- What is Browser-Safe Color Palette / Web-Safe Colors?
- Is it still relevant in today’s context? Why?
- What are the common fonts face found on PC & Mac?
- What is page loading time and how does it influence your
design?
- Read about Web Design Process article and
write what you think about it (at least 150 words)
1. It is a fixed color palette that will work well on most browsers. Out of the 256 colors available in Mac and PC, this palette only consists of 216 colors. The remaining 40 variable colors are eliminated so that the palette can be optimized for cross-browser use.
Browser-safe colors
2. It depends.
The browser-safe color palette was ‘created’ a long time ago when computers ran on 8-bit, 256 color monitors. It was suggested as a web standard to ensure that all computers would display the colors correctly when it was running on a 256 color palette.
HOWEVER, the browser-safe color palette is no longer needed as the graphic cards available these days can display more than a million colors.
In the view of a designer,
this palette could be a good or a bad thing.
Working with the limited color choices may be a good decision if you are not confident at color picking or if you are just starting out at web designing.
On the other hand, colors on the palette are highly saturated and very, very limited – compared to what is available these days.
If using the palette does not bring justice to your design, or make it turn out looking like what it should be, then it would be a bad decision sticking to the browser-safe color palette. JUST PICK YOUR OWN COLORS! D:
One question would be, ‘who is your audience’?
The minority of people using old computers/monitors?
(of which you will have to compromise and stick to the palette)
Or, those with common graphic/video cards that can display a wide range of colors?
The choice is up to the designer of course, because the most important thing in the end, is to ensure the website that you have designed is pleasing to the eye.
There is no right or wrong or even relevance in today’s context.
If you want to use the palette, no one is stopping you. 
3. These are some common fonts found on both PC(Windows) and Mac:
– Left:PC — Right:Equivalent on Mac
- Arial / Arial
- Arial Black/ Arial black
- Courier New / Courier New
- Comic Sans MS / Comic Sans MS
- Verdana / Verdana
- Tahoma / Geneva
- Trebuchet MS / Helvetica
- Times New Roman / Times
- Lucida Console / Monaco
- Lucida Sans Unicode/ Lucida Grande
- Georgia / Georgia
- Impact / Impact
They are also known as “Browser-Safe Fonts”,
meaning they are viewable to everyone on the internet -
also because Macs & PCs have these fonts installed in their operating systems by default.
An important point to note, though, is that the fonts you can use for your website design are directly dependent on the fonts that are available on your visitor’s computer. If they do not have the fonts installed, then they will not be able to view exactly what you have intended for them to view when you used a particular font.
( That problem can be overcome by saving your font as an image file and then posting it onto your website as an image.) … at least, that is what i think.
Here’s a link on browser safe fonts.
& a list of programs that can help on the conversion of pc/mac fonts.
4. ‘Page loading time’ is a term used to describe the amount of time it takes for a user to view your web page after clicking on the link that leads to that particular web page.
People these days, including myself, expect things to be fast and convenient. The same concept applies to web users – They want the websites they visit to load quickly, and they want to get their information in record-breaking time! Hence, it is critical that we, as web designers, ensure we create quick-loading websites to make them happy and have a better user experience.
Here are a few quick tips on how to optimize page loading time:
- Reduce widgets
- Compress the size of your page
- Cut back on cookies
- Host files locally (instead of using sites like photobucket, or imageshack)
For more tips, please visit this site.
5. Well, these links were broken,
http://webstyleguide.com/process/index.html;
http://cybermed.ucsd.edu/Web_design/process.html;
so i only analyzed the the remaining links available.
After reading through the articles,
i have come to the conclusion that there are many similarities
between these seemingly different workflow process articles by these people.
Even if they do categorize their steps in a different order,
or name them differently, Content-wise, they are quite interrelated – give and take.
If i were given the task to name the steps,
this is how i would put it.
1. The most important and crucial step of web designing,
is the purpose of the creation of the website.
“Who is the client?”
“What does the client want?”
“Who are the viewers/target audience?”
“What would they like?”
“What is the purpose of creating this site?”
i.e commercial usage; to deliver some sort of information;
a portfolio site displaying artworks?
Hence it would be good to determine all these before starting to plan the design/interface of the website.
2.Knowing the competition & learning from what has already been done.By exploring other existing sites, as a user/viewer, you can determine what is good or bad about them.
You can then learn from their mistakes and successes.
Implementing the successes into your own design or even making it better.
3.Sketching out thumbnails and roughs would be the next step.
It would enable the designer to organize the layout and contents,arranging the elements in a nice order; creating and playing around with different compositions.
It is an important step to organize your thoughts.
4.Once the client has given the go-ahead or the designer is satisfied with it,typography and visual elements have to be considered. Typefaces are important as it can bring about a feel to the overall site. Websites can be considered bad if the wrong typeface is used, resulting in information being wrongly conveyed. ( Eg. if it is a professional e-commerce site, and you use Jokerman font, what would the target audience think?)
5.Draft it out in Photoshop to see how it looks like
and rearrange the elements as deemed fit. It’s a good practice as
it can be used as reference while coding up the HTML.
(A lot of time will be wasted if you do not know how the website is supposed to turn out looking like and you do the coding first.)
6.Code, test, debug.
7.Official launch. 
I would say i am more fond of the processes by this and
that as i feel i can relate more to them in a “designer kind of way”.
While the rest puts a lot of analysis and focus on features of the site, etc etc. The above 2 is a combination hands-on approach, exploring and analyzing at the same time.
(In other words, i find them easier to understand and follow.)
Okay, if the above wasn’t what was expected for me to type out,
i can generally just say that these articles are good references for people who are designing their first websites and do not know where to start. They can decide to choose between whichever of these processes that they feel most comfortable with.
Overall, i think reading these articles and actually dissecting them bit by bit has made me more aware of what to do when i have to design a website in future.
