Fancy Buttons and Menus and Audio and Video - Week 8

Fancy buttons and menus are aesthetically pleasing navigational tools for site users. They can be individual graphics, regions of one whole graphic, or images of fancy text. Adding an interesting layer of design, they also serve a practical function. In my site, I chose to put in a single menu graphic, and add an image map to create links on each page. The step-by-step instructions in the book were very useful.

Audio and video files are essential pieces of every person's web experience. Just look at any teen's mySpace page and you find at least one multimedia item, with most incorporating up to or more than a dozen. The first choice a web designer has is whether to link to the file on an external page or embed it in an existing one. This depends on the size and format of the multimedia file, because of the necessity for some files to also have an embedded player. Many sites have streaming background music for users. It is important to give users a choice by allowing them to turn the sound off, so that those who listen to their own music are not disturbed or distracted by your choice. Videos are huge files, but can be effective for illustrating points or impressing potential clients. I don't really see a need for any at this point, but possibly could add tutorial videos in the future.