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macbeginnerschool.com

R

reminett

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 14, 2010
5
0
Hi, all!

Me and some friends thought we should make a site for complete Mac newbies.
The goal is to make a really simple site which touches the ultimate basics in using a Mac, step by step.

We got the idea from friends and family who was asking identical questions when they all got their new Mac for the first time, and this is what we came up with:

http://www.macbeginnerschool.com

We would very much like your feedback.

Thanks in advance!
 
On keyboard page also explain the lack of keys such as delete, home, end, pgup, pgdown, and how to replace them with shortcuts. That was my big issue when I first switched to mac.
 
deadkennedy said:
On keyboard page also explain the lack of keys such as delete, home, end, pgup, pgdown, and how to replace them with shortcuts. That was my big issue when I first switched to mac.
Click to expand...

That is a good idea, thanks!
I'm writing it down on my "to-do list" :)
 
SidewaysTakumi said:
I'm exciting about checking out the site...I'm a Mac Newbie myself
Click to expand...


Thanks. Your opinion is very valuable to me, then.
I put a lot of time into this page, it sort of became a hobby.
You never know how much work it is before you begin, obviously hehe.

Looking forward to see your thoughts, both positive and negative ;)
 
Last edited:
I hope the new Mac user got a large screen Mac.

You might think about scaling things down a bit. A 1280px fixed width for a website is a tad excessive unless your target audience is visually impaired.
 
Darth.Titan said:
I hope the new Mac user got a large screen Mac.

You might think about scaling things down a bit. A 1280px fixed width for a website is a tad excessive unless your target audience is visually impaired.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your feedback.
I was thinking of that, but on my 13" MacBook Pro the width seems fine..
Isn't it a good thing to make use of the users screen width?
 
reminett said:
Thanks for your feedback.
I was thinking of that, but on my 13" MacBook Pro the width seems fine..
Isn't it a good thing to make use of the users screen width?
Click to expand...

Don't make the assumption that your screen width is everybody's screen width. That is a common design mistake when people first begin creating sites.

There are two basic ways you can design a site: Fixed width or fluid.

A centered, fixed width design is very common these days. Apple's website is a centered, fixed width design.

MacRumors, on the other hand, is a fluid design. The center column and top bar expand and contract so the website fills the entire window.

If you are going to use a fixed width design it should fit comfortably in the window your average user has open. It is rare for a Mac browser to open to the full width of the user's screen.

The only Mac user I know that stretches browser windows out to fit the whole screen is a recent PC convert who is used to that "look". Every other Mac user I know has windows tiled all over their desktop (which is usually the application default. i.e. when you open a new Safari window it doesn't open one that fills the whole screen).

Currently I have Safari open, iChat open, MSN open, MS Word open and iTunes open. My overall screen width is 1440 pixels, but I doubt my Safari window is open more than 800 or 1000 pixels right now. Honestly, if I have to resize the width of my browser to accommodate a website I usually just leave that website. I like my window's open a certain size, and side to side scrolling is a pain.

A good exercise is to surf the web and check out all the major websites. Get a feel for what fixed width is common these days (I try to stay under 960px or so when I design).

Cheers!
 
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