Webmaster Blog

I was designing an e-news letter about 2 days ago, it was about travel and air ticketing. It contains a section about Changi Airport Terminal 3 so i surf the web and looked for the Changi Airport Terminal 3 logo and got to the Changi Airport T3 website. I was so impressed with the design. What a great one it is! I first noticed with its banner, impressive design and it is changing day and night. Together with easy to use navigation.

You can explore around the website with easy and effective sliders & you can filter what you want. Great too.

And more, you will be explained by human, . Yes. It will give you some kind of mood and familiarity.

You can also find some branding things like:

More, I also like gallery page. It’s stunning and it’s with preloaded images. Well done.

I was just looking for the logo and I got many many things that I need to learn from Changi Airport website and it’s designers. Well done and I salute guys :D.

In these days, I have met with some of my friends and had talked about so many career about programming, web design etc and talk about the people who go and work abroad. One said even we work hard in our high school or university, professionalism is different. Some people didn’t make well in their studies but sometime they did great with their work and become rich somehow. I did not provide any comment about that anyway. But I am not posting about that I would like to emphasize on the following.

At the same day, I had visited to my grandma who is from Myeik current staying in Dagon township. While she was chatting with my grandpa, I took a walk to the neighbors and saw a group of children and at the middle of them was a primary teacher who was about my age or maybe a little older than me. I gazed them as it is an interesting scene for me. I listen to them carefully and I heard that the teacher was teaching English to the children. She taught if the long arm of clock stay at 5, it’s past 5. So if the short arm rest at 1 and long arm at 5 we say 5 past 1 so on. She was teaching repeatedly. I was gazed for quite so long and how amazed of her patience with the young children. And I had in my mind at once that we still have that kind of person in our country spending her life for the new generation while others go and work abroad. This is not blaming the people who work abroad, but about a kind heart primary teacher I had seen with my own eyes (usually we only heard like that in story :D).

I also thank all of our teachers who taught us when we were young. I salute all the teachers from here.

Ok folks, let us welcome the new author of our blog, Aung Naing Own, who will contribute his own knowledge of hardware and technical news. He is one of my best friends, we attend the NCC diploma courses together, we created assignments together we helped each other with the software projects while we were computer studies students.

He is a B.C.Is degree holder and now contributing as an author at PC World Myanmar magazine. You can find his two articles at January issue with the topics Green PC & Windows Live SkyDrive at page 65 and 68.

He is a gadgets geek, love Mac and love to test and try new products in different ways. So, shall we look forward for his posts.

PS: Thank you my friend, for agreeing to contribute in our blog.

Google is now release software development kit for  mobile phones. This SDK could soon be huge Smart Phone OS. OS would be more comfortable on Larger VGA screen phone. It can also play QUAKE. The software will support

1. Touch Screen

2. 3G

3. Webkit-based browser

4. Optimized Java runtime layer (known as Dalvik Virtual Machine)

5. Threaded text messaging

6. MPEG-4, h.264, MP3, and AAC file formats

7. Accelerated 3D graphics

Since the end of 2006, I have discovered that websites are heading for fun and informal ways. Maybe just my personal view or taste. Web developers and web designers are trying their best to entertain their visitors and visitors are looking forward to entertain themselves in vice visa. I have recognized “igoogle” from google.com and it is fun with its banner which is changed with local weather condition or day and night and drag and drop blocks. It’s fun to use and I think we are going to see more and more entertaining sites in future.

I have downloaded the Apple Safari browser today and it’s written that “You go surfing, and before you know it,”. Great words!! Yeah, people usually surf web waves for a long time and even the whole day(maybe). They may visit tens of websites from one to another. Like the guys from Apple says, they are surfing even they haven’t noticed. So what is the point? Have you notice about familiarity?

Visitors are hoping from site to site and they can still easily find information they want because of the familiarity they have with most of the sites. In web world, we should say web standards, basic rules or something like that. As a web designer, it is important to follow some basic rules with layout and navigation(yeah, navigation again). As I said above, visitor comes to your site from other sites or maybe directly to you. If you obey the rules of familiarity with navigation and layout, visitors can easily go here and there or find the required information. Otherwise, they have to make themselves being familiar with your own standard or even they may simply quit. Oops!

It’s like driving a car in your own country. You can drive well in your country and when you visit to other countries, you can find that the road signs are the same, traffic lights are also red, yellow, green(but there’re some difference in some countries, it an exception :P), left or right handed driving and most are same all over the world. So you’ll soon can drive a car in those countries just because of the familiarity or standards. GOT IT?? That’s the point.

Web surfers are the same as the drivers. They can still surf in your website easily if your site follow the basic rules about navigation, like main menus should be at the upper section of your website and it should be accessible and seen easily. Menu should be easily noticeable such as decorated with underline when it is mixed with the content. Should be shown with hand cursor when mouse over. Should contain descriptive words that says what page it will lead to. Eg. “Click here for web design quotation” should be used instead of the word, “Click me!”

Layout is the same issue. One column, two column or three column. F layout or reversed-F layout. And many more…

Familiarity is also important within your website. Let’s say, if you are using red and green colour schema in one page, your other pages should be used with the same colour schema. It’s same with menu position and decorations. If your visitors have to make himself or herself familiar with your pages everytime they visit your pages, they will soon leave your website. Maybe forever.

So, as a web designer, we should know the importance of standards and familiarity. There are some websites stating about the rules in detail. That’s all and happy web designing!

To make a good web site, the following facts are the must:

1. Neat and Easy Navigation that is playing a big role in determining the stickiness of your site (how long your visitor stays and explores your site).Your visitor probably read the content of the present page and then look around to find any other page that make them interested. Therefore, Navigation is very important part of web site.
2. Clean Layout Design that is meant you try to keep focus on your content. Use fonts that will be available on all computers to prevent your site looking messed up.
3. Optimum Load Time that is you must use Graphics and Flash that is with reduce quality.

We design websites for personal purpose, informational purpose, business purpose etc. And most of the time we design it for ourselves, in our likes. It’s the main point. Visitors will not feel the same ways as the designers or creators. That’s why put in mind that website that we designed are not for us, that’s for the visitors. You should always think it in the visitors’ way. And it’s sure that your visitors will like it.

Do not think it as your office or home decorations. You can decorate your office or room in your favour like putting the large painting or impressive photo taken by yourself from the highest hill or mountain to make your friends or customers ‘WOW’ when they visit to your place.

But it is not the same with the website design. Your visitor will not ‘WOW’ in the same way as yours. So step into their shoes and think what they are looking for and what will make them ‘WOW’. Have fun with web design!

Using background color for your website looks cute. But is it always look cute?

If you are using background color or background for your website, always check it with the real time web browing. What I mean is, let say, if you are using white font color and dark background to make your text stay contrast. It will look good on your monitor when you test it offline. But let imagine that user is trying to access your website with very slow connection. You text will display first while your browser is fetching your wonderful background image. What will happen at that time?

Yes, your website visitor will see nothing because your text are written with white color and they can’t be seen with the browser default white background. So always be careful when you use background color or background image with your website design.

If you would like to use it, try using a font color that can be seen with or without background.

Fonts, one of the headache when you design a heading image with your image editors. I have just found a wonderful site with many free fonts together with easy to choose navigation and test font options. Great! Just visit Urban Fonts. It’s Great!