Most important Web Style Rule

It was very hard for me to come up with one rule that was more important that any other. After looking over websites that others in the class created I realized there was one web style rule that should always be followed: Don't use black or dark backgrounds and light text.

Lynch and Horton's Web Style Guide says, "Subtle pastel shades of colors typically found in nature make the best choices for background or minor elements. Avoid bold, highly saturated primary colors except in regions of maximum emphasis, and even there use them cautiously." I agree that pastel colors with a Dark text are best. Pastels are pleasant to look at on a webpage because they are soft colors. Bright colors hurt to look at them on the computer for too long.
In Spiderpro's 100 do's and dont's of web design they say, "Dark backgrounds tend to make text less readable. So avoid darkcolors or dark backgroundimages. If you do need them, use a
nonserif font for the text (like Arial, Universe, Helvetica) and be sure to not to use a small fontsize."

There are times when a dark background is appropriate. If designed without too much text and the right fonts dark backgrounds can look nice. However, I feel that for the average web designer dark backgrounds should be avoided at all costs.

Written Style vs Web Style

After reading Spiderpro's 100 do's and don't and Lynch and Hortons web style guides, it became apparent that know style guidelines for writing can be useful in creating a website.

Spiderpro's guide starts out by saying do know your audience. In any writing whether online or not it is important to know who you are writing for. You don't want to put information in a text or on a website that is not useful to the intended readers.

Another style that fits both texts andwebsites is to not over write. I wrote about this style rule for my Style Rules essay. I believe that less is more when it comes to words. People like me do not want to see wordy books anymore than they want to see a wordy website. A website needs to be much shorter than a text would, though. The reason for this is because sometimes people want information quickly when they are searching the web. People also don't like having to scroll to read their information. Lynch and Horton say, "Dense text documents without contrast and visual relief are also harder to read".

There are many guidlines that apply to webpages that do not apply to traditional written texts. For instance a web designer needs to take into consideration the capacity of his or her readers computers. Since not everyone has the same computer, operating system, or monitor sometimes webpages won't look the same to everyone. One person may have a computer capable of picking up millions of colors while the next three people have computers that only recognize 256 colors. When writing an essay or a book this is not necessary since each page will be printed out exactly the same for every reader.

Websites also need to be visually appealing. According to spiderpro dark colors do not work well on websites. The writer of an essay, newspaper, or book doesn't need to be concerned with visual appeal because they are all black and white.

McCloud Part 2

I went to Amanda's blog where she discusses a comic called Piercing by David Gaddis. This comic has no words only pictures. Amanda tells us that it is up to the reader to interpret just what is happening in the story and the amount of time that has passed. She discusses Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics; a book that discusses the parts involved in creating a comic. In Amanda's blog she mentions a section of McCloud's book where he talks about frames and the time sequences created with framing.

I would like to discuss a completely different aspect of this comic: color. It is very hard to figure out what this comic is about, but i feel that the color of it plays a part in reading the emotions. McCloud says,
" Suddenly it seemed possible for color to take on a central role. Colors could
express a dominant mood. Tones and modelling could add depth. Whole
scenes could be virtually about color! Color as sensation, color as environment."
I think this is exactly what the purpose of the color in Piercing is doing; taking on the central role. We know that the man feels inferior to others. His charachter is always a soft gray color so he kind of blends in with the background. The woman that he is attracted to is in bright oranges and reds. She stands out. We can tell that she is what the man has his sights on because of this coloring. I think this use of colors in Piercing make it possible for Graddis to create a comic without words. If this comic were entirely black and white we would have an even harder time figuring out what was going on, but because there is color the emotions are presented in a way that the reader can understand without seeing words.

McCloud Blog #1

This Comic can be found at http://www.the-whiteboard.com/ This comic is about paintball in Alaska. The characters are all animals.

In his book Understanding Comics Scott McCloud spends a chapter discussing the space between panels. He calls that space "the gutter" (66). He goes on to say that in the gutter is where human imagination goes to work to make the frames become an idea. McCloud discusses six different types of transistions for "the gutter".

The comic I have chosen seems to employ the the third type McCloud discusses. This is what he calls "subject-to-subject" transitions. The comic creator stays within the idea, but the reader must use some imagination to make the transistions meaningful (70).

Looking at the strip above we can see that the creator has stayed within the scene, but that there is some reader involvement necessary to get from one panel to the next. For instance, in the strip above the racoon is standing outside the building discussing helmet sizes. In the next panel you only see the racoon's tail sticking out the window. The reader has to deduce what happened between panel one and panel two.

The interpretation of what actually happens between the frames is up to the reader's imagination. Reading the dialogue does help. The racoon is saying in the second frame "I just thought of something" so I envision the racoon running to the building in a hurry to find the thing he is talking about in the comic.

I've looked back through several episodes of The Whiteboard and Doc, the creator, seems to use this subject-to-subject in each one. This type of transition is a good way to get across time without creating long story lines.