Week 6 articles

Milissa Tarquini's article "Blasting the Myth of the Fold" was interesting to me because I too have always heard that you're not supposed to make a page longer than the viewing screen because "people don't scroll." But, I've always thought to myself, I scroll...especially if I see that there's more text to read on a page, and I have not gotten the information I came to that page for. The whole idea of making sure there are visual clues so the user knows to scroll down is good and all, but can't they just tell that a page continues by the right hand scrollbars, amount of time it takes a page to load, etc.? I wonder if this is maybe a generational thing; being a young person, I've been using the web for a good part of my life and am very comfortable with it. But other people may need those visual clues to tell that a page continues. I think an important factor here is to make sure your content is engaging, informative and well-written so that people want to continue reading your page...to me, that's just as important as visual clues. A few people made this same comment at the end of the article.

I really liked Danny Sullivan's article on Search Engine Placement Tips. It has lots of really useful information about SEO, which is something I've heard lots about but haven't read too many tips on. For instance, I always thought it was a good thing to make your keywords one word each; so, in the example in the article, my keywords would be "stamp, stamps, collecting, collection." Wrong! The idea of using "stamp collecting, stamp collection" as your keywords makes so much more sense the way he explains it. The HTML links as navigation is another good tip, and one I plan to use in the redesign of my online portfolio.

The 12 Rules for Choosing the Right Domain Name would certainly be helpful for someone looking to buy a domain for their business or service. My domain name is aliciapimental.com because it's for my photos, portfolio and whatever other information I want linked to my name. It makes me feel a little more secure that I own my name as my domain name; I know no one else can buy it and put content on the web that could potentially hurt me professionally.

I agree with Andrew Twigg's lamenting that there are too few typefaces able to be viewed on the web. I personally enjoy Georgia, but it'd be nice to have a few more options, especially since, as he says, it's been about 12 years without any major advances in this area. It definitely limits your design capabilities, though I wonder if maybe it's a blessing in disguise. I certainly don't want to have to read pages in certain crazy fonts I know people would start using if I was able to see the fonts on their computers. Though many of those would be better than a page in Times New Roman...ugh.