Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
means you can add bold, italic, and caps to certain text blocks to add
emphasis. However, you should use these type styles consistently and
keep them to a minimum. Fight the urge to use blinking text, lime green text,
and other painful HTML text attributes that might detract from your
credibility or the user experience. Black or white should be your dominant
HTML text color. Highlight important information by using one other color
only. You should create a color scheme. We talk about this more later on
in this chapter.
With regards to Web type, you have only these choices: Helvetica, Arial,
Times, Times, New Roman, or Verdana. Type on computer browsers is
limited to a set number of fonts. If you use fonts outside these, you risk the
good possibility that the user will not have the typeface on his or her
computer, thus serving up unknown fonts on the Web page. That would
have negative impact on the visual design of the page, the user's percep-
tions, and ultimately we would lose the persuasive pitch that we had
intended.
When using graphical type, keep it simple and consistent. Don't
overdue it with drop shadows, glow, and outlines, and gradients — all
applied on the same piece of type! Many people new to art and design
tend to over use the bells and whistles that exist in applications like Adobe
Photoshop. Try not to feed into the temptation. “Overdone” type, as I call
it, is a distraction from the most important part of your Web portfolio, the
project descriptions and credentials. Fancy effects that draw attention
from the meat and potatoes of the Web portfolio are actually obstacles to
clear communication.
It is important to use HTML type on the home page in some fashion other
than navigation. Perhaps add brief introduction paragraph about the site.
This is a good Web communication strategy. It will also provide your site
with text-based retrieval words to be picked up by the search engines. We
will cover this more when we talk about Meta tags later in the topic.
Images and Graphics
The use of images also known as graphics in the Web portfolio provide a high
level of communication that cannot be achieved with text alone. Presenting
graphics in the Web portfolio is not only attractive but is necessary to provide
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