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The Five Basic Elements Of Web Design

Tamani Moe — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:02:38 +0000

The basic elements and principles involved in web design are true for all other types of design. These principles will show you the most effective way to put together the various design elements to come up with a good and effective site. A good web design company emphasizes the fact that web design is not simply about slapping all those HTML tags on the page, but it involves the use of design principles to build a pleasing and useful websites. Your web design company will need you to make the most aesthetically attractive and effective web design, so make sure you keep these elements in mind:

Web design Balance is the equal distribution of the heavy and light elements on a singly page. Balance in your web design is concentrated in your page layout. You must achieve visual balance in your web design all throughout the page, not only in the initial view. You web design company might commonly suggest you to center the text and all the other elements on your page. It is also very common to set your page on an invisible grid system to create the balance that you need. There are three types of balance that can be achieved when designing a page.

1. Symmetrical. This is achieved by placing all the elements in an even fashion - a heavy element on the left is matched with another on the right. Be careful with symmetrical balances as you do not want your site to look flat or plain boring.

2. Asymmetrical. These are more challenging to build, but there are strategies to achieve this which can include the varying texture, color and image positioning and size to arrive at a pleasant looking page.

3. Discordant. Web sites that are off-balance suggest action or motion, so you can create a discordant design on purpose. This type of designs make viewers uncomfortable or uneasy, so they are best used for sites that are intended to make people think.

Web design contrast is more than just about colors and black or white, but also involves contrasting shapes, sizes and even textures. You can take full advantage of contrast by changing font size, weight and family to provide textual contrast and varying sizes of images and elements. However, be careful not to blast your readers or scare them off with contrasting colors which are way too loud. The links on your content should be contrasted well to draw most attention.

Web design emphasis involves the main points where the eye is drawn into in a design. One of the mistakes that your web design company may warn you not to make is to have everything in the design stand out. Keep in mind that if everything in the design has equal emphasis, the entire page will tend to appear too busy for comfort and may end up unappealing. What you should focus on instead is to create a visual hierarchy in the web design - to put emphasis only on the right elements.

You can use semantic markup to provide emphasis even without the use of styles; change the font size of image size in order to emphasis or lessen emphasis on them; or you can use contrast in colors for added emphasis.

Web design rhythm, also known as repetition, brings the much needed internal consistency into your web site designs. Almost all elements in your design can be repeated in order to create pleasing rhythm into your design. For instance, you can repeat your headline a few times for more emphasis, repeat the same image across the page, create a background that is tiled and patterned with repetitive elements, or repeat a particular style to provide site design consistency. It is also a good idea to repeat the navigation elements in your site design across the pages of your web site.

Web design unity, also regarded as a site’s proximity, is the what keeps all the similar elements in the site alike and those diverse further apart, and pulls everything together into one integrated whole. Unity when it comes to web site design is mainly achieved through the proper placement in your layout. You can implement this in many ways. You can, for example, adjust the layout of your elements to put them close or far away from each other. In the body of your page, you can change the spacing around the text in your page contents. You can further achieve unity by playing around the box properties and change the margins and paddings.

A good web design company keeps in mind all the basic design elements with each and every page they design and collaborate with. This way, you and your web design company will come up with web sites that are pleasant looking, effective and attractive. As the web designer, it is important that you keep these elements in mind and apply them appropriately to your page web design.

Web Design Vs. Print Design: How To Find The Middle Ground

Tamani Moe — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:24:08 +0000

There are a number of web designers who come up with print backgrounds for the sites that they make. These are most likely those who used to be print designers before joining the web design company they are part of now, or they are simply used to the control that is offered by print media.

Remember though that print provides stability and permanence, and these two are not present in the Web. Realistically speaking though and speaking from experience if I may add, it is rather easy to forget this.

As you build your web page and have it tested on your browser, you somehow would like it to look exactly how you want it to. However, since your web design company requires you to test it in different browsers, you will see that they look different.

As you move from one platform to the next, you will notice that there are slight but uncomfortable differences. This should be a good reminder that web design does not have the permanence and the stability that print does.

On the other hand, as the web designer, your web design company will most likely ask you to work with your customers during the web designing process. One of the most important things that you need to do is to explain to them the difference between the Web and print.
Most clients would ask you to provide them your portfolios and web design plans.

It is all too common for a web design company to receive customer complaints which stems from the fact that the website is not the exact representation of the print-out. To spare your web design company from this usual trouble, you have to learn how to properly work with your customers:

It is always good to have a portfolio printed out for clients to see. But bear in mind that it is not entirely a representation of your skills in web designs.

When you do show them a portfolio, make sure that you also carefully explain to them the differences that they should expect on the final output web page. Make sure that you are upfront with them. If they set specifications for a graphical page and want specific layout, font and other web design elements, make sure that you also mention the possible trade-offs such as in the download speed and maintenance requirements.

Lastly, it would be best to know what type of platform your customer will use. If you are a big fan of Netscape on the Mac, while your customer uses Internet Explorer version 7 for the Windows operating system, make sure that you bear this fact in mind when you come up with your designs. The page you come up with during the web design face may look very different on their platform.

So how then can you compromise the difference between web design and print? Well, you mostly need to rely on the web design techniques that you employ. Here are some tips to help you through this difference:

1. Know your audience very well. It is imperative that you know who the potential visitors of the site are and for whom the website is to be made for. Know your client’s target audience and their characteristics or behaviors. If they are highly advanced users, they will most likely browse in UNIX or Linux on a 21-inch monitor. If they are rather more conservative, they are likely to use an Internet Explorer 7 on a 14 inch monitor. If your web design best suits your audience, your client will not come back running to your web design company to complain about the final site output.

2. Test, test, and test again. You need to test your web design in each and every browser and operating system combination that you can possibly get both your hands on. You can use emulators if you are short of time and if you have no other choice, but nothing beats hands on experience through actual tests and runs.

3. Never forget about resolution. Although browsers and operating systems are both important, there is one other factor that you need to consider in site web design.
Keep in mind that if your client as well as their target audience will browse your final page on a browser than is smaller than you have designed on, there is a good possibility that they will be unpleasantly surprised. They might come back running to you, and your web design company might not appreciate that very much.

Using CSS can help you get precise layouts, but remember that your web design can never and will never be as precise as print. Remember this as implement the web design of your pages to spare you and your web design company a great deal of stress.

Web Design Basics You Want to Know

Tamani Moe — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:23:58 +0000

Here are some of the basics of web design that you should know on your own without your web design company having to teach you:

Web Design- on Graphics
1. Always think small. In order to optimize your page and avoid slow loading pages, make sure you set your graphics to a file size of only about 10 to 12KB per image. It is true though that broadband technology have advanced leading to increase of speed, but the number of broadband users are increasing at a steady rate as well. Slow pages are always annoying, and no doubt your web design company will agree with this.

2. Use graphics that are suitable to the page content. Adorable pictures should not be posted on the page just because they are adorable. Make sure that all your graphics have something to do with the site. An exception will be on design images, which are made up of photos and graphics that make up the page design and have nothing to do with the content.

3. Minimize the use of blinking, rotating, flashing or changing images or graphics. These types are the ones which annoy and distract people the most. You need your online visitors to look at the contents of the page, and not get distracted by these graphics.

Web Design- On Layout
1. Try to get by with standard layouts. I have seen them all: from those pages with eight frames, to those which you need to scroll to the right then downwards. These layouts are novel and cute, but they are pretty darn confusing. The reason why your web design company suggests the use of the standard 3-column layout is because it is what works well with the general audience. The same is true for newspapers and other media print. This can prove to be boring, but you have to bear with it to make sure you do not drive your visitors nuts.

2. Pay attention to whitespace. You should know that whitespace is not just a CSS property, but is one of the functions of your layout. The whitespace actually has a bearing on how the page content is viewed, and is just as important in your web page layout as it obviously is in paper.

3. Use graphics as actual elements in your layouts. If you use graphics as actual element in your page layout, it serves a far better role.

Web Design- On Fonts
1. Use standard fonts. You can get by using Serif for your headlines and Sans-Serif for your actual text. Do not wonder if your web design company advises the use of this font family. Serif fonts are actually easier to read on monitors than it is in print since screen resolution is lower in the former.

2. Minimize the use of different fonts. It is undeniable that ages with varying fonts here and there look like they are made by an amateur. Doing this will not make your web design company very happy. Try to limit your site and page to about two or a maximum of three standard font families. Trust me; they look a lot more professional.

3. Use only standard fonts. You can use rare fonts that look pretty good. However, the chances that your online visitors will have the same font installed in their system might be low. If you stick will general fonts such as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana, your pages will look better and your designs will likely be in the right places once they are viewed.

Web Design- On Advertising
1. Never be greedy of advertisements. Yes, you and your web design company have the actual control over the ads that can be placed on the site. However, know that your readers do not visit your page to read the ads, but they need significant content. Do not overwhelm them with ads that overshadow the content of your site, or you might tend to lose their interest immediately. Instead, keep them small and subtle (no flashy ads, please), but relevant and strategically placed to draw attention. Web Design is about remembering Your Readers

2. Make sure to test your page in different browsers and operating system combinations. Your web design company requires you to come up with sites that are viewable and effective. Coming up with a page that is only compatible with the most modern browser and the latest operating system is simply unacceptable. Make sure that your page design is compatible with as many browser and OS system combinations as possible.

3. Write the content that readers want. Remember that you are making a website that is not for yourself, but for your readers. So make sure that you create content that covers topics that your visitors would like to read. Your web design company will appreciate this as well.

Web Design Work And How To Price The Services

Tamani Moe — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:57:25 +0000

One of the important aspects that your web design company has to consider to a great extent is to know just how much they will charge for services.

If you are part of a web design company, this problem is most likely not part of your coverage and you will have to rely on others to do the quoting for you.

However, if you are doing freelance web design, you will have to think about just how much you will charge for each project. To give you an idea of how much your work is worth, there are a few things you need to consider. Here are some factors you need to think about before you quote a price:

1. Web design factor #1: The nature of the project. Before you start evaluating any web design project, you will need to determine the nature of the project - how much effort it will entail and just how extensive it is going to be. To help you know this, here are some guide questions:

I. How many web pages do you need to make?
II. Will they require you to create images or designs from scratch as part of the project?
III. Does the client have ready made content for the site or do you have to do everything yourself?
IV. Will the client require multimedia, Flash, scripting or programming?
Depending on how much work load you expect and what the answers are to these questions, feel free to raise or lower your price.

2. Web design factor #2: The deadline. Practically, you have to know how much time you have to finish the project. The more urgently they require you to finish, the more you charge. However, make sure that you agree with a schedule that is possible for you to meet.

3. Web design factor #3: Your experience. The more experience you have in web designing, the more right you have to charge higher. This is true for a web design company as well. The better the image of the web design company, the higher they generally charge for their expert service.
However, make sure that your price is relative and reasonable. If you, for example, have seven years of experience in HTML yet very little on Flash, and your client wants Flash, do not rely on your seven years of HTML experience to raise your price.

4. Web design factor #4: The long-term maintenance required. If you or your web design company provides site maintenance on top of the site design, you should charge accordingly for maintenance coverage. If the client wants you or your web design company to cover maintenance of the site, it is better to get a separate contract for this aspect of the work.

5. Web design factor #5: The present going rate. Knowing the going rate can be a little difficult. For starters, you can ask other designers in your area. You can also check out the salary and pricing of web design companies in your area relative to their experience and level of service. Benchmark from there to determine how much you deserve.

6. Web design factor #6: Your target earning. Of course, you should also consider just how much you want to make out of the project. You might, for example, have a project that you want to do not for the salary, but because it is fun. There are also some design work that might be uncomfortable for you and you need to work extra hard to complete it, such that you want to earn more for the additional effort.

Rules of Thumb
Here are some rules that you need to follow in accepting and pricing your projects. Keeping this in mind will spare you and your web design company from a lot of headaches:

1. Never accept a project which you do not have enough resources to complete. If a client requires Perl due in a week’s time and you have no idea how to do Perl, do not assume that you will find yourself a Perl programmer in time to do the project or that you can learn it in a matter of days. This is simply impossible!

2. Come up with a clear and specific contract. You do not want to end up providing more service than you initially expected.

3. Always be honest. Your clients expect your integrity; if you tell them that you can meet the deadline, and then meet it. If you can’t, inform them about the situations as soon as possible.

A web design company usually quotes their prices based on the same factors. Of course, they usually give you a set salary with bonuses, benefits and additional pay for excellent job done.

Web Design Scariest Four Mistakes

Tamani Moe — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:12:43 +0000

Believe it or not, there are web designs that actually scare people away from the site and keep them from coming back.
Doing this is something your web design company and you will have to avoid practically all the time. If you do not want your web design company and you to become tarnished or labeled as one of the "Worst web Designers of the net," you need to watch out for this.

Web Design’s Scariest Backgrounds
Setting the background on your site is one of the things that you have the liberty of setting or changing.

However, some backgrounds are simply ugly, difficult to read or just plain scary. Here are some sample backgrounds that I am talking about:

1. Pure black background with pale, light or white text. Unless you are a professional web designer who belongs to the best web design company in the world, try to avoid this type of background.

It looks generally pretentious, not to mention how difficult it is to do well. Some browsers print background color, and you definitely will not like angry customers complaining about how much ink it caused them to print the page.

2. Black with dark text. This is simply illegible and unacceptable. Your customers will have to highlight the text first to make it readable, and this can get really annoying.

3. Tiled and busy background images. New web designers find this convenient and amazing, but note that this takes more download time and do not add value to your site on the part of your customers.

Web Design’s Scariest Text
People visit your site for the content that you offer. If they can not view your text, they will leave immediately and not come back. Your web design company does not want this to happen, so be wary of some of the things that you need to avoid:

1. Text wherein everything is centered. This makes your page awfully hard to read and look really boring.

2. Too much emphasis, headlines, bold, strong or italics. Do not set every line on your page to be highlighted or set as headline. This defeats the web design purpose of setting some text to stand out.

3. Blinking text. Even if they can be attractive to some, they are almost always impossible to read!

Web Design’s Scariest Content
You should also pay attention to your content as it is what drives visitors into (or out) of your site. The general rule is to make sure that you put in interesting and eye-catching content and to avoid things like these:

1. Content made of pure lists of link. This refers to straight links where every word of every line is a link. (Those that have paragraph explanations to it does not belong to this category.)

2. "Cutesy and fun" content. Try not to add in some tricks to get people to laugh. Chances are they will either not understand your humour and you will need to explain it further, or they will simply not go back to your site anymore.

Web Design’s Scariest Multimedia
Multimedia oftentimes becomes the scariest tool ever to hit the web. Your web design company will surely appreciate your multimedia talents and you can show it off when you want to.
They usually will take you a very long time to build, so that the more you work hard for it, the more it makes you proud. However, note that the page is never just about you or your web design company. It is about the client who you are web designing the pages for. Do them a favor and do not let them have to sacrifice for you to show off your graphical or Flash skills. Try to avoid the following web design no nos as well:

1. Images much too many. These images include those small icons that designed put into their site. The rule of thumb is: if you already have more than two, you now have too many.

2. Unreasonable large images. You do not have to publish the print quality versions of photos right into the page. They take too long to load, and are usually not appreciated anyway. Resizing your photos through HTML simply does NOT count.

3. Sound. Just try your very best not to put sounds and songs. Mp3, wav or whatever format of audio and songs playing on top of the page that is impossible to turn off, those MIDI files - they are all annoying. If you think your web design will be better off with sounds, make sure you give your visitors the controls to turn it on or off.

Your web design company will definitely not be happy about a scary web design. You surely will not. Your web design should encourage readers to view your page and to stay a little longer looking through it, and not the other way around!

Getting Attention Through Proper Web Design

Tamani Moe — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 05:31:18 +0000

When web designing a page, it is important for every web design company and for every web designer to attract attention to the most important events, items and contents in the site you are making in behalf of a client.

Fortunately, there are various ways by which you can attract the attention of online users. Most web designers will find it effective to simply change the font size of the content headline. Setting the font size reasonably bigger is a sure-fire yet simple way to draw in attention. Newspaper and media companies will know this for sure. A good and experienced web design company should know this as well.

Grabbing Attention through Typography
Using typography or varying font and font sizes to get the attention of online users is not really a new concept. However, before you go on and set your titles or headlines to 48px or even larger, you should know a few rules on typography that are best generally followed by a web design company. Here are some of them:

1. Web design tip #1: Highlight only what is important. Before setting a headline to a much bigger font, you should ask yourself: Is this particular part really that important? If you are announcing a 20% off sale on regular cosmetics, for example, this will surely arouse interest but making your font unreasonably huge will likely to turn your customers off. And this is something that you and your web design company should avoid at all times.

2. Web design tip #2: Consider the standard font size you use for the rest of the page. This is just plain common sense: if you type everything at 24pt, then creating a 30pt subject headline might not look all that different. However, a 16pt headline written on top of an 8pt text will look huge.

3. Web design tip #3: Set standards on the use of font sizes. You should have already decided with your client as to the type of events that should merit an increase in the title font size, and up to what extent it should be. You and your web design company will benefit from this. Once you have laid out the plan, even if your client comes running back to you and starts pleading you to announce the recent cosmetic sale at 54pt, you should strictly follow the standard pre-determined size for the particular level of content.

Remember though that changing the font size is not the only way that you can modify your web design to get as much attention. Playing around with your font will also prove useful. You can for example, use different fonts of the same family to highlight important events (using Sans-Serif and switching to Serif for added emphasis). You can also modify the color to instantaneously grab your viewers’ attention. Similarly, you can change the weight and the style of your font by using the bold or italicized option to make certain parts of your site stand out.

Grabbing the attention of your online users is not just limited to fonts. There are still other ways to change your site’s web design so that it gets the attention it deserves. Here are some of them:

4. Web design tip #4: Use images. Graphics and images have always been effective at catching attention. A picture says a thousand words, as they say.

5. Web design tip #5: Change your layout. Completely changing your layout is a very exciting way to get attention, for as long as you come up with an interesting new one.

6. Web design tip #6: Use animations. Flat images tend to attract attention. However, these days, your web design company may have to ask you to come up with animation-based splash page to show off the kind of pages you come up with. They generally make your site look more dynamic and interesting to the eyes of your visitors. Be careful though, as you will need to think about site loading times beyond the web design stage.

Catching the attention of online visitors may prove relatively easy to do as stated above. However, it is just as easy to go way overboard with these attention grabbing techniques. You have to remember that if each and every line in your page is set in red or bold face and has blinking effects; nothing in the content will stand out after ll.

Also, if you announce your 20% off on cosmetic site at the same intensity as an ongoing war, your online visitors will surely notice how strange, business-centered or unrealistic your site seems to be. They will learn to quickly ignore all the designs you make and look for another site that is more even-handed - much to the frustration of your web design company.

Web Design Choice Of Fixed Width Vs Liquid Layouts

Tamani Moe — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:44:37 +0000

If you have worked long enough for your web design company, or if you have tried designing a site on your own, you should already know by now that there are two kinds of web page layouts that you can choose from.

Fixed width layouts are those wherein the width of the entire web page is set at a specific value, while liquid layouts are those wherein the width is flexible depending on how wide the online visitor’s browser is. Choosing between these two layout methods can be a little difficult for a web designer, as each has its own benefits and deficiencies. Let us look through each and discover everything you need to know for you to make the right choice.

Fixed width layouts allow you to start with a specific size that you set. This allows you better and direct control so that you know how your page will look like, at least most of the time. They work best if you work with print backgrounds, as they allow for minute adjustments in the layout without inconsistencies across browsers and operating systems. On the other hand, with a liquid layout, you base the layout on a percentage of the browser’s current window size.

Liquid layouts allows for an efficient use of space given by any browser window or screen resolution. They are often used by web designers who want to get as much information across in a very limited space. Your web design company may ask you to choose one from the other depending on the needs of your client.

What is at stake for you and for your web design company when you choose between these two windows? Well, the method you choose has a large bearing not only on the final site design and aesthetics, but will also affect the ability of your online visitors to scan through the contents of your site.

Furthermore, the layout can affect the ease, by which readers will find what they are looking for in the page, and can also reinforce or ruin your marketing efforts in the website. Thus, your web design company may stress the importance of choosing the right one depending on the message that the client wants to communicate across.

The Web Design Benefits and the Drawbacks
To help you and your web design company to decide on which to use, I will present the benefits and the drawbacks for each type of layout.

Fixed Width Layout
1. The web design Benefits
I. Allows you to come up with pages that look entirely identical no matter who is browsing and what type of browser is being used.
II. Elements such as images and graphics will not tend to overpower the text contents especially in smaller monitors.
III. No matter how wide the visitor’s browser is, the scan length will not be affected when there are large segments of text.

2. The web design Drawbacks
I. They will cause horizontal scrolling in small browser windows. Users generally dislike having to scroll horizontally.
II. Fixed width layouts usually result to large coverage of whitespace in large monitors such that there is a waste of unused space, and further vertical scrolling may be needed than necessary.
III. This layout can not deal with font size changes quite well. A small increase in the font may be tolerated, but larger increases can not be handled well that your overall layout may become compromised.

Liquid Width Layouts
1. The Web Design Benefits
I. This layout can contract and expand to fill in all available space on the page.
II. All available space is used up, thereby allowing you to display as much content as you need to in larger monitors, yet still remain viewable on smaller ones.
III. This layout can provide you consistency in relative widths, therefore allowing your page to respond dynamically to restrictions and specifications that may be imposed by your client, such as larger font sizes.

2. The Web Design Drawbacks
I. Liquid layouts do not offer precise control over the page width and the elements on the page.
II. This layout may result to columns in the text which are either too wide for comfortable scanning, or too small for the text to show up very clearly.
III. Liquid layouts tend to have problems when dealing with elements in the page which has fixed width (i.e. image and graphics). If the column does not have enough space, some browsers may increase the column width, and all other elements in your page may not be in the proper order.

Many designers usually go for the mixed approach. You web design company may also suggest you to use both layouts depending on the page and the part of the site you are making. You can, for example, set your main columns to fixed width but make your side columns, headers and footers more flexible. With time and experience, you will eventually learn how to make the most out of the features of each layout type to come up with an optimized site.

Web Design Take On Back Button And How To Take Advantage Of It

Tamani Moe — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 04:05:17 +0000

As a web designer, you should know that the Back Button is one of the most vital buttons found on any web page. You should not rely on your web design company to inform you about this.

If you have been browsing through web design companies and sites for a long time now, you will most likely realize this on your own. Unfortunately, most web designers seem to take the Back Button for granted when they implement their web design. It is not too uncommon to see a "back to home/start" or simply "back" links incorporated into pages being designed.

However, unless you make sure that these links have built-in logic to know exactly which page your visitor was before they clicked on these links (as the highly-efficient Back Button does), these back links you put into your pages will seem like sham that gets by only by guessing the path which your online visitors took.

How People Browse the Web
Most online users visit a web site to simply skim through it. If they think that the site does not give them what they need or does not contain any interesting information to read, they simply leave. That said, there is no quicker way out of any web page than, yes, the Back button!

People don’t seem to even realize that they click on it every so often. They simply sit and browse through site after site with their mouse pointing right over the scroll bar area ready to scroll up and down. And then, unless the site has something interesting for them, they pull their mouse just right up to the upper left hand of the browser to go back to where they were previously.

Do Not Try To Impact This Negatively
All web designers have one thing in common in relation to this. Whichever web design company you belong to or whichever tool you use, you definitely would not like them to leave your webpage.

In desperate attempt to do this, some web designers come up with web design strategies to prevent visitors from leaving the site. Some do things such as pop the page into a chromeless window with no back button. Some even close down the original window to open a new one that does not have controls.

This can be really annoying so that the image you will create for your web design company will not be pleasing. Most importantly, it will not make your site web design more usable or interesting since you have crippled your customers with the standard methods to get around.

As soon as they figure out for themselves how they can leave your site, they will do so immediately and will most likely not return. You would not want your client or your web design company to get ruined because of this, wouldn’t you? So, try not to get that back button away from your readers. Instead, take advantage of it.

How to Take Advantage
Taking advantage of the back button does not mean putting in text that goes "click the back button in the upper left of your browser to go back." Your visitors know this already, and you do not want them to feel stupid by giving them instructions to do something that simple.

Instead, you should only keep in mind that they are bound to use the back button and prepare for that. Here are some ways that you can plan for this:

1. When web designing put your branding or advertising right near the back button. Putting your brand right up there will give it more attention that is not as likely anywhere else.

2. Make the items near the area clickable. Your logo should first and foremost be clickable. Besides that, you should also make sure that the other text or graphic elements at the upper left area of your page are clickable as well. If you do it this way, they just might go somewhere else related on your site if they miss the back button.

3. Take advantage of server logs as well to check where they came from before finding you. Your web design company and client alike will highly appreciate this information. Not only that, you can also use this as well. If you, for example, know what your visitors usually go back to, you can directly address that site on your page, maybe even with dynamic elements that could only display when they are coming from that particular location. For instance, someone who is coming from a search engine may not know how to search your site.

Remember in your web design that your site will be much more helpful if you include details such as how to search on your pages. Doing this might get them to stay longer, much to the appreciation of your client and your web design company.

Web Design Series- Dreamweaver 8 and CS3: What’s The Difference?

Tamani Moe — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:40:46 +0000

So you now have the Dreamweaver 8 and you are just not quite sure whether your web design company is willing to shell out some more to upgrade to the latest CS3 version.

This is actually a challenging decision to make for your web design company. As a web designer, you have to work with the software, so it is both your right and responsibility to decide whether the new version will help you come up with improved web design. This makes you wonder too: Now that Adobe has already bought Macromedia, what have they done to it? Have they ruined it, or have they made it so much better that you should already kick yourself now for not buying it earlier? Well, if I were to be asked, I stand somewhere in between these two.

Web design feature #1: Adobe and Dreamweaver Together
Your web design company may find it reason enough to buy the new Dreamweaver CS3 because of its full integration with Adobe graphics tools like those found in Photoshop. When you have an image, you can directly click on it and edit right away.

Web design feature #2: CSS Support Made Better
One of the best features found in the new Dreamweaver CS3 is the integration of better CSS layouts. These layouts are all well-commented in the code, so it can be pretty easy to start knowing how CSS layouts tend to work. They now have over 32 layouts that you can choose from in 1, 2 or 3-column formats, in fixed and liquid type web designs. You may also define the position where you want the CSS to be when creating a new page, not to mention how easy it is to move the CSS styles around.
You can stat out by styling the tag directly into the HTML through a style attribute and move it to your style sheet. With Dreamweaver CS3, you will only have to right click on the tag and set it to "Convert Inline CSS to Rule" to build a custom class for that specific style or to create one full CSS selector.

Web design feature #3: Mobile Support
Your web design company will also be pleased to know about the mobile support integrated into the new CS3 version. Creating pages made especially for mobile devices have been popular in the recent years, but it can be difficult to design one which is compatible both on mobile and web browser platforms. However, with the integration of the Adobe Device Central into the CS3, Dreamweaver now makes it easy to view your pages in cell phones.

Web design feature #4: Ajax Implementation Now Made Possible.
The Dreamweaver CS3 now has integrated the Spry framework so that it adding Ajax widgets and effects onto your pages have now been made possible. All you do is to drag and drop them and incorporate them into your dataset. Dreamweaver CS3 features Spry components which include: widgets for tables, lists and forms: transition effects such as growing, shrinking, highlighting and fading, and integration of data from XML feeds such as in database or RSS.

Web design feature #5: XLST Support
Another amazing feature about the CS3 that both you and your web design company will love is the extensive support it has for XLST through the use of XML files as database source. Through XSLT, it is easy to view the XML in a tree form and integrate it right into your HTML document. This simply means that if you have a number of XML files set in the same format; it is relatively simple to create one single template for all of them in the new CS3 using XLST.

Web design feature #6: Support for Mac Intel Processors
If your web design company works on an Intel-based Macintosh platform, you will be happy with the performance improvements of the CS3. It is now native to the platform and does not run on Rosetta so that it loads a lot quickly than before. In fact, CS3 claims that what loads in Dreamweaver 8 for 4 minutes can load in the CS3 in under one minute. You can do further testing to confirm this.

To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade.
That is the question. In my case, I have upgraded and haven’t regretted any of it. I appreciate the new CSS features, the XSLT support and the Device Central. However, your web design company may see one piece that is still missing, which is that of web design time and programming. As in the previous versions, the Dreamweaver CS3 is also still difficult to use in terms of live databases and server side scripts. However, there may be extensions to make things easier for you. On a general whole, go on and upgrade and you will most likely never have to look back.

Web Designers Guide To Facing Writer’s Block

Tamani Moe — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:40:01 +0000

Much like those who are in the field of creative arts, web designers can also experience writer’s block. No matter how long you have been in this business or the years that you have rendered service to your web design company, there are times when you simply get stuck with no novel ideas to keep you going in your web design/copy write project.
However, there are a few ways by which you can deal with these blocks. Here are six tips that I have found to be useful in generating new ideas and be of productive service to your web design company once again:

1. Be ready for procrastination to come and block you. Do you notice that when you are assigned with a new web design project and find have to start working on ideas for it, you find yourself thinking about other ideas totally unrelated? You might start to think about how much it will cost to repaint your house, or when you would like to play golf, or what car you would suggest your friend should buy. These are just some of the ways that procrastination disguises itself. However, you should also recognize that these are the things that you actually want to do. So, you can write down the other things you would like to do and schedule them or have a web design to do list. I realized that once I write down this web design to do list, I do not tend to think about them as often time and again as compared to when I simply ignore them.

2. Start somewhere in the middle. If you ask other designers in your web design company, they will surely agree with you that it feels rather intense to have to start from the top of a page and design downwards. Of course, you will still have to do it that way when it comes to HTML or CSS coding, but when dealing with web design, you might find it easier to focus on the most important part first - the one that catches the attention of an online user. I would usually think of what it should look like in the middle before I move on to navigation, advertising and branding which are found at the top, sides or bottom of the web design page.

3. Make a draft of your web design on paper first. In your web design company, do you frequently see people writing rough drafts on paper? Although this is rather uncommon nowadays, I still find it more helpful to "web design" on paper first. It can be very easy to get all hung up on the technicalities in HTML or JavaScript if you try to do your initial web design on a computer. Web designing on paper is sometimes easier to do. Also, when you "Web design" on paper, it is does not take much effort to erase them or scratch them out when you need to make changes. If you hate the idea you came up with, you do not have to feel bad about throwing the paper right into your trash bin.

4. Take time to plan your web design. Planning is very important when starting a web design project. Unfortunately, it is the one that is taken for granted the most. Most web designers proceed immediately to developing pages or generating web designs without giving the project ample though. When you do this, you run the risk of over-budgeting, you might run out of time, or end up not meeting the client requirements - all of which your web design company will mostly likely not welcome. Take all the time you need for planning the web design project (as long as it is reasonable, of course). Taking the time to plan will not hurt your web design, but lack of adequate planning will.

5. Do not hesitate to ask other web designers for help. Never be afraid to ask for someone else’s help when the need arises. Surely, someone in your web design company will be ever willing to lend you a hand or provide you suggestions and constructive criticism. However, be careful about whom you ask the help of. Be wary of those who do not find good in what you are doing, as they will not provide you the help that you need.

6. If you are really stuck, try to do something else for a while. If there is no other way to go about your writer’s block, try to get your mind off to think about something else. Take some time to stop thinking about the web design and the current problem and allow your subconscious to rest for a while. I’m sure other people in your web design company have experienced waking up in the morning with a great solution completely formed to solve the problem.