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The advertising industry is on the verge of being shattered into a thousand fragments due to the knowledge explosion and the proliferation of new technologies. There are no more grand theories that hold sway over the entire industry. Michael Strangelove
Advertising is
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The System
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In a newsgroup to which we subscribe, comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site-design,
we came across these principles of good site design, thoughtfully compiled
by Tobias C. Brown, with assistance from
Alan J. Flavell, Sue Jordon, and Susan Lesch.
"1. Write for multiple Web browsers to provide easy access to the widest
possible audience.
The World Wide Web is a multi-platform, non-browser specific medium. It should
not matter whether people browse your web pages using Netscape Navigator 4.02,
AOL Browser 3.0, Lynx 2.7, or NetPhonic's Web-On-Call.
Each browser ought to render your informational web pages without problems.
If a Web page is designed properly, blind individuals using text-to-voice
or Braille web browsers can easily access and review your work.
2. Condense textual content to fit the time and attention constraints of
today's busy Web users. Take a look at Thoughts
on Web Style,
3. Use small (byte-wise) graphics so graphics load more quickly in graphics-capable
browsers.
It is not advisable to use GIFs for everything. It's of the first importance
to make the right choice between JPEG and a palette-based format. Avoid blindly
choosing GIF and then trying to rescue yourself from the resulting problems.
JPEG image compression Frequently
Asked Questions
4. When using graphics, provide textual alternatives for image disabled
or text-only web browsers and indexing agents.
5. Run Web pages through a validator to test their compliance with HTML
standards.
Modify pages until they validate, because compliant pages have a better chance
of being rendered by various Web browsers, as the writer intends.
However, if you intend something that is impractical with HTML, it will be
no less impractical for being syntactically valid.
Work with the strengths of HTML rather than trying to batter it into a WYSIWYG
page design system.
What You See Is
Not What Others Get on the Web
6. Run pages through Lynx
View or
Lynx-me or, best of all, view them using a browser like Lynx, to see
how the "text-only" world sees your documents. Make documents Lynx-friendly.
7. Spell check your documents.
8. Establish a routine to help you locate and fix broken internal and external
Web site links.
8. If your web site URL or eMail address will change occasionally, consider
using a service that provides eMail forwarding and URL redirection.
9. Submit your Web site address to an appropriate newsgroup
for a critical peer review.
10. Promote your Web site by adding your URL to search engines and directories.
To ensure that people can easily find your Web site, it may be necessary to
modify your pages to take best advantage of current search
technologies."
Thank you Tobias et al.
GadgetGrrl (who we used to know in a previous life) has emerged reviewing "software, hardware and gadgets" for WBZ in Boston.
Her most recent column (June 2) compares Eudora
and Videomail as eMail clients.
She's obviously our kinda gal, as she comes down firmly on the side ot Eudora. With reservations...
Be that as it may. GadgetGrrl takes a long hard look at applications that normal people like us may be tempeted to buy (and even use). As such, she's well worth a look to discover what the punters may well be using the day after tomorrow.
GadgetGrrl appears daily at the WBZ site, so well worth checking out on a regular basis.
On June 8, the ClickZ Network launches the
first comprehensive search directory for online marketing,
advertising and commerce. It is called - quelle surpirse! - SearchZ.
Prior to the official launch, you are welcome to submit links to any
relevant articles, columns, news items or reviews that might
be relevant as well - whether you wrote them or someone
else.
This could well be a useful resource, bringing together as it does a distinct sub-group of sites with a common theme.
We have the feeling that this may well be the model for search engines of the future - defined universes, spidered on a regular basis.
We have high hopes for this one.SearchZ has engaged the mighty brain of Eric Ward (who will get a column all to himself in the not too distant future).
We're keeping our fingers crossed...
It used to be easy. A new logo was designed for a company on the understanding that its reproduction was pretty much confined to print, usually in two colors, occasionally in four.
No more. In today's multi-media environment, a corporate logo is likely top be reproduced in a variety of media, from print to CD-ROM to the Web - and everything in between.
No longer is it enough to reproduce the company logo as if all media made the same demands on the design. They don't. Differing resolutions and media of reproduction by no means guarante that a design will degrade gracefully across the board.
Readers familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area will probably be aware of BAM Magazine. A few years ago, the company revamped its corporate logo. The design team was faced with producing a logo which was capable of being reproduced in one to six colors, in sizes ranging from 1" x 1" to 6" x 6", on stock ranging from newsprint to 100# gloss cover.
This was by no means an easy task. The reulting design was accompanied by a forty-page usage manual, with manifestations of the design in all conceivable formats.
Of course, this was before the Web - and, naturally enough, the design didn't translate too well.
So if you're thinking of a logo redesign, employ a pro who will be able to come up with a design which will maintain its integrity across the full range of media.
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
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