Some Simple Web Design Tips That Offer Results
Web design is a complicated subject when you realize that a lot of factors go into making a good site. You don't want your site to only appeal to visitors but also to receive high rankings from the search engines. If your website doesn't look good enough to keep people on it, no matter how much you impress the search engines, you won't have achieved much. The "bounce rate" of people visiting your site and leaving right then depends on how presentable your website is. To achieve excellent results over the long term, it is critical that you emphasize good site design. Even though they do great in the search engine pages, some sites still do very badly when it comes to sales. The present document will look at different suggestions you can implement when designing your site.
Make sure you have a fast loading website, as not having one is the biggest mistake some webmasters make. People usually have the time to wait for a website to load, yet there are a number of sites online that take way too long to load. To solve this problem, the best web design tip is to use more text and fewer graphics. It's just as easy as that. While loud graphics/animations may be alright on the eyes but these definitely slow down the load time of the site. For that reason, only use graphics if it's absolutely needed. If your site is taking more than 10 seconds to load, then there are high chances that you're losing half of your traffic. A good way to make sure your site loads fast is to check its performance using a slow connection, if you see it's taking time, then just cut down on the graphics.
You also need to keep navigation in mind. Good web design and smooth navigation go hand in hand. People should be able to visit your site and easily find what they want. It's not a good idea to push your visitors to click a number of links or make them scroll to the bottom of the page, etc. Give them a clear cut road map detailing how your site is structured and how they can navigate your site. Also, keep in mind that not everyone comes to your site from your home page, as they may find your site through the search engines. For that reason, you'll want to include the page's title and also links on the top or bottom that direct the visitor to the important pages of your site, such as your homepage, contact page, about page, etc.
One more trick you need to remember, which many overlook, is to maintain a narrow layout for your text. You may alienate your visitors if you force them to scroll back and forth to read each line of text, which is annoying to say the least. They may end up leaving your site out of boredom, which is something you really want to avoid.
For this very reason newspapers don't have long columns. Having narrow text columns not only makes it easier to read but is also visually more enticing. Good design principles include making sure you get all the right stuff in their rightful places. Traffic is vital, of course, but if they all think your site sucks... well, you know what to do.
Want to find out more about OxyElite Pro Reviews, then visit Greg Ryans's site on how to choose the best SlimVox Reviews for your needs.
Web Design Forecasts For 2012
We all have our own web design predictions for the coming year, here are some I think will happen in 2012. 2012 will bring the end of Internet Explorer 6. The usage of this 10-year old web browser has been rapidly declining since 2011 thanks to the push by Microsoft via IE6Countdown.com to reduce worldwide usage of the once-popular browser to below 1%. According to the site, Internet Explorer 6 usage had decreased 6% between December 2010 and December 2011. Despite this push, it is thought that 7.7% of the world's internet enabled population are still using this Browser Dinosaur. Will 2012 finally be the year that ends this headache for designers and developers?
HTML 5 will become the standard. With an increasing number of the most popular websites already making the switch over to this new specification already in one form or another, for example, Youtube making use of the new video tags, it is likely that this will create a ripple that will quickly spread across the internet. HTML 5 offers not just more semantic code, but additional features, and APIs for web designers and developers to create more powerful and interactive websites, being able to utilise features such as Canvas which is often compared as an alternative to Adobe's Flash. The main issue with HTML5 is browser support, but with the major browser manufacturers like Google, Mozilla and Opera bringing out updates frequently, this doesn't look to be an issue for much longer.
CSS4 - Yes CSS3 has not even been adopted as standard across browser makers, and already the CSS4 specification has begun being written, with new selectors that allow backward selector styling, so you can style an element based on its children, location pseudo classes for links, so you can automatically apply styles to links that are internal to the site and different styles to external links and Reference Combinators which, for example, you can set the style for an input field when it's corresponding label is hovered over. In all the new CSS4 spec is looking just as promising if not better than CSS3, all we need is for Internet Explorer to support it!
Responsive design will take over the internet. Since the bandwagon set off on responsive design, it has started a revolution in web design. When making a design now, it is all about responsiveness, responsive design involves styling elements based on screen resolution using CSS3's media queries to create a fluid, fully resizing layout that works both on the small mobile screens and the huge desktop displays available today.
Clash of the Titans - The Google and Facebook War. As Google, with its need to control everything, rolls out its shiny new social network, Google+, in an attempt to steal traffic from Facebook's empire, it is predicted that there will be a crossing of paths between the 2 internet giants, this can lead to only 2 things, a feature race like no other, in an attempt to win favour with the end user and gain the traffic, both companies will rapidly roll out changes and new features, this can benefit the user, however for the not-so-technical users, it may be off-putting, it will also lead to news coverage on a grand scale, which will, like the recent coverage between Apple and Samsung on the patent dispute, fill headlines on technology sites worldwide, and inevitably by the end of it, probably make you sick of hearing about it!
While it is likely that these predictions will become reality, not all may, Internet Explorer 6 may survive another year by hiding in a cave, we might see GooFace as Google and Facebook Co-Exist in harmony, or CSS4 might drop off the radar, but let us all be honest, how likely is that?!
Hit Reach have been offering high quality website design in Dundee for over 10 years and carry our Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for a wide range of clients in Scotland.
Graceful Degradation and Progressive Enhancement Explained
It doesn't matter if you are designing your website from base-up or refining what is already present, it is essential to plan every minute aspect precisely to avoid as many pains and "back to square one" moments as possible, one key thing is to plan how your web design is going to work on the powerful, modern browsers as well as the older browsers that are available. There are generally two slants to this, Graceful Degradation or Progressive Enhancement.
Graceful Degradation is the art of taking the most feature rich version of the design, which provides the best possible user experience, and providing fall backs for those features that are not supported the browsers such as features from the recent CSS3 and HTML5 specifications so that the design is still usable in older browsers
Progressive Enhancement is where you start from the ground up, and add features as the browser supports them, so that the initial website that is served will render for all types of browser, which is then boosted by the availability of the newer features for the more advanced browser.
There is a range of different ways that both Graceful Degradation and Progressive enhancement can be implemented within a website, one of the more popular examples for this is the standard "print this page" JavaScript button, and its fall back when the browser doesn't allow for JavaScript.
When using the progressive enhancement approach, you would first provide a plain text prompt for the user to print the page by using the browser's native print command (File - Print) and then, using JavaScript you would check that the Print Function exists, and if it does, you an overwrite the plain text with a button to call the JavaScript print function for browsers that support JavaScript and the Print Function.
The graceful degradation approach is to simply add the JavaScript button to the page straight off, and then, using the HTML NoScript tag, you can leave instructions to non-JavaScript users for them to use the browser's native file - print command. This approach does have its drawbacks however as it leaves behind a button that doesn't work, which may lead the less technical users into believing that the website is broken.
So which is better, degradation or enhancement? Well it is not as simple as just saying "use this one it is better", each method is suited to different situations, for example, for a Flash video, you may want it to gracefully degrade to a static image, but with a simple JavaScript non-critical element like a countdown banner, it may be better to serve the static number, which changes on page reload, and then replace it with a dynamic JavaScript version on page load, rather than not displaying a counter at all which is what would happen if gracefully degrading.
Therefore, the answer is in fact, a copout. If your prepared to put in the time, enhancement is a good option, but can requires quite a few libraries and scripts, but also can be more suitable than degradation, but then there are still the times where degradation can be useful, and requires less time to implement usually.
Chris and his team strive to understand your core challenges then work passionately with you to develop tools that help you deliver real business solutions which often includes the use of web design and online marketing.
Adobe Dreamweaver Remote Site Setup
Html
The Remote Info tab of the Dreamweaver Site Setup dialog box allows you to supply details of the remote web server. This will be used by Dreamweaver to connect to the server hosting the site so that information can be uploaded and downloaded. For internet sites, Dreamweaver uses file transfer protocol (FTP) to connect to the server, as shown in the QuickTime example. For intranets and sites being developed on a local server, the Local/Network option is used.
The FTP host is simply the host name or IP address of the FTP server associated with your domain. The name usually takes the form ftp.yoursite.com or www.yoursite.com. If in doubt, consult your internet service provider (ISP).
Host Directory is the name of the directory on the web server in which internet files need to be uploaded if they are to be visible on the web. Check with you ISP to see whether files should be uploaded to the root directory or into a sub-directory.
The next section allows you to enter the login and password which have been allocated to allow you FTP access to the server hosting your site. Note that Dreamweaver activates the save password option. If you think this is a security risk then click the checkbox to deactivate this option. Again, this information will be available from your ISP.
The machine on which you are running Dreamweaver may use a firewall to block access to their intranets and to control how their own workers access the Internet. If you or your company uses a firewall then you must enter the relevant information in Preferences. Once you have done so, the Use Firewall option will be automatically selected. If your company uses a firewall, check with your network administrator to see whether it uses passive FTP, a system whereby the FTP connection is initiated by the client rather than the server.
Dreamweaver's Check-in/Out facility should be used when several team members are working in collaboration on the same site. When a team member is working on a particular file, Dreamweaver will place a check mark next to the file in the remote listing in site files view as well as the name and email of the person editing the file, so other users can email him or her. If you activate this option, you must enter your name and email in the appropriate boxes.
You can find out more about Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Dreamweaver Classes at their central London training centre.
Html
Dynamic Website Development With Adobe Dreamweaver Server Behaviors
Adobe Dreamweaver is one of the best visual web development tools around and one of the most widely used. It allows both experienced and inexperienced developers to build standards-compliant web sites without having to become fully conversant with all of the underlying technologies. On the client-side, it contains tools for adding sophisticated JavaScript and Ajax functionality. On the server-side, it allows for easy connection to data sources and has visual tools for creating data-driven search and results pages.
Dreamweaver offers the developer a choice of five scripting languages: ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, JSP and ColdFusion. This is specified as part of the site definition process: in the "Testing Server" category, the user must enter the parameters which will enable Dreamweaver to connect to a server which has the necessary scripting software. Either a local or remote server can be used.
The server-side development tools offered by Dreamweaver are very much the same, regardless of the scripting language chosen. First, you are able to connect to a data source which can be a database server such as Microsoft SQL Server or MySQL, or a desktop database file such as an Access database.
Having connected to your data source, you can retrieve a set of data, using a SQL command. Dreamweaver offers a limited amount of help in building the SQL statement but the developer will need to acquire a basic knowledge of SQL syntax in order to retrieve the required data.
Dreamweaver then allows you to populate the page with elements from the dataset using simple drag and drop and other visual techniques. A number of useful "server behaviors" are also available to add functionality to the page. For example, the "Repeat Region" server behavior will automatically repeat a given page item (such as a DIV or table row) as many times as there are records in a dataset.
Similarly, a "Recordset Navigation Bar" can be automatically inserted which will contain link to the first, last, next and previous pages of search results. The code generated by the server behavior will also cause the correct links to be visible or hidden; thus, for example, the first and previous links will not be visible when the first page of results is being displayed.
Because Dreamweaver's legendary ease of use applies equally to client-side and server-side development, making the transition to building dynamic, data-driven web sites can be a fairly painless process, even for inexperienced web developers.
To learn more about Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.
Web Designers Guide: CSS, Making It Look Good
Have you ever gone to a website and all of the links are listed down the left hand side of the page? What is normally a menu is just a bullet list? What you saw was the raw HTML being rendered without styling. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the technology used today to style websites. CSS tells the web browser where to place things, and how they should look. It can even tell the browser to animate an element on the page. Simply put, CSS makes the web look good and makes web design so much better.
Besides the fact that everyone uses CSS now a days for web design, CSS also makes web development faster and nicer looking than the old way of using HTML to do it. In addition to a better look than just HTML styling, CSS allows for faster site development since every page references the same style sheet. A change in one place is changed everywhere. Imagine if you have a 10 page site and you decided you didn't like the look of a certain title. The old way means you would have to change the style information on every page. With CSS you change the style information in the css file, and every page that uses that style is immediately updated.
CSS makes web sites better looking, and allows you to develop faster. Now it's time to explain how to use it. But before I do, let me point out what this article is not. It is not an in depth guide to CSS, just an introduction. I just want to give you an opportunity to test the water, if you want to go for a swim or even dive into this subject I'll have to defer to the web and a host of books on the subject. With that, lets begin. At the highest level, CSS is the coverings to HTML. HTML defines the structure, CSS covers it up with something interesting to look at. This is done by adding styles to HTML tags. The most popular tag used in conjunction with CSS is the <div> tag. This is because it doesn't have any of it's own styling, and unless you add a style to it, it's just a see through box. A box is a good name for a <div> since that is how it behaves, like a box, when a page is being laid out.
The <div> tag in and of itself, is just a container/wrapper. If you use an <a> tag in your HTML you get a link. If you use <hr> you get a horizontal line. If you were to type the following code: "<div>Hi there</div>", all you would see is the text "Hi there"; nothing special. This is because <div> is a blank, "see through", wrapper; it adds no functionality, no styling, nothing but a box to hold something. Because it is a box like container it's great for layout purposes. Example: You can have the header as one <div> box, the side bar as another, the body as a third, and the footer as a forth. Then using CSS you can define how those boxes line up in reference to each other in addition to how things look inside the box. Even though <div> tags are used a lot with CSS, CSS can be applied to any HTML tag, including the ones I referred to earlier, such as <a>, <hr />, or even <body>. There is another wrapper tag in HTML that without CSS would be useless, <span>. If <div> is a box, then think of <span> as a sock. It is a wrapper too, but not has bulky, and is typically used for changing the look of something inline, whereas <div> changes the look of a block of things.
Now we have a simple concept of what CSS is, but how about using it? That is the easiest part. To get started open your favorite text editor and create a blank file and save it as "styles.css". Type the following three styles into your blank CSS file:
body background-color: #000;
.whiteText color: #fff; font-weight: bold; font-size: 24px;
#header width: 220px; margin: auto; padding: 10px;
Once you've typed the following three lines save your file and name is something like "styles.css" and save it on your Desktop, for now. I should note that I've simplified this CSS for this article, normally the style name and the actual styles are on different lines. Now that we have a style sheet lets hook it into the HTML file. To do so you enter one line inside the <head> tags as you see below. Make sure that the path to the css file in reference to your HTML file is correct. For our simple test, save your HTML file on your Desktop as well.
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" />
</head>
We now have the first two steps done, now just applying the styles to the actual HTML tags. The following example follow on after the precious so just keep typing.
<body>
<div id="header">
<span class="whiteText">Welcome to my site!</span>
</div>
</body>
</html>
That is it, you've made a CSS styled web page. Open up a web browser and take a look at this simple test. It should be black with some white text centered at the top of the page. This was a very simple use case of CSS. CSS is quite powerful and can do quite a bit that only a couple of years ago we needed Flash to do. CSS really has become the gold standard for styling webpages and now that you have a basic idea of it, you'll have a better grasp of it when you are out looking for code samples to make your page shine. With that, get out there and make some web pages, you web designer you.
Mykel Hawley started making web sites in high school for an online game he was playing over fifteen years ago. Mykel now works for a premiere web design firm called Superior Design. He is fueled by his love of Internet technologies and wants to share his knowledge with all. For great examples or inspiration, checkout Superior Design's web design portfolio.
Adobe Dreamweaver’s Very Useful Document Toolbar
Dreamwaver has a huge arsenal of floating palettes known as panels. Some of these contain options that are duplicated both in the main and context menus or which can be accessed with keyboard shortcuts. You will therefore find that you do not need to keep all of Dreamweaver's panels open.
As a new Dreamweaver user, the first document view keyboard shortcut you should learn is F4. This is the shortcut for Window - Hide/Show Panels (or View - Hide/Show Panels). This very useful toggle causes all of Dreamweaver's panels to disappear or reappear at their original positions.
Most of the options for showing, hiding and manipulating the various panels are to be found in the Window menu. However, in addition to the panels, Dreamweaver has two other tools palettes which are referred to as toolbars. One of these, the Document toolbar, is normally displayed at the document window. To make this toolbar visible, choose View-Toolbars-Document.
The first three icons on the Document toolbar are perhaps the most frequently used: Code, Split and Design views. The document title box is used to set the title which will appear in the title bar of the user's browser (as opposed to the document's file name). The file management pop-up menu contains options for uploading and downloading the document as well as commands to be used when working in collaboration. (These options are also available in the Site menu.) The browser preview pop-up menu allows you to preview your page in any of the browsers you specify using the Edit Browser List command.
Dreamweaver's document toolbar is only visible if you are working in document view. To be working in document view simply means to be editing an HTML, or other, document. If you are not in document view then you are normally working in the Files panel. There are three ways of entering document view from Files view.
1. Open an HTML document by double-clicking its name or by choosing File - Open.
Secondly, you can create a new blank file by choosing File - New.
3. Activate a document which is already open by clicking its button in the Windows Taskbar or by choosing its name from the bottom of the Window menu.
You can find out more about Web development training courses, visit Training Company . Com, a Computer training website offering Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.
Testing A Website In Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
Whenever you build a new website, you can almost guarantee that you will make mistakes and that there will be errors within the site that need to be fixed before it goes live. Adobe Dreamweaver has a number of tools for helping you to locate such errors and correct them. The program allows you to perform browser compatibility checks, locate broken links, orphaned files and locate syntax errors within your code.
Site testing is an ongoing process: it should be an integral part of building a web site rather than an isolated step which is performed after the site has been built. Every page that forms part of the site should function correctly in all its aspects in all of the browsers which the site is designed for. Using Adobe Dreamweaver's various reports is a great way of ensuring that your site is error-free.
One of the first things you should do is to preview your pages in as many browsers as possible. Dreamweaver's Preview in Browser feature allows you to set up primary and secondary browsers and then add as many other browsers as you like. Each time you choose File - Preview In Browser, you can choose any of the browsers you have configured. You should also try to preview your web pages both on PCs and Macs. This multi-browser testing is particular important for testing that CSS and JavaScript is functioning correctly. What works well in one browser does not always work in another.
It is also important to check both the text and the markup of each page. A simple omission made by many web developers is to check spelling. Naturally, this can be done in a word-processor such as Microsoft Word, prior to bringing the text into Dreamweaver. However, even in this scenario, it is quite typical to make further changes to your text within Dreamweaver. It is always a good idea, therefore, to run the spell-checker on every page. In Design mode, simply choose Check Spelling from The Command menu.
Then there is the question of broken links. These are, if nothing else, a potential cause of annoyance to your website visitor. Dreamweaver's Link Checker will look for any links to pages that do not exist as well as locating orphaned pages; i.e., pages that do not have any links pointing to them and which will therefore not be found by your website visitors. To access Dreamweaver's Link Checker, choose Check Links Sitewide from the Site menu.
If you would like to learn more about Web development training courses, visit Training Company . Com, a Computer training website offering Dreamweaver training courses in London and throughout the UK.
General Dreamweaver Training Courses Information
Dreamweaver training courses is designed to teach web design simplified. Web design utilizes coding and other forms of functionality to ensure the design's excellence. Hyper Text Markup Language is the basic center of every web page out there. Dreamweaver allows one to create a and design with ease and simplicity without having to start from scratch.
File Transfer Protocol and Secure File Transfer Protocol is the process of being able to send and receive Hyper Text Markup Language with guaranteed security amongst other variations. Dreamweaver software allows the creator to mimic and copy other sites forms and codes that will transfer the coding to implement the same design but with added security. This means you can preview other web sites and take bits and pieces of their layouts and apply them to your own.
Web development becomes straightforward with Dreamweaver. Learning the basics of Hyper Text Markup Language and Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language will be the core ground rules in your understanding of how they provide the core of web designs. Insight in how Cascading Style Sheets provide one set of format for web pages will be provided.
Java programming is becoming the language of choice and it is the crucial parts of the successful web design. The language is known to provide function and for usability. Understanding how variables and arrays come into place will provide insight in how pages are created and how users interact with them. You know the little images and graphics that you see on the Internet? Taking and educational experience in Dreamweaver will teach you how to implement this.
Having discussed the three cores that operate behind the screen of web pages, Uniform Resource Locator is used to link pages together and is also another crucial component of how web pages are accessible. Links within links and how they provide value will be discussed.
Dreamweaver training courses is a healthy prospect as it opens a large array of opportunity in career building. As you frequent the courses, you will discover many of the variations and expressions that are used in ordinary programming language that implement a functional interface.
To learn more about Dreamweaver training courses, visit Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Dreamweaver Classes in London and throughout the UK.
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