Point Two: Mike has an advertising banner on his site.
Contrary to what many think, I don’t dislike ad banners.
I dislike a lot of ad banners. Notice what Mike did
with his. This is the correct method of incorporating
a banner on your site. He nestled it into the page
without giving it top billing. We know that importance
is set by placement. The upper left-hand corner of the
page is the most prominent portion of the page and any
element placed there will be seen as the most important
element of the page. All too often, new designers will
put an ad banner top and center pushing the remainder of
their site down. That puts the idea in the viewer’s mind
that the ad banner is the most important thing.
It isn’t! Your page is the most important thing!
Mike has taken that idea to heart. The top left is
occupied by the text and font that represents the site.
The top right is still occupied by his site. The next
“line” is still occupied by his site through the use of
the PV logo. Finally, the ad banner pops up nestled
within the design of the site.
Mike has said, through placement, that his site is
the most important thing. The ads banner is
important, but it is of lesser importance than the
title, character, logo, and design of the site.
That’s how you incorporate an ad banner. It is
support for your site, not the end all. Giving an
ad banner top center billing only serves to push
your site down and lessen its importance in the
user’s eye.
Speaking of the user’s eye…
Point Three: Mike has set the width of his page to
600 by surrounding the content with a single table
cell. He has also then centered the table cell.
That way as the user’s screen sizes increase or
decrease, the page itself stays the same size and
centers to the screen size. That’s a good thing,
but not what I wanted to point out.
Mike has gone as far as to be concerned about the
background behind the page. He could have easily
just used a flat color to surround the page on
larger monitors, but he didn’t. He put some thought
into it and used a background image that actually
leads the user’s eye. Notice the horizontal lines.
No matter where the viewer’s eyes land on the page,
the lines constantly keep acting as a road map to
direct the user to continue moving horizontally back
to the actual page. It’s a little thing, but a wise
choice.
Point Four: So…what was all that above regarding,
“so goes the homepage so goes the rest of the site?”
Well, Mike’s homepage set some boundaries in the
user’s mind. It set the shape of the page, the colors,
the character, and the logo. If he were to use
different boundaries throughout the page, he might
confuse the viewer, but he didn’t. Once the homepage
set the boundaries, Mike continued to reinforce those
boundaries on each of his sub-pages. Dig this:
Notice the shell and the format is carried across the
site offering consistency and reinforcing again and
again that the user is within the same site and that
site is marked by the color purple, a specific font,
a specific character, and a specific logo. Smart.
Concern: Oh, yes. Mike knows he can’t get out of
my class without at least one concern. I pointed
this one out to him the last time he stopped over.
Here’s the site in Netscape Navigator.
Notice that much of the font and navigation formatting
is lost. That’s because Mike did the majority of it
with CSS commands Netscape didn’t always understand.
He said that the page rendered fine in Netscape 6.0.
It did, but lesser versions don’t play by the same
rules. Oh well – get in there and hard code to get
the effect.
Overall: It’s “A” level work. Mike is the epitome
of someone who takes design seriously. He leaves
nothing to chance and every element on the page is
thought out and placed there to make an impact towards
the site’s killer app.
Oh, one more thing. Did you notice that the first
letters of the paragraphs in the homepage are all
capped and in bold? Try reading them vertically.
They spell out PHANTOM.
Oh man, now that’s putting some thought into design!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That’s that.
Joe Burns, Ph.D.
Always Remember: When it comes to designing your Web site, the
most important person is not you, but your user.
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