Help with Web Design ... (Do not read if you're a total prick.)

http://www.ilxor.com

http://stylegala.com/

^^^ I steal from here a lot.

(Do not read if you're a total prick.)

I like how you excluded Jon Williams from this discussion right in the thread title.

kenan, thanks... That's exactly the type of content/site I'm referring to - although the links are still not distinct enough for some of our users. They apparently need more contrast or something.

hey, what can ya do?

:)

:)

Still, I shall also steal from them henceforth.

http://themes.wordpress.net/

www.bbc.co.uk

Does it have a framework???

my friend runs this site for Knoll:

http://www.knoll-int.com/index.html

no wikipedia links, but aLOT of info prety well organized. It's a beast.

I need help with educating clients about web design. I have one on my hands that insists that all the content be "above the fold," and is gleefully willing to use 9px text and no padding on anything to make this happen. It's insane. It's so insane that I don't know what to say to him. I can't just say, "You're insane." How do people who use the internet every day keep on assuming that even though they do so with one finger on a scroll wheel 99.9% of the time, NOBODY ELSE HAS EVER THOUGHT OF USING THE SCROLL WHEEL. This is a doubly difficult problem, because even if I convince the client that there is no such thing as a "fold" or a "scroll line," the client may have a legitimate problem convincing an advertiser of this.

What the hell do I say to this person?

"Most people...ah...don't use the internet the way you do."

First place I worked at (legal publishers) had a client (lawyer) who genuinely didn't know about scrolling.

just tell them different screen sizes have different "fold lines" and as such you'd have to design it to 800x600 and show them how terribly crunched it'd look ;)

xxpost But that's just it... I think he probably does use the internet just like everyone else does. But there's a really pervasive "wisdom" out there that the prime screen real estate is only what you see as soon as you open the window. I'm not sure what the counter argument to this is.

Show him big name sites that do scroll? BBC news, newspapers, any of his competitors (actually that one not such a good idea, he might think 'ha I will steal all their custom with my amazing no-scroll site).

I mean when you consider that the browser takes up about 200px between the top and bottom you could conceivably argue that they'd have to restrict all content to 400px tall max.

is there any way you could set up their site so that the content is split across several pages with a cute NEXT PAGE>> link at the bottom of each page? hard to conceptualize without having an idea of what kind of site/content we're dealing with.. but I agree with you FFS just scroll, it's easy

He doesn't want no-scroll; he's just trying to cram huge amounts of shit into the top of the page, readability be damned. The more I do what he asks, the more the page looks like some kind of spam, from an awful hellish place where there is no white space ever. No one will ever ever read this. It's intimidating and ugly. But he doesn't seem to understand that it's meant to be read, clicked, and used, not just jammed onto the page in order to charge some sucker a five bucks a day.

I think I just hate the internet, is the trouble.

I did work for Washington Mutual for the past several years and they were completely irrational about a lot of this "fold" stuff.

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of

yeah, lawyers don't like it when you try to prove them wrong with stuff on the internet. They would send back things specifying point size of fonts and asking for bold in tiny text and all kinds of crap you can't do. They were idiots and I'm glad they failed.

Try taking a newspaper and pointing out that they put plenty of stuff below the fold. Flatter his prejudices, but make him see that you really only need to put the key stuff in the first screenful; it just has to be enticing enough to make people scroll.

"Here's what you asked for, but I have some fundamental differences with where you're going here." Would that be too aggressive?

Yes.

That's pretty much what I did, actually. Fulfilled his wishes as best I knew how, and also gently suggested that his wishes were needlessly complicating things.

best to start off agreeing w/him - cause he is right that the first thing someone sees goes a long way in determining if theyre going to spend some time w/the site - u just have impress upon him that the way said info is presented is as important as its volume - struck a balance must be

like show him some successful sites

"As you can see, the top of this page now looks like... well... did you ever see the episode of South Park where all the men climb into a giant pile and get all gay with each other? That's what your content is doing, and I promosie you no one wants to watch."

(I did not really write that.)

Publisher: "Make everything stand out."
Me: "If everything stands out, nothing stands out."
Publisher: "...make everything stand out."
Me: "..."

xpost lol

I swore once that the next person who asked to make something "pop" was going to learn a new meaning of the word, but that was quite a few "pops" ago now.

in my experience if yr dealing w/someone w/truly intractable bad ideas it can be amusing to just set aside yr personal sensibilities and just try to give them what they want - sort of a fun through the looking glass type game

Publisher likes to say "make it pizzazzy" -- over a decade I've converted that to "add pizza." Only my wife and daughter get my regular pizza references.

Yeah, I just need to go do something else for a while, and when I come back I'll see that I made as many mistakes as anyone else involved.

Like, when designing a site for a company that manufactures heavy, obscure, odd-looking machinery for processing food starch, do not turn off all the lights, put on the last Autechre record, and make a design that kinda makes everyone feel unsettled and nervous. It's almost certainly not what the client wanted.

i recently told my last freelance client that i was doing web-work for to take a hike.
it's not worth the headache. (most) people are stupid and they want miracles for free overnight and they can all go to hell.

the one positive about web work is that it's not permanent. with print, if the clients asks for and gets something retarded, they won't realize until it's printed and too late. web you can give them their piece of shit and then charge them again (assuming you bill by the hour) to do it right.

xposts

Technically this is software design, but no less familiar. I loled.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/ca-report-finds.html

The button is positioned next to the Print and Save As buttons (see image above), making it easy for an election official to click on it by mistake and erase crucial logs.

Sigh.

The system provides no warning to the operator that clicking on the button will result in permanent deletion of records in the log, nor does it require the operator to confirm the action before executing it.

Heavy sigh.

According to California's report, one of the system's developers wrote in an e-mail in 2001: "Adding a Clear button is easy, but there are too many reasons why doing that is a bad idea." Yet the company included the button in its system anyway.

I laugh that I may not cry.

It's unclear how many previous versions of the software had the button, or why it was included in the first place.

When reading this story on Le Show last week, Harry Shearer stopped at this point and said, "I know why. Because it sounds nice. Cleeeear... Doesn't that feel better?"

I think he's absolutely correct. There's nothing intentionally sinister about it. Somebody liked the Clear button, is all. Maybe it helps fill that awkward space next to Print and Save As. Maybe someone saw a Clear button somewhere else, and would not be satisfied until they had a Clear button of their very own.

long story short, i've lost my job and am revamping my website to try to drum up b'ness.
ok, it was a short story to begin with.

anyways - here's how i'd like it to look. i'm going to start building it out in flash this weekend. wouldn't mind feedback - i'm going to have the background image rotate between several of my shots, but they'll all have the same feel as the one pictured.

http://i753.photobucket.com/albums/xx177/tupac-chopra/Website_rev1.jpg

nice!! just make it accessible. i.e. navigation that comes early in the HTML, alt attributes that clearly describe the destination of the link... etc. and see how it looks on a mobile phone.

jesus. never had to design for a mobile phone before! if i do it in flash it's not gonna work with an iphone anyways, right? should i even worry about mobiles? i haven't done web for a few years :s

Mobile's where the new business is, in a big way. Definitely worry about them.

ok i have a question - i have gotten paid to do a site for someone. its basically done, but how do i show it to them, without uploading it to their server? do i have to go and show it to them physically? or should they just take my word for it being decent and let me upload it? not sure how this sort of thing should work.

host it yrself or put it in a 'hidden' directory on their server (assuming you used relative links)