Four Principles Of Basic Web Design

In this day and age where anyone, including a five year old, can use software tools to write a basic web page it is more important than ever to be aware of and follow some of the principles of basic web design. This list of web design basics is by no means definitive, there are many other issues that come into play when publishing web pages on the Internet. However, following these simple rules will keep your pages looking clean and provide a good first impression to your viewers.

1. Conserve bandwidth wherever possible and start with your photographs and images. Broadband Internet access is still not universal, and even though current estimates point to nearly 80 percent of US households having Broadband we must still optimize our web pages simply as a matter of courtesy. Always use an image editor to reduce the size of images down to the exact size you want them to display on your web page. Never use HTML comments to make a large image squeeze down into a smaller package. Also, make certain that all images are down-sampled to only 72dpi in resolution. Computer monitors can only display images at 72dpi so anything higher is wasted bandwidth. Another great rule of thumb is to attempt to keep the total page size (including all images and scripts) to under 50k. This is very difficult to do, but small web pages load incredibly fast and get your information to the reader much more efficiently.

2. Think about the way you align text and images on each page. Centered alignments are very weak visually. They are difficult to read, and simply don't use the space well. Left justified or right justified texts create smooth, clean lines that give the viewers eyes something to lock on to and focus their attention. You can further accentuate the alignment of the elements on your page by carefully using the edges of your images as guides for these alignments. Have your image be the left or right hand border of a text block. The image captures the attention of the viewer and the neatly aligned text makes the viewer want to read the information on the web page.

3. Pick a graphic or logo and design your web page's color scheme based on that graphic. At the same time don't be afraid to break with the color scheme of your company, school, or organization. Some colors look great on paper but look lousy on a computer screen.

4. Don't create it if you are not going to update it! Nothing says "WE DON'T CARE!" as much as an organization's web site that has old, stale, and outdated information on the home page. If you know that you will not have the time to update regularly then create a web page that will not go stale after a certain date. Present your information in present tense without any reference to dates or times. For more detailed and time critical web sites consider using a content management system (CMS) such as Joomla in place of writing raw HTML web pages.

About the Author:

Chad Criswell is a highly successful web publisher, music educator, and band director. His web site, Music Education Magic provides daily updates and information on a large variety of music and general education topics.
Read more articles by: Chad Criswell
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=148608&ca=Internet
Article published on May 18, 2007 at iSnare.com

What should not be done while designing a website

The designing of the website should be very user friendly and it should give an everlasting experience for the first time the user has logged on to your website. Having a decent design for your website matters a lot and it does not mean much what product you are offering. You won’t be able to sell off your product if you have a terrible looking design for your website as in most of the cases the user will be turned off by your website.

A good design of the website does not mean that it should be graphically good looking. There are other main elements that make a web design- convenient design, interface and the whole layout of the design.

There are some elements that should be kept in mind while designing a website:

- You should always avoid introducing the looping music in the background. It is not always pleasurable listening to the music. Let us take an instance if you have a website with 50 pages then every time the user clicks at a new page the background music starts to play and it is very annoying and forces the user to leave your website.

- The website should be user-friendly and it should be easily accessible for the users. The size of the text should be easily readable nor too big that it looks awkward and neither too small that it is not readable for the users. If you are selling a product and if the user is not able to read the text of your website then how do you think he will purchase anything from your website.

- The popup windows are nuisance for some users as they the majority of these windows are useless. Let us say that you have a very important message to communicate and you add it on the popup window that gets eradicated most of the times it is appeared on the user’s screen. You instantly loose your credibility of your website.

The main objective of a website is to fulfill the purpose for which it is prepared. There should not be some minor mistakes so that it becomes an obstacle in the appropriate use of the website.

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About the Author: Avinesh Prahladi is a professional content writer having proficiency for writing on diverse topics at webartsoftech. Visit http://www.webartglobal.com

Choosing a Web host

There are some simple rules to follow when looking for a web host. The first rules is to avoid free hosts whenever possible, it is easy to think that a free service is preferable to paying a monthly fee however with web hosting this is defiantly not the case.
Paid hosting has several important advantages over free hosting. Firstly you will receive more useful features with paid hosting. Technical support will be much better with help available when you need it. Generally speaking Paid hosts will have much faster connections to the internet so your site will appear quicker. Most importantly with paid hosting you won't have to display a banner on each page advertising the Hosting Company and advertising to the world that you are on a free host. With excellent hosting packages starting from $6.99 per month there is no reason why you shouldn't go with a paid host.

The second simple rule concerns what operating system to choose. You will find hosts offering you Windows Hosting or Linux Hosting, it is tempting to choose windows as it's a name everyone knows and many people mistakenly believe that because their PC runs windows they need a Windows Host but in this case they'd be wrong. Whichever hosting package you choose you will receive a control panel through which you administer your site these are graphical environments through which you can control many aspects of your website from configuring your web mail and installing forum software to creating a database. Take a lead from the marble halls of business most major companies host their websites on Linux Servers. Linux Servers generally runs faster and are more secure than a windows server. This is partly due to how the operating systems are built. Windows try to include every possible function in the base package whilst Linux allows the host company to add the functions they need.

The final thing to consider when choosing a host is the list of features they offer. If you don't know much about html you can look for a host that supplies you with free website building software and some of the better ones will even supply free Domain names. You should look at a number of different companies and compare what they offer as standard with their hosting plans. Technical aspects to consider are ; the amount of disk space available to you and how much monthly bandwidth you have to use. Look at how many email accounts you can have the more the better. Customer support features should not be overlooked check to see what their response time is and if it's anymore than an hour look elsewhere, also consider if they offer a money back guarantee.

Look to see what additional services they include in the package for example do they offer daily backups? Make sure that they offer support for PHP as this is quickly becoming the programming language of choice with web programmers.

To conclude when choosing a website Host look for a paid host with Linux hosting and then compare the packages on offer from a variety of companies.
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Basic Web Design Principles

by: Zoran Makrevski

Home Page

Home page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide top level navigation on the first page, your logo, and tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Your home page should be informative, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor decides what he will do, click on some of your links, or leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers, make sure to provide link to that service on your home page.

If you decide to implement flash intro on your first page, make sure to give the user possibility to skip the flash intro. The link “skip intro” should be outside of the flash, because you will force the visitor to wait until the Flash movie is loaded.

Navigation structure

Place the navigation on the place where the people are used too look for it. Don’t experiment with the navigation! I can’t stress enough this. Keep the navigation system same on ALL pages. Visitors are not ready to learn your site navigation system. Consistency is the most important thing here. You should focus your effort on building consistent rhythm across all pages of your site.

Font size

Your font size should be enough big so your text can be read without effort. There are many people who will not bother to read very small letters. Don’t loose your visitors because of font size. Optimal size seems to be 12-13 points. Visitors should be able to read your text easy, without any effort. Broke big chunks of texts in paragraphs and make them easy to follow.

Line Length

The length of a line of type should be comfortable to read. The optimal line length for printed materials seems to be about 10 to 12 words, or 60 to 70 characters. Somewhat shorter lines of about 40 to 50 characters may be more appropriate for larger displays. If the line is too long the reader must search for the beginning of it; if it is too short it will break up words or phrases awkwardly.

Creating emphasis

Creating emphasis is an important and integral part of designing and typesetting. Handled with taste and good judgment it can help direct and inform the reader. When these qualities are lacking, or someone feels that every word is important and must be emphasized in some way then your web page starts to look like a battlefield and becomes difficult to read!

Graphics

It’s well known that one picture worth more than million words. This rule applies on Internet too. Do your best to show clear, attractive photo of your product. If you offer a service, find a photo which will best describe him. However, be careful about file size. Don’t compress your photo to that level to not be clear, but also don’t leave the photo on full quality. That will make file size too big, and will increase download time.

Gif vs. JPEG

Less experienced web designers many times use wrong format to store their picture. Here are few guidelines which will help mistakes to be avoided. If your photo has small number of colors (less then 64) GIF will be better choice. Make sure however to reduce the palette size too. That is, if your image have10-15 colors only, reduce your palette on 16 or 32 colors.

Also, if your image contains text, GIF format should be your choice. JPEG use loosy compression method and will cause text and edges to become blurry.

If you are saving a photograph – save it as JPEG

JPEG images can contain over 32 million different colours. That is much more than the human eye can see.

If you want to incorporate large text into a photographic image, JPEG may be a good format to use. While the edges may still get blurred, danger of it becoming unreadable is slim. If you think your image is more important than the text, go ahead and use the JPEG format.

Speed

Do your best to reduce the download time. We live in a busy world and people are not will to wait long time. Try to reduce size of your graphics as much as possible without to destroy the image. Image must look good, but size (in KB) should be as small as possible.

Test before publishing

Do your homework, and do it well. Your visitors will not bother to send you an E-Mail that some of your links does not work or that some of your images does not appear. Even if someone do so, it is quite embarrassing. Perform spell and grammar checking. Remember that in many cases visitor will build his opinion about you or your company on base on your web site. When published, site should not contain any “under construction” or “coming soon” messages.

About The Author

Zoran Makrevski is founder and CEO of SEO.Goto.gr.
Since 1998 has focused on E-Commerce and attempts to bring more traffic to the customer sites bring him in the SEO industry, and he is running his own company today.
Search Engine Positioning Firm
SEO.Goto.gr