Want to learn some basic Web design stuff but don’t feel like slogging through a book or taking a community college class? Here are a whole gaggle (well 10 actually) of video tutorials someone linked on Mashable covering everything from basic HTML to CSS and even some PHP and other scripting languages. Check it out.
Oh, and I have no idea what is up with the picture of Tony “Gazelle” Little.
In perusing several newspaper Web sites I noticed an oddity. Many sites, though I won’t mention any names, did not have a ‘multimedia/interactive/data” tab as part of their navigation. For most of them it was shoved halfway down the page, sometimes even several scrolls below the main content. This is a travesty at this stage in the game.
Even if your site doesn’t have much in the way of interactive online content, you should already be paving the way for that content in the future. Whether it be audio slideshows, video or even just picture galleries, readers should have a direct link along with all of the major sections or channels of your site to get there.
Putting it anywhere else on the site buries the content and takes the eyes away from one of the largest traffic pullers of any site. Multimedia content is an integral part of any news Web site and deserves equal billing next the news, sports, entertainment and business.
Oh, and horizontal navigation is the way to go. For more information as to why, check out Poynter’s ‘Eyetracking the News.’
