1) How do you find this site? (3 words)

Plain, boring and uninteresting.

2) Who do you think the site is created for?

I think it is created for mostly adult women and teenagers who are interested in buying the brand’s clothes. It is also created for whoever wants to find out more about THIS FASHION.

3) What are the good attributes of the site?

It is not cluttered, so it is easy to navigate. It also loads very quickly due to the sparse graphics. The menu on top is convenient to use too as we don’t have to press the “back” button often.

4) What are the bad attributes of the website?

The website is not pleasing to the eye, with minimum pictures and bland layout. Overal, it feels amateurish.  Also, I don’t like its “no-frills” approach; very straight-forward contents which made the site more bland than it already is. I feel that the site does not reflect well on the brand, especially if they are selling clothes. There is hardly any good picture of their clothes. Last but not least, there are some typing errors too.

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Please contact me through the school email or handphone if you can’t download the file! Thank you!

1) What is browser-safe color palette/ Web-safe colors?

Browser-safe color palette/web-safe colors  is a pallete which is used by Mosaic, Netscape and Internet Explorer within their browser. It contains only 216 colors out of 256 and will appear the same on Macintosh and PC monitors. The RGB values of web-safe colors are 0%. 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%.  Also, the colors will appear solid and not dithered. Browser safe color pallete is predominantly used many years ago as most people used 8-bit (256 colors) monitors.

2) Is it still relevant in today’s context? And why?

It is not as relevant today as compared to many years ago since most computers can now display millions of colors. However, there are still a number of people who use 8-bit color monitors even at this age of time.  Therefore, the usage of web safe colors can’t be ruled out completely.  >:-( I guess it depends on who the target audience is.

3) What are the common fonts face found on PC & Mac?

They are:

• Arial
• Arial Black
• Andale Mono
• Century Gothic
• Comic Sans MS
• Georgia
• Impact
• Palatino
• Trebuchet MS
• Symbol
• Webdings
• Geneva
• Verdana
• Times New Roman
• Times
• Garamond
• Palatino
• Courier New
• Courier

4) What is page loading time? And how will it influence your design?

Page loading time is the amount of time taken for the user to see the landing page. It influences my design in such a way that I will have to consider the following things to make my page load faster:

• Image dimension -> Using height and width tags for images allows the image to load in the background.
• Image size -> Reduce image sizes first. Heavy images load slooooooow.
• Number of images -> Less images are better!
• Widgets -> Don’t put too many widgets into the page!
• File hosting -> Host files on my own server.
• Cookies -> Use the minimum number of cookies for the page.
• Simplicity -> Flash, tons of images and sound effects are not necessary although cool. >:-B
• Tables -> No nested tables and full page tables! Also, use height and width tags for tables.
• Content -> If there’s a big chunk of information, split them into multiple pages.

Basically, simpler is better. It’s good to keep the site clutter free I guess!

5) Web Design Workflow and Process Comparison

Read the web process article above and write what you think about it.(150 min words)

After reading the article, I found out that different companies have somewhat similar workflows despite naming the processes differently. Planning, drafting and production are the three common steps used by the them. I feel that it is important to have such workflow since it can save us a lot of time and it’s always good to plan before jumping straight into the production. Also, I personally like Like A Design Process Revealed‘s workflow:

1. No Smoke, No Mirrors
2. Research and discovery
3. Competitive analysis
4. Exploration
5. Thumbnail sketching
6. Typography
7. Imagery
8. Composition
9. Execution and implementation

I guess I like the fact that his steps are easy to understand to me. :-]

Another thing I realised after reading the article is that websites have to be maintained after their launch. Problems such as bandwitch shortage (hotlinking! >:-s) and heavy traffic flow might occur. Also, it’s important to find out people’s feedback about the website.

Overal, I find the article useful and enriching as I didn’t know that companies have different methods of working. The list of their workflow also serves as a good guide for me when working on a website. Maybe I should start coming up with a workflow which suits me the best too!

Questions:

1) Name as many browsers as you can: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Yahoo, Google, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

2) What is browser wars?: It is competition for control between the web browsers. The term is used to specify two main periods, namely during the 1990s and from 2003 onwards. In the early 1990s, Netscape Navigator was dominating the web. However, it was defeated by Microsoft Internet Explorer in the late 1990s. From 2003 onwards, the competitions are between Internet Explorer and other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari.

3) What is IP address?: It is a short form of Internet Protocol address. It is a code consisting of numbers that indentifies a particular computer on the web. IP addresses are displayed as human-readable notations, but they are stored as binary numbers.

4) What is URL?: It is a short form of Uniform Resource Locator. It tells us the location of an identified resource and the system for retrieving it. It can also mean Web Address in popular language.

5) What is a good website?: A good website has to be well-organized, edited, updated, set in an attractive, interactive, and consistent format. It has to be easy to navigate and usable too. Not only that, a good website presents its contents in the most effective way as possible to suit the need.