Web design links
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This page is horribly outdated. - Fixing it a bit right now over the next two days - Daniel K. Schneider 14:41, 22 October 2011 (CEST).
Introduction
Right now, this is a quick and dirty (!!) page with pointers about WWW design and style. Entries should have real contents useful to web designers.
See also:
- Interaction design, user experience and usability, Design and usability methods and techniques and related articles in the
- Articles on general and other subjects-related design methodologies
Things to do - Daniel K. Schneider 17:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
- Move the french pointers to the french wiki
- Check links and kill a few useless ones
- Comment the better links
- Reorganize (!)
- Add a few definitions
See also many entries in the categories web technologies, web technology tutorials, usability and Ergonomics and human-computer interaction
The process
Style recommendations (without visual design)
Visual design recommendations
Web design links
The general process / design methods
This selection of various resources should particular address web design.
- Web Style Guide, 3rd edition by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horon. This is a popular free onlinebook. It covers the whole design process (including interface design, site structure, page structure, page design, etc.). Excellent book for beginners who aim to start creating web sites. A very early (popular in the nineties) version of this book was called the "Yale Style Guide".
- A Design Method List Apart article by Ross Olson, July 2000.
- Beyond User-Centered Design and User Experience: Designing for User Performance by Larry Constantine, 2005. Argues that “model-driven approaches based on fine-grained task models have a proven record of leading to dramatic improvements in user performance through innovative designs.”
- Activity Modeling: Toward a Pragmatic Integration of Activity Theory with Usage-Centered Design by Larry Constantine, 2006. Activity theory and usage-centered design are outlined and the connections between the two are highlighted. Simple extensions to the models of usage-centered design are introduced.
- John December's Web Development (John Decembmer has built the first widely used Web Portal about Web Design in 1992).
- Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun (M.I.T). This free online book covers two broad categories of Web sites. The first is Web Publishing, i.e. vaguely magazine-like. The second broad category is Web-based Application. A nice complement for developers is Software Engineering for Internet Applications
- Web Redesign 2.0 by K. Goto and E.Cotler. The site is a companion site for a book. The online materials include some interesting check lists.
- Web design, Wikipedia
Style in the light of usability
As we pointed out in the introduction, you also may have a look at our resources on. Pointers below rather point to simple technical recipees of what to do and not to do in a web design. Other's can be rather found in the usability literature, e.g. Nielson's well known Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design
- Universal Usability, a free online book by Sarah Horton doesn't only cover usability. Web site design is understood as a combination of function, interface, and content and covers issues like document structure, text, images, data tables, page layout, etc.
- Style Guide for online hypertext. This document was written by Tim Berners-Lee in the early days (1992). Still an interesting read. In particular, it includes a few basic "dos" and "don'ts".
- WDG's Design Elements. The Web Design Group is organization that fights for stable standards. (last update: 2007, as of oct 2011). Its Style guide for online hypertext is based on the W3C (Berners-Lee guide) above.
- Cool URIs don't change by TBL/W3C. Argues that URL's should remain stable. {quotation|URIs don't change: people change them.}}
- Art and the Zen of web sites Tony Karp / TLC (last modified december 2002). Quite similar to the W3C and recommendations.
- HTML Hell Page (probably written in the late nineties). Written by Eric Raymond, a well-known open source advocate and contributor.
- 99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete by Jeffrey Zeldman, 2002
Graphics oriented design
- lynda.com, Lynda Weinmann's web master site includes design-oriented articles.
- Web Page Design for Designers
- Graphics at webrefence.com
- PraystationState of the Art Designed Site
- Monitoring Order: Visual desire, the Organization of web pages, and teaching rules of Design article by Anne F. Wysocki.
- whether a 2D or a 3D interface is better on-line Tutorial by Greg Trafton
- Kaliber10000 (The Designer's Lunchbox). CPU & bandwidth hugging
- 30 Must See Web Generator for Lazy Webmasters (Includes a list of online tools to generates various web page elements)
Technical and specialized issues
See also:
- The Anatomy of an Icon. Short technical "how to" article.
- Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web, W3C Recommendation 15 December 2004 (a different suject, but HTML producers ought to know this)
Various
- "People, Communities, and Service: Shaping the Future of the Internet" (1999), a Brenda Laurel Talk (some design principles for government services online)
- Conference Presentation Judo (how to give conferences by M.J. Dominus)
- Here is very nice parody of Nielson's site
Evaluation
- General quality
- Checklist for Evaluating Web Resources A short list made for judging the quality of a web page. (USM, retrieved oct. 2011).
- Five criteria for evaluating Web pages (Cornell, retr. oct. 2011 based on Kapoun, Jim. "Teaching undergrads WEB evaluation: A guide for library instruction." C&RL News (July/August 1998): 522-523.
- Evaluate Web Pages (Widener Univ., retr. oct. 2011).
Links
Links either point to indexes or larger web sites that we didn't mention above.
Web Design Links, Portals & Zines
Also, dig in above's links, most major WebDesign resources have a link page !!
- Zeldman (Web designer related to [A List A Part
- Links at The Web Design Group
- Design Pages by Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini at AskTog, a list with good unsorted pointers
- Usability 1st Usability Portal (including groupware)
- Susan Carter's links a Web Designer who works for small businesses
- Whuzzup by Eric Brooks
- Usability at webreference.com
- designshops.com A directory of Web design firms, news, tutorials, etc..
- Web Accessibility Initiative (a W3C group)
- WebWord Usability Weblog
- Interface Mafia
General Design
See also: usability, web usability, human-computer interaction, etc.
- European Usability Support Centres has free resources on-line (including papers and guidelines on design)
- The Design Management Institute has a few good links to general design
- Don Norman's Website
- Interaction Architect.com
- Participatory Design page at Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
- HCI Bibliography
- Bad Human Factors Design
- Oxford Good Design Guide
- Standards: Designing For the Future by Ian Lloyd
- User Friendly, the Comic Strip (humour)
Programming
Design of documentation
Examples
- One True Fit - standards design by Ryan Carver, paper will attempt to give an overview how he built Lee Jeans - One True Fit. (2003)
- On-line Zines are always a good source of inspiration. jwz's bookmarks point to a number of them (dig a bit)
- Some Players in design world: Organic * e8z (A Harvey) *
Bibliography
Journals
- DesignIssues The MIT Press Journal's site (a few on-line articles)
=== Bibliographies
- INDEX: Jakob Nielsen has a list of recommended books including his own Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (recommended)
- INDEX: Bruce Tognazzini also has a nice list of more general Design Books
Bibliography
- Michael Bauerly and Yili Liu (2011). Effects of Symmetry and Number of Compositional Elements on Interface and Design Aesthetics, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, DOI: 10.1080/10447310801920508
- Bi, L., Fan, X., Zhang, G., Liu, Y., and Chen, Z. 2009. Effects of symmetry and number of compositional elements on Chinese users' aesthetic ratings of interfaces. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, accepted for publication. PDF
- Engelbart, Douglas C. (1992). [Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework], Read for some vision what we could use modern technology for. See also: other publications and projects).
- Wolf, T.V., Rode, J.A., Sussman, J., and Kellogg, W.A. 2006. "Dispelling design as the "Black Art" of CHI," Proceedings of CH, 2006 Conference (Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 22-27 April). PDF