The Web 2.0 Design Checklist.

We’ve full time to write up a small list of equipment to remember when designing a web 2.0 application or website.

Please note: Using these design principles doesn’t automatically make your website “web 2.0ey”. We are just noting down the well loved web 2.0 design trends that have started popping up over the Internet the past few months.

Big Fonts

Possibly the most obvious one. If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past 12 months then you will know this already. Huge fonts are certainly a must for designing for web 2.0 applications. Huge fonts can be worked into the UI all over the place, in the navigation, in headings, sometimes even the content itself.

Less is more

This one is such an incredible clich?ɬ© I can’t believe i’m even using it. But, i reckon it needs to be said. Web 2.0 is all about the content. People don’t care about visual heavy yaxay style designs anymore, they care about the content. The less design elements here are the better as it gives your website visitor a chance to do and see what they came to your website for; the content.

White Space

White space is building come back. Flickr is an example of a website that uses white space excellently. If here is a gap in your sites content, don’t worry about it! White space is cool in the web 2.0 design planet.

Centered

This one isn’t so much a rule as a generalisation. The vast majority of web 2.0 sites and applications are centered in the browser window. You won’t find many websites that are left aligned of fluid*.

*Fluid refers to websites stretching to the full width of the browser window.

Tag

Keep navigation simple. A fantastic way of doing this is by count tag clouds. They have became so well loved in web 2.0 applications that they have nearly become a design element in themselves.

A tag cloud can be used as a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or if not emphasized, while the showed order is generally alphabetical. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag. – Source.

If you’re a designer just add one to your web 2.0 design and let your programmer worry about having to code it.

Intro

It has become common practice to include some kind of bold, striking initiation to your website on the homepage. We’re even doing it here at tutorialvine. :)

That concludes our brief checklist of equipment to remember when designing for web 2.0. Feel free to stray away from the “rules” as much as you like and try and come up with something truly unique.

Here are a few more links that you may find useful.
Web 2.0 digg tales.
Wikipedia
The web 2.0 bullshit generator
TechCrunch

Thanks for reading.

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{ 1 trackback }

The Blog of Jon Wheatley - j0n.org » Archives » TutorialVine.com - Launched.
29/01/2007 at 02:15

{ 2 comments }

angelsoft 05/04/2007 at 17:26

fantastic article. i’ve been so confused about this 2.0 business for quite some time. now i’m starting to get a clearer picture. thanks. regards from angelsoft

jalpari 30/04/2007 at 07:20

awesome guideline

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