Chinese Zodiac Signs, Essay Example

Introduction

This report is based on the Chinese zodiac signs. The foundation of Chinese zodiac depends upon the Lunar year. Moreover, the zodiac signs are discovered on the bases of ancient calendars. On the contrary, western zodiac signs are based on the solar year. The calendar on which Chinese zodiac is based includes 12 year cycles instead of 12 months. Each cycle of the Chinese zodiac is named for one of the animals. Likewise, the zodiac animals are the fundamentals of the ancient classification of the Chinese calendar. Here the animals are supposed to ‘rule’ that year to which they belong. In 2012, the Chinese lunar year begins from 23^rd January and the solar year of Chinese calendar always starts from 4^th February.

About the website

• The website provides complete and relevant information about the Chinese zodiac signs that facilitate potential customer’s knowledge.
• Details and information for example specifications of zodiac signs presented in the site is easily understandable by the common users.
• The site has helped functionalities i.e. for clarifying information that is difficult for the common user to understand for example technical terms and specifications.
• The site provides content that is unique and unavailable from the site of its competitor.
• This site is easy to navigate.
• Elements that enhance the attractiveness for example graphics, multimedia, are used intelligently and appealingly.
• The website was visually appealing, interesting and fun to use.
• The online experience was overall a positive one.
• The website is worthy of recommendation to the fellow users.

Zodiac names and year

The names of animals and to which years they belong are illustrated below

 Purpose

The purpose of the Chinese zodiac in contemporary day is to find true love or to choose a partner to date. But Chinese zodiac exists as the expression of philosophy and culture from ancient times. The purpose of this website is to make understand the tradition and life style of Chinese people. The historical background and the traditional context related to the Chinese people will provide a fascinating viewpoint on the Chinese zodiac. In addition Chinese cultures have numerous mythical tales that defines the origin of the zodiac signs.

Target audience

This website targets those people who want to know about Chinese tradition, culture and as well as about their daily horoscope.

Home Page Design

The home page of this website is designed to describe the full meaning of the website. The top the site contains the name of the website. Moreover the top most corner of the website shows an animal character bar that defines the 12 animals of zodiac signs. Below this bar on the left side there is a vertical section that illustrates the years that are related to the specific zodiac animal names. In the center of the page a wheel diagram is given that demonstrates the animals along with their Chinese names. In addition, a short history and background is also explained in order to allow the visitors to clearly understand the culture and the purpose of these zodiac signs.

The first page

The first page illustrates the main idea of the topic on which the website is based upon. A small introduction is given about the zodiac and the ancient culture of Chinese people. The names of the twelve earthly branches are Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai. These branches relate to the twelve animal names of the zodiac. On the left corner a vertical section that explains the years of the related animals. By clicking on the particular years you can get directly to the page that contains the full detail of the specific year.

Animal character bar

From top left to top right of the page an outline is given that contains the animal symbols is the animal character bar. This bar reveals the animal symbols related to the zodiac signs. By clicking on to a specific animal symbol one can get the full detail about the particular animal zodiac. A graphic image of that specific animal is also mentioned on the detailed page of the chosen animal symbol.

Site Design

The first impression of the website provides the complete overview of the contents that are incorporated within the navigation links. Likewise, this is an advantage, as the visitor will spent less time to figure out the navigation and working of the website. The navigation zodiac signs of the animals at the top section of the home page will remain constant throughout the navigation and will not change. As a result, the visitor can focus on the information required rather than worrying about links to the page and other related contents. Moreover, the coloring in the headings, links, sections, captions and text are professional and not teasing to the eyes. Furthermore, the images and other contents of the site are not heavy and do not take much time to download.

The Chinese Zodiac site utilizes graphic icon navigations, as each zodiac sign is bundled with a link that takes into further details of that particular sign. Figure 1.1 demonstrates the primary navigation tab illustrated on the home page of the website.

Figure 1.1

Moreover, fig 1.2, demonstrates the text based navigation presented on the website

Figure 1.2

Along with strength and weaknesses, the site also demonstrates images against each zodiac sign along with additional informative images on the left side of the website, as demonstrated in fig 1.3.

Figure 1.3

In addition, the website generates interest by illustrating informative pictures on the left as well on the right hand site. However, the pictures demonstrated on the right hand side provides information associated with the Fixed season of each Zodiac sign, Fixed direction of each Zodiac sign, Fixed element of each zodiac sign and associated sun sign for each zodiac. Likewise, the fig 1.4 provides an image of the zodiac sign rat.

Figure 1.4

The structure of the site is simple, as a visitor do not have to remember previous links because navigation is very easy and simple. Moreover, each zodiac sign provides enough information to the user to satisfy all the requirements. Furthermore, the images that are allocated at the left as well as the right site provides a rich graphical experience for the visitors.

As far as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) design is concerned, visitors can easily guess or enter zodiac signs in the below mentioned URL:

http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ylee/it240/Horse.html

Likewise, the above mentioned hyperlink demonstrates flexibility in terms of opening a specific URL. For example, if the visitor wants to access zodiac sign of ‘The year of the Horse’ he or she may enter the text in the gray color highlighted field, as mentioned above.

Content Design

The home page of the website is distributed into three logical sections. The first section includes the title named as ‘Chinese Zodiac, The Chinese 12 zodiac animals’. Likewise, the representation is backed by Chinese alphabets that is a GIF file. Moreover, the first section also displays all the main components of the Zodiac animals in terms of graphical signs of different colors. The second logical section of the site includes textual information along with Chinese language alphabets where relevant. Furthermore, the third logical section of the site includes the year for each zodiac animal.

Scanability

Without the visualize graphics and animations the pages of the website are electrifying to view and easy to understand writing. Two kinds of text are being used in this website

1. Text describing the history and purpose of the Chinese zodiac signs
2. Chinese words that are mentioned against the symbol of each zodiac animal.

The description of the zodiac information is formatted in the simple English while the zodiac animal names are also mentioned in Chinese as, well as in English. Instantaneously, below the history of the Chinese zodiac signs a wheel diagram that (contains the symbol of animals) is given showing the names of the animals in Chinese. The excellent selection of the color scheme of the website allows the visitors to read easily.

Images

Images are light and colorful that may attract a visitors attention along with the required information about a particular zodiac animal. As the website provides information about Chinese zodiac animals, language support for both English and Chinese will facilitate general users to read and understand the provided information along with rich and interesting images attached on both sides of the website structure.

Page Design

Each page on the website has a clearly defined URL, header and title. However, there is a requirement of changing the title name or the header of the home page. Moreover, there are certain HTML codes that are not correctly coded and have syntax errors. As a result, some parts of the HTML code are visible on the body of several pages in the website. Furthermore, the design of the page is not following a structured approach. The first Chinese zodiac animal description is divided into three logical sections i.e. main title, textual information and images. However, in some description of Chinese zodiac sign pages, images are overloaded and the textual information does not find enough room that will promote acceptable textual visible to the visitor. Moreover, there is more than one image that illustrated only the type of animal for relating to the zodiac sign. As a result, irrelevant images are loaded against each zodiac animal sign page. Furthermore, the website do not require excessive scrolling, as it may distract the visitor from the website very quickly. In addition, the font size and color is up to the standards, apart from the visibility of this text. There are three

Style sheets are implemented and coded effectively, as the structure of the website look presentable and professional. Moreover, style sheet also facilitates the website to be downloaded comparatively more quickly and at the same time making the structure of the website good.

Three aspects of page layout are always taken into consideration i.e.:

• Consistency
• Important information at the top
• Format for efficient viewing

 Conclusion

The Chinese zodiac animal sign website is launched with a good success. Millions of Internet users can now access the site with minimum Internet bandwidth required and can see the information from their Chinese zodiac sign any time. However, there are many key drivers that facilitated in the success. These drivers are demonstrated below:

Navigation: The website posses excellent, simple and easy navigation that keeps the visitor calm and cool. Moreover, the navigation is same all way along to the last page of the website.

Consistency: Similarly, the consistency of the website is excellent, as visitors experience a consistent feel and look. The animal sign bar is always available on each page so that users can navigate back anytime. Moreover, the color scheme is also standardized to give a smooth and structured look right from the start till the end.

Images: Images and videos always enhance user experience on the web, the website demonstrated textual as well as information from different images for each zodiac animal. However, the size of the images is acceptable, as the visitors will not required to zoom in or expand the images that are presented.

However, there are some issues that are highlighted as well. These issues include syntax errors resulting in HTML codes displayed in the body of some pages of the website. Moreover, there is a congested space for textual information provided in the middle. Furthermore, too much representation of images not providing benefit will result in lack of interest from the visitor. As the main purpose of the website is to provide information, if the images are not providing any information, except generic pictures, visitors may close the website. Furthermore, there is a requirement of aligning the web page to wide screens. As nowadays, there are wide screens available for display purpose. Moreover, laptops are now easily available in widescreen mode and if the visitor finds a website not compatible with wide screens, he or she may close the website, as it will not provide ease of visibility. In addition, the images and templates used in the website are not heavy, resulting in a quick response from the hosting server, whenever any visitor sends a request for accessing this website.