Post pobrano z: CSS-in-JS: FTW || WTF?
I enjoyed Bruce Lawson’s talk on this holiest of wars. It’s funny and lighthearted while being well researched and fairly portraying the good arguments on both sides.
The post CSS-in-JS: FTW || WTF? appeared first on CSS-Tricks.
Post pobrano z: The Game That Never Was // Trailer
Post pobrano z: The History of Emoticons and Emojis
Have you ever wondered what emoticons and emojis have in common, or how they even came to be? Well, since we love empowering our readers with knowledge, we took the time and put together this in-depth article which should break down these two modern ways of communication that have changed our lives so greatly.
From the early days of humanity, our ability
to communicate has played a key factor in completely shaping the way we as members
of the same species interact with each other, allowing us to elevate not only
our minds but also the world that we live in.
This all began when our
early ancestors figured out ways of exchanging pieces of information between
different members of a group, through a common system of symbols, signs, and eventually
words. These slowly but surely formed the tools that we now refer to as language,
which the Britannica Encyclopedia defines as:
„Language, a system of
conventional spoken or written symbols by means of which human beings, as
members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves.
The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity,
play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.”
As the human population started growing and covering different
geographical areas, the number of languages grew exponentially. SIL
International (originally known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics)
reported that in 2018 it identified and cataloged roughly 7,097 spoken
languages: 2,300 in Asia alone, 2,143 in Africa, 1,306 in the Pacific, 1,060 in the
Americas, and 288 in Europe.
Just imagine, 7,097 languages and your average person speaks roughly two or three out of all of them. So what happens when two foreigners try to engage in
the act of communication?
In 1948, Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren
Weaver developed the Shannon-Weaver Model of Communication in which they
postulated that for a successful exchange of information to occur, a sender (the source) needs to encode a message (the information) that will then be
passed down a channel (the medium) to
the receiver which will then decode it.
Even though the model was introduced as a way of improving technical communication for telephone lines, it was later applied to all kinds of communications since it helped develop effective communication.
This all sounds pretty straightforward, but
what happens when the receiver can’t
decode the message due to the fact that
it was encoded using a different set of words, or more precisely a different language?
Well, nothing much
really, since the information simply
won’t be able to make its way across, creating what is commonly known as a language barrier, which can be a great
source of frustration.
Imagine going to your local food market
and trying to buy a few apples. Easy, right? Now let’s say that there’s only one
farmer that sells apples, and this particular person speaks another language, a
foreign one that you don’t know at all.
At first, without knowing it, you’ll open
the conversation and send your message across by telling him the number of
apples that you’d like to buy, but after a few moments you’ll notice that he
doesn’t seem to understand you.
At this point, you
could easily fix the problem by changing the encoding of your message from spoken
words to visual signs, and indicating the product and quantity using your
fingers.
Now let’s take a slightly different example, where the entire conversation takes
place outside of a face-to-face scenario, where the message is encoded using
written text, such as an instant messaging app.
We’ve all been in that situation when we’ve had a huge crush on a person, but we’ve never had the courage to let her/him know how we truly feel. We would start writing long sentences, and then quickly delete them one word at a time, since we couldn’t find the exact words, or we would be frightened of the other person’s reaction.
As with the previous example, a quick and easy solution would be to change the encoding from letters to emoticons or emojis which have a powerful impact on their own. Not only will this engage the other person into partaking in the conversation, but it will also force you to take a shot and express your feelings.
While these might not be the best examples that I could have come up with, the idea is that sometimes words, whether spoken or written, are not the best solution to a communication problem created by language
barriers or social inhibitions. Sometimes, we need to
adapt our message to the situation, and try and make it as clear and succinct as possible
using the easiest way of getting our thoughts across without losing
too much information.
Whether to express love or to communicate things like the weather or your current state of mind (sadness, happiness, etc.), symbols have become powerful means of expression that we intertwine more and more with our other ways of communication.
This is where emoticons and emojis come in play, since they allow you to adapt to almost any conversation, giving you the ability to communicate your inner emotions more quickly and easily using visual symbols that the other person can relate to.
Most of the time, when people start thinking of emoticons or emojis, for some reason they end up portraying the same visual entity, since both of them are used with the purpose of enhancing an ongoing conversation.
While the latter is true, the two are quite distinct forms of visual representations, as we will get to see in the following moments.
The term emoticon (i-ˈmō-ti-ˌkän / plural emoticons) was created by blending together the words emotion and icon, and is commonly defined as a typographic representation composed of
punctuation marks, numbers and letters meant to illustrate a facial expression
capable of conveying emotions in a text-only medium.
The first documented use of the modern concept
dates back to the year 1982, in a message published by computer scientist
Scott Elliott Fahlman within the bulletin boards of the Carnegie Mellon
University.
Back in the day, faculty staff and
students alike constantly created posts in which they discussed different
topics of the day.
As one would expect, many of these posts
were intended to be serious, while others were meant to be humorous. The
problem was that often the reader would fail to catch sarcastic remarks due to the nature of written language, which lacks tone
and body language.
Such was the case with
a specific post, in which during a physics riddle, one Neil Swartz mentioned a
mercury leak within one of the faculty’s elevators.
“16-Sep-82
12:09 Neil Swartz at CMU-750R
Pigeon type questionThis question does
not involve pigeons, but is similar:There is a lit
candle in an elevator mounted on a bracket attached to the middle of one wall (say, 2″ from the
wall). A drop of mercury is on the floor. The cable snaps and the
elevator falls.What happens to the candle and the mercury?”
What happened was that other users that
read the post either hadn’t followed the entire conversation or they didn’t
catch his subtlety, so they ended up assuming that there was indeed a mercury
spill, causing a wave of terror among the other students.
Of course, Neil quickly
pointed out that people had gotten it wrong, and was the first to propose that
they use a convention where all subjects that were to be taken as jokes were
marked using a star (*).
“17-Sep-82 10:58 Neil
Swartz at CMU-750R Elevator postsApparently there has been some confusion
about elevators and such. After talking to Rudy, I have discovered that
there is no mercury spill in any of the Wean hall elevators. Many people
seem to have taken the notice about the physics department seriously.Maybe we should adopt
a convention of putting a star (*) in the subject field of any notice which is
to be taken as a joke.”
This started a whole debate on what symbol should be used, to which Professor Fahlman found an elegant solution by suggesting that people should
explicitly mark the posts that were not to be taken serious using the 🙂
character sequence, while using 🙁 for those that were.
“19-Sep-82
11:44 Scott E
Fahlman 🙂From: Scott
E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>I propose that the
following character sequence for joke markers:🙂
Read it
sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that
are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:-(“
As we now know, this convention quickly became a norm spreading out to
other universities, giving birth to what we now call emoticons.
The etymology of the term emoji (ē-ˈmō-jē / plural emoji, emojis) comes from within the Japanese
language, where e stands for picture/illustration and moji for
character. An emoji is defined as a pictographic depiction of any small image,
symbol or icon used within a digital text conversation in order to express the
emotional state of the writer, enabling the writer to succinctly convey information in
a playful manner.
The concept was invented back in the year 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita while working on i-mode, the early mobile internet platform of the Japanese Carrier NTT DoCoMo, which encompassed a wide variety of internet standards including web access and email.
While the system allowed the use of emails, they were limited to 250 characters, which he strongly believed could impair the users’ ability to express themselves,
since they were forced to use words in such a small message.
Kurita sought to ease the communication by conveying information in a simple, succinct manner using pictograms instead of typographic characters. Taking inspiration from marks used in weather forecasts, manga, and other sources, he designed a total of 176 icons, created on a 12 x 12 px grid that incorporated not just facial expressions, but other symbols (hearts, fist bumps, peace signs, etc.) capable of adding emotional subtext to a message.
While the model was instantly replicated by other Japanese telecom companies, it took almost 11 years (1999–2010) for the symbols to be standardized and incorporated into Unicode, which is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems.
In 2011, Apple started officially supporting emojis within iOS by adding a dedicated set of icons within its own keyboard, and it was followed by Google two years after.
With the official adoption of Unicode and the support of these two tech giants, emoji was finally going to become its own universal language.
Now that we have a better understanding of the two notions, let’s take a couple of moments and see what they have in common and what sets them apart.
As we already pointed out, emoticons are typographical representations, meaning they are usually built using keyboard characters (punctuation marks, letters and/or numbers) that are positioned in such a way that they end up depicting a sideways facial expression or in some cases a simple real-world object.
The complexity of the design is directly influenced by the person creating them and how they choose to use its different composing characters, which means that the person doesn’t necessarily have to be a designer.
Emojis, on the other hand, are characters in themselves, which means that instead of having to create them from scratch, you can simply open up your keyboard and find one that suits your needs, or copy them from another source if you’re using an application that doesn’t already have them built in.
Compared to emoticons, emojis are usually created by an experienced designer within a dedicated vector software program, using basic geometric shapes and paths that are then exported and encoded in order to be used with Unicode.
Even though many people tend to think that emojis are usually round, today we have a huge variation in terms of form, which allows designers to paint different images of the same concept.
Some go to such an extent that they end up anthropomorphizing simple objects or even symbols with human emotion, sometimes managing to bring a bigger emphasis to the message.
On the other hand, if you need to create a library of emojis, but you’re not a fully fledged designer yourself, you can always head over to Envato Elements, where you can find a great selection of editable vector packs such as these that might help you out.
Another key difference between the two has to do with the use of colors within their different composing elements. In this regard, emoticons suffer a huge disadvantage, since they only come as flat monochromatic symbols, which is understandable if we take a look at their typographic nature.
Emojis usually come with a larger set of colors, due to their more complex nature, yellow usually being the base color used for the character’s skin tone.
While we’re not absolutely sure why, many including myself tend to believe that the design decision was inspired from Harvey Ball, who back in 1963 invented the smiley or smiley face, using out of all the possible colors yellow as the main one to represent the human face.
That being said, a few slimmed-down versions called smileys were popular on older phones that used monochromatic displays.
Now, while some might jump in and say that these were in fact emoticons, I tend to look at them as being a more primitive version of emojis that were created by converting typographic symbols into pictographic images, so kind of a bridge between the two.
As we saw at the beginning, the ability to correctly send a message across can make or break a conversation, which is why the content that’s being depicted needs to be easily understandable.
When using a specific emoticon, the sender needs to be certain that the receiver will be able to decipher its intended meaning, which can sometimes be hard to accomplish since not everybody has the same level of imagination.
This implies that both the sender and receiver need to get good at using them, which is usually done by adding the symbols to their personal lingo through the process of memorization.
Emojis, on the other hand, are designed in such a way that their idea is clearly portrayed at a first glance, which is one of the primary reasons why they’ve been adopted so rapidly.
When it comes to function, both emoticons and emojis fulfill the same role of enabling users to express themselves in a manner that is more humane than regular plain text, by creating a deeper impact in the reader’s mind when it comes to understanding the intensity and direction of an emotion or attitude.
As we’ve seen, this is accomplished through the use of lesser or more complex imagery which helps convey not only emotions, but ideas and actual intents from one user to another. By adding these type of symbols within a conversation, the user is able to increase or decrease its tone, thus influencing the other person’s mood and state of mind.
Let’s take a quick and easy example, in which we want to communicate our feelings of love for another person.
If we were to send out a simple text message saying „I love you”, the intensity of the feeling may not be perceived as intended due to the lack of other stimulants.
„I love you”
Of course, we could finish the sentence by adding an exclamation mark, which should give the words more depth and move the love meter a few lines.
„I love you!”
Now, watch what happens if we add a simple heart at the end.
„I love you❤️”
By adding a visual symbol that we are all too familiar with, our brain gets stimulated in a way that allows us to visualize the face of our loved one and experience different feelings that text alone can’t produce.
Let’s take another example in which two people are talking about their current mood and one of them responds by simply saying:
„I’m OK”
Now, if the entire scenario were taking place within a face-to-face environment, one could observe the facial expression and conclude if indeed that person is feeling okay.
If we take the same context and put it within a text-based communication environment, words alone would make it far harder to grasp the true state of the sender.
But what happens if we add a simple sad face at the end of the same sentence?
„I’m OK :(„
If the receiver is familiar with the symbol (which shouldn’t be a problem in this case), it should be easy to understand that the sender is in fact sad and engage in a series of questions aimed towards understanding the root of the problem, which should then be followed by a period of comforting.
Compared to written text, emojis are easier to decipher because their representations are less abstract, which takes away the tinkering process and produces an immediate understanding of the signified intent and language itself.
Due to this fact, emojis will always create a more profound effect than emoticons, allowing the human brain to be stimulated more profoundly.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what form you end up using, since when introduced to a conversation, both will end up enhancing it by adding substance to what would otherwise be a plain piece of text.
Whether we see it or not, technology is
constantly interfering with our day-to-day lives, slowly shaping who we are and
what we choose to become, giving us new tools to overcome what was once thought
impossible.
From rocket-driven spaceships to instant messaging, the human race is on a course of re-inventing
itself in ways that our grandparents never dared to dream of, and it’s all happening
right now, right here under our very own eyes.
The way we communicate and interact with one another is in a constant state of transformation, as new vehicles of communication are introduced through technology.
That being said, I strongly believe that emoticons can and
should be perceived as the first modern digital form of expression, an attempt at a universal language in its one right, that was
created out of a need for carrying one’s emotions beyond the barrier of any language,
which is exactly what it allowed us to do.
While they haven’t changed at all over the years (which is a statement in itself of their efficiency), these little
typographic creations have enabled us to bring deeper meaning to our otherwise
tone-deaf conversations, making it easier for us to capture the true intent of the message.
Today, emoticons have seen a decrease in use, mainly due to the smaller range of feelings and real-life objects that they can convey, allowing emojis to take the helm of this digital communication revolution.
Compared to their smaller brothers, emojis have come a long way in terms of both form and function, which can be directly attributed to the ongoing technological advancements (particularly smartphones) and the world population’s increasing access to this technology.
If, in the beginning, they only covered a specific portion of the different known cultures, today we have more and more variations added each year, from different skin tone colors to international cuisine and holidays, which results in an ever-growing glossary of symbols that can be used to create comprehensive sentences on their own.
Just imagine the number of things you can express using just a sequence of visual symbols, from I’m sad (😢) to peace (✌️) or even funny things like 📺🤣🤣🤣 without having to send out a specific set of instructions on how to read them.
Common expressions such as lol, I love you, I like it that were over-saturated with use have quickly been replaced with mind-pleasing symbols such as 😂, ❤️, 👍, creating a culturally understood link between the image and the concept that is being conveyed.
Now, whether or not we realize it, these forms of expression have become an intrinsic part of our ways of communication, as professor Vyvyan Evans pointed out, surpassing the reach of most common languages and demonstrating their global accessibility and function.
The simple fact that we can send a 😍 to any person on the planet, and they immediately understand it for what it is, demonstrates the impact that this visual form of representation has on culture, by creating bridges where previously language barriers did not permit them.
Going beyond that, emojis have become intermediaries for both one’s self-identity and a broader, cultural identity due to the fact that they depict real-life objects, traits and values that people can identify with, which are reflected within their use.
For example, people who are extremely friendly and socially confident might be inclined to overuse positive, outgoing emojis such as kisses (😚), hugs (🤗), fist bumps (👊), etc.
On the other hand, people who are tend to shy away from social interaction might tend to use more reserved symbols such as 🙄, 😀, 👍.
By simply observing people’s patterns, you can start forming an idea of their personalities, which is something that regular text can’t facilitate to the same extent.
On the other hand, emojis can also provide a digital mask, an ego pumper where a person can become something entirely different, thus enabling both positive and negative behaviors.
At this point, I could go on listing new notions and observations, but I won’t since I’m pretty confident I’ve proved my point. Whether we like it or not, emojis are going to continue shaping our ways of communication, transforming both our interactions with one another and our identities.
When it comes to the future, these days it’s kind of hard to make an accurate prediction, since things are changing at an alarming rate due to different factors from technological breakthroughs to cultural awareness, trends, and fads.
Considering their current state, I tend to believe that emojis are here to stay, but their form and ability to convey information will probably change a lot during the upcoming years, which is clearly suggested by the appearance of Apple’s animoji.
If you don’t know what animojis are, well they’re a new breed of emojis that are capable of imitating a person’s facial expression through the use of powerful face tracking technology.
While I personally haven’t used the feature, I’m amazed at the level of craftsmanship that has been put into it, and I’m looking forward to seeing how people will go about adopting it in the near future.
Emoticons, on the other hand, will probably end up being faded out and completely replaced by emoji in a similar way that older phones took the typographic characters entered by the user and automatically converted them to smileys. You’ll either won’t use them at all, or the app/tool will immediately convert them to similar thought-provoking emojis when used.
While this article started out as a simple guide to what emoticons and emoji are, it slowly but surely ended up becoming a scientific exploration that tries (and for the bigger part of it succeeds) to bring substance to these two visual forms of expression.
That being said, I hope that after reading the piece you’ve managed to expand your knowledge on the subject and most importantly had fun while doing so.
So, we’ve talked about emojis, but how about taking a stab at creating one? Well, in hopes that we’ve piqued your interest, we’ve set out and hand-picked a collection of in-depth tutorials that will help you create your own sets:
Post pobrano z: Render Children in React Using Fragment or Array Components
What comes to your mind when React 16 comes up? Context? Error Boundary? Those are on point. React 16 came with those goodies and much more, but In this post, we’ll be looking at the rendering power it also introduced — namely, the ability to render children using Fragments and Array Components.
These are new and really exciting concepts that came out of the React 16 release, so let’s look at them closer and get to know them.
It used to be that React components could only return a single element. If you have ever tried to return more than one element, you know that you’ll will be greeted with this error: Syntax error: Adjacent JSX elements must be wrapped in an enclosing tag. The way out of that is to make use of a wrapper div or span element that acts as the enclosing tag.
So instead of doing this:
class Countries extends React.Component {
render() {
return (
<li>Canada</li>
<li>Australia</li>
<li>Norway</li>
<li>Mexico</li>
)
}
}…you have to add either an ol or ul tag as a wrapper on those list items:
class Countries extends React.Component {
render() {
return (
<ul>
<li>Canada</li>
<li>Australia</li>
<li>Norway</li>
<li>Mexico</li>
</ul>
)
}
}Most times, this may not be the initial design you had for the application, but you are left with no choice but to compromise on this ground.
React 16 solves this with Fragments. This new features allows you to wrap a list of children without adding an extra node. So, instead of adding an additional element as a wrapper like we did in the last example, we can throw <React.Fragment> in there to do the job:
class Countries extends React.Component {
render() {
return (
<React.Fragment>
<li>Canada</li>
<li>Australia</li>
<li>Norway</li>
<li>Mexico</li>
</React.Fragment>
)
}
}You may think that doesn’t make much difference. But, imagine a situation where you have a component that lists different items such as fruits and other things. These items are all components, and if you are making use of old React versions, the items in these individual components will have to be wrapped in an enclosing tag. Now, however, you can make use of fragments and do away with that unnecessary markup.
Here’s a sample of what I mean:
class Items extends React.Component {
render() {
return (
<React.Fragment>
<Fruit />
<Beverages />
<Drinks />
</React.Fragment>
)
}
}We have three child components inside of the fragment and can now create a component for the container that wraps it. This is much more in line with being able to create components out of everything and being able to compile code with less cruft.
There is a shorthand syntax when working with Fragments, which you can use. Staying true to its fragment nature, the syntax is like a fragment itself, leaving only only empty brackets behind.
Going back to our last example:
class Fruit extends React.Component {
render() {
return (
<>
<li>Apple</li>
<li>Orange</li>
<li>Blueberry</li>
<li>Cherry</li>
</>
)
}
}You may be looking for a good reason to use Fragments instead of the container div you have always been using. Dan Abramov answered the question on StackOverflow. To summarize:
When mapping a list of items, you still need to make use of keys the same way as before. For example, let’s say we want to pass a list of items as props from a parent component to a child component. In the child component, we want to map through the list of items we have and output each item as a separate entity. Here’s how that looks:
const preload = {
"data" : [
{
"name": "Reactjs",
"url": "https://reactjs.org",
"description": "A JavaScript library for building user interfaces",
},
{
"name": "Vuejs",
"url": "https://vuejs.org",
"description": "The Progressive JavaScript Framework",
},
{
"name": "Emberjs",
"url": "https://www.emberjs.com",
"description": "Ember.js is an open-source JavaScript web framework, based on the Model–view–viewmodel pattern"
}
]
}
const Frameworks = (props) => {
return (
<React.Fragment>
{props.items.data.map(item => (
<React.Fragment key={item.id}>
<h2>{item.name}</h2>
<p>{item.url}</p>
<p>{item.description}</p>
</React.Fragment>
))}
</React.Fragment>
)
}
const App = () => {
return (
<Frameworks items={preload} />
)
}See the Pen React Fragment Pen by Kingsley Silas Chijioke (@kinsomicrote) on CodePen.
You can see that now, in this case, we are not making use of any divs in the Frameworks component. That’s the key difference!
The second specific thing that came out of React 16 we want to look at is the ability to render multiple children using an array of components. This is a clear timesaver because it allows us to cram as many into a render instead of having to do it one-by-one.
Here is an example:
class Frameworks extends React.Component {
render () {
return (
[
<p>JavaScript:</p>
<li>React</li>,
<li>Vuejs</li>,
<li>Angular</li>
]
)
}
}You can also do the same with a stateless functional component:
const Frontend = () => {
return [
<h3>Front-End:</h3>,
<li>Reactjs</li>,
<li>Vuejs</li>
]
}
const Backend = () => {
return [
<h3>Back-End:</h3>,
<li>Express</li>,
<li>Restify</li>
]
}
const App = () => {
return [
<h2>JavaScript Tools</h2>,
<Frontend />,
<Backend />
]
}See the Pen React Fragment 2 Pen by Kingsley Silas Chijioke (@kinsomicrote) on CodePen.
Like the Context API and Error Boundary feature that were introduced in React 16, rendering children components with Fragment and multiples of them with Array Components are two more awesome features you can start making use of as you build your application.
Have you started using these in a project? Let me know how in the comments so we can compare notes. 🙂
The post Render Children in React Using Fragment or Array Components appeared first on CSS-Tricks.
Post pobrano z: What to follow when designing a one-page website
Are one-page websites effective? Due to their lack of complexity, one-page websites are often dismissed by designers. However, they can often provide an effective solution to many.
This article aims to explore when a single paged website would be helpful, and how to go about constructing one…
When would a single page website be helpful?
If you’re wondering whether to build a single page site, have a look at your content. Is your content limited to a single topic? Do you have only a few chunks of information which can be placed on a single page?
Diluting your content simply so that it will fit on a single page is not always a great solution. If you have a great deal of content, in different topics, and if this content could span multiple pages, then a single page website may not be for you.
If your content is short and to the point, a single page site would be helpful. Single page sites are also very useful if content flows into a single narrative or story which would suit a single page.
If you’re starting out small and only wish to share a small amount of information, a single page site would suit you. You can always build or add onto your site later on.
Single sites are also a great opportunity for people who need a website to be online while a fuller site is being developed.
A single page site is a great addition to social media profiles such as a Facebook page or Instagram account, and these accounts are providing great traffic to your site.
You are not using content or SEO to attract visitors or new clients.
What about SEO strategies?
SEO uses content to attract visitors to your site. Search engines rank sites with particular keywords as more valuable. As a result, many websites use SEO techniques such as keywords or questions in order to achieve a higher ranking with Google.
A single page site doesn’t have a high amount of content. This means there is not a great deal of information to offer search engines and the site might not rank as highly. However, using a single page site doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use some SEO principles.
You can still ask questions which apply to your services or product and use keywords in your copy. These basic SEO principles and techniques will still assist you while setting up your site.
What about parallax scrolling?
Parallax scrolling is a website technique which shows the foreground of the site moving more rapidly than the background, as a user scrolls down the site. This technique helps to create a 3D effect.
Many designers prefer not to use parallax scrolling in site design, believing that although attractive, it does not improve the user experience.
Sometimes the arguments about whether to create a one-page site and whether to use parallax scrolling have combined, and designers speak out about one-page sites because they dislike parallax scrolling.
Parallax scrolling does not have to be a part of a one-page website though.
When should you consider creating a one-page site?
If your site has information that could be condensed into a single page, with contact details placed at the top or bottom of the site, a single page might be ideal. This may give coherence to your content while keeping your site fresh and modern.
When content is sparse, a single page site can make your content seem more complete.
If your site would be very simple and efficient to use as a single page, it is worth making use of this design. This will keep your site easy to use for viewers while presenting everything you need to share.
Add navigation links to your site
Your viewers may be able to access all of your content by simply scrolling, but it wouldn’t harm your site to add extra navigation links. If you have a long page, adding navigation links to the various sections or elements of your site will keep it easy to read.
Try to add these on the top of your page, near your logo design. Your users need to find these links easily.
Use headings and subheadings to divide up your content
Large masses of content can feel difficult for your reader. Internet users prefer to take in information at a glance. By using headings and subheadings, your reader will be able to grasp the contents of your site quickly.
Subheadings allow your reader to choose what to read and the sections which appear most interesting.
Make use of imagery
A single site will often have a large amount of white space. If you’re only using a single page for your website, emotionally resonant and relevant imagery will add interest to your page.
They will also assist you to divide up your content. Effective imagery will, therefore, assist you to add appeal to your site.
Create a hierarchy
Internet users like their information to be concise and easy to read. When creating a site, your headings will help your reader to understand your content. You will also want to structure your site so that your reader is most likely to read important content first.
When constructing your site, keep your most important information at the top of your page. Interested readers can scroll down and read more if they want to.
Use multimedia to add impact
Although many site holders will tell you that content is king, we also know that pictures speak a thousand words. Over 65% of people are visual learners. This is why illustrations, photographs or images are a very effective way to share a message.
Images produce an emotional resonance in viewers, and they will break up your text, helping you to hold your viewer’s interest. Images are able to give a message clearly without demanding an awful lot of your viewers.
You can use photos, videos or slideshows on your site.
Images: create visual impact. If you are creating a one-page website, adding images which resonate with your viewer will enhance your site. Keep your images relevant, high quality and eye-catching.
An emotionally resonant image will assist your viewer to identify with your brand and keep viewers on your site. If you take high quality, professional looking photos, you can use these to communicate with your viewers. Alternatively, there is a range of royalty-free stock images available for use.
Look for stock images which are uncommon in order to make the greatest impact on viewers.
Slideshows: Photos or illustrations can be combined in the form of a slideshow, which can be used to tell a visual story. Slideshows can often share complex messages with ease.
Videos: site viewers deeply appreciate videos. These videos can be used to share messages which keep viewers engaged. Videos make a great feature, keeping viewers engaged.
In fact, research shows that viewers spend 100% more time on websites which offer videos as a part of their content.
Keep your calls to action clear and visible
Your call to action is a clear message to guide your viewer into taking action. Without a clear call to action, your visitors will not know where to go or what to do next. This is as true with single page sites as it is with complex and intricate ones.
In order for your call to action to be effective, it needs to be persuasive. This may mean receiving a free offer or coupon when you subscribe to a site or knowing exactly how to place a purchase in your shopping cart.
Keep your call to action clearly visible, use colour to help it to stand out from the rest of your site, and make sure that it is not surrounded by too much information.
When you half close your eyes, your call to action should be the first thing you can see on your site.
Summary
Although websites are often appreciated for their intricacy and ability to convey information, a single page site can be equally effective. Although single page sites may hold less content, they make an excellent choice for many businesses.
Weigh up the value of creating a single page site for your business. It may just be the option you need to get your message across.
