February 14th, 2009
There’s a joke that goes: “I want to learn web design. How long will it take?” “A year or two.” “Great! That’s much less time than it took me to learn print!” “Oh, you used to be a print designer? In that case, it’ll take five to seven years.”
We’re crazy about this post about introducing print designers to web design. It is quite helpful, and isn’t nearly as sarcastic as we’re going to be. So when you’re done with that, come back for our footnotes on five things we wish print designers would learn faster:
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Tags: print design, web design
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December 22nd, 2008
If you are thinking of designing an interactive and a dynamic website, then using Flash may be your best option for your website. Flash is essentially a type of media player and a designing environment created by Macromedia Technologies. It is an environment that allows you to create compressed audio / video files that can be used for multimedia presentations. Flash files can be used to create presentation files or they can be used as integrated components in a website.
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Tags: flash, Macromedia Technologies, search engine rankings, website indexing
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December 5th, 2008
It is important for you to have a professional website in order to compete on the Internet. One of the most important factors in a successful web site is the site usability. Your website must be easy to use and more importantly, you must be able to convey this ease of use to your visitors. Many surfers will run away from websites that they may deem as too complex to use. Hence, you will have to be aware of several techniques in order to create a successful web site. This way, you can make sure that your website is one of the winners.
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Tags: web design, website usability
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November 17th, 2008
Many websites like those of newspapers constantly update the website. These websites will have different content every time you visit them. Such dynamic websites need to provide you with the latest content. What these sites require is to pull information needed from a database or a form. The information is normally populated when the static site is created. However, for dynamic websites, it is populated when the individual page is requested. The design has to be such that it adapts and maintains a professional appearance even when there is a large amount of information on the page.
The site container is a very important part of its website design. It provides a solid base for a dynamic site to work. It has to be height flexible that can encase the content of the site of any size. For that, a simple thing to do is set a black border with a consistent site width. The container has the capacity to expand or contract height wise and accommodate different amount of content. When using dynamic website drop down menus can also help in making it easily functional. They are easy to dynamically produce and can have the same logic as the site container. The idea behind using it is that the main categories can be each wrapped so that they can be assigned an absolutely positioned hidden sub menu that can appear only on mouse over. This is very useful for dynamic websites as the height of the pages can increase or decrease as the number of submenu items increases or decreases. All this is possible without affecting the overall layout of the site.
Peter Brittain
Tags: dynamic design, web design, web design tips
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November 14th, 2008
Dynamic websites have generally different amount of content. If the page size is kept limited to a specific level then the page may appear crowded when the content is huge.
To ensure that the pages do not appear crowded and to make the design SEO friendly, the design may be made using a combination of JavaScript and DHTML that can help create tabbed browsing within pages. The content for the dynamic websites can be taken in two ways namely server side includes and client side includes. With server side includes you can have the server read the information from a database in the format that would be suitable for the website design. With client side includes, servers send information to the web page. The client’s browser receives the programming and the command is performed. For example, if you have list of images for display and want to change image when your visitor moves the mouse over it then such a script is useful.
Search engines were unable to read the dynamic website content earlier. However, now they have developed abilities to read dynamic website information also when indexing the website. Earlier, web developers created static pages and uploaded the static version to server to ensure indexing. However, now it may prove to be reason to your receiving lower rankings as creating a static and dynamic version may be considered as duplication of content.
Depending upon your need you can use dynamic website content. It is a good idea to use dynamic design if you have a website where updates are required often.
Peter Brittain
Perth Web Design
Tags: design tips, perth web design, web design
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November 3rd, 2008
The task of designing a website is incomplete without putting images on its pages. However you need to be careful choosing the image format that you intend using.
There are currently three types of image formats which are supported by all the browsers. They are JPEG (joint photographic experts group), GIF (graphic interchange format) and PNG (portable network graphics).
The JPEG format is suitable when you have to use many colors for one image. However, it cannot be used for images which have text with photographs. In the JPEG format the photographs may look blurred. The GIF format is used when there is a less number of colors involved as it has a limitation of 256 unique colors.
Usually GIF format reflects pixelated images which affect the beauty of photographs and therefore this format is not preferred. Thus the Portable Network Graphics or the PNG came into existence when the GIF format started showing shortcomings - leading to its decreasing use by the web designers and developers across the world.
On the other hand, a wide variety of images can be stored in the PNG format. Initially the most popular browser, Microsoft Internet explorer (IE), was incompatible for this file format. But as soon as IE7 came out with other java script hacks, PNG format became very effective. Thus the PNG images certainly have some clear advantages over the GIF format.
Let us discuss in detail why the PNG images will best suit your requirement for designing an excellent website.
Unlike the earlier GIF format, PNG format supports semi transparent pixels, which means PNG can be used as a watermark on a textured or gradient background. It can also be faded smoothly from opaque to transparent below the content on the web pages. If you want to change your logo with a soft drop shadow with a background of architectural sketches, which will change at regular intervals, then using GIF or JPEG format won’t show the effect and therefore they are not advisable.
Slinky Web Design
Tags: png, web design
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November 1st, 2008
This is due to the fact that every time the image changes, the background for the logo has to be edited. On the other hand, in the case of the PNG format, the image will float with a faded drop of shadow. This will help make your web fast, simple and dynamic.
The PNG format has the distinct advantage of displaying full colour photographic images and supports a managed color palette. It never degrades in quality and saves the original file information. This quality makes for brighter and crisper images.
Earlier, web designers had to face the problem of adjusting the brightness and the clarity of the images on a wide range of monitors and operating systems. This problem is related to gamma settings in different monitors. It is a method by which the monitors distribute luminance evenly. But the problem is, various operating systems have different gamma settings.
This problem has been solved by the PNG file format which allows images to be saved with built-in gamma correction. This helps the operating systems to detect and adjust the brightness and contrast automatically. By using the PNG format, a web designer can correct images on their personal systems. This shows how the PNG format makes the job of designing a website so easy.
Thus PNG images ensure clarity as well as brightness of color. Using them for designing your website will definitely add value to your website.
Peter Brittain
Perth Professional Web Designers
Tags: web design, web design tips
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January 17th, 2008
A professional looking website can be very instrumental to your success. Especially in the case of a corporate website or in the case of an e-commerce website, having a professional looking website is absolutely essential. Don’t forget that most people will judge you by their first impressions of your website. Hence, if your website is able to capture the attention of your audience and if it is also able to impress them with its professional outlook; then chances are that these visitors will also become your loyal customers.
So then you may be asking yourself on what are the steps toward making your website look professional. First of all, it is important for you to use a professional looking template for your website. Thus if it is a business oriented website, then it is imperative for you to use a business oriented template for it. Selecting the right template can be the most important part of your website design.
For your website to look professional, it is important for you to choose a color scheme that is in concurrence with your company or organization themes. By choosing soft and “eye friendly” colors, you will be able to capture the attention of your visitors more easily. In addition, by incorporating your company logo and your company colors into the website, you will be able to convey your ideas more professionally.
Peter Brittain
Perth Web Design
Tags: web design, web design tips
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January 1st, 2008
For your website to look professional, it is important for you to choose a color scheme that is in concurrence with your company or organization themes. By choosing soft and “eye friendly” colours, you will be able to capture the attention of your visitors more easily. In addition, by incorporating your company logo and your company colours into the website, you will be able to convey your ideas more professionally.
The usage of graphics in your website can also help to make it look more professional. By using properly designed graphics, you will be able to convey your ideas or information about your products more easily. In general, statistics show that many web surfers will be more easily impressed with your website by professional designed graphics incorporated in to the website. However, an important point to remember is the fact that you shouldn’t over do it. This means that using too flashy graphics or too complex animations may contradict your overall theme and it may even distract your viewers from the overall theme of your website. Another problem that you may encounter with some graphic design is the fact that they may be slow to load. A slow loading website can be a sure way to lose the visitors to your website, since most people won’t be patient enough to wait for a long loading website.
A professional looking website should definitely have an overall theme, so that the visitor in your website will not become confused and he or she can have a sense of familiarity with you (or your company) build up as a result. This means that all of your web pages should conform to each other and they should all reflect the overall theme. However, you should also make sure that your website is easy to navigate. One thing that your visitors will look for in a professional website will be its easy navigation. When a person goes to a part of your website, than that person should be able to go to another part of your website with ease. In general, if you are able to incorporate good graphics, good navigation, rich content and a professional template; you will succeed in having a professional looking website.
Peter Brittain
Slinky Web Design Team
Tags: web design, web design tips
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August 3rd, 2007
One can source a host of web designing tools in the software market, and practically all of them claim to generate great web pages for you very easily. However, the fact remains that this is a marketing ploy, and you will at many times come across sites that function perfectly with a particular browser but even plain text on the page may become unreadable as soon as you try viewing the site using a different browser.
Moreover, when you see the huge number of operating systems surfers the world over use; such pages may not reach even half the targeted netizens. If the page relates to online sales and is not viewable to half the targeted online audience, it spells straight losses to the tune of 50%.
To let you design a high, professional quality web site here are some helpful tips.
• Ensure neat and convenient navigation: The navigation facility of your site is greatly responsible for making visitors stick around for a long time and continue exploring. Now to make your site easily navigable you must ask yourself about the initial action of visitors when they first open your site. The answer usually is that they read the content on the logged page and then search around for other pages that might have something interesting. Therefore, keep a clean page layout and ensure easy navigation by keeping all or a group of pages cast in one basic design just with different content. The visitor will automatically focus on content. Concentrate on your content and use simple clear fonts that are available on most computers for the text.
Slinky Web Design
Tags: design tips, web design
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