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- So okay, I am doing the website for the place I am interning at, and there’s a newsletter page, and a special place at the top for current/particularly notable events. And the Pres says (it’s a small company) says she wants a picture there that is flashy, and goes with “new”. All I can think of is a flashing gif with the letters “new” and some variation of flashing going on (like, stars or whatever), but she said she kinda wants some kind of picture, but doesn’t know what… Ideas are welcome, as I can draw or re-draw whatever it is.
-So what picture says “new”?
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- So okay, I am doing the website for the place I am interning at, and there’s a newsletter page, and a special place at the top for current/particularly notable events. And the Pres says (it’s a small company) says she wants a picture there that is flashy, and goes with “new”. All I can think of is a flashing gif with the letters “new” and some variation of flashing going on (like, stars or whatever), but she said she kinda wants some kind of picture, but doesn’t know what… Ideas are welcome, as I can draw or re-draw whatever it is.
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No, no, no flashing anything. If you do that ppl, including myself, won’t come back. I don’t like flashing stuff on web pages…
What looks new? Nice, clean, well designed pages do 
I agree with handy. For the love of god, don’t buy into the glitzy page design trend. If your page has animated GIFs, Shockwave, or Java, you’ve done it wrong. And make DAMN sure that if all the text was magically removed from the page, someone could still navigate by using intuitive icons. If you want the page to look good, use a consistent layout, no photoshop “tricks,” and give it some sideboxes. And remember, PNG is your friend.
i agree with the guys above - i’ve always encouraged clients against “flashy” since, to be honest, what matters is usability and content over flashiness - although obviously you still want a site to look good.
iwhy not just have “New” items listed in a different colour?
I’m the wrong person to ask. I’ve got ASCII art on my webpage.
Choose your main colour scheme, which is probably like 3 colours that you will be working with mainly. Then choose one contrasting (but complimentary, not garish) colour as your “highlight” text. Put just the text “New” in front of the updated items.
Just make damned sure that the “new” is not missused, it must be removed when the article is no longer new.
FDISK I adore png, whats the story on support for it in browsers nowadays? IIRC it is viewable in all browsers, but alpha channels is still dodgey?
One website I thought was pretty original was for an art website & all they had on the front page was an @
You’d click on that & it would take you to the main site.
I hate that. What is the point of a splash page with no content? Absolutely pointless waste of my time. Splash pages, bah!
All splash pages are irretrievably evil.
You don’t want a flashy picture. You can use a different background colour for the “new” section, that will have a highlighting effect.
Splash pages do have one decent function if used correctly.
You can use them to offer different language ports to your site, you can use them to offer a high/low bandwidth variant of your site. Usually one also adds the basic contact info to that sort of splash page as well which can mean that if that’s all the visitor wants they have gotten it effortlessly. On the web you really want to avoid the “supermarket tactics” such as making your customer walk the whole way through the store for the bottle of milk. If you make their visit the least bit difficult then they will simply go somewhere else, simple as that.
Iteki: Brother!
The PNG website offers a browser compatibility list. At this point, I believe that Internet Explorer (and AOL) still doesn’t support much more than basic interlacing and transparency, starting in version 4. Netscape supported basic display of PNGs in version 4, but no transparency. Mozilla and mozilla based browsers (NS6+, new AOL) should have near-perfect PNG support. Opera got basic support in v3.51, with full support in v6.
If I was designing a webpage, I’d use interlaced PNGs with basic transparency, but none of the other advanced features. Everyone should be able to see that, and if they can’t, their browsers can’t render HTML4 anyway so its moot
And if you really want to wow them, put a really loud midi file of the Macarena on there in a hidden frame.
Everybody loves musical webpages!
Black text on a white background. One or two quality, still graphics. Don’t be afraid of white space.
From a different perspctive …
What product/services do you sell? Is the prez from a design background or an MBA-type? Who currently does the advertising for the company?
Answer those questions honestly and you’ll have a justifiable response to even listen to the prez and her opinions about the web site.
It has been my experience that company brass should be practically ignored when designing web sites because they fail the Prime Directive – a web site is for the customers and potential customers. Company web sites are not about ego wanking for the company brass, especially if you have products/services to sell.
If you are trying to win a cola war, then you have 400mb flash files with popular (yet sterile) music blaring out at maximum levels. Who needs usability when you have Shakira?
If you are running a site that actually contains useful information, then you need to make sure nothing gets in the way of the user getting that information. Low on images (and make sure they have alt tags, so people who REALLY want just the information are not too inconvenienced), easy navigation, and a clear, easy to read font. Make sure your links stand out from the normal text.
It’s all dependent on the product you are trying to sell, and the audience you are trying to reach. If you are dealing with the US Govt, make sure you meet the accessibility guidelines of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
Pity, for nobody will go to your website.
Sure, you can do that, or you can do it in other ways.
For example, make the low bandwidth, English version to be the default one. Offer links to high bandwidth and foreign language webpages.
This is what we do on our website. It is a low bandwith default home page and it has simple text links to the other language versions.
As for “new” it depends on whether you mean the whole page, just an item or something that needs urgent attention.
Our layout has a special, dedicated spot that is really noticeable in the layout that we can usefor announcements or “special features.” If there are no special features on the go, the spot is just held by the company logo and the layout is unaffected (it doesn’t look at all weird for the company logo to be sitting there). It’s really obvious without being visually annoying.
Sometimes though you have to go with ugly and annoying if there is some kind of legitimate urgency. Example: We hosted an event that suddenly had to switch to a larger when it became overbooked. It was within two weeks of the event, so it was important to draw attention to the change as blatantly as possible. So on the website where it had the date and venue, we stuck an annoying, animated arrow-thing with “new venue” pointing at the changed location. Ugly as hell! But it did it’s job. Normally we would not do this, but it was rather urgent in this rare case.