Home | Internet & Online Business | Web Design

Handy Hints for Web Designers

Posted By: Pooja Gupta | Posted On: 2008-10-27 | Article ID: 108945

Web Designing is as easy as 1-2-3, claim some of the software tools on the market that "generate" your pages for you. Unfortunately, many web designers today have fallen prey to this marketing gimmick - and the results are obvious. Every now and then, one comes across a website that looks good with a particular browser and a particular screen-resolution; but view it with a different browser, and you can't even read the plain text on the page. Worse still, given the number of operating systems that are used by netizens worldwide, these pages will never be seen properly by more than a half of the intended surfers.
Now let's assume that this web page belongs to a site that sells stuff online. The very fact that half the users cannot even see the page, translates into losses worth half the amount straightaway (perhaps, even more!) I guess that makes a good case for the raison d'ętre of this article! Web Designing is, in my opinion, a cocktail of creative skills & technical prowess – and one is no less important than the other.
In the following lines, I have jotted down a few points that I noticed during my online journeys, important from the point of view of web designers. Some of them may be taken with a pinch of salt; for it is not possible to please everyone everytime. But most of them are simple enough to be used as a rule of thumb.
1. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. A picture file, alas, is also almost as big. Images, no doubt, enhance the look of a page, but it is not advisable to go overboard in stuffing your page with a truckload of images. Most net-surfers use a dial-up connection, and the average time to load a page should be no longer than 5 seconds. If it's longer, the surfer will most probably click away elsewhere. So, within this time, all the images on a page must be loaded as well. So, as a rough yardstick, keep the aggregate page size less than 30k.
Another important point to note is that each file on the page requires a separate HTTP request to the server. So a lot of small images - even if they do not add up to a lot in terms of bytes - will slow down the loading a lot.
Even when you must use images for navigation, please give a second thought to the users who will not be seeing those jazzy, fantastic & truly amazing buttons that you spent hours to design. Yes, I'm talking of the ALT text attribute of the IMG tag. Do not forget to provide an Alternate Text for each image that you use for navigation. (It may be left blank for certain images that are purely for aesthetic reasons, but let that be an exception, rather than the rule.) Though not obviously apparent, ALT text can help such users immensely.
Modern browsers offer users a choice to turn off images. This gives an idea of how troublesome the unwanted images could be.
A couple of more attributes that make your pages load faster are the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes. Without these, the browser must wait for the image to download since it cannot know how much space to leave for them!
2. Navigability & functionality come before artistic excellence. It is no use making your site a masterpiece of art if users cannot navigate around it - even after they reach the main page, they have no clue as to how to go where they want to go.
3. Especially common, is a kind of navigation that some people call Mystery Meat Navigation. That means, that unless your mouse moves over an image, you have no idea where that link might take you. Only when the mouse hovers do you see the actual link. This is cumbersome because users need to move their mouse all over the place to find out which part is a link and which is not.
4. Follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep it simple, stupid!
The web waits for no one. And furthermore, the user is king. Try your best to keep the user happy. And to keep all users happy. For, a good website is like a good storefront - it can mean all the difference between a casual surfer and a serious customer.

 

Article Source: http://www.articlecell.com

About The Author
Pooja Gupta
www.my-early-days-on-the-net.com www.master-web-graphics.com



Please Rate this Article     
Not yet Rated

 


 



Ken Wilson
Author ID - 2683
    View - Ken's Profile
    View - Ken's Articles

Lee Dobbins
Author ID - 148
    View - Lee's Profile
    View - Lee's Articles

Jim McDonald
Author ID - 1638
    View - Jim's Profile
    View - Jim's Articles
 Submit Articles
 Member Login
 Submission Guidelines
 Ezine Notifications
 Popular Articles
 Article RSS Feeds
 New Stuff
 About Us
 Link to Us
 Contact Us
 Privacy Policy
 Terms of Service
 

EnterArticles.com

Submit Articles

 

Monsterputt.com

Golf Clubs and Accessories

 

MarketingAU.com

Internet Marketing Help


 

ArticleCell.com » Copyright © 2006 - 2007
Terms of Service | Submission Guidelines | Contact Us | Link to Us | Privacy Policy | About Us

Bridgestone J33R 460CC Driver | J36 Cavity Back Irons | Bridgestone Golf

Powered by Article Dashboard