Eric Saar’s Blog

In Class Working

Learn Good Web Design Habits with my Blog

On my blog you’ll get
•    My background and expertise
•    Learn about web design
•    Bad websites and where they went wrong
•    Critiques of good websites.

Learn new techniques weekly for creating stronger and more powerful websites. Making a great website is harder than most people think. Come to my blog and you will learn from other websites mistakes. I will use my knowledge from the program I’m enrolled in a BCIT to help readers strengthen their website. Once you finish reading the blog posts you will learn about bad websites and where they fail. Learn from others mistakes so you won’t make them.

The Audience of the Web
The core rules of netiquette are good guidelines to follow when writing for the web. The rules help to remind the writer to remember the audience that they are writing for. It is easy to forget that your audience is made up of people. Even though you cannot see them its not a computer that is reading your work it is people. Making the first rule in netiquette, remember the human, the most important. It is key to remember that people have feelings that need to be taken into account when writing.

Treat Others as you Would Like to be Treated
Some topics will evoke emotions that can be very sensitive to the audience.  So when writing you should treat your audience like you would like to be treated. Its simple if you curse, rant or blog with a vengeance it makes you the writer, look uneducated and misinformed. My mother always said that people swear when because they aren’t smart enough to think of something better to say. Everything you write and put out on the web is a reflection of you.

Objectivity
Which is why Rule 7, try to be objective, is another one of the most important rules.  You lose credibility if you can remove yourself from the situation and look at it from all angles. Like in any sport if all you bring is the offence and have no defense then you team is destined to lose. You need to take a position on a topic but if your perspective is so narrow that you cannot see how others might interpret the information you make your position weaker without even knowing it. Defending a topic with emotion isn’t nearly as effective as defending it with facts. Which is also why you need to be considerate of other peoples mistakes. When some one makes a spelling error there is no need to jump all over them you it goes back to rule two treat others as you would like to be treated.

Both websites Mt. Seymour and Mt. Cypress are good-looking sites. Mt. Cypress does a great job of using media and social networking to keep users interested. It has Facebook applications, 360 views of the mountain.

Redundant, Outdated, and Trivial Content (ROT)
With all this great content the websites does start to suffer from ROT. One page in particular on Cypresses is an Artist of the Month page. It has no bearing on the mountain what so ever.  It is dated and needs to be removed. The Second example of ROT is the Gift Certificates navigation buttons on Cypress’ page. The buttons appear in three different location on the home page and all take you to the same website. Just have one navigation button for Gift Certificates.

Wasted Space
Navigation could have been spaced out way better. The Bike Park drop down menu only has two items Bike Park Info and Gift Certificates.  The gift certificate button should be dropped completely and then just turn Bike Park into a sub-category not a main navigation button.

Overflow from Bad Labels
Poor labeling in the navigation and bad site structure resulted in most of the subcategories being put into 2-3 Categories causing them to overflow with data in a sense. For example the Seymour drop down menu for lessons is too long and gets cropped off at the end. So the page Mountain Riders Teen that is supposed to be part of the navigation in missing. If this drop down menu had been shorter then this would have never happened. Yes it is a combination of poor visual design. But had the site been better organized the visual would have fixed itself.  Then there wouldn’t be any missing information.

Photo Galleries
When comparing the photo galleries side by side Cypress was the clear winner. Seymour’s photo gallery looks good but isn’t functional. When you click on a picture the image moves all over the place and sometime you just get linked to another page, this photo gallery is a complete fail. Especially when you look at Cypresses’ clean easy to navigate photo gallery.

Bad Navigation
Both websites do need to fix their second level navigation. There are just too many options.  Even the person who created the Cypress web page was dizzied by all the options.  You can tell because as you click through the navigation and travel to other pages the navigation will suddenly change. Order of navigation buttons changes or some appear/disappear depending on whether or not you’re on the Cypress homepage.

The Winner
If this were a fight Cypress would have taken home the belt. It is a superior page. However both sites need to work on their navigations organization.

Creating a website can be a daunting task. One of the easiest principles to follow is keep everything short and sweet. No extra bells and whistles. Why use twenty words when five will do?

The problem with all the new technologies is that people forget about content and making it easy to read. In the information age where there are more than 1 trillion URLs is your webpage isn’t easy to use and functional people will just go somewhere else.

The Bad

Clutter is an online readers worst enemy. For example take a look at the website www.havenworks.com It has actually been rated one of the worst websites of 2008 by webpagesthatsuck.com. Not surprising it has a lot of content but there is no clear way to navigate or use the website.

The Good

When you compare it with a website like www.you2gov.com that has similar content yet a streamlined look its easy to see how clutter make or break a website. This website is functional and easy to navigate which would you rather get information from?

I’ve been studying at BCIT for over a month now and still haven’t received my student loan. I have gotten two fee deferrals and been reassessed twice. Part of the problem is that my course started in April and goes for a full year. Since the Alberta student loans is used to giving most of their grants for September they say that my program has to be broken up into two. I will have to apply for a second student loan in October to pay for the second half of my program. I haven’t even received my first one yet and it’s just about June.

The Second Check

When I got my second check for the money I was supposed to receive. I went straight to the post office and expressed the envelope to Mississauga, Ontario. Which was 25 dollars for one envelope. My first fee deferral expired today. So yesterday I called to see where the hell my money was. Talking with an operator at the National Student Loan office I was told that there was a hold on my payment because I was assessed the wrong amount.

A History of Reassessment

This isn’t the first time I had heard this a couple of weeks ago after I had done everything asked of me I was told that the check I received was too much money and would have to be reassessed.  So I sent the check back and waited for the reassessment to come. Two and half weeks ago I got a check in the mail with the theoretical new amount. It was reduced from the last check so I thought nothing of it. Filled out all the paper work and sent it on its merry way. Now the check is being held because it needs to be reassessed.

The Run Around

I call the National Student Loan office in Ontario to try and straighten things out they tell me that its being sent back to Alberta for a reassessment. I call Alberta Student Loans and after being disconnected twice I am put on hold on the third call. Then after three quarters of an hour I am finally put through. After talking with the adviser she tells me that she doesn’t know anything until next week and to call back. Frustrated I smash my phone on the ground. The way things are looking I am going to be finished my program before I ever even see my student loan. Bullocks!!! But I won’t let them win I will get my loan oh yes I will. They have broken my cell phone but not my spirit.

Summer time is only a few days away and everyone around the BCIT campus is gearing up for it. Well that is except for the New Media and Web Development kids. We will get to watch the summer pass us by through the window. Work on our tans via Macbook Pro.

Some Relief with a Break

There is a break in July for a week that will help to get rid of the some of the energy that always comes with the summer time. But then we will start into term 2. According to the people in the program last year is killer. Is this some cruel joke? Going to really be using those time management techniques to try and squeeze all the sunlight and fun out of summer. I’ve never been to summer school and am not looking forward to this one.

Keeping Busy

What’s a person to do the program is worth every penny and if one summer has to be sacrificed to the learning gods then so be it. I am hopeful that even though I’m stuck behind a computer screen I can still salvage some of the summer time. There will still be ball hockey on weekends to get the stress of week out. Nothing like sports to relax the mind. There is something tranquil about smashing a puck into the net.

New Media and Web Development is the program name. It can be taken all over Canada but one of the best schools to take it at is BCIT. The program is a year straight of schooling, so sorry beach bums you might have to work on your tan the year after.

The Program and Memory

The program at first is a little overwhelming you get seven different classes and seven different teachers. Which is a little tricky because most of us (me in particular) tend to procrastinate till the night before to do our homework so the lessons become a little fuzzy. When you’ve been through six different classes all week it can be challenging to remember what you learned the week before. Plus in the first week it seems like the only connection between the different classes is the room where you receive your lectures. Which is the same room every time.

The Initial Hump

However if you can get past the first couple of weeks you can see the sunshine through the clouds. Things brighten up things start to overlap. You can start using lessons in other classes and apply them to projects in others.

The Power of the Student

The tables have turned. Now it’s the teachers who are struggling trying not to step on each other’s toes. Well except for one that could care less about the direction from other classes. Which is funny because one teacher tells you to use Netstorage to get your files then the other one asks why the hell everyone is using crappy Netstorage. To his credit Netstorage is garbage compared to some of the free programs available online. So moral of the story stick in the programs its only going to get better the more you learn. At least I hope anyway.

So I’m into my first couple of weeks of being away from home and into school life. I’ve traded Calgary for Vancouver and so far had no regrets about it. Its been sunny and warm here for the past three weeks while back in Calgary its been snowing and cold. Suckers.

Life In Vancouver

Vancouver is about what I expected maybe even a little bit nicer. But its hard to say I’m a bit of a skeptic at heart. Living in the residence at BCIT is quite a change of pace from my home life. My room is 9′X10′ which is only a foot bigger than the average prison cell.

Poor Timing

I came late in the school season, which makes me the odd man out with my roommates. I just got here and am wide eyed and excited, while 90% of my roommates are leaving in a month or two and have been here since September. Everyone is still nice but it does put me at a bit of a social disadvantage.

Group Cliche

Everyone already knows each other and has history. Making it hard to assimilate myself. It’s not like their mean or anything its just simple social physics. They don’t know me well enough yet to feel comfortable around me. Everybody else is close already and I’m playing catch-up. So we’ll see what the future has in store for me, I’ll just keep a smile on my face play whatever hand life gives me.