'How Do We Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?'

'How Do We Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?'

This is a study conducted by the Standford University on 2002, where, and I quote:

When evaluating the credibility of a Web site, participants commented on the design look of the site more often than any other Web site feature, with 46.1 percent of the comments addressing the design look in some way. When coding for comments on design look, researchers included comments on many elements of the visual design, including layout, typography, white space, images, color schemes, and so on.

This is obviously just a part of the study; results vary depending on the persons, and after all it's just a collection of polls. Also, of course, there are other mitigant factors. To say a few: the Name Recognition and Reputation, the Site Functionality, the readability or the Design/structure of the Information, etcetera, etcetera.

But it's deserved at least a look. Check it out.

via 'How Do We Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?', by consumerwebwatch.org

Ahhh blog updates.

Ahhh blog updates.

Eh, I'm not one of those guys who updates a lot his blog.
I don't have the urge nor the desire (aren't they synonyms?) to publish new articles, mainly because I do not form entire ideas on my heads, just little pieces of information. That's right, little scraps of information.

"oh hey, cool thing over there", "oh this band launched an album". Stuff like that. Nothing major; Just daily information that I process to a certain degree of interest, which apparently is just below the "enough to write a blog entry" category. Oh well.



Founda' cool article on Tutorial9 which has some advices on designing blogs. I find the latest three to be opinionated and subject to personal criteria, but most of text contains good information. Worth a look, or two.

The link's on the picture, or can be found here: 9 Things You Can't Forget When Designing a Blog

Web Typography Tools and, "Why I Hate MySpace" got erased?

Web Typography Tools and, "Why I Hate MySpace" got erased?

I got this link since I installed Firefox 3 but I never got to read ALL The tutorials (who does).
Though I'm not fond of the whole "trackback-fashion", some of them are worth the look.



I'd particulary want anyone to read 8 Simple Ways to Improve your Typography since it's probably one of the couple articles with global advices and not just CSS tips, or Javascript tools.



On another completely unrelated note. Someone may know that a video on Pixelated Geek about "Why I hate Myspace" got published a while ago on how users should have less choices respect their own templates and color choices (fancy way to say profiles could cause you a seizure if you'd expose to them too much).

Apparently the video doesn't exists anymore. Isevenx hasn't posted anything about it, neither other authors.
Anyone knows what the fuck happened?

Designing Logos

Designing Logos

It has been a while since my last update. There's no particular reason. I just had mixed ideas of what I wanted to publish, but I never actually concreted any.

In any case; I found a cool article on lifehacker.biz with a list of tutorials on different techniques over logotypes. Worth a look.

Issuu | Publish your work

Issuu | Publish your work

Issuu basically consists on a host website for little or medium magazines who want to make theirs known around the globe.



The system is really easy, actually. You just need to upload your PDF files to the website, and after that you gather them in the order and way you want.
It's also great to discover other magazines and chat about design with the authors.



I feel like a f*cking seagull doing advertising to other websites, but oh hell, this one deserves it.

POP | Design Agency

POP | Design Agency

Have you ever said "If I would want to work in this company/for someone it would be 'x' "? I just had this thought while I was searching in the POP website.



"POP is an interactive agency. With a dynamic blend of marketing strategy, design and technology, we help some of the world’s leading brands discover new opportunities to enhance and expand their businesses through the thoughtful crafting of innovative interactive experiences for the web, mobile devices and emerging digital platforms."

And boy they do have some brands: Nintendo, Microsoft, Google, EA, Amazon, Ubisoft. The job offert is extremely low and the demands are, well, as you can imaginate, the best of the best: expert on acronyms, translations, and the list goes on.



Every website they have done combines a lot of existent languages in many forms, for an impressive outcome and beautiful presentation. A good example probably is on the Mario Brothers website of the very own Nintentdo. Worth taking a look.

Changing your Link borders

Changing your Link borders

Okay, this is a pretty specific subject. So it happens that my blog came with a configuration which made any of my images, when they linked to somewhere, to use borders. Like this.



So I searched and found a way to change it into this:



What did I do? I created another "class" for the images, so they could work as different elements from Links. You just need to find your a: line and set something like this.



You can define every one of the variables on the list to match the colors on your blog. Every time you want to correct the border, use the usual code img src with this agregate: Class="img".
For example, the last image looked like this.



Remember that I'm talking about Images with Links. It won't work if you add it to the "img src" part.

Changing your Blog Icon (favicon)

Changing your Blog Icon (favicon)

After a couple hours of searching in the web, I came across a blog which described an useful method for changing your blog favicon.
I must state that I gathered a lot of this information from another blog, which I can't track right now, since I erased my historial (blame CCleaner).

What's a Favicon?
It's the icon next to your browser direction, meant to identify the site you're currently navigating. It stands for "favorite Icon", since that's the image it's going to display in your bookmarks (and originally, on the Internet Explorer's).



So how can we change the Blogger default's icon?
By introducing this codeline on the Palette:

Link rel (where rel stands for relationship) is encharged to link the icon with the outern source, and the href part is basically the URL of your icon host. This is the only part of the code you have to change.
You need to introduce this code (obviously with another URL) between the «head> and the «/head>, after the ]]>«/b:skin> (please notice that I changed all the "<" in order to make the f*cking blog accept the line of text)

Real explanation starts here
What you need to do in order to change the URL part on that code I gave you, is the following.

1. First of all, save your Blog palette before messing with. It's a suggestion.
2. You're going to need either a 16x16 image in order to convert it to Ico, or already, an icon. Try searching on google, or using a program to make one, such as Photoshop, Gimp, or something else. You got a list of programs at mashable to check.
3. Go to IconJ and host it at the box on the right side of the screen.



4. After the site finishes uploading it, copy the direct link on the bottom of the link box.



5. Now paste this between the «head> and the «/head>, after the ]]>«/b:skin> and you're done.



Hope you liked it.

Installing Wordpress locally and a Watercolor Menu

Installing Wordpress locally and a Watercolor Menu

Another tutorial; This time, for a watercolor-like notepad and some interesting stuff about Wordpress (which tragically, I know almost nothing of it).



Watercolor Menu tutorial



Installing Wordpress

3D Pixel Stretch

3D Pixel Stretch

Not because I enjoy doing publicity to other sites, but because I found a great tutorial for making (grungy?) backgrounds filled with colors.

The only trick on it, is getting handle of the CTRL (or was it ALT) + T thing, which looks easy at the very beggining but after a while you notice it's not so-so.



3D Pixel Stretch tutorial on this website