There are many tools which will enable you to create clear,
effective websites.
However, if you are new at the game, it is helpful to
- gain an understanding of effective websites
- fit your concept into a process of design
- have fun creating your website!
Summary of design:
- identify your audience
- motivate your audience: treat them with respect and provide
proactive feedback opportunities
- establish clear, measurable web site objectives or design purposes
- acknowledge reactions, effort & success, and built in help for
failure to meet expectations
- Content
- focus and define your website content
- language should be simple,
understandable for a global
audience
- promote scanning content for important concepts
- build in white space
- prioritize your information, as with an outline
or concept map
- Navigation:
- simple
- clear
- layered (site maps)
- organized (think "outline")
- Incorporating graphics
Developing websites begins with its text and structure.
After the basic structure is developed, the content should be analyzed as
to what would benefit from illustration whether line or photographic
graphics
Principles:
- choose a background and text colors with high contrast
- use a browser safe palette
to be consistent across platform and browser
- format text consistently
- avoid color changes
- avoid italics (hard to read), color changes, and underlining
(mistaken for links)
- avoid overly-large text
- avoid textured backgrounds
that make it difficult to read
- illustrate content with simple, symbiotic, scaled (small),
stagnant (non-moving) graphics
- avoid "dancing dogs":
graphics that show off but do nothing for content
- file formats: compressed (.jpg) photographs, and
drawings in (.gif)
Here are some helpful sites:
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Web Design
extensive topics from the
University of Minnesota Duluth
Web Style
Guide
Patrick Lynch, Yale Center for Advanced Instructional
Media; and Sarah Horton, Dartmouth Curricular Computing, Dartmouth
Didactic Web. One of the best comprehensive guides to the design
of websites (http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html) (18
February, 2004)
The basics and the latest on HTML
World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]
founded in 1994 to develop common protocols for the evolution of the
World Wide Web. Here you will find pointers to specifications
for HTML, guidelines on how to use HTML to the best effect, and
pointers to related work at W3C
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ (18
February, 2004)
Photo.net
Forums | Gearing up | Exploring | Sharing |
Learning
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Pegasus Web Design Resources
features web design, graphic design and Adobe Photoshop tutorials
written by Daniel Piechnick, a professional Web Designer based in
Adelaide, South Australia. He tries to keep the web design and graphic
design tutorials on this site as original as possible, and creates new
tutorials regularly. (18 February, 2004)
Top Ten Mistakes in
Web Design
(18 February, 2004)
Top Ten Mistakes of
Web Management
(18 February, 2004)
Jakob Nielsen authored the above two "Top ten"
http://www.alexa.com
Alexa provides traffic data and rankings on web sites
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Alta Vista:
Who links to your website? How popular are you?
Search for these links using Alta Vista's search. Type "link:"
and your address (don't include
http://www).
Remember any check of this sort only searches the database of the
particular search engine, in this case Alta Vista) (18 February, 2004)
http://selfpromotion.com/
Robert Woodhead,
AnimEigo SelfPromotion.com automates the process of
registering your website with search engines and indexes.. You decide
what sites you want to register with, and the site will generate a
custom form that asks for exactly the information needed to register
with those sites. (18 February, 2004)
HTML Tidy
Dave Raggett: When editing HTML it's easy to make
mistakes. HTML TIDY is a free utility for fixing (HTML) mistakes
automatically and tidying up sloppy editing into nicely laid out
markup. (18 February,
2004) |
Ozone, Dr.
Thaddeus,
Hands-On Training
Great little tutorials in Photoshop (drop shadows, lighting effects,
transparency, tiled backgrounds, 216 colors, etc.) as well as
Javascript rollovers. (18 February, 2004)
Internet.com Corp,
Site
design and graphics
Step by step instructions with illustrations on various effects,
including dripping, soft beveled, and "X Files" text; dirty snow,
transparent GIF's, chalk effect, etc. (18 February, 2004)
Lindsay Marshal,
Color selector
A Website that automates and illustrates your color
selection, but does not demonstrate the color safe palette or their
values. Handy nonetheless. (http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Lindsay/colours.html)
(18 February, 2004)
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Study Guides and Strategies web site
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