Webstyle Guide

I really agreed with the fact that posting text on a computer screen for a website is harder than in print. In print, it is much easier to see how the text will fit on a page and for most publications, editing would quickly discover if text were off the page. With a website, it is much easier to make mistakes with the complex coding and all of your steps must match up -- to the out-dated operating system that won't allow you to have certain fonts, to missaved files, etc. More details mean more room to make a mistake. I think contrast is very important to the style of the website and directly contributes to the reader's want to read it. I would rarely ever read something that was just plain text unless I was forced to. The alignment and use of white space are always important, especially on the web were you have more than just text, you have images, links, backgrounds, etc. that also need to be on that page, so deciding what goes where without taking attention off of what you want to be most important is critical for a good web page. The alignment also talks about justified, flushed left, and flushed right in deciding how a text should be presented. Most of the time, I believe it is better to go with flushed left because that is where the eye naturally goes. Centering is ok for headlines, but I find that flushed right is more distracting than helpful. I feel like I have to read each line carefully or I will miss the next line. It does not make for an easy read. Another major theme is use of white space to generate a space between paragraphs instead of indentation. It is more reader-friendly, and since some screens are small with the text smaller because of the other elements on the page, it is easier to distinguish a break in the paragraphs. Reading a book is different because the pixels are much higher and easier to read with just indentations. The typefaces will need to be different between the books and the computer screens. I have always understood that Times Roman was the best font to use as a standard font for a lot of text, but I did not know that it wasn't the best choice for web documents. I thought about using it for my first website but found out that Georgia looked much better, so I'm glad I make that choice so my readers could read my text more easily. I also found that I was using a bigger font size because I did not want my readers to be strained in any way and have to hurt their eyes from trying to read small text on screen.
Consistency was my biggest concern with my first website. I wanted to make sure that all of my links were visible on every page as well as the same font, same headings, etc. so people would know that they are still on the site, and I believe that this is an important part of digital text and something that really separates it from printed text, which is usually consistent. The possibilities are seemingly endless for digital text, which would make it a lot easier to stray off the track with other design ideas that could really confuse the reader. Something I learned from this reading which can be very helpful to me is the antialiased type that can be created to smooth out a look through Photoshop. This could help out a lot with bigger headers and also create a more reader-friendly web document. Overall, this site contains very good reference points for web designers just starting out and in need of direction.