The Design of Sites: Pattern Group I — Designing Effective Page Layouts
Pattern Group I of The Design of Sites — six patterns (I1-I6) for giving a Web page a clear, predictable structure. Documents all six in full six-part format, per Web Design Patterns.
License: © 2006 Pearson Education / New Riders — all rights reserved, no open license; one of the book’s co-authors is a FuguUX founder, which is the basis for citing it here.
Key points
- Grid Layout (I1) — organizing a page’s competing elements into a consistent row/column structure that customers can learn to predict.
- Above the Fold (I2) — what must be visible without scrolling, and why the Web’s variable screen sizes make this a harder problem than it was in print.
- Clear First Reads (I3) — the first thing a visitor’s eye catches on a page, and how to design deliberately for it.
- Expanding and Fixed Screen Width (I4 + I5) — combined into one page since the book always presents these two as a direct contrast with each other.
- Consistent Sidebars of Related Content (I6) — where and how to place links to related content so visitors actually notice them.