Designing for print and website are two completely different layouts. In print (newspaper, book, etc), the text is linear and static. Linear text is where you have no choice but to read the whole thing (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006).
Compared to print, a webpage design (online), readers follow the F-shaped pattern and more interactive. They first read the horizontal movement across the top part of the content following, move down the page a bit and read across in second horizontal and lastly scan the left side in a vertical movement (Nielsen, 2006).
Compared to print, a webpage design (online), readers follow the F-shaped pattern and more interactive. They first read the horizontal movement across the top part of the content following, move down the page a bit and read across in second horizontal and lastly scan the left side in a vertical movement (Nielsen, 2006).
Examples:
Seventeen Magazine Vs. Seventeen official website
Walsh (2006) states pictures are worth a thousand words using visual codes such as colour, framing, angle,line, perspective, etc. in other words 'visual grammar'. Readers must be able to decode the message based on the audience's culture, background and knowledge in order to understand the meaning.
Designing a website is that information can linked with other sites that gives the readers more choices based on our interest. According to Nielsen (1997), people rarely read web pages word by word; they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences.Online readers interact more with words and pictures in terms of frames, hyperlinks, etc. Although readers for blogs make it often harder to understand the site and trust the author as blogs are too internally focused and ignore key usability issues (Nielsen, 2005).
References:
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London
Nielsen, J 2006, F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content, viewed 5 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html>
Walsh, M 2006, The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print and visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literarcy, vol. 29, no. 1, p.24-37.
Nielsen, J 1997, How Users Read on Web, viewed 5 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>
Nielsen, J 2005, Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes, viewed 5 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html>
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