Mod 3 - legal issues

Mod 3 - Optional standards task

Top five requirements for well written web pages - or easy to read/use?

1 best stuff first - perhaps a list
2 no flashy images etc
3 use links that have relevance and won't take your reader away from your point
4 don't break it up too much - you'll lose your reader
5 good short, punchy sentences - web readers scan much more so than readers of hard copy BUT if they really want to read what you have written they will print it - make it easy to print

I think all the articles are interesting and all have some relevance today , but the way we use the internet is always changing and so the way we write for it changes too.

task 2 - don't really have a web page to test this on yet ...

Web design - does it matter?

"Still, the dot-com meltdown has proven that fancy design won't save a bad web site." From course readings. Totally agree - hate those fancy sites but then I'm not a thirty something or twenty something web designer ...
Here's a concept I'd like to explore further: Information & communication are related. People like to develop their own context for the information they are seeking ...

email - the art of it

email is a user interface. Design your messages accordingly, aiming for maximum usability. Makes a lot of sense to me. That subject line is crucial. Much of this is to do with marketing and point of difference - tell people what you do, and what you want them to do in the simplest way possible.

Mod 3 - newsletters (Ass 1 topic?)

As I am constantly writing newsletters in my work, and using e-newsletters more and more I might use this as one of my topics for the resource assignment. Just reading the article on "Lower Literacy users"
This is interesting stuff - just how differently this audience reads websites and newsletters than do high literacy users. I'd like to research this more.

Asynchronous communication

The most important thing about communication is the same with blog and web as it is with written and direct verbal communication: keep it simple. With the internet this also means keeping the tech part of it simple as possible IF you want to reach a broad audience. However, I think that plenty of Internet users have a small equally fanatical audience and they all have the same major systems anyway - its called preaching to the converted.
I am much more interested in how the internet can be used to communicate with and between more disenfranchised sections of the population - such as older or isolated people and communities.

Thoughts on html and web design

I am not sure I will ever really get into actual creation of web pages - but it is very nice to now know how it sort of works. None of it really stumped me, and I am sure it is the sort of thing that becomes like a second language when you get the hang of it. I can see how much fun it must be to be able to design really wicked ones ... but ... it's not for me.