Tim Berners-Lee: The World Wide Web - Opportunity, Challenge, Responsibility (Photo credit: Fräulein Schiller)
As business continues to proliferate on the World Wide Web the art of successful web design grows in importance. Poorly designed websites are far more likely to cause visitors to click the dreaded “X” in the upper right corner. Competent web design with flash animation and other bells and whistles usually provides sites with a fresh, vibrant look that keeps Internet surfers on the site or makes them repeat visitors.
Tim Berners-Lee was the father of web design and actually invented the World Wide Web, launching the first website in August 1991. Lee synergized hypertext with Internet communication to create the information super-highway and his ingenuity has revolutionized information technology throughout the world. The first language used in web design was HTML – Hypertext Mark-up Language – and it allowed pages to be linked together. This important new language separated web design from all other pre-existing methods of design. As innovation was applied to HTML the language became increasingly more intricate and compliant to manipulation. With web design flourishing, the advent of Macromedia Flash further revolutionized the industry by allowing web design pros and media specialists to integrate more user-friendly features onto websites.
With the Internet boom of the 1990’s, cyberspace witnessed the creation of businesses, large and small, dedicated to web design. Each year the technology for creating user-friendly website content improves and that bodes well for these companies. Literally hundreds of thousands of out-dated websites exist in the prime number graveyard of cyberspace, waiting to be overhauled and redesigned. With so many possible clients out there, the future of web design is bright. Consider this, after the dot-com bust that all but eviscerated the stock market in early 2000, web design has remained a lucrative venture for businesses throughout the globe.
The global marketplace continues to shift its location from the physical world to the virtual world of the Internet. Web design professionals create content-rich sites that provide information, facilitate transactions, and present options for communication that just decade ago seemed right out of science-fiction. As the world continues to change, web design continues to be an important part of that change.
Exploring Web Design
“There are two ways of constructing a design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.” – Charles Hoare
The buzz about the Web has been so loud it is impossible to ignore. For many people, it’s a call to action – a new career opportunity, an incentive to keep up with competitors, or just a chance to get stuff out there for the world to see. But the Web can also seem overwhelming. There’s a lot more to the art of web design than learning plain vanilla HTML and inserting GIF/JPEG files. If you’re just getting started, chances are you have some mighty tricky questions. Where do I start? How doe
s it all work? How do I get my stuff on the Web? How is web design different from print design?
To begin with, design for the Web is the most significant new area of design practice of the last decade. Learning to work in a new medium is both exciting and challenging, and forces us to restate what design is. The fluidity this medium presents allows it to assume a more prominent role in business and society. While web design has much in common with the approach to other areas of design there are also some important differences. Many of the challenges of web design are about creating an effective interface between people and technology.
Web design entails using a combination of media and HTML to develop a web page. Basic media components include graphics, sound, and animation files. This combination grabs the attention of surfers on the Internet. One dynamic Internet editing tool used to integrate media into a web page is Macromedia Dreamweaver, which aids in the production of web pages for personal or business use. Before you get in to the nitty-gritty of tags and file formats, it is important that you have a good feel for the design environment. Once you understand the medium and its quirks, you will have a good head start using your tools and making design decisions. All the rest will fall into place.
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If you decide to design a commercial website, it is a really bad idea to consider using a free web hosting account. Don’t let advertisements detract from the products and services you sell! Using a paid web hosting site will eliminate this problem.
If you’re wanting to design multiple sites, you need to learn how to work with multiple platforms. PHP, MySQL and Java are all highly useful disciplines that can benefit any site designer. It does not matter if you are designing for yourself or for your friends, you should work on becoming a multi-faceted web designer.
Your visitors do not want to be accosted with pop-up ads or multiple windows opening from links. A large number of your visitors won’t even allow popup windows to load. Therefore, you should not use such techniques on your website. If you want to use popups in your navigation, it’s probably a sign that you need to rethink your navigation scheme.
Designing a website is just like creating a work of art. This means you should open your mind to new ideas. Take down notes on a new idea as soon as it comes to you. If you’re at a restaurant, use your napkin for notepaper. If something occurs while you’re working, leave yourself a text message on your cellphone so you will remember it later on.
Photoshop is software which is important to learn if you wish to get into web design. Yet a lot of people aren’t familiar with Dreamweaver, and all that it has to offer for web designers, check into this program and see how it can help you.
Choose your color scheme wisely. You have to be certain that your text will be readable on top of the background colors you use. A dark color for foreground text against a light background is often more readable for most audiences. If you need help determining weak points of your website, show your current version to a friend for feedback.
This tip may seem like common sense, but it is crucial. Never upload a page on your server prior to reading every single word first to ensure you don’t discover any spelling or grammatical errors. Badly written content will not make your site look professional. You’re likely to lose many visitors quickly if your site’s appearance isn’t professional looking.
Always use descriptive titles for your pages. To understand the reason for this, conduct a quick online search for “untitled document”. You’ll see just how common the error is. It is essential that you name your site. This will play a large factor in how you rank on search engines.
Now that you know what it takes to become a better web designer, you can earn a lot doing it. Knowing how to design your own website is a wonderful skill that you can use to earn extra money building websites for others.
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Be certain to make the logo that is appearing on the site, link to the home page. It is almost a convention of web design to have a click-able linking to your homepage. A static logo can irritate your users, because that makes them hunt for a separate “Home” link. Your site’s navigation and ease of use will be much improved by making your logo into a link.
Don’t assume that the design process has wrapped up just because the site is live. Keeping on top of your website will help you to ensure it’s always current. You don’t have to constantly update it, but you must do regular updates. This is especially true if you have videos or deal with current events. Unfortunately, updating a website is not as simple as updating a blog. It will be necessary for you to invest some time in this.
It is imperative to replace old content with new. If the page a viewer clicks on is promoting something that happened a year ago, you just lost a reader. It is an expectation from users that you maintain the site and keep your information fresh, or else they think your site is ill-kept or abandoned. Make it a point to regularly update your content, and replace dated information with current things.
Use sound sparingly when creating your website. Don’t aggravate users by forcing them to listen to noise that they are unable to control. It’s ok to provide links to video or audio clips, but be sure it’s the user’s choice as to whether they hear it or not.
Using auction sites for a domain name may be helpful, since so many domain names are in use already. You will be able to find many wonderful domain names that either are for sale, abandoned or have already been sold.
Buying books on web design is money well spent. Stick to books for beginning web designers until you’ve mastered the basics, so that you won’t miss anything you need to know as you study web design.
When you add videos to your site, remember that some people don’t have high bandwidth. If you post videos at 5,000 kb/s, some people’s connections won’t be able to keep up. These people will have to wait for a long time to watch the video, and the video may freeze frequently while waiting for more data to load.
Stay in contact with friends who are knowledgable about design programs like Dreamweaver or Photoshop to make sure that you don’t forget how to use them properly. Make sure you understood everything you learned so that you do not find yourself committing mistakes while designing your website.
Hopefully the above tips have provided you with some ideas about how you can improve your web designing skills. Be sure to always watch for new sources of knowledge, as the more you learn the more you will perfect your web design skills.
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You should have some place exclusive within which to work. Get rid of all distractions, and have you work space organized and ready for when you go to work. Have your office tools and everything else located where you have easy access, and make sure you have an optimized space for your website design needs.
Domain auctions are a good way to get the domain name that you want. Auction sites, such as SEDO, allow purchase of a domain name that has already been created. Doing this can help your site immensely. Although it could be costly, it is worth having a great domain name.
No matter what your website looks like, all the file sizes should be small. This is because the speed of your website loading is directly influenced by the file sizes. You should strive to make sure that your website loads as fast as it possibly can. You need to remember that not every person who visits the website will have a fast Internet connection. Test each section of your site to ensure it loads rapidly for every visitor.
Most likely, your site visitors will want to see content as opposed to overwhelming design features. To help your users find what they need quickly and efficiently, keep your website simple and include only relevant information and photographs. The simpler your content, the more quickly it should load.
You should [...] Continue Reading…
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Don’t hire any family members to assist with setting up your site. No matter how much experience a family member has in web design you should not hire them to help you because it will limit your ability to be able to fire them if you are not happy with the site.
A newsletter can help you to get more repeat visitors to you website. You can keep your visitors informed about important events, updates, and changes when they sign up for a newsletter, and the flow of information will often tempt them to revisit your site. Put the form in a convenient sidebar, and track the users who subscribe. Stay on the ethical path and only send newsletters to users who request them.
Each page on your site should include a tagline in both the domain and the sub-domains. These tags should immediately draw the visitors’ eyes when the page loads. Good taglines are high on the page and formatted in large, clear text. They can quickly let the reader know what the offer, goal, or purpose is of the page, and whether they go back or stay on this page.
A good website should display and function in any type of web browser, so it is vital that you test your website in every browser currently on the market. The most popular browsers are Internet Explorer, Firfox, Safari and Google [...] Continue Reading…
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Pay attention to color combinations in your design. The text needs to show against the background easily so your site is easily recognizable as yours. Dark text colors on light backgrounds are usually easier to read compared to the other way around. If you are uncertain about the effectiveness of your color scheme choice, try it out on a friend and solicit feedback from them.
This tip may seem like common sense, but it is crucial. Never upload a page on your server prior to reading every single word first to ensure you don’t discover any spelling or grammatical errors. Nothing will make you look as unprofessional as poorly written content on your site. When you look unprofessional you can lose a lot of visitors from
coming back to your site.
If you want to have videos on your website, you should first confirm with your web host that they will allow this. Many hosts do not allow for video hosting on the servers they provide. The FLV files tend to take up a lot of room on public servers. Be sure to check before doing anything so you are not wasting your efforts.
Adobe Photoshop is widely-known, and a lot of people are sure that becoming familiar with the program is vital to, if not entirely synonymous with, successful web design. Fewer people are familiar with the program Dreamweaver, which can be [...] Continue Reading…
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Before you purchase hosting for your site, know exactly what you need and what packages provide it. The things that are important to know are bandwidth, CPU usage, disk space and any other areas that they highlight in their package. It is important to know exactly what is included in the cost.
Give your website’s visitors the capability to search your website, at least on your main page and ideally on every sub-page. This will ensure that visitors can access the knowledge you have to give, and that they came to your site to find. Site searches are easy to implement; the result will be worth the effort.
Double check to make sure that all your links function properly. Complete your error check before uploading your site and going live. Checking links is important since visitors who click the link will become frustrated if they find unavailable content on a frequent basis. So you don’t run into problems, make sure you check to see if everything works.
If you are making multiple pages within a subcategory of a website, use the copy/paste feature on your PC, it will help a lot! Copy the bulk of the code and then tweak it to change the content, heading and navigation menu. You can work off the master copy endlessly.
Proofreading seems obvious, but too many webmasters forget this step. Proofread every page you add to [...] Continue Reading…
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Video is an increasingly important element to any website, so make sure that your hosting service can accommodate it. There are many hosts that do not allow their servers to host videos. Those FLV files absorb a great deal of server space that simply may not be available to you. Before putting the effort into this feature, make sure you’re not wasting your time.
Free web hosting might sound like a bargain, but it can quickly turn into a nightmare. Avoid it for any of your business needs. Though you can’t beat the initial cost of free, free hosting includes ads and other features that can detract from your site. This can draw customers away rather than draw them in.
Try using a newsletter for getting repeat visitors. If you have your clients subscribe to updates, they will have a reason to come back again and again. Place the form for signup in a sidebar or at the top of the pages in your site, and track those who sign up. Only send the newsletter to those who request it, or you could find yourself in hot water.
Try and get some books which can help you be a better web designer. First, read books for the beginner and advance from there.
Pay attention to color combinations in your design. Be sure that your written content is clearly visible and easy to read [...] Continue Reading…
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