Archive for the ‘Website Design’ Category
Widgets in Web Design
No matter the medium or method employed, artists tend to approach new projects with a stretch of plain and unadorned material before them. Sculptors begin masterpieces with a block of stone or a clump of clay; painters are confronted with a white expanse of canvas. And web designers begin their work with essentially the same sort of object, only digitized: the blank page. While some web design experts prefer to create pages that work as continuous, uninterrupted wholes, an increasing number designers as well as less experienced web professionals such as search engine optimization gurus are choosing a more modular approach to page and site creation. Playing off of this popular trend in modularization, widgets for the web offer ways to incorporate various site features that can be added, re-arranged, and removed with a minimum of design disturbance.
Widgets are created by designers and programmers alike, each with individual specializations that lend something different to their creations. The basic concept of the widget focuses on its role as a relatively small page or site ingredient, able to function independently of other site features. This independence allows widgets to be effectively “popped in and out” of designs without the need to spend a lot of time changing code or re-organizing design. The convenience of the widget format has led to an impressive range of the products available as freeware or for purchase, touching on a wide variety of utilities, topics, and ideas.
Some of the most common widgets available for websites are also the most basic. Widgets that display the time and date, often in a number of different cities like Austin Texas, Moscow Russia, and Milan Italy, or that count site visitors and their activity, are fairly standard. Widgets for displaying the weather in a given location or keeping site visitors updated on other dynamic data such as sports scores or local news are also common offerings. More customized and creative widgets might help site owners incorporate social media tools such as site accounts and updates or comments into their design.
Not all widgets are created with front-end effects in mind, however. Some models focus their functionality on helping site administrators and owners improve their online success, such as in the case of SEO widget tools or coding cleanup models. Back-end widgets can analyze data and present it in a clear, concise, and attractive way, simplifying the management process and helping to keep sites operational and optimized.
Modern widgets for the web might not be primary elements of a page or site, but just as the sheen on the windows of buildings in a painting of the Austin Tx nighttime skyline make an artist’s effort stand out, and just as the folds of fabric or strands of hair on a sculpture help viewers deepen their experience with a marble or ceramic statue, so too can widgets add detail and multi-dimensionality to websites.
NuArtisan
7000 N Mo Pac Expy Ste 200
Austin, TX 78731
(512) 712-5359