Online Texts
This is really the links section, broken into the following categories:
Interesting articles
General references
Bibliography
Marketing
Accessibility
Interesting articles:
Color Theory
Originally written for newspaper designers, this site still has lots to recommend it, including a great interactive tutorial that is excellent. Note: you’ll need flash on your system to look at it.
Understanding the web as media
It's a little hard on the eyes, but worth the pain. An interesting take on what makes the web useful as a medium.
Effective web writing (New Architect)
This article covers much of the Neilsen material I mentioned last week.
Beyond Usability and Design (A List Apart)
Another perspective on the whole form vs function debate that we discuss early in the course.
Online Storytelling Forms (Cyberjournalist.net)
This article follows on the theory of the one above. Though it's focussed on journalism, there is still lots of grist for any web mill here.
General references:
A List Apart
A nice collection of articles on many key issues in web design -- some from the presentationalist side, but generally more balanced in approach.
Builder.com
Tons of great stuff for web designers and developers.
Common Look & Feel
Government of Canada's guidebook for giving Federal sites consistency. Lots of interesting info on how the feds do it, and potentially a model for your own procedures manual.
Digital Web Magazine
Nicely designed, good info. (Let me know if you can spot the navigation problems.)
Useit
Jakob Neilsen's site on web usability. Ignore the design and use the content.
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium -- the folks deciding on web standards. A fairly technical site.
WebTechniques/New Architect
A great archive of articles on theoretical and strategic issues.
Evolt
A massive "participation economy" effort of web developers helping other web developers. It requires some digging sometimes, but there's great info here.
Bibliographies
The Poynter Institute -- New Media
Marketing
CyberAtlas
Internet stats for market research -- search for Canada to get Canadian stats.
Industry Canada's e-business portal
Lots of good information here, from marketing to research and statistics to case studies.
Accessibility
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
Net Bobby
A resource to test your website to ensure it is barrier-free.
Vischeck
For testing to see your site and images look to people with color blindness.
