With my recent quest to learn HTML and CSS and successfully incorporate one of my designs into a blog (what do you think by the way?) I have stumbled across a number of websites that are of interest to me more so than others. This week I found Janko's web design blog called Janko At Warp Speed. To be honest I can't remember how I found Janko's site, probably through Google or from a recommendation by a friend. There are a couple of things I like about Janko's web design blog and the advice he gives:He provides demos for all examples he provides. This caught my attention almost instantly. When I find a good example on the web, usually after a painstakingly long search crawling through nearly 20 pages on Google, my puppy eyes light up. But then I'm often stuck wondering what the example will look like on my site. Sure, I could copy and paste the code, load it up in Firefox and look at the results, but it's the feeling that Janko has taken the time to entice the user by decorating his 'Demo' button so attractively (I'm a slave to design, you see) and the fact that the demos I have looked at have always been of superb quality. It makes all the difference when a blogger closes the gap between offering advice and giving proposition. I can see what the product will look like visually, which is a huge advantage because I find it hard to visualise the end result when I am looking at lines of code.
Janko targets the unusual aspects of a website that many other web design bloggers wouldn't go near. I found an article on his blog called 'Poorly designed webforms force users to leave: Example'. Many of his articles follow suite, questioning the internets many websites ability to provide a successful platform on which the user can interact. A website that is poorly designed, which is often the case with novice programmers (like me!), can lead to instability within the visual - a product of interactivity in a way - and underlying interactive elements of a web page. Janko not only picks up on the transparency of the internet (because almost all web pages are not connected to each other and have no meaningful relation other than they are all part of the internet) due to poorly designed web pages but offers advice on how to combat these common website problems within your own site and - the part I like - an example of how.
His blog offers down-to-earth advice that makes sense. The examples and advice provided to website designers isn't too absurd that it interferes with the creation of any website, merely helps improve and offers a stepping-stone on which website designers can use to augment their site.
Take a look around, especially if you are interested in website design or programming. I found his articles inspiring and interesting.