New Media in Web Design

From Baruchnewmedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

New Media & How It's Used in Web Design

"Web 2.0" is a term coined to refer to the focus of web design on the user. To promote this, Web 2.0 sites utilize new media tools and objects, which allow the user to have more freedom and control in the web environment. Some of these elements include the ability for users to drag and drop items as well as easily edit the layout of a site. Web 2.0 allows users of technology to be consumers, producers and editors.

Certain elements of New Media & Web 2.0 include:

  • Polling Features
  • Commenting
  • RSS Feeds
  • Social Bookmarking
  • Networking
  • Other Interactivity

Some books describe Web 2.0 in more detail, such as:

  • Web 2.0 Heroes: Interviews with 20 Web 2.0 Influencers by Bradley L Jones.

(Book Review: link)

  • Web 2.0 Architectures: What Entrepreneurs and Information Architects Need to Know by James Governor.

(Book Review: link)

New Media Web Design:

The emergence of new media and Web 2.0 was characterized by very minimalistic and simple looking sites that had little content, but many features. Homepages often consisted of a single logo, with just one or two buttons, and a login. Domain names often had one vowel removed to create clever names like:

  • Flickr.com
  • Tumblr.com
  • Zoomr.com

While the design of Web 2.0 sites is usually minimalistic, the features they provide are generally very rich and go far beyond simply providing information. Utilizing databases and sophisticated scripts, Web 2.0 websites provide interactivity and social functions.


Web Design and Blogs:

Because of the popularity of blogging, web sites such as blogger.com and wordpress.com provide free, pre-developed blog creation and include templates for easily customizable blog design.

Sites like Tumblr.com provide users with a simple to set up blog and features which allow them to publish various types of content (music, videos, audio, links, etc.) with the touch of a button. Tumblr users can use their mobile phones to post content and even have a phone number to call to record audio content.

In general, web design has become more community-oriented. Blogs display links to other blogs they are associated with. Also, blogs may be enrolled in a public listing, allowing readers to view other blogs that have similar interests.

Some blogs give advice on how to develop a successful blog, such as:

Web Design 2.0: Some General Concepts

Simplicity.

Central Layout.

Fewer Columns.

Separate Top Section.

Simple Navigation.

Website Design Examples

A website that I (Rohin Sharma) have created is dedicated towards Photoshop Brushes called http://PhatBrush.com, It includes various aspects of Web 2.0 designing including a commenting system , polling , social networking as well as the RSS Feed.

References: http://designrfix.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Photoshop-brushes-resources-15.jpg

Other, better known examples of Web 2.0 include:

  • Flickr.com - a photo sharing site
  • Twitter.com - a micro-blogging site
  • Youtube.com - a video sharing site
  • Digg.com - a social news site
  • Yelp.com - a social review site

RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds(Really Simple Syndication) are a tool used by some websites to send users updates on anything from blogs, news headlines, audio, video and downloads. It's very useful in compacting updates from your favorite websites onto your screen. To view your RSS feeds you need to first get an RSS reader, there are many RSS readers out there you can just pick any, and then find a website that allows RSS feeds and subscribe.

RSS Readers:

Sample RSS Feeds:

NEWS

ENTERTAINMENT

FINANCE

SPORTS


Additional information on RSS Feeds:


HTML5; A still non-standard new standard

Online videos are one of the most popular categories of content on the Internet, so it is not surprising that portals such as YouTube, DailyMotion or Vimeo produced the first elements of the HTML5 standard. HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language - the language in which HTML documents are written and are the base of the Internet. Since the conditions of properly displaying pages is to adapt to these engine rules to web browsers, the new model was developed by the four major manufacturers of such tools (without the participation of Microsoft) in collaboration with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). HTML5 introduces many new features so the markup language is no longer focused on documents but on the applications. Many users and developers believe this is an internet revolution.

The main feature of HTML5 is the easier integration of multimedia files. Usually to play video and sound we have to use plug-ins such as Adobe Flash Player. However, it occupies a lot of resources, often destabilizes the browser and is usually the weak point of computer security. Many malicious programs spread through the vulnerability of the Flash Player also. HTML5 is to end of these old standard plugins. New coding tags like <video> <audio> enable direct integration of multimedia files to HTML documents. Simple, integrated players will open them in your browser without additional plug-ins and will need only codecs. And therein lies the catch: the HTML5 specification does not enforce the use of a particular codec so there are no standards for browsers. For example Firefox and Opera use a different codec than Safari and Chrome and Internet Explorer doesn’t support either codec again. So coming to an agreement on a standard has been the biggest issue still.

Image:Apple-ipad-video-650x378.jpg

ROCKMELT; A new socially integrated browser

A new browser was launched earlier this month, RockMelt (www.rockmelt.com) It is a fantastic new browser that incorporates main Social Networking, RSS Feeds from your favorite websites and Social Bookmarking, all in its main window.

Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape, of venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, is the principal financial backer of RockMelt.

RockMelt Promotional Video

From Article in the New York Times there is a brief summary of its main features: ”At first glance, RockMelt looks like an ordinary browser, a digital windowpane onto the Web. But along the side of its main window are two thin rails with icons, one showing a user’s friends on the left, and another displaying a user’s favorite social sites, including Twitter and Facebook, on the right. A “share” button makes it easy to post a Web page, a YouTube video or any other items, to Facebook, Twitter or other sites. Similarly, users can update their status or keep tabs on their friends’ activities on any social network right on their main browser window. They can also easily add and remove friends, or chat with them, on the left-side rail.

Image:Rockmelt_screenshot.jpg

When a user searches the Web using Google, RockMelt not only delivers the Google search results, but also fetches the pages associated with those results, so a user can preview those pages quickly and decide which to click to. “Had we known about Facebook and Twitter and Google back in ’92 or ’93, we would have built them into the browser,” Mr. Andreessen said, referring to Netscape. “This is an opportunity to go back and do it right.”

Like other browsers, RockMelt will be free, and like the popular open-source browser Firefox, it plans to make money by earning a share of the revenue from Web searches conducted by its users.” [1]

Reference

[1] ^ "Web Browsing Takes a Social Turn". New York Times. 2010-11-07.

Retrieved from "http://www.baruchnewmedia.com/wiki/New_Media_in_Web_Design"
Personal tools