The Hamburger Menu

The hamburger menu has been common place on smart phones and is ideal for opening and closing navigation on these sizes however we are continuing to see it used on large full screen desktop. Many designers love the clean and uncluttered look it creates when applied to a website. This type of navigation although visibly pleasing does have its downsides. Criticized by many user experience analists the hamburger menu which consists of 3 horizontal lines is still unfamiliar with some users. This can cause issues if these user do not know where to click on a website to access the navigation. Hiding all of the navgiation links in this type of menu is frowned upon as a practice.

 Longer Scrolling on Websites

Users are now use to scrolling on websites and web designers have taken advantage of this, giving them more creativity and flow for any given web page. Although having the most important content towards to the top of the web page is still a tried and tested rule, the longer page length allow for more creativity, larger site maps in the footer and overall an more aesthetically pleasing and fun website.

Large Background Images & Videos

Often known as hero images, these large scale compelling graphic images grace many websites. They immediately emote the brand’s feel when users visit a website. Videos are also increasingly popular for home page banners as a means of conveying the brand message to a large audience quickly and esasily. Large scale images and videos are one for the best ways to make an intimidate impression and grab users attention.  In terms of load times large scale images and videos are usually not an issue due tot he data that is compressed. (add soemthing here about hwo to optimize)

Flat, Simplified Web Design

Minimalisim and solid colors and simified shapes are popular to see one several websites. Many large websites and brand have helped grow this trend by adapting their bradns and wesbites to the flat minlist look.  For example, Microsoft operating system developed  Windows 10 and the surface pro tablet and … the style has been the go to look for new websites since 2014. Google has also stripped awayt their beveloed stlyed logo an opted for a clean sans-serif typeface wihtout any affects applied tot heir logo.

In regards to the flat trend in web design, it was allowed designers to focus on user expenice and stripping away the clutter and unnessary elemetns, it has allowed web design to focus on creating a fresh user and unobstrusive expereicence.

Responsive Design

Responsive web design has really solidified its place in the the web design industry becoming a go to standard for any website that needs to operate and function well on mobile devices. Allowing for all of the content to resize to any device it has defined what websites can do and how they function going forward. The website administrator no longer has to update both desktop and mobile websites since the responsive website is now all in one. With ease of use for updating content id it now the standard. 

There are many new developments and rules when creating an responsive website to maximize user experience. A few include using responsive tablets for better formatting,  utilizes responsive images and avoiding using java script…