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Advantages for Using FrontPage (Part I)
Ever since I've been doing SEO work, I've always griped and complained about FrontPage and all the extraneous code it puts in the section of the page, etc. Then recently, I had the opportunity to visit with a group of advanced search engine...
Content Management Systems (CMS): What They Are And Why We Love Them…
There is a buzz in the online community about a technology that empowers the average computer user with the ability to create and maintain their very own web presence. In the past, individuals who took interest in having and operating their own...
Designing Professional Web Pages
If your Web site doesn't project a professional and polished image to your visitors, your credibility and that of your products and services will suffer. Image is everything--especially online where your competitor is only one mouse click away! ...
DHTML-Introduction
Think of DHTML as not a singular technology but a combination of three existing technologies glued together by the Document Object Model (DOM): 1. HTML - For creating text and image links and other page elements. 2. CSS - Style Sheets for...
How I Slashed The Load Time For My Website By 200-300%...And So Can You, For Yours!
Here is my latest article. It may be freely used in ezines, on websites or in e-books, as long as the Resource Box is left intact. I would appreciate notification of where it was used, and if possible, a copy of the ezine or newsletter that it was...
MAMBO- a full-featured content management system
Content management systems (CMS) store and manage an organization's electronic document and Web content so that even the non-technical authors and employee of the company can reuse the information across different applications which is otherwise...
Real Life Internet Evil: Microsoft's Smart Tags
Our purpose with this series is to use real life examples of deception, fraud and other evil to show how you can better protect yourself. The examples cited in these articles are intended to demonstrate best practices and recommendations.
You've...
Spice Up Your Web Site With Rotating Images
Normally I don't like moving objects when I arrive at a web site. It distracts visitors from getting to the content. However, many web sites could enhance their visitor's experience by creating rotating images on the home page. Here's a good...
The Top 5 Roadblocks To Web Accessibility
Introduction Accessibility is often the last thing on a web designer's mind when creating a website. This is not a trait unique to newbies or people working on a personal page. It is also a trait common to professional web designers (large...
What Could Be Worse Than Your Viewers Not Seeing Your Site Display Properly?
What if they never get to your site to see it?
If you want your site listed on search engines then make sure that you have correct HTML code. Many search engines cannot properly catalog or index a site that has HTML errors. This can greatly...
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Designing Professional Web Pages
If your Web site doesn't project a professional and polished image to your visitors, your credibility and that of your products and services will suffer. Image is everything--especially online where your competitor is only one mouse click away!
Before your first HTML code is written, you will need to consider your Web site's navigational structure, color scheme and page layout. Is your content developed? If not, who is going to write it?
Once you have done the necessary pre-planning, then the fun part begins--coding your HTML pages.
Following are some steps to consider when laying out your Web pages:
(1) I highly recommend that you try to get your home page to fit on one screen. Ideally, people shouldn't have to scroll down to see what your site has to offer. You may need to make your graphics smaller, but that's okay. Smaller graphics mean a quicker download time.
(2) Be sure to check your pages at all the various screen resolutions. Although only a small percentage of users have their monitors set at 640x480, you will want to make sure your site looks good at that resolution. I design my Web pages at 800x600, which is the average resolution. However, more and more users have their computer monitors set at higher resolutions, such as 1024x728. You will see that your pages will look radically different depending on the resolution. I personally have been horrified at how ugly my "beautiful" pages look on different computer screens.
(3) Browsers are another very important consideration. Netscape and Internet Explorer both perform the same function--display Web pages--but the way they do so is strikingly different.
Your code needs to be very clean and pretty much flawless to display correctly on Netscape. If you miss even one table tag (e.g., you forget to close a tag), you will be mighty surprised when you get nothing but a blank page on Netscape. Internet Explorer is much more forgiving. It "assumes" what you meant to do. Netscape, on the other hand, is unassuming. If it doesn't understand your code, it simply will not display it.
NOTE: An excellent site to check your HTML code for browser compatibility, as well as screen size, is
Anybrowser.com at http://www.anybrowser.com/
(4) You will no doubt want to employ JavaScript and DHTML on your site because it's both functional and cool. However, those technologies work better on Internet Explorer than they do on Netscape. Many of the scripts that you can grab for free at sites like Dynamic Drive DHTML (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/) and Website Abstraction (http://www.wsabstract.com/) are written exclusively for Internet Explorer, so you will need to be very careful when deciding what to use on your Web site.
(5) The titles on all of your Web pages need to be consistent--not only in font style, size and color but also alignment. Make sure the spacing between the title and the first paragraph is consistent throughout your site. Make sure your spacing is uniform on all pages.
(6) If your navigation is dependent on graphics (e.g., image maps, icons, buttons, Java, JavaScript), some of your visitors will have a problem getting around your site if their browser doesn't display graphics, or if they've chosen to turn graphics off on their browser settings for faster surfing. It is extremely important to provide text links in addition to graphic links. All of your users will see your text links, plus text loads faster than graphics.
(7) It is an excellent idea to make your logo a clickable link back to your home page from all of the pages of your Web site. Many visitors expect to be able to use the logo to go back home. Don't forget to also include a text link to your home page.
These are only a few considerations in designing your Web pages, but they are very important. Don't let your beautiful pages look ugly on your visitor's computer screen. If you are like me, you will find these issues among the most challenging aspects of designing professional Web sites.
About the Author
Copyright (c) 2000 by Joanne Glasspoole. Joanne Glasspoole is the editor/publisher of CYBER QUEST. Each issue is jam packed with original reports, news briefs, cool Webmaster tools, and more. To subscribe, send email to mailto:Majordomo@lists.kdv.com with "subscribe cyberquest" in the body of your message. Visit Joanne's web site at http://www.glasspoole.com
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