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Design Basic Concepts |
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Lucky for the site owner that their content was that good! But one day I will find
another site with the same information and a better design. Then guess who will
be in my favourites and who will be left out? Maybe your content is great too,
but don't take chances on a poor design. Think how much more repeat traffic and
referred traffic you will get if you have both great content and great design.
Design Taste Varies - OK, design is a matter of taste and target audience to some
degree. What looks good to one visitor may not be so great to another. Here we
have the old adage of "one man's trash is another man's treasure". But there are
solid basics that go into good site design. Creating a distinctive visual style
and applying it consistently is the best way to bind a series of subjects and
web pages together.
Layouts - The layout of your site is an important design element. A webpage is a
document, plain and simple. It is like formatting a letter, an outline, a
report, or an advertisement. Establish a layout grid and a style for handling
your text and graphics, then stick with it to build a consistent rhythm and
unity across all the pages of your site. Make it easy to follow, pleasing to the
eye. Learn to use tables and nested tables, lists, and even well designed frames
for controlling layouts.
Color - Color has a lot to do with target audience as well. What appeals to a teenager
may not work with a target audience of baby-boomers, and so forth. But anybody
can appreciate color coordination. Color coordination can be learned. Yes, it's
a lot easier if you have a natural "knack" for these things, but you can learn
basic color coordination techniques that make the difference between "tacky,
yuk!!!" and "soothing to the eye".
Safe Colors - Everyone does NOT have 16 million colors on their computer. Learn to
use the web safe 216 colors. Notice that's 216 colors, not 256 colors. This is a
matter of video card capability and you are at the mercy of the viewer's
personal computer system. Your best bet is to stick to 6 x 6 x 6 bit color
resolution (216 colors) to cover the majority of Internet users. The 216 color
palette gives you plenty for design options. Sure, not as many as 256 colors or
16 million, but still plenty to accomplish what you want or need to do with
color.
Page Load Time - Now I'll be the first person to admit that I have made *personal*
web pages which have large graphics or music .wav files and other things that
take awhile to load. The point here is, they are my personal websites, *not* my
professional or commercial websites. I may use these long loading pages for
demo-ing several techniques, or chatting with friends and other developers, but
never never never for professional site design (unless my client insists, in
which case I do not use their site as a demo to other potential clients!). This
doesn't mean you have to give up everything on professional sites. It just means
take it easy, use only one high-load-time element or two, learn to compress your
graphics properly, and if you've got that much "stuff" then break it up into
more than one page.
Don't Overdo IT - A typical mistake among developers is to overdo it when putting
together a website. Try to use extras in moderation. Some common things that get
overused are:
graphics
background images
bevels and other graphic tricks
excessive frames
text scrolling, animated .gif's, page fade-ins
Too much of something just comes off as being "cutsie", tacky, or unoriginal...but
used properly it can add just the right touch. Learn to use things that compliment your site's content,
and not to overdo it with extra techniques and tricks.
Readability - Make your pages as easy to read as possible. Black text on a white
or off-white background is the easiest to read. There are plenty of hard-to-read
pages that use backgrounds the same shade as the text (dark text on a dark
background and light on light), or what I call the "neon" look with bright color
on bright color.
Learn to use the <font face="FirstFontChoice, SecondFontChoice, sans-serif"> tag and
give your readers a font that's easy on the eye. I always think it's such a
shame to see a site full of great content and then left in the default Times New
Roman font. Use a sans-serif font - Arial and verdana are good choices, then put
"sans-serif" generic font in your last html tag attribute to cover anyone that
may not have a specific font you listed as a first choice or second choice.
Browser and Monitor Compatibility -. Learn to make your web pages compatible with both
Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape Navigator. After preparing a site,
test it in both browsers and on different screen sizes or resolutions. Typical
figures are 80% of Internet users are on the IE browser, 80% using 800 x 600
resolution, and most on a 15" or 17" screen....but, can you really afford for
your site to look poor to 20% of the market? The answer is NO. Make your site
compatible with both browsers and take that silly "best viewed with..." graphic
off the site! Furthermore, use alt tags in your graphics for people who surf
with images turned off, or on smaller browsers which don't support them.
Using Java - Personally, I like Java and use it in site design. However, you have to
remember many people turn it off for one reason or another. Or they may be using
a browser that doesn't support it. Therefore, if you use a java driven menu
(quite popular nowadays), you better have some alternate navigation.
The article is an excerpt from the "Master The Web" ebook. For a complete copy of
the eBook visit <a href="
http://www.eyerstation.com/ebook2.html
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