Web design links

Draft

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This page is horribly outdated. - Fixing it a bit right now over the next two days - Daniel K. Schneider 14:14, 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

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

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)

Some technical issues

See also:

• CSS tutorial
• Computer colors tutorial

Making icons

• The Anatomy of an Icon. Short technical "how to" article.

Legibility of text

Serif fonts, all things being equal, are easier to read (except on a computer screen)

• Type Legibility and Readability Good reading, in particular for people also write for paper :)
• Fonts FAQ, old but still very useful, e.g. part 3 and its Rules of Thumb section.

Various

• Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web (a different suject, but HTML producers ought to know this)

• "People, Communities, and Service: Shaping the Future of the Internet" a Brenda Laurel Talk (some design principles for government services online)
• AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework, D. Engelbart's 1962 text, read for some vision what we could use modern technology for .... see what he is doing today boostrap.org
• [http://thot.cursus.edu/rubrique.asp?no=5978 Comment citer un document �lectronique dans une bibliographie] (how to cite electronic source, english version needed too)
• MUST, Site of a danish Method for Participatory Design, includes a good short description.
• Understanding Interactivity A few online chapters from a book by Chris Crawford
• Persuasion and Web Survial A Webreference Newslettre feature
• On a related note: Technical Writing at Suite101
• So You Want to Write a Book (O'Reilly)
• Conference Presentation Judo (how to give conferences by M.J. Dominus)
• Here is very nice parody of Nielson's site

Evaluation

• Guide de concption pédagogique et graphique d'un site éducatif sur le réseau Internet (Univ. of Laval guide)
• Evaluating Web Resources (good teaching materials, ok for self-learning too). See also J.E. Alexander's and M.A. Tate's Web Wisdom book.
• évaluation d'un site Web (une petite liste)
• The CyberMetricssite has a lot of good links to quantitative methods (a lot on the quality of search tools)

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

• Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines
• Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design

Design of documentation

• sigDOC / ACM

Examples

• Suck.com

• WebMutant's Design Paper

• 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
• 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