Inspired by the clean graphic and total functionality of Roger Ebert's movie review page at the Chicago Sun-Times and by the clean layout and easy navigability of InfoSeek's opening Personal News Page, I abandoned my home page's conversion to frames which was only complicating my front end. I found myself preparing a new index.html to let people choose between a frames and non-frames version of my home page. It was getting way too complicated.
Embedded Files
If the primary purpose of a page is to disseminate information, there is no need to wade through ton's of buttons and links and wait forever for large cgi-based graphics to load. If your purpose is to demonstrate programming skill, by all means load your page up with all of the Java you want, but I encourage you to keep your opening page clean and simple with warnings to the uninitiated if they are about to embark on an animated journey best suited for an ISDN connection.
After seeing several pages with photo-based icons, I experimented with Adobe Photoshop and came up with a process to create, what I refer to as, panel buttons. My goal is to limit the number of panels on a given page. This serves to keep each page clean and to minimize loading time.
Another design goal is to develop simple intra-site navigation bars at the top and bottom of each page to give internauts a simple escape upon an aborted load and likewise an easily navigable decision tree if they've taken the time to make it down to the bottom of your page. Load time is minimized if these "bars" would be text-based.
I designed a seal with TypeStyler to give my pages my own "stamp of approval." I release these seals to the public domain and use them only to bring attention to this page, the prime purpose of which is to provide links to good web page design.
Google Sites
Report abuse