As you know, CSS is one of the most debated terms in the web design and development area. That is because it is one of the hottest approaches on the design side on web. And also because lately more and more people out there use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
Last year one of the most talked part of CSS was the CSS Framework. A CSS framework is a pre-prepared library that is meant to allow for easier, more standards-compliant styling of a webpage using the Cascading Style Sheets language:Wikipedia In order to get a clear view, a CSS framework is composed of several .css files like: RESET, TYPOGRAPHY, GRID, PRINT and others. Those files have rules for resetting default values, setting typography rules, print rules and other detalis.
I talked about this approach at that time but some foreign elements came, and my opinion is now a little bit changed. My previous idea was that a standalone CSS framework is wrong for everybody to use, but instead, creating one that is suitable for your project is the best approach. Well, it seems that I don’t agree with that anymore.
The main purpose for a CSS framework is to use it in the early stage of the development process. In this way you can change or add easily new classes and ids, and test them very quickly. Later in the early stage of the production phase, you can loose the css framework and try to optimize the css files in order to achieve better server response performance. Although I’m not pro with the frameworks, I do believe that some rules for reset, typography and print are suitable in every project.
For the RESET, my recommendation is the reset file from Eric Meyer or the reset.css file from Yahoo User Interface library. For the typography and print you should decide for yourself what type of rules are proper. This is my opinion now, regarding the CSS Frameworks: Custom and YES in development / NO in production
First I will try to explain in my own words the user experience (UX) concept. For me, user experience is represented by the interaction between visual elements of an application, object, thing and the active user. So user experience is not limited to software applications, or websites. User experience is part of our life, in most aspects of our daily activities. From a cup of tea to a racing car, from a phone to a garage door, the user experience must have a fluid course. User experience is related to user interface. In fact these two concepts can’t live one without the other. In order to simplify the definition from above: user experience is the interaction between user interface and active user.
The reason for writing this material is because lately the Internet industry has baked many companies and products daily. There is nothing wrong with that, because good companies with good products make users happy. There is still a problem. Innovation exists and funds also in order to sustain a future business. But somewhere in the process the user experience gets less attention. When building products or services, companies tend to emphasize the features part and spend money on marketing instead of sustaining the entire development process. I mean, it is nothing wrong with having multiple features and a great campaign for promoting your product. But keep in mind that after a certain period of time, the user will find leaks in the user interface and user experience. After, the user will try to get those issues fixed by replacing your product with a new one.
In order to keep your users to you, you must take some actions. The most important thing from my point of view is to learn from the mistakes of others. Analyze their user interface and their bugs, find solutions and continue tweaking the user interface and user experience. This should be a permanent activity in a product timeline. Depending on your domain, place primary features at minimum effort distance. It is not OK with just placing them – it is how the user has access at those features.
For example, when you have many articles (pay attention Techcrunch) – a key factor is the posibility to access every article with less effort. So – the first thing to do is to place a search feature on the interface. Keep in mind also the user behavior: what are the most used application with a search feature? Where is the search placed? These are simple questions, but with the right answers they will give you better understanding of your user interface and they will provide you a solid base for your user experience.
Even if your service or product is niche, put the user experience at a global level. Get elements which are familiar for a normal user, in your interface and combine them so that the user will feel comfortable and have a good user experience. Have this kind of approach regarding your user experience and your popularity will grow.
Hey, I’m back with the first post on Gongea.com. For this first post my main theme is - Resume or CV (curriculum vitae). The reason for picking this topic was the existence of many CV templates, but very few stable and usable.
Back, when my CV was made in different software applications and exported as PDF or text document, I’ve decided that it was time to have something easy to customize and easy to maintain. So my first approach was obviously a document that was compatible with text applications like Microsoft Word or Open Office. At the moment it was a proper solution because it was a simple way to showcase skills and projects. But the aspect of the CV was very poor and it wasn’t reflecting my domain of activity: design.
Based on those drawbacks I started to think about creating my own resume template easy to update. After analysis process and based on my previous resume structure I’ve started to build the template. My decision was to develop it in XHTML and CSS for easy management and customization.
During my thinking process (that took the most part - sorry), I’ve came up with the following User Interface / User Experience concept:
1. Header will contain the basic personal information (Name, Age, Location, qualification) 2. Content will be structured into 7 components: - Summary - Key Competencies - Technical Skills - Work Experience - Projects - Personal Projects - Personal Information 3. Footer will contain always visible navigation links for easy access.
From the code perspective - the resume is one-file-template because it contains in the header the CSS code with no additional stylesheet. The XHTML file is composed of repetitive code - which is easy to edit/add/remove. You can easily customize it to fit your needs from the structural perspective to the color scheme. In this archive provided here there are 3 files of the same template, having color differences - orange, cyan, green. The code is compliant with W3C Standards.
Hopefully this concept will help you getting a new interview. Happy job hunting!
As you may know, I run also GraphicRating.com - a site with good and bad stuff from the visual area. This blog is not related to that site. Here I will try to share my knowledge with everyone. I want to learn from my mistakes or from others and if it is possible to help next developers or designers.
Basically this blog will cover fields related to web development, graphic design, marketing. I don’t know how often the posts will be published, but I hope to have quality instead of quantity. For example, to show one of the aspects of my future work, this website has no graphic elements beside the ones from the posts. I started this Wordpress theme with one idea: graphics free Wordpress theme | 100% CSS Typography. But this will not be the only domain for my future posts.
Check from time to time to see what I’ve been writing about. Cheers!