MTV.com Review

The first thing I noticed about MTV.com is that it opened with basically an ad, which is annoying, but not unexpected. The homepage is very modern, with polished, clean lines. It is pretty simply designed, with navigation across the top and then lots of “news” cells filling the rest of the page, all of which is really easy to use. Subpages have their own internal navigation layouts (some down the left, some across the top, tab-style, etc.) according to their purpose. The site is mostly black, white, and shades of gray, which I think is a good choice, because of the amounts of pictures, graphics, and streaming video. If they had chosen anything more colorful or complicated, the page would start to look very busy.

Since MTV is first and foremost a television station, they do have navigation to sites for each of the many versions MTV and to the various shows on those channels. However, television is only a small part of MTV.com. The network has evolved into the primary source of culture (pop and otherwise) for many teens and twenty-somethings, so MTV.com covers everything from movies to style to games and even some politics. They have an MTV Messenger as well as Mobile features. Links to music and video, though, is never more than a click away.

All in all, the site is designed and executed really well for its purpose – to try to transform young people into the MTV generation. They have styled the site according to young people’s tastes, kept it easy to use and navigate, and branched out to cover every aspect of the typical teen’s life.

www.foodnetwork.com

I chose to review the www.foodnetwork.com since I LOVE food. I’ve never been to this specific food website, although I have been to others. This one, like most food websites, has a recipe search and even your own recipe box to store your favorites. The design of the website does a very good job to target their primary audience, food lovers/home cooks. I really liked the option to print the recipe in the size on an index card to put in your own recipe box. Also, on the main page it gives you the top recipe's and what's "in" for the month. (that's my favorite part)
The navigation bar is easy to read and even designed like recipe box index cards with the “flap”. What also makes this site easier to navigate is that it has only one main navigation bar, rather than two or more. The main color is green, a very aesthetically pleasing color, and accentuated by a light, pale yellow, a good compliment, not to mention it’s the color of most index folders for recipe boxes. Overall, I really like the website.

Amazon.com

Amazon.com: we all use it. It's one of the most convenient ways to purchase anything from books to refridgerators to digital cameras to paper clips. It provides options for new and used items.

When I sign onto Amazon, as a returning customer, it greets me with recently viewed items as well as reccommendations based on my recent purchases. I can easily view items I've thought about purchasing, and be tempted to purchase them once again. There is also a search bar conveniently located at the top of the screen. The search bar has two options. You can either search in general, or within a category. Usually the general search yeilds what I am looking for, but in case too many results present themselves, the other option is there as well.

There are also lists of sale/specialty itmes worth considering. As they say, with amazon, everything is literally "one click away." The left navigation provides items by category. You can simply search for books, or films, like you would at a store. And actually, there is the recently added option to shop at actual stores via Amazon including Target and Office Depot.

The style of Amazon is very simple, with consistent colors. It isn't too busy, but the text on the homepage can be a little overwhelming.

Overall, I think that Amazon is easy to use and a great option for all of us with busy lives. The design of the website works well for the user. It is easy to get around. It even remembers your credit cards from former purchases so you can purchase future items by just entering a username and password.

Weather

Weather.com is a great website to get the current temperature or look at what the weather is going to be like today, tomorrow, or for the next ten days. I go there every morning so I can decide what awesome clothes I want to wear for that day. You should check it out.

KATV

Check out KATV.com. It's a great way to get local news and check for job openings..which is what I do. You can also read the talent bios and look at their classified ads section. I really like this website.

I like this site

I like ebay, because it is colorful, and it has lots of information on it. I find that it is easy to access what you want to find. It also is cool because there is not a mall in Arkadelphia!

CNN website review

CNN.com is a sight I visit regularly. It is easy to navigate and very informative. Because it is a news site the visual layout is slightly different than other sites. There is a large portion of the site which is actually text. One of my favorite features is the popular/interesting stories that come up under the heading "Latest News." The navigation allows me to choose by title different stories that might be of interest, and in essence: get the news at a glance.

Something that is really helpful about CNN is the different types of navigation. The page is full of links. At the top the news is sorted by category, so if you are interested in just one particular type of news you can read its headlines by following the links.
There is also a search bar, which allows me to look up any topic I may be interested in that I do not see a display for.

One of the most frustrating things to me, is the use of video. Some of the headlines have a little video icon next to them, and if you click on it, in order to hear the story you must wait for the video to download. Usually I'd rather just read the news, so if i casually click on a headline because it's interesting before realizing it's a video link, it's a little frustrating.

Obviously, from a visual standpoint, CNN is a little blander than most websites, however, I think this is proportional to the content. The news isn't about glam, it's about copy, and copy is what you get.

The web site has very little advertising, which is nice.

Overall, I think the web site is well done. It does what it's intended to do, and is easy to use for it's audience.

A lot of info

This site has a lot of information on different subjects dealing with website stuff.
http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html

Tutorials!!!!

http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmlxhtmltutorials/

Some tips on CSS

http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp

All About YOUR Own!

http://www.allaboutyourownwebsite.com/

Usability First

http://www.usabilityfirst.com/websites/design.txl

another helpful site

here's another helpful site. this one lists commands that help with different functions within html.

http://www.computerhope.com/learnhtm.htm

Here is a helpful website. This particular section is a FAQ section about html and web design. There are several question headings and you can select them for the answers. It is very helpful when you're trying to figure out how to do something you can't quite remember...or do not yet know how to do.

http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/#designtoc

HTML Dog...

This is a great tutorial/reference site not only for HTML tags but for CSS references. There is also some training courses in other things as well.

Click here or go to www.htmldog.com

The Art Institute of Chicago Review

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s website attracted me especially since I’m a graphic designer. However, the navigation seems to be a little complicated. There is so much information that it would be difficult to find if someone was looking for something specific, so the navigation could have been created a little more simple. But I think the site is aesthetically pleasing, which is perfect for its main audience, artists. Since this website is a for a school, the users are students who like lots of things to be exciting. The homepage of the School is a little confusing to know where to click., even the colors, brown over black, don’t work together so well. And it doesn’t flow with the rest of the website. however, I really liked the way they displayed the artwork, scrolls horizontally across the page. The design on the top and bottom of the page is very nice and each page has a different design, which is great to look at something a little new, but still continuous from the previous pages. Once I finally figured out the website better, it made it much easier to navigate. This site might not be the easiest to figure out the first few seconds of looking and surfing it, but once you go to a few pages, it is easy to get around. Overall, I think they could’ve made a few more changes to make it a little easier, especially since it is an art website... more seems to be expected from artists.
The Museum’s website seemed to be designed much better and easier navigation, yet very aesthetically pleasing. The design of the homepage does a good job to get the audience already involved in the artwork and the weebsite and their values by using the phrase, “A place for ____” Another positive aspect is that the homepage is not clustered with information, and there are plenty of links that are easy to understand where to find somethign specific. The colors are professional and calm, cool colors. Sincethis website is for all ages, the simplicity is more user friendly.

cool websites

First of all, the quiz was pretty cool, even though i answered incorrectly the first time (but almost correctly; you should always go with your gut).

time.com has a list of the 50 coolest websites. They ranked them by accessibility, beauty of design, all kinds of stuff. There are some good ideas on there. Just google "cool websites."

Pbase

www.pbase.com

This website is a great tool on a number of levels. It's great for photographers, both amateur and professional, to show off their work. Individuals can access a free amount of space or pay for more to host their images. It's also a great way to look of high quality images, as an alternative to seraching them on google or yahoo.

Fredmiranda.com

A site that I frequently visit is www.fredmiranda.com

This site is organized quite well, and is a great tool for photographers--both amateurs and professionals. It is set up like a forum, and there are convenient button tools for navigation at the top. These buttons link to different areas of the site--equipment reviews, forums, galleries, and software. One has to set up an account to access all areas of the site, but the images and the speed on the site is very nice.

Fredmiranda.com

A site that I frequently visit is www.fredmiranda.com

This site is organized quite well, and is a great tool for photographers--both amateurs and professionals. It is set up like a forum, and there are convenient button tools for navigation at the top. These buttons link to different areas of the site--equipment reviews, forums, galleries, and software. One has to set up an account to access all areas of the site, but the images and the speed on the site is very nice.

Mae Site

The site for the band Mae (http://www.whatismae.com) is a cool Flash site - easy/interesting to navigate, nice visually, and very informative. Over-all really up-to-date; they have re-designed the site fairly recently.

HTML-to-XML

http://www.stylusstudio.com/html_to_xml.html is a good reference site for html-to-xml tools.

HTML

Just a helpful websitehttp://www.learning-html.com/!

facebook

So what's with the new facebook? okay, maybe this is just feeding off something that everyone's talking about, but it is a real web issue. do y'all llike it?

Not saying that you will need it but......

If you need some help with the html website stuff, this website has an entire search engine deticated to helping with writting html sites: http://www.htmlhelp.com