Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

Design Trends: Tabloid Pages

Posted by James - 25/11/07 at 01:11:43 pm

Introduction

Web design enevitably has some hangovers from the early days. The web is, and always has been, really nothing more than a network of documents. Ok so the documents are often cleverly generated on-the-fly by computer systems, but they’re still documents. That’s one thing a lot of people don’t seem to realise, one of the obsticles to understanding ‘how it all works’. The only unique thing about documents on the web is the hyperlink and by extension, the concept of navigation.

Backstory

With no precident set for navigations, and tables being such a dominant aspect of page construction, they more-or-less defined what the web could look like. From this came the standard 3-area division of the page, with side-navigation, top-navigation and content. Perhaps because of browser behaviour - like the default 10 pixel page padding - or more likely because fluid-width designs were a real pain in the rear, fixed-width layouts were predominent, and this led to the standard ‘boxed’ page idea. Or, the idea that a webpage should have a visibly limited width, enclosed within a box and surrounded by a different coloured background.
Continue reading Design Trends: Tabloid Pages…

2 Smashing Flash Websites…

Posted by James - 20/07/07 at 08:07:46 pm

DONTCLICK.IT and pr0jects are a couple of outstanding Flash-based sites I’ve come across this month.

 

 

Continue reading 2 Smashing Flash Websites……

RSS. Bling or no Bling?

Posted by James - 28/05/07 at 05:05:23 pm

Times move fast on the web. RSS has been mainstream for quite a while. So long, in fact, that RSS readers are now built into the two major windows browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2. It’s been inbuilt for longer on the Mac, I hear.
So, in our busy little ‘Web 2.0′ designs, why does the staple ingredient of Blogs and Community websites need to be emblazoned in the design? I mean, what’s the point?

Continue reading RSS. Bling or no Bling?…