Looking for some “faith” icons to tuck away in your resources?
New Resource: Fireworks Lab
I’ve got a great Fireworks resource for you, and it’s called “Firworks Lab.” I love their tag line, “The Fireworks Resource Site that does not suck.”
True story.
I’m a long time user and lover of Fireworks. A lot of web design stuff you hear about and find tends to lean more towards Photoshop, which totally makes sense. Photoshop gives you that “pop” (I really hate saying that) that you just can’t get with Fireworks. However, Fireworks is great for mocking up sites and it’s easy to port over. Creating layers, working with PNGs, it really is a sturdy tool. I leave final touches and logos up to Photoshop.
3 Web Design Mistakes
Jam pack every nook and cranny with something.
The web design term is called “white space” and is the space between different elements on a page. This area does not have to be empty of color or patterns, but what is absent is clutter and content. For experienced web designers (and many different artists), white space is a highly coveted resource that they tend to battle against clients to fill. In fact, a whole design genre, called Minimalism, has emerged in the web design world. Websites like Google and Apple do this SO WELL!
White space allows for easier scanning of a website, getting to the content that the user wants quicker. The focus becomes less on distractions and more on the product (ministry, blog, or your organization) and reduces user frustration. These kind of designs always come out clean, professional looking, and refreshing feel to it.
Design it to your liking.
While you may love the color red and want to start up a church website that has red as its primary color, you need to make sure you know what you are trying to convey in these colors. The thoughts and emotions that correspond with red are anger, aggression, and is clinically proven to raise blood pressure. Even Target.com, whose logo is based on the color, shy’s away from over using it because of how it could be interpreted.
At the same time, structure is important and you should always keep your audience in mind. Bloggers might want to share their top posts to those that first visit your website, but without focusing on new articles, your traffic will get lost. For those that love to make things visually appealing may want to make their website a Flash site, but many people do not have Flash installed on their site and these files are large and take time to download. Be cautious with what you use and always get a client’s opinion of what they see.
Publish it after you see it works on YOUR browser.
Several times I have created a website for someone, been able to get it exactly how they want it to look and then they expect it to go live the next day. The problem with this is that the website on my Firefox 4 browser on my 17 inch MacBook will look differently than my grandma’s 21 inch PC that only runs Internet Explorer 6. (Oh, how I loath IE6!) As web designers, you need to make sure that your site comes up correctly on all major browsers at all major resolutions, and with all the different operating systems.
Feel overwhelmed? No need to fear. BrowserShots.org is a great online resource to do all of this (and more than you probably needed). I use this every time I make a website to make sure it is working on all systems. Of course I will still try it out on different browsers myself, but this is the first line of corrections when I come up with a new design.
jRumble: A jQuery Plugin That Shakes Things Up!
[tentblogger-youtube VpFITa9eYoQ]
Visiting the jRumble website was pretty entertaining. So, what does this jQuery plugin do?
[Read more…] about jRumble: A jQuery Plugin That Shakes Things Up!
NewHopeChurch.tv is Awesome & I Failed
A few days ago, I posted about Churches Ripping-Off Churches. It’s unfortunate, but true. From logos to code, far too often, websites are built by way of copy and paste.
The good news, however, is the discussion highlighted the fact that many of the best Christian designers, bloggers, and developers, are more than willing to hand over their hard work to the Church. It was inspiring, indeed, to find many Churches sharing with other Churches.
Unfortunately, there is some bad news.
Churches Sharing with Churches
[READ THIS FIRST – There has been an update regarding the topic of this post.]
Yesterday, we talked about Churches Ripping-Off Churches. It was a classic story of copy meets paste. Websites being designed and developed by copying code without permission or attribution, and releasing it as their own.
An interesting discussion arose, one that I did not foresee. I thought the conversation would center around the lack of creativity, the violation of ethics, and maybe even law. These things were mentioned here and there, but they were not the center piece.
I was sincerely impressed.
If I were to boil the discussion down to one word, it would be: