WWW page of the past, and the present

School of Computing  |  Napier  |  Cisco  |  SFC  |  NOS  |  Code |  Old page


WWW pages of the past

Nov 2001

The next wave of WWW pages has arrived, and my pages were starting to look a bit out-of-date, so I've updated them. You also find weaknesses in the page design when you use it to teach a class. The main one I've found is that NetScape doesn't really present the page, as I thought it would be presented, thus in future I will use NetScape to view my designs, and finally test it with Explorer.

So here's my new design (you can compare this with the old page). I'm a great believer in reusing design elements (especially GIF and SWF elements), so it's similar to my previous page. If you move your cursor over the image, you'll see the enhancements made.

It does no good to just change the home page, so I've updated the other pages, such as, for the the CNDS page:

and for Code Snippets (which has never really been a very well designed page):

and for NOS:

Compare old with new:

Page

Old

New

CNDS:

Old

New

NOS:

Old

New

Home:

Old

New

Code Snippets

Old

New

CV:

Old

New

Studio:

Old

New





 

 
Page size has been reduced to pixels across so that it can be viewed by any browser, no matter their resolution. It also helps the user to print the full page. Blue background gives some contrast to the main page. It also helps to provide the user with an initial sign that the page is loading. This was a problem in my previous page, as it took more that 30 seconds to initially load. Once loaded into the cache, it can be viewed quickly.Blue background gives some contrast to the main page. It also helps to provide the user with an initial sign that the page is loading. This was a problem in my previous page, as it took more that 30 seconds to initially load. Once loaded into the cache, it can be viewed quickly.Some important links are now on the right-hand side. A low-resolution graphics display would possibly not be able to view this menu properly, but most browsers will be able to get access to them. The contrast of blue against the white focuses the users eye on these menu options.The main graphics elements of the old page have been incorporated, so that it does not feel as it the style of the page has changed.Once you've investigated a portal page, you just want to quickly jump to the required page, thus I've provided the links to the main sub-pages on my site.The graphics at the top of the page do very little for navigation, but give the page a strong page heading. The Home animation adds a little bit of interest, but I've general deleted all the main animation elements on this page.New, quick jumps to important pages.Some page balancing graphics.



General

Main page

Summary
Past WWW pages

Distorting and changing the transparency of a graphic
A good trick to add interest to a graphic is to distort it, so that it appears to be viewed from a different angle. Most graphics are scanned in, in a 2D space, thus distorting can give the effect of an image taken at a different angle. For example:
In Fireworks, this can be distorted with the Modify-> Transform-> Distort menu option, to give:
Then the image can be faded into the background with the transparency option on the Layers window:

School of Computing  |  Napier  |  Cisco  |  SFC  |  NOS  |  Code |  Old page
Page maintained by bill