Web Design - Use Of Superfluous Elements

By Author: Alex Baker
Total Articles: 149
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Anything that is in excess and hardly of any use is usually termed as redundant. In web designing too there are redundant elements. At times because of technical snags and goof-ups there may be errors and the website may go down for some time. It is during this time that the utility of redundant elements come into play. In this sort of cases usually the multiple links are referred to as redundant elements.

We can compare this situation with a situation in which we go for a long drive in a car with a spare wheel. Till the current wheels are working it is fine and the spare wheel is redundant but once the current wheel gets flattened due to puncture, the spare wheel no longer remains redundant but useful.

The redundancy could be used in various aspects of the web design. Some of these aspects are as follows.

Communication:
One and the same information can be conveyed through audio, text, images and even video. In this case if the message is being effectively conveyed through one channel the others become redundant. At times when one channel does not work the other channels can convey the message. Addition ...
... of different optional channels of communication adds a communication layer or a set of programming code. Though this kind of addition may be considered by some as redundant hardly does anyone know when it will be useful and of vital importance.

Hosting:
On spending additional money, the website can be hosted from multiple servers. This is usually necessary because when one server goes down the website can be accessed through another server. The balancing of load when you opt for multiple servers may or may not be there. There could be even multiple and redundant source of power for the centers that store the data. These elements despite being considered redundant at times are necessary to ensure that the website is accessible for most of the time. The facilitation of the visitor with a cached page is one of the examples of redundancy. When the website is not being accessed the information can be conveyed through the cached page too.

Navigation:
This is all about the ways to make it easy for the visitor to find the information. Multiple navigational links are provided for the visitors as well as search engines to make it easy for them to find what they are searching for. Different types of navigations such as vertical navigation, horizontal navigation and even breadcrumb navigation are used for making the navigation easy. For this purpose even the links are added on the content. The links that facilitate navigation are usually displayed in blue and its text is underlined.

When it is about optimizing the accessibility of the website the constructive use of redundancy plays a pivotal role.

How are design and Blogging interrelated?
The ends serve the means. For a web designer communication is the ultimate purpose of web designing. The web designer may either use the visual design or blogging for serving the purpose of communication. In fact both these have varied sets of skill requirement.

While designing is all about using the appropriate images and other visuals, blogging is about using the right language with the right vocabulary and right words.

Since both are an art and the purpose of both is one and the same, when you try to excel at visual design you become better at blogging and when you try to excel at blogging you improve on the skill of visual design. This implies that that design is all about presentation with the help of pictures while blogging is representation with the help of written text.

In design, the visual elements are placed on the web page or screen in such a way that the layout does not looks haphazard but a specific texture and pattern is formed by the arrangement. When we compare this situation with blogging, we find that specific words and merged according to the rules of grammar to form a sentence. Different visual elements are arranged in specific order on every page. A designer has to take care that the visual elements on a single page are interrelated. In blogging, a group of sentences based on the same line of thought form a paragraph. If two conflicting thoughts are grouped in a paragraph the reader of that blog would be left in utter confusion.

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