Web Design Smart Tips:
- Never Delete a Webpage
- Links That Don't Look Like Links
- Shrink Image Sizes
- Design for the Smallest Screen Size
- Aid Those who Can't See Images
- Don't Ignore White Space
- Always Interlace your GIF(c) Images
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Clever Web Designing Hints
By Maricon Williams
Some software tools are claiming that designing is easy
as 123 and that they will ‘produce’ the pages
for you. Unfortunately, a number of web designers are
victimized by this marketing gimmick. The results are
obvious. A number of operating systems have pages that
are not seen properly by the intended surfers. Some are
unreadable. Some are difficult to navigate. Most of them
do not serve their purpose.
To help some amateur web designers out there, I have
here a list of established rules of thumb in web
designing. This may help you in creating functional and
arty wed sites.
1. A picture is worth a thousand words thus, you need
not stuff your page with a truckload of images. Pictures
and images are used to enhance the page and not to mess
it up. Bear in mind that less is beautiful.
The average time to load a page should not take longer
than 5 seconds. If it’s longer than that, the surfers
might click away elsewhere. Therefore, you must keep the
page size less than 30k.
Each file on the page should have a separate HTTP
request to the server. Lots of small images will slow
down the loading. Other factors that contribute to the
slowing down of the loading are the height and width
attributes. Without these, the browser should wait for
the image to download since it has no idea of how much
space to leave for them.
2. Navigability and functionality come before artistic
excellence. It is no use making your site a masterpiece
of art if users cannot navigate around it.
3. Keep the web site simple.
4. Whenever your whole page is within a table the whole
page cannot render until the whole table is downloaded.
To remedy this, split the table into two and let the top
one be a short table that displays only the page header
and a small number of navigation links.
5. Stay away from all browser-specific functions. If a
certain feature is supported by one browser, it will most
definitely not be supported by another. Where you must
use such features, it should not hinder the display of
the page in the other browser which does not support such
functionality.
6. Do not clutter the screen with new popup windows. An
exception though, may be made for pages containing a links
list. It is convenient in such cases to open links in
another window, so that the user can come back to the
links page easily.
7. Bear in mind the fonts-challenged users too. Font should
therefore be readable. Stay clear of out-of-the-way hard-to-find
fonts. Use simple fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and
Courier.
8. A new design trick that is increasingly being used
on the web these days. It looks something like this: Home
> Section > Subsection > Page
9. Use Java as a utilitarian programming language, not
as a graphics front-end for your photos or images. There
are various things you can do with Java but it doesn’t
mean you’ll have to do it all. Java applets are
known to run slower, so users experience certain lethargy
in performance. And worse still, Java has been known to
crash certain browsers.
10. Use META tags. Search Engines heavily rely upon the
Keywords & Description Meta tags to populate their
search database.
11. Write for all browsers, all resolutions, and all color-depths.
If you show people pages that look best with their own
browser and their own resolution that makes users feel
‘at home’, and you get a better response.
Web Designing is a combination of creative skills and
technical prowess – and one is no less important than
the other. A good web site on the other hand, is like an
efficient frontline which can spell the difference
between casual surfer and a potential customer. Web
designers are tasked to yield benefits that will redound
to the company. This is quite a hard task however you
can always rely on both your skills and the right tools!
Additional Information about the article can be found at
http://www.fullcolorprintingcompany.com
About the Author
I love reading. Give me a book and I'll finish it in one
sitting. Reading is the chance to be transported to a
different world and so is writing.
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