Web & Design Discussions

Personal views on the latest trends in UX Design and Web solutions...

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Latest Trends in UI Design

The area of design is evolving by time and it is vital for the designers to follow and practice the recent trends in their projects. The usability and ease-of-use criteria are highly important for the website’s success, however most of the times, adopting the trends and making them in use besides the functionality of the digital experiences are a success factor as well. In this sense, within this post; I want to discuss about the latest trends in web aesthetics and user interface design. First of all, I want to start with the increasing use of 3D designs that seem like a very attractive approach to grab the maximum level of user attention by adding depth and reality to simple objects or components in design. Another significant trend that is gaining more power in the field of UI design; is the use of bold typography. Thanks to its features of making the essential text material more visible and standing out; use of bigger and bolder typography where needed, is creating a relatively more eye-catching and remarkable layouts that allows users to pay more attention and feel involved.  Thirdly; there is no doubts that; use of effective animations in UI design is still on rise and seen as a great method to support the user experience with interesting animated visual material. We are all familiar with the night modes or dark modes of the most popular native apps in our mobile devices; however, this concept is getting trendier nowadays that; even regular designs of the webpages are taking advantage of the dark themes to enhance the readability and visual elegance. Finally, the Bauhaus style is getting more significance in this field with its main features of; using the geometric designs intuitively to form an understanding of the message wants to be given in the website by maintaining the minimalist aesthetics of the overall concept. In this trend, shapes, colors and creative use of typography is backing the flow in the design by structuring a more complete and logical apprehension; that user follows and pays more attention to the meaning and functionality of the concepts within the overall outlook. 

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What makes a successful blog?

After the rise of web and popularity of social media, blogs have become an inseparable part of our lives. Blogs let us; learn from them, witness different perspectives, and add a piece of sensation to our hobbies or fields of interests. TechCrunch, TMZ or HuffPost can be listed as few of the most popular blogs in the last few years, that have a huge audience base. But reaching to such large user groups and keeping them engaged with the right content is a highly challenging job for today’s bloggers. It has been one of my objectives for long time to run a successful blog that both generates an extra income as a side hustle and a give inspiration to people that shares the same interests with me. That’s why I want to share the most critical points as short notes in the aspect of content quality, that can make a blog successful in the long-term, so people who are interested in can take advantage of this post, and who knows, maybe I can add some good value to their work. To begin with, being concise is very important, we are living in a world, where time is everything, so the readers should get as much from it, in the shortest amount of time. In this sense, entertaining content, is getting more important, where readers would like to find the pieces of little engaging information about their lifestyles or interests. Easy-to-read paragraphs is another essential point; that, the readers mostly like to skim and only focus on where they find some interest in. Moreover, in this sense, effective use of grammar and punctuation marks are becoming crucial. If the content creator or the blogger is not native in the language that he is writing in, then it would be nice to have a proofreading service from a professional. When it comes to the tone of the communication, it is always good to have a sincere and conversational tone to grab the attention of the readers, rather than adopting a very formal tone. And finally, since navigation within the content is equally important; the heading / subheadings, the right division of the content according to the logical flow by each section, are the factors that increase readability. 

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The Future of Low-Code / No-Code

Websites are making our lives easier as we are the users who utilize from them, but how about the developers? Is there a way to make their lives easier too? The answer for this question has been getting more and more certain for the last few years where huge discussions are running all around. The advancements in web technology and content management systems allowed designers to build their websites even without a single line of code. More complex features, animations and functionalities are taking place in these low-code or no-code platforms gradually. It is even getting a lot easier for freelancers to get jobs with the qualifications related with low/no-code platforms like; WordPress, Wix, Bubble.io and webflow. Especially for the static websites, these platforms are getting more valuable day by day. Why would anyone need to put himself in a difficult situation that requires tones of codes for even really simple tasks? Since the projects are not requiring high levels of customization; these systems are good enough to satisfy most of the needs from both the user side and developer side. According to Gartner, two third of the websites will be developed by using these platforms by 2024 and obviously they are getting more popular day by day thanks to the favor in use. These highly effective platforms; where most of them are in use in the form of websites; are producing high quality outputs in shorter periods of time and allows the developers to spend their time in more valuable aspects for the problems regarding efficiency and functionality. I guess it would also be highly beneficial in terms of avoiding human made mistakes which is also time consuming. Besides its’ time-effective features, these platforms can be used by almost anyone with reasonable amount of practice experienced and that’s why can be cost-effective by reducing the time and money spent on a product, where they would have needed to hire the highest skilled developers with tones of experience just to perform a smaller and less important task. So it can be said that; there will always be a huge demand for good developers but the technology is bridging the gaps so quickly that these platforms getting more popular gradually and making things happen a lot easier.

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GitHub Copilot

For the professionals like programmers and developers, there is no doubts that GitHub can be seen as one of the main sources that they utilize from. The main purposes of this version control platform are storing the repositories of the software projects and encouraging collaboration within the community and share codes. It is free of charge and easy to use that even newbies can participate and practice through the platform. But even more than this, a relatively new feature or let’s say an extension of this platform named “GitHub Copilot” is letting the users to enjoy the advantages of the todays not too complex AI. This AI- based assistant extracts the relevant information gathered into an editor suggestion as a code in a matter of time, so it helps the user do their own business in an efficient way. It works as an outcome from the typed comments and creates the code or suggests the next few lines based on user comments. From my personal experience, I found it very handy and convenient with basic needs in static web page design and development, but according to comments in stackoverflow.com and reddit; this AI extension of GitHub, skilled enough to provide complicated algorithms, unit tests, and most used methods. Moreover, I think; it will make the professionals who work in the fields of IT and CS, will be suffering less, from forced labor of less creative tasks and focus more on the fun stuff in code and put the whole effort on the real matters. But I guess, besides its capabilities and advantages; its promising features for the future, is making the developers and programmers even more curious than before, since the debate of whether the AI will make them lose their jobs or not. 

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Does navigation really matter a lot?

Navigation is one of the most important components of the modern websites that has a huge impact on user experience. In this sense, designers are practicing an approach that allows users to reach the information that they are looking for as quickly as possible. Other than this critical reason, I also find it very useful to follow the layout and have a look at the various sections in the predetermined structure of the website. When the navigation has no logic behind or some good level of consistency, I feel distracted and it affect my personal experience in terms of usability. In the modern world, we are all interacting with few very popular websites plus the ones according to our interests, and in this sense; I guess it could be much better if we are having similar experiences, so we wouldn’t be wasting our time and energy to get used to the layout and navigation in the websites. It is not a coincidence that most of the successful websites are using relatively similar intuition regarding their navigation. Avoiding the obstacles related with the layout and providing a clean look; generally, increases the time that users spent on websites; which also affects the search engine optimization parameters and eventually the conversion rates and sales favorably.  As being another essential outcome; aesthetics and website outlooks are affected from the navigation directly. Thanks to the well-structured layout and the sub sections aligned accordingly, the users have a more enjoyable sense and impact their future interactions. 

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The Dark UX

The most common way for describing the concept of Dark UX, is; to define its unfair and tendentious design traps to delude and profit from the web users. Most of the times, the dark UX patterns, aims to direct and manipulate the users for the sake of the website or the business. This may mean asking for more information than is relevant to a transaction, eliminating important navigation elements to reduce site abandonment, or opting users into receive promotions by default. There are various methods that designers take advantage of the concept of dark UX. First one can be called misdirection; by canalizing the user attention on the desired thing purposefully in order to distract your attention from the real need. In this case designers use stress elements like borders, shadows, font sizes etc., to manipulate the user and direct them to make the wrong choice. Secondly, dictating hidden costs; by directing the user until the checkout process and then asking them to pay unexpected minor costs to complete payment. Additionally, it may sound extremely ridiculous but would you believe if I tell you that, there is even a method called confirm shaming where the designers or the businesses, making the website users feel guilty or lame by actually creating their choices as a button and write humiliating text on it?  (https://careerfoundry.com/) And finally, fear of missing out or “FOMO”, is one of the strongest methods to manipulate the users. In this method, businesses, are playing with the numbers and demonstrating them as they are being sold very quickly and there is not enough of that product and they are already in other users’ basket etc. So, the users are getting nervous and feel the pressure to buy that product or service as soon as they can. The methods discussed in this post can seem like favorable, to the business’s operations but in long term, I don’t think that they can maintain a strong relationship with their users and a sustainable brand loyalty. From my experience, another point that I have to admit is that; many small design agencies and large corporate firms don’t tend to work with UX designers who have a past with the dark or evil UX patterns. So, they might have some career related problems in the future. 

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Minimalism in Web Design

The most successful examples of today’s highly popular websites with extreme traffic, are demonstrating us, a very crucial concept; which is the minimalist design in web. Rather than forcing the users to challenge with visual chaos and incoherence of the various elements in the design, UI professionals adopt a more meaningful approach that boosts efficacy, simplicity and finally usability. Where “less is more” approach is maintained in the minimalist user interface design, the experts are mostly utilizing from the fundamentals of negative space or lack of content / less of content. And also, with the impacts of high contrast & low color variety practices, designers are creating a simple but more visible and clear vision from the screens.  According to the common sense, it is not easy to notice the existence of a good design unlike with bad and perfect design; which are a more notable and eye-catching. Today, taking advantage of the most important and necessary elements that serves for the main purposes of the website or relative business; is being the real work needs to be done. Thanks to the impacts of this approach a sounder user connection and engagement is now more doable. Prioritization of the details with an extra focus on user attention is being one of the key factors regarding this trending approach of minimalism in web design. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with getting inspirations from popular designs and then adapting these practices to new websites or apps. What matters on this aspect, is; brilliant designers are following a trend and making highly usable websites that people utilize from, and when these people have a bite from these digital experiences and enjoy them; now this action is being consistent and they expect the same experience from other websites or apps. For the users, who value the convenience and ease of use; getting used a completely new design and achieve the same tasks, generates inconsistencies and therefore failures. 

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The Elementor

I have been hearing about Elementor, even when I was not very familiar with WordPress. When I actually dived into the Web Authoring course content; I became more knowledgeable about this WordPress plug-in and now I am feeling myself more comfortable with that. First of all, it can be considered as a large part of the WordPress environment since it is highly popular among users. It is more of a visual drag and drop editing plug-in where users can easily get used to the workflow and steps. In shortest terms, it allows us to build websites from templates and customize it according to our preferences and even some code can be added to achieve animations and extra functionality. For me, I guess one of the most useful features of the Elementor, is the live visual builder, that allow the users to make instant changes directly in the display of the website users; which is super handy and time-efficient. Since it is an open-source website builder; it gathers all the contributions from a huge developing community and improving itself by time. Thanks to this; support behind Elementor, almost everything related with a website is thought and prepared; from the most basic sliders to more custom buttons, and from numerous widgets to a broad range of themes but also it is good to mention that the pro version which is a paid one; comes with a lot of extra features. Another very important feature for me that I care most, is the availability of the responsiveness, since it is very crucial for the industry to be accepted by the majority of the users and reach crowds. Personally, the cost for developing a proper native app can be really high; so whenever I think about my personal projects, I mostly pay much attention to the web apps, which are responsive and mobile friendly; and the good thing about Elementor, is; besides its great capabilities and features; it allows users to practice their designs on various screens and have a live preview of the work they have done on different devices and start adjusting in a matter of time.

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The Mighty WordPress

There are no doubts that WordPress is one of the most popular online platforms in the web. The main purpose of the WordPress is to help the users to build websites in a easy and quick way. It doesn’t require much previous knowledge or training, just following the guidelines and watching the tutorials provided, would be more than enough to make a good start. And the best thing about the WordPress is; that, there is almost no limits in this platform and nearly any kind of websites can be build; such as blogs, drop shipping sites, business pages, and even e-learning websites. WordPress can also be considered as a content management system and lets its user to make quick adjustments and updates in a very short period of time and keep their systems fresh. And one of the reasons that made this platform went this far and almost unrivaled, is that, it is open-source and free. It has a market share of 40% and almost 6 times larger than its biggest rival which is a platform named Wix. Normally users get used to having very limited services from web platforms especially if they are free; but WordPress is proving a really wide selection of customization availability for the web design professionals. Without the need of installing any plug-ins or extensions; the platform is already providing themes that can be personalized in every aspect and the components of the design. The only troubles which are very well-known are the downturns about WordPress’s embarrassing performance regarding SEO and page speeds.

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The Least Known Features of CSS

Personally, I have always liked to spend time in CSS, using different features and making things easier, sometimes more difficult :) But according to many of the developers advance level CSS has few very problematic issues besides its advantages, so these highly practical and experienced professionals in the industry, are not being fans of CSS. In this post I want to talk about the least known features and properties of CSS and try to surprise you a bit, with these unpopular capabilities of CSS. To begin with; writing-mode property allows us to align the text items vertically or horizontally from top to bottom or right to left. For example; vertical-rl: means that the text should flow from top to bottom and the first lines should be aligned on the right, where the second line should be aligned on the left. If it was; vertical-lr: things would be opposite in the right-left direction. Another interesting property could be the; background-clip; that allows the developers to create an animated background behind a content which can be a text a shape or a section within the borders. Thirdly; backface-visibility property is an amazing animation and allows us to flip the layers of the cards and create a 3d visual by rotating the elements either on x axis or y axis. We can hide texts or images behind of a card and hide it until flipping the face to see the information. Another interesting CSS feature, which is; the background-repeat property can be very handy when we need to fill some space with the desired content without too much effort. It lets us, fill the area; by x axis, y axis or both axis (with the round attribute). And finally, one of my favorite CSS features which is; user-select, allows us to keep our content unique and prevents plagiarism, so others cannot direct copy our texts and use in their websites. If we have a text that we don't want the other users to select, we can use this property. The values that this property can take are; none, auto, text and all. 

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Plain HTML

Probably many of you have already heard that HTML can be considered as the skeleton of a website, where CSS is the skin and JS is the muscles. From my personal experience, it is very true. Because without the existence of HTML, the basic structure of a website wouldn’t be easily formed; even if there are other ways, I have never tried any of them as a design student. So, it would be nice to talk a bit about what can be done with plain HTML or vanilla HTML without using any CSS or JS. HTML abbreviation is coming from Hyper Text Markup Language; and It allows the developers or web designers to decide how the elements are going to visualized on the webpage on a screen. And it is not a programming language according to the literature, because there is no space in HTML for manipulating the data or modifying it. With the latest version of HTML, which is HTML5; we can create a basic form for our webpage with the most used elements of it; such as, head, title, body, paragraph, anchor tags, navigations, headings, headers, footers, images, and even videos. It helps us; determine the prioritization of the data, arranging the order and navigation through the website, importance levels and finally the whole structure that we want our page to be displayed with. So, the boring, less colorful and animated versions of static pages can be done by using only HTML. This is a link for accessing a plain HTML website; http://www.fluffbucket.co.uk/howto/htmlonlypg.htm. Obviously, this kind of designs are not the most attractive ones to grab some user attention, however, the aim of this post is; to clarify that; a meaningful, static and highly functional webpages can still be done by HTML without the help of any other languages or frameworks. And since minimalist design practices are gaining more importance, maybe it can work better, who knows… 

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The Very First Website

Today’s modern citizens are highly dependent on web and its services; to exploit countless benefits and most importantly to make our daily lives easier. Thanks to its dominance, we socialize, get information, learn and buy through web. We are mostly equal in the web environment; especially compared to the real world, there are less obstacles felt in terms of self-expression and human related discrimination. Generally, users from every age and background can take advantage of the web services and access its benefits. That’s why, in order to appreciate this great world changing concept, its history should be examined carefully. Regarding this objective, in this aspect I would like to see the properties and capabilities of the very first website in the world. The first of its kind, the primitive version of today’s websites; was launched on in CERN by a computer scientist called Tim Berners Lee. This first webpage of human history, which is made by hypertext, can be reached through the link of http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. The founder was aiming to develop an information management system out of this spectacular invention; that can be connected with other computers by internet. So, we got familiar with the world-wide-web or W3 concept thanks to Mr. Lee. When it comes to the capabilities and main features of this very first website; it must be seen that; the plain HTML was used; many of the links are created by anchor tags, headings by h1’s, h2’s and h3’s and text material through the paragraph elements. It seems like a quite basic but also explanatory website that leads the users to various pages and talks about the concepts of http, HTML, naming schemes and leading protocols. Despite the fact that, this very first website is not providing an extremely detailed and meaningful knowledge about the upcoming inventions in web; it is still an amazing initial service that let us enjoy today’s highly effective and helpful websites. So, we do have a reason to be thankful.