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User interface design needs to follow usability and efficiency guidelines
<Name of the student>
<Name of the subject>
25th August, 2013
User interface design needs to follow usability and efficiency guidelines which should target large user base. CSS contains rules which determine how controls and elements are being formatted on the web page. It is the most flexible language as it can be designed outside web page and then applied to it. Therefore a single HTML page can be directed to be presented in different ways, perhaps under different situations. For e.g., CSS can direct the webpage to format itself for a mobile screen or a large widescreen desktop. So instead of coding different HTML pages with its own unique designs and presentation formats, the CSS eliminates that need and instead contains all that information in a single or a few CSS files.
This saves a lot of time for the developers and also reduces the burden on the web server overall optimizing the website as the overall code is lighter which enables faster download times. Also there is a consistency in design, if the designer has to design each page individually for different situations, and then there might be some discrepancies. Such discrepancies are also eliminated as the designs are originating from a single source. Since these designs are centralized, it is also easier to maintain and update.
The book puts light on the fact that CSS can be executed across browsers i.e. both old and new. In addition to this, whenever a new version of CSS is introduced, it gives an easy-to-understand platform to developers. This is so because most of the components remain same and hence there is little learning curve. CSS is a set of rules. But this does not mean that they are difficult to construct or implement. CSS provides a simple rule construct which can be used even with little understanding of its components.
This let designers to focus on the desired presentation of content rather than on learning the tedious syntax and then implement it. CSS allows designers to define rules in any order i.e. it does not matter whether heading rule is defined after a paragraph rule. It is a huge benefit as designers need not to remember the order of tags used in the html. Web designers do not have put write rules in html file. They can very well define them in a separate file and then call the file in html. This feature of CSS adheres to separation of concern property of development world.
Social Media Obituaries
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<Insert Name and Title of Tutor>
<Subject and Code>
Date of submission.
Social Media Obituaries
A facebook post about an occasion that happened some time ago triggered my interest in taking up this topic for study. In the said post, the lady was lamenting about how she learnt of her brother’s death. The story was that the brother was a worker with a multinational company. During the cause of duty in Asia, there was a fatal accident and the brother was one of the victims. Immediately after the accident, R.I.P messages started appearing on the brother’s wall; incidentally, the lady was checking out her brother’s profile, and she was shocked by what she was seeing. The company had not even finalized the process of informing the family since it was only thirty minutes from the accident. Her weighty question was, ‘Has facebook introduced dying in real time’. During my use of social media, I have always found status updates from friends on facebook that are either announcing the passing on of the friends’ parents, children, siblings, friends or relatives. I almost always wonder the motivation behind sharing such personal information was. The question that always lingers on the mind is what will one feel when they learn of the demise of their loved ones through facebook or twitter? Are social networks making us so inhuman as not to consider the feelings of others? Are we in a race to establish who breaks news of an event without considering the humane and ethics side of our actions?
For the research, I choose to look for respondents who had either reported a death on social media or one who had learnt of the demise of a loved one from the media. I requested my friends to try to remember if anybody in their connections had ever posted anything close to that. From my friends, I got a list of eleven possible candidates. I then visited these candidates’ profiles to try and pull up these updates and found that three of them had already deleted the posts or ‘unfollowed’ them. The first consideration I made was the time elapsed since the post was made. This was necessary since I did not want my interviewees to be people who were recently bereaved on such a sensitive subject. Next I narrowed down by geographical location since I preferred to do a face to face interview. At the end, I settled on two candidates, one a college student and the other a married man who only gave his age as ‘in the mid thirties’ For the purposes of this write up, I will only use alliances of Joe and Mary for the man and the college lady respectively.
Both candidates had been using facebook for upwards of four years and as thus were well versed in uses and limitations. The college student was on a camping trip when one of her friends drowned. Immediately most of her friends went online to announce the incident with some mentioning the name of the victim in their posts or through the auto name link function of facebook. Mary insisted that she was not among the first to post this but on reflection she felt that the only reason might have been because she had been too much shocked and had to be taken to the hospital. Asked how it would have been had she been the relative and learnt of the occasion on facebook, she said she would be extremely troubled and actually termed it ‘disgusting’. Joe lost his young son after a short illness. Being a Muslim, the young boy’s body had to be interred the same day. His wife was in shock and all planning was left to Joe. With family to be notified and logistics to be handled, it was all too much for him. Then an idea hit him, why not just it on facebook? He did exactly that, and he says he has no regrets. The post acts as his condolence book and most of his friends and family even those who live in faraway places were able to condole with him. Ilana Gershon uses the term Idioms of practice to describe the situation where people decide communally how to use various media and their appropriateness in certain situations. (2010, p.6). This implies that a majority of the users of social sites subscribe to certain ways of thinking about and understanding of the use of facebook.
It can thus be said most users were in agreement that: first, posting about others catastrophes without a pause to think of the repercussions was insensitive. Second, that as a means of conveying grave information it was not the right channel and that thirdly, the facebook wall is a fitting condolence book. From the last observation, there arose the argument that in no way can it replace the personal touch and image of concern that is portrayed by the traditional handwritten condolence or card.
Works CitedTop of Form
Andrews, Lori B. I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy. New York: Free Press, 2012. Print.
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Bradburn, Norman M, Seymour Sudman, and Edward Blair. Improving Interview Method and Questionnaire Design. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1979. Print.
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Carroll, Evan, and John Romano. Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What’s Your Legacy? Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2011. Print.
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Gershon, Ilana. The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2010. Print.
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Stannard, David E. The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Print.
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Appendix 1: Questionnaire
Name
Age
Marital Status
Career
Are you on facebook?
If yes, how regularly do you use it?
How many facebook friends do you have?
Sorry for your loss, after how long did you post anything to do with it on Facebook?
Do you feel that posting about the event helped in any way?
Do you feel that people posting about the loss of others on facebook infringes in private affairs that should be left to those closely concerned to deal with?
How different would your reaction have been for you if you had learnt of the loss on facebook?
Paradise Lost” by John Milton
“Paradise Lost” by John Milton
Student’s Name
Institution of affiliation
Date
“Paradise Lost” by John Milton
“Paradise Lost” is a poem which was written by John Milton-an English poet in the 16th century. The original edition of the poem was published in the year 1667 (Martindale, 1986). The work created a stable stand for the author since it is one of his most significant works. The poem is a ‘Christian epic of humanity.’ The epic draws its origin from a common and simple biblical story of Adam and Eve. It focuses on the events which led to the fall of man due to their disobedience to God. In his story, Milton holds that Lucifer (who later became the devil) was thrown into hell by angels from heaven. The events came after he could not accept that God was supreme. Lucifer stayed in a lake of fire for nine days before he arose and declared that everything had not been lost. He decided to take revenge on God and aroused allies. He brought allies in the form of spirits and started working towards his purpose which was to deceive and influence God’s creation into disobedience. The devil (Satan) organized a meeting with his allies to deliberate on the actions they would take against God. Satan got into a snake inform of a spirit and influenced Eve to eat a fruit which was forbidden by God. The act was sinful and led to disobedience of God. Through his unique way of writing, the reader understands how people can easily fall into evil and the outcome of the sin.
Milton uses a simple story in his epic. The story of human ‘fall’ blends well with different ideologies such as puritan ideas, domestic and political ideals, and Renaissance humanism (Martindale, 1986). At the beginning of the epic, Milton prays to God to help him write well. The epic has several themes. One of the major themes is explained in the justification of the disobedience of God which leads to the fall of man. God’s actions and his later decision to bring salvation to people depicts that God is right. The author explores the events that led to the disobedience of man. The primary cause of the fall is disobeying God which is caused by Eve. Although Eve cannot justify her reasons for revolt, Adam disobeys God for a mare reason that he wants companionship from Eve. Through this justification, he holds on the reasons as to why people must act rationally.
The decision by Adam to eat the forbidden fruit justifies the free will of a person. A person should be able to make choices whether they are good or bad. However, people should take responsibility for their actions. Milton does not hold that God had all the plans on the destiny of the man before his creation. Milton is a humanist who has faith in the adventure and faith of man. He believes that God was right to leave Adam and Eve alone for a while so that their reasoning would be free. By exposing them to evil, He justified that people are creatures that can take care of themselves. His punishment to Adam and Eve was also justified. Milton also believes in the orthodox views of the second redemption. He argues that the redemption of human beings through Christ will bring a better outcome than paradise. Therefore, he believes that Adam and Eve act of sinning was useful towards the redemption of humanity.
Paradise Lost can be seen as a mental pilgrimage. Losing the first paradise leads to finding another one within our lives, which may have better results in the future. Garden of Eden restricts Adam and Eve. Although God may have been impressed by their way of living, Adam and Eve could never have developed spiritually. God withheld knowledge from Adam and Eve, and thus their obedience can be seen as insignificant. The fall of man and the loss of Paradise can be seen as a result of ignorance and innocence. Men, therefore, can attain a rebirth spiritually through the ability to control their passions. Milton uses an engaging writing style in the Paradise Lost. The style presents ideas in a way that is well-crafted, elevated, and unique from that styles used by other authors. Some analysts and readers are fascinated by the language which is used in the epic. His poetry has a lot of Latin influence, and some critics argue that the author compromised the English language. However, the poem has contributed to crafting of English language as a literary tool. Milton unique style is seen through different aspects; the theme, music and rhythm, figures used in the speech, dignity, diction, and syntax.
Milton rhythm or meter in his poem is known as the blank verse. Although it is not an ordinary black verse like in other literary works, he uses several lines which do not rhyme. Analysts hold that he uses the blank verse for his purpose as well as convenience. In his epic poem, Milton uses lines which contain ten syllables. However, the lines do not have a specific number of stresses. The lines have a minimum of three and a maximum of eight stresses. His style does not, therefore, follow the traditional style of variation in poetry. Stresses’ position and degree also vary in the poem. Another crucial feature in the poem is the caesura or the pause. Milton uses a style whereby; the caesura is found in different positions of each line. The weight of the pause falls also vary with the shorter and lighter as well as long or heavy breaks bringing out a different effect to the storyline of the poem. In his poem, Milton uses diction which is more of Latin. Some of the English words also have connotations which are Latin. The language and the words are carefully chosen. There are also English words which are pedantic and unfamiliar. The English and Latin words have both literal as well as symbolic meaning. Milton uses images and pictures to bright specific themes and changes tone with the change of setting and description.
In Paradise Lost, Milton uses a simple and familiar story of Adam and Eve to explain how the fall of man comes happened. The story focuses on sin and the implications of the sin. Through his theme of disobedience to God and its outcome, the reader can understand how people can easily fall into evil.
References
Martindale, C. (1986). John Milton and the transformation of ancient epic (p. 131). London: Croom Helm.