Commentary on "The Foundations of Web Design" by Jeffrey Veen

Jeffrey Veen, in the above aritcle, makes a few interesting and enlightening points about essential web design principles. Essentially, his article is an abbreviated "Web Design for Dummies" type overview. One of the most useful tips Veen offers is to learn from the source code of websites you believe are well-designed. Any site on the web has to make that source code available to the viewer, thus, the more you learn from the successful pages, the more you learn about designing your own page. Also, Veen asks his readers to keep certain points in minds when designing their own pages. Every user has a different web capability so Veen says that bandwidth and media types ares essential to a successful pages. This is important because how universally accessible your webpage can have a major impact on how many people use your website. Using too many or too complicated of videos and animations might make users with dial-up internet, for instance, unable to use your site to its fullest potential. This connects with his later point of not over stimulating your audience with too many flashy or showy graphics, videos, etc. because they won't know what the focus of your page is. Finally, he leaves a few brief common-sensical type bits of advice to his readers advising them to make a solid first impression to their target audience and to use external links intuitively so as not to detract from your own site.

For the article in its entirety, please visit the original web page here.