Web Design Reports

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Tag Archive: HTML

Get Up And Running With These Web Design Tips

Have you ever seen a website that you were just really impressed with? From layout to graphic design, there are many elements which turn a website from good to great. Here, you will learn some of these tricks. So keep reading and take note of what you read.

If you’re designing a website, make sure the code you write has a valid HTML+CSS. Although most browsers can make sense of code that isn’t valid, it could be rendered correctly or incorrectly. Valid code will render the same way most of the time in modern browsers. You can check the validity of your HTML code with an HTML validator.

On the Internet today, speed is where it’s at. So you must make sure everything on your site loads fast. If your website takes ages to load, they will wash their hands of your site and find one that loads in a reasonable amount of time.

You don’t ever want to use too much graphics. Graphics are indeed important to make your website look well-designed and professional, but if you use too many, it just looks cluttered. Don’t just use graphics to decorate the website; they should be used to make it better. Having the right mix of graphics will improve your site’s usability, too.

Keep the sizes of your files and images small. Excessive loading times are a death knell for any site. The larger the files are that must load, the longer a user’s load time is going to be. Most users will click away if the page doesn’t start to load within the first few seconds of opening your page.

Build your website using a content management system. Knowing how to build a website using just HTML and CSS is good foundation knowledge, but this can only produce a static website. Web design has evolved into providing dynamic content. If you couple your coding skills with the use of a content management system, you can practically build any type of website that you desire.

Add a link where your visitors can send you feedback. You will find out if a link is broken or if a page is not loading properly. If a visitor feel involved, he or she will want to see your website again.

Minimize the amount of clicking or scrolling visitors must do to access information. The more a user has to click or scroll around to find the information they seek, the more likely they are to give up looking for it. Aim for having at least 400 words on every page of your site by combining pages that have content that falls below this number of words.

Make text easy to ready by using colors that contrast or backgrounds that are easy to read text on. When your text is harder to read because the background or text color creates eye strain or portions of text that are unreadable, site visitors are less likely to stick around.

Now you know some great places to begin with web design. Write down what you enjoyed about other sites, and figure out how to incorporate them into your site. Enjoy the process and remember to continue learning.

Difference Between Web1.0, Web2.0 And Web3.0

After the invention of World Wide Web the idea behind the technology has been absolutely changed. It opens the new way to see the world through internet. It makes our day to day life easier in all around. We can easily operate our business globally. We can join a MNC and able to work from home easily.
Web1.0: In the beginning of web the information published in a static form well designed with the text and images. The main features of web w.1.0 are hyper-linking and bookmarking of the web pages. There are some design elements of web 1.0
HTML based Static page.
It consists of framesets.
Online guestbook.
HTML form sent through email.

The term Web2.0 was first introduced by OReilly during the brainstorming discussion MediaLive International. The information available in this form is quite different from the past web1.0. It began in 2002 with new ideas to exchange as well as share the content such as Wiki, Weblogs, Widgets, and Tagging etc.
Key difference between web1.0 and web2.0

In Web 1.0 it is only for read. But in web2.0 you can express yourself by writing.
The former was only for corporate bodies. And the later is about you and your communities.
In web.20 you not only interact with site and webmaster you can also communicate with others who access that website.
Web 1.0 was the age of one and only language i.e. HTML web 2.0 is the field of XML.
While web1.0 was depended on advertising, web 2.0 has been popularized by word of mouth.
Previously was meant for website but web 2.0 is not for site it is also about blogs.
In Web 1.0 there was nothing to exchange. Everything was about one way. Through the emergence of web 2.0 you can exchange your thoughts with other and easily converse with them.
The Web 3.0 could be defined as semantic web, personalization like iGoogle, My Yahoo etc.
The semantic web is a more developed extension of WWW. Wit the help of this technology the web content can be conveyed not only in form of natural language, but also be readable by software agent which letting them to locate, share and assemble information more easily. The concept comes out from Sir Tim Berners-Lee the director of W3C with the vision to make the web medium for exchanging the data, information knowledge.
Other features of web 3.0
It will be more portable and personal.
More focused on the preferences of individuals (Me-onomy)
Advertising oriented.
Widgets with drag and drop facilities.
Dynamic content.
User behavior, user engagement etc.
Though this technology not yet capture the whole web world. It has been spreading out slowly. Some big online business houses have started to follow the standard of web 3.0 few of them are spoke.com, twine.com, wink.com. mybloglog.com, friendfeed.com etc.
Some significant features of web 2.0 technology
Clean and Simple design
Number of columns is few.
Simple navigation which is fixed in every pages of the site.
Central layout

Html Email Design Best Practices

HTML Emails are arguably the most effective of all email marketing designs. Theyre eye catching, engaging and flexible. They provide you with a variety of opportunities to promote your business and achieve email marketing success. However, there are many pitfalls to be aware of when designing HTML Emails. In this article well highlight some of these and give you a few tips to help you design effective email campaigns.

Back to the old school

Theres no point denying it HTML Email design is Old School web design. This means no Stylesheets, JavaScript or Flash, they just wont work consistently across the wide and varied range of email clients.

When it comes to layout its back to a basic table-based structure, which may, to some web designers seem like committing web standards blasphemy. However, when you take into account the number of email clients that either remove or pay no attention to CSS it becomes quite clear going back to basics is the only way to guarantee your email looks the same regardless of which email client is displaying it.
We have found when designing table based layouts using merged cells (indicated by colspan and rowspan in your code), some email clients, especially Lotus Notes will usually distort any layout with merged cells. Instead, using nested tables will work more consistently than merged cells. For example, a two column layout could consist of a base layer of one table with two columns with other tables inserted into each column to give you space to enter your content.
Looking Good

A great deal of formatting can be done using Inline Styles small snippets of CSS code inserted into either a containing table cell (&#60td&#62), in paragraph tags (&#60p&#62) or span tags (&#60span&#62)

Below is an example of an inline style insert into a table cell tag:

&#60td width=”400″ align=”left” valign=”top” style=”color:#000000; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:11px;”&#62

This style would then apply to the text contents of that table cell. Other standard HTML formatting tags such as &#60strong&#62, &#60em&#62, &#60font&#62 etc can be used as well to vary the formatting on top of this base style.
When deciding on a font for your email its always best to stick to a font that most, if not all, of your readers will have. Common fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman and Georgia should be fine. If youre willing to take the risk of a slightly lesser-known font its good practice to specify a set of backup font faces in your inline style eg.
&#60td style=” Lucida Console, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; “&#62

If a computer does not have a certain font it will look to the next in the list to see if it has that one.

Time Warp

When we first got our hands on Microsoft Outlook 2007 we were a bit taken aback with what Microsoft had created, not only locking it down to use only the Word HTML rendering engine (Outlook 2003 will let you choose between normal HTML and Word rendering) but also support for background images had been removed, which meant a real step back with what you can and cant do to keep your emails looking good.

To ensure the most consistent display across the majority of email clients, we took the decision to not include background images in our designs (unless otherwise specified by the customer), and weve come up with a few little tricks along the way to help us keep our designs looking top notch. The main thing to remember is HTML text should only appear on a solid background colour (which you can set in a table cell). There should be no gradients or any other fancy effects behind actual text, unless you plan to include that text in an image.

The final few things…

There are hundreds of elements to take into consideration when designing a HTML email. These are just a few of the most important things to consider:

Create a plain text version of your email to send alongside the HTML version for those who prefer it and for mobile devices and email clients that only accept text only email.
Keep the width of your email between 600-650px to ensure readability for the maximum amount of email clients.
Assign an alt tag to each image so if readers have the images turned off they should see some sort of useful information to assure them the email is legitimate.
Always set height and width attributes on images in your HTML design. Some email clients like Outlook 2003 and 2007 will suppress images in the inbox. Failing to put a height and width will result in your deign be distorted by the security message that is inserted by the email client into the image space.
Use images at the size they are meant to be rather than resizing them with HTML some email clients will ignore the HTML resize and just display the image at its original size.

Whatever you choose to do with your email marketing designs, the most important thing is to test, test and test again. You should always proof your email into the major email clients to ensure its rendering correctly and ask a proof group to check for spellings or design issues too. However, just because there are limitations to HTML email design it doesnt mean you cant be creative or push the boundaries to see what impacts on delivery, open and click through rates. Remember the aim of any email is to achieve your goal and sometimes being safe with your design isnt the best option.

Tasks Handled By A Web Design Company

Web design includes skills and techniques that help to produce and maintain good websites. Web designing may be done in many fields such as graphic designing,, interfacing and search engine optimization. The team that works with it designs the websites as per the requirement by the client. Web engineering is something that includes all the disciplines of web designing and the features required for the working. It is a set of guidelines that helps to form a good website and making it the most popular one.

Web designers have a variety of tools to work with. They are experts on what part is to be focused upon and how it is to be done. This field undergoes lots of changing from time to itme. The basics always remain the same but there are many updating in software and the principles associated with them. Use of vector and raster graphics is very common by web graphic designers for creating design prototypes.

What does a web design company do?

Web Design Company has basically a team of people whom it may hire called as web designers. Now a web designer is not someone like a computer programmer. He has basic programming skills. He may even be a web programmer who may not just create a page to be made available on the internet but also can create his own designs if he is an expert of programming. But the most important thing that a web designer does is to create beautiful and appealing web pages as per the need of the client. They are experts of soft wares like Photoshop and languages such as Java that helps them in animation. They are skilled to add other features to their websites such as sound or short film clips. At the end of the day the main aim of a web designer is to create eye-catchy websites having good graphics and sound-effects. He may even be flexible enough like if sometimes the demand of the client is to write some content so he may be able to do that even.

There lies not a hell of a difference between a web designer and a web programmer. The job of the programmer is implementation of designs by programming in HTML, XTML and some other languages. They are equipped with all the skills required to do intelligent and good programming. Same job can be done by a web designer as well provided he has some programming skills. In fact there are many web designers who offer both of them. They create beautiful WebPages and also help in the programming part. And a good web design company always keeps updating its designers from time to time. They keep in mind the current trend of the internet market and accordingly maintain the scenario of their developers. Since the demand of the clients also vary due to the changing trends in the market. So a good web design always keeps changing according to the demand and keeps adopting to the new technology .Further it also trains and guides its employees so that they give the desired output.

Web Design Company also keeps changing its customers this helps them to get in touch with the new technology and adapt to new skills.

Now there are some skills required for a web designer. Even some courses are also available for being a certified web designer. But a paper can never be a proof of any bodys skills. Degree may definitely add up to ones skills but its the knowledge and the talent that actually helps everyone to get through every hurdle. Theory always restricts you but being practical can help you to be more creative as well.
So before selecting a web designer check his ability in the practical aspect rather focusing on credentials. Check whether he fulfills all the skills you require rather having a good percentage of degree.

Following are some tips that should be kept in mind before selecting a good company. These tips will not only help you to make a right choice but also the things that you be beware of instead of getting into the wrong hands.

Money charged should be result oriented

Its never good to indulge in open ended billing system with designers till the maintenance phase is associated with the project.
Work sharing
A good web designer company always shares its work. You can see their testimonials and portfolios for the authenticity. So, beware of the false promises and high fees charged by companies.

Usage of time saving technology

The web designers who give quality outputs always have technology that is not only time saving but also inexpensive as well. Good companies believe in open source publishing and use of tools like word press. Usage of such tools helps to meet the proper standards thereby saving time and energy.

Maintenance of proper stock

Good companies always believe in smart work. They maintain stocks of template. This helps to maintain customer needs on time and especially at the time of urgency.

Distinguishing between web hosting and web designing

A good web design company would always maintain a difference between hosting and designing. Web host solutions are separate from web design services.

Some updates are left to clients

They develop such architectures that includes providing platform for publishing. This simplifies the process of making changes. And even they are also ready to make minor changes or launching of websites whenever required.

Proper standards and ease of accessibility

A good web design company meets standards such as interface design and ease to access the browser. Even the ones who have even little bit of experience in this field are also meets requirements of search engine optimization. And they are highly flexible as per the demands of the client.

Honesty about the cost

A good web design company is always honest about the time it requires to turn around with the results and also the costs that would be there for it. Unprofessional designers may give you hi-fi promises and even higher rates. But true designers would always tell you before starting any project on how much would be the speed and the rate of the data.

Reno Web Design Firms

In today’s time-crunched world, most people literally don’t have a minute to spare. This hurried pace extends to the realm of website design — your professional Web design must satisfy the demands of users with a wide range of options for viewing the Web.
Even if you create a website design that’s worth a wait, visitors faced with slow download speed aren’t likely to stick around. So how can you make sure that time is on your side? Pay close attention to seven professional Web design tips to create a website that won’t slow your business down.
Clean up your code
While HTML text is much faster than graphic text, there are ways you can make it even faster. Watch out for extraneous HTML coding like spaces, unnecessary tags and even white space — that can increase the size of your files. Remember that less is more, and use defaults for tags or remove them wherever possible.
Compress your images
Images are a great example of how looks can be deceiving in professional Web design. You might not realize just how much space they occupy when you create a website design. By compressing your images before adding them to your professional Web design, you can reduce/shrink a GIF or .JPEG image by up to half its original size. You may also want to specify the height and weight of your images in your HTML, which can decrease loading time.
Pay attention to page size
Even if you use all of the tips above, your page size may still be big enough to cause a slow response when all the pieces of your website are put together. Remember that less is often more in professional Web design, and use only the content that is absolutely necessary. Ideal page size is around 30KB.
Use thumbnails
Thumbnails are an especially helpful website design technique for ecommerce websites. Provide customers with a small, fast-loading image of your product and let them decide whether they want to view the larger version of the image.
Limit use of flash
Flash is a classic example of style over substance and, while it definitely has its place in professional Web design, it must be used sparingly when you create a website. Even if your visitors have the right flash player (and many won’t), it will increase your site’s download time. Flash is also one of the Web site design elements that is not yet accessible to search engines, which means it can only hinder your search engine optimization efforts.
Reduce server requests
Any element of your design that loads from a different server whether it be a graphic, an audio clip, or an ad will elicit an HTTP request each time the page loads. Create a website with limited external content to reduce loading time.
Switch to CSS
Many Web designers now use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) instead of the more traditional table layout. CSS is a styling language that has a dual purpose in professional Web design: it can save you time when you create a website and save your visitors time by drastically reducing page size and download time.
When you create a website design for your business, go the extra mile to ensure your website has the speed your visitors need — or risk getting passed by.