Book Image

MediaWiki Skins Design

Book Image

MediaWiki Skins Design

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (16 chapters)
MediaWiki Skins Design
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Focus-Drawing Techniques


You can draw focus to an element on your wiki by using one or more of the following techniques:

  • Suggestion of movement, including the use of arrows

  • Color contrast

  • Diagonal lines

  • Indentation

  • Padding

  • Size

  • Ordering

  • Depth, and the impression of 3D

Suggestion of Movement

Our eyes are designed to respond to movement. Anything that appears to be moving (or actually is moving), will tend to draw your visitors' focus.

Note

Movement and Advertisements:

Beware of making things that look like animated banner adverts, as your visitors may associate these with advertisements and ignore them. Refer to: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9709a.html.

For example, by applying a motion blur to each of the sponsors' logos, we can attract our visitors' attention to them:

On the other hand, this motion blur makes the logos less legible for our visitors. So we should clearly exercise caution here.

Drawing Focus with Arrows

A good way to suggest movement is with the use of arrows. The tip of the arrow...