Month: May 2016

Inefficient at counting. Efficient at saying things?

Posted on by jubalation91

Wondering about that title? Yeah, I can’t count but I can say words okay. Accidentally missed this blog but now I’m back to destroy it with a vengeance so pure, so unadulterated that it’s going to wish I had forgotten about it altogether.

Alright, today, in this era of technology and aesthetically pleasing things, what makes a website efficient? What makes it stand out and make people want to come back and use it over anything else?

You’ve got to make it look good, mayn. That’s where it’s at. It needs to run smoothly, not lag or jump, and look so damn beautiful that you get lost in its eyes. Basically the design, the navigation and the information. That’s what makes it efficient in my eyes.

My example, as odd as this sounds, would definitely have to be Netflix. If you’re me, you’d spend a ridiculous amount of hours watching it, especially the American version…maybe also Shrek the Musical. No judging. It’s magical.

But onto the layout, no matter what you are using, be it your phone, console, PC or TV, it always looks aesthetically pleasing. Everything is easy to find and you know what you’re looking at because of the images telling you along with a large image that appears faded in the top right to give you an idea of what you’re in for. I would prefer to use that over Stan, Presto and Foxtel Play because it’s easy to use with very little lag.

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I recommend House of Lies. Great, great show. Not House of Cards but Lies

So, at the same time what makes an inefficient website? I can give you plenty of examples but that’s in a moment cause I have a few beautiful ones.

Everything I described before about efficient websites? Well flip that and you’ve got exactly what makes a shit website. It’s cluttered, it’s slow, it’s hard to navigate, it’s blert.

My two examples for you today are Blinkee and Ling’s Cars. These are so absolutely awful that they automatically revert into something fantastic. If you’ve been in class with me, you’ll understand my complete and utter fascination with these two sites. How Ling sells a car, I just don’t know. I really don’t. There is no fixing these sites. Truly, they need to be in the museum for awful and amazing. Amazful?

I was going to link a picture for both but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

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Me on the regular

 

Orange Mocha Frappuccino..I mean, let’s talk about SEO

Posted on by jubalation91

Hello, old friend. Time to join me for another blog?

Well, strap yourself in, son.

I know I got you excited for Zoolander with that Orange Mocha Frappuccino reference..

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Dada da…jitterbug. *finger snaps* jitterbug

..but today’s blog isn’t about Zoolander or Blue Steel or even a wonderful petrol fight that you just know is coming after in the picture above.

No, today is about something much more fun and invigorating than anything Mugatu could show you. It’s about SEO.

What’s SEO I hear you ask? Let me enlighten you to the wonderful world of web design. Or WWWD. I tried to think of something witty but I’m at a loss, maybe later.

SEO really just stands for Search Engine Optimisation.

What’s that do? Great question, have a lollipop.

Think of google. You’ve just gone to search Orange Mocha Frappuccino and there’s an ad or two at the top and then result after result. Those ads? Everyone hates them. So the SEO is the process of getting natural, organic results. Ones that might include your website or the search result you actually want.

How are you going to get your site on that SEO thing though? Keywords. It’s all about what words you have in the search algorithm. The more relevant the keywords, the better your visitor traffic is going to be.

In all fairness though, I’ve seen a video and it has search algorithm so my best assumption is that. I could be wrong and I’m okay with that because we know what time it is..it’s baby animal time.

What have I got for you today?

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My obsession when I was 12. My obsession again at 25

And mankind created user friendly websites for all with a soul numbing phone

Posted on by jubalation91

Too dark? I’m okay with it.

Okay, picture this. You’re sitting on your computer when, what happens, you get the urge to desecrate a toilet to no end? What do you do? You want to keep looking at that messed up thing you just discovered on Reddit but there is an urgency.

Obviously you grab your phone and pick up where you left off. Yeah, it’s gross and I painted a wicked vivid picture but it’s what we all do. Our phone is super glued to our hand that if we didn’t have it by some rare miracle, people would think we were ill. Especially me. I can’t cope…high five.

My point is that our phone is basically our life support to the outside world. So don’t you want to continue browsing like there was no interruption? That’s why mobile friendly browsing is so essential.

 When creating your website, you’ve got to consider what it’s going to look like on a phone. If it’s overlooked, it’s more than possible it’s going to turn to shit.

So today, and today only, I’m able to tell you about these super special, super secret design approaches to creating the extra perfect mobile website.

Still with me? Bail out while you can cause I literally have no idea what I’m talking about.

Alright, so you’ve really got two design types. There’s Adaptive and Responsive. Responsive is much more preferred because it’s affordable and I occasionally like to live off Kranskys and Ramen so I’m going to talk about Adaptive first and dream of a better life.

Adaptive is basically considered the high end of website design. Big companies use this to make one nifty looking site and it allows them to reach the largest possible online audience they can. The point of Adaptive is that it can detect and identify what device you are using and style the page based on it’s capabilities. Cool, right?

Then you’ve got Responsive. That generally just uses CSS to create a single version of a website and it auto adjusts to display properly. The downside to this is that it really only works on newer phones. You out there with a Nokia 3310 are out of luck but if you were able to bring up a website on that old brick, I’d commend you and ask for an indepth tutorial.

The cute animal for this blog is…

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When someone touches the back of your neck

Tables. Not the kind where food goes but the kind that makes me want to bang my head against a desk

Posted on by jubalation91

Tables, my old friend, we meet..well not again cause this is the first time but I’m happy to try getting acquainted with you.

My name is Jenna, occasionally I go by Jubes or Jubalicious. Depends on if your my friend or my godson. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, I think it’s time we get up close and friendly with that thing called a table.

First of all, why? Why would whoever came up with coding..who did invent coding? Hang on. Okay, apparently it went abacus, Jacquard Loom, Charles Babbage, Difference engine to Ada Lovelace and then Herman Hollerith. This will make absolutely no sense to anyone but Fae so I apologise.

Either way, who in their right mind decided that tables were the most amazing thing to put into coding? Originally, tables were relevant because web designers needed to structure their web page but along came CSS and made that redundant.

So what’s the use of it now?

Why can’t we have both?

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Preach it, sister

These days, we really only have tables for the columns and rows of organising list items. I suppose, to a certain extent, they can be used on something like JB HIFI, where they sell their shit in neat columns of goodness until you realise that you could go somewhere else and probably get a better deal.

Then again, I’m not even entirely sure if the system they use is a HTML table or if it’s using CSS. If it’s in a grid though, I feel my assumption may be correct since that is the correct use of a table in HTML in today’s day and age.

Want another cute animal? You’ve come to the right place.

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Me when I really don’t want to go somewhere

HTML5..please be gentle

Posted on by jubalation91

The topic for the week I was supposed to keep on top of was elements of HTML5. Research that but when you’re done, tell me why it’s okay to use it in older browsers.

I hit google up because, to be honest, it’s my best friend. My confidant, my amigo, my..uh..amore? No, that’s not right. That’s a bit odd actually unless you watch My Strange Addiction. Whatever brings them happiness though. Little off topic but have you seen that show? After reading this, please, please, go and youtube the episode of a guy in love with his car. The love in his eyes, I tell you, amazing.

Anyway, HTML5. As I was saying earlier, researching it and the elements helped me understand that, really, it is okay to use HTML5 in older browsers.

In my extensive five minute travels, I discovered that there is a backwards compatibility that uses something called polyfill to fill in the gaps and your site more functional.

There are also elements that allow you to teach older browsers how to handle HTML5 correctly. From what I was reading, HTML5 defines eight Semantic HTML elements. These are header, section, footer, side, nav, main, article and figure.

Then you do something with the CSS where you set the display property to ‘block’.

Look, I won’t lie. I’m shocking at this whole coding thing so I just googled it. Can I recommend you google it too because I can’t be trusted in my interpretation. Here, have the site I used.

So to summarise my rambling, yes, it’s absolutely okay to use HTML5 for older browsers as long as you know how to code it correctly to display in a way that doesn’t make it look awful.

Alright, let’s end our suffering here, please have a picture of a cute duckling

 

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