Thursday 21 August 2014

Website Design

Website design embraces many different disciplines and skill sets in the production and upkeep of sites. The different areas of website design include the design of logos, background images and images; the design of the front end; writing, including web standard code and using proprietary scripts; website design for the user experience (Human Computer Interaction), and search engine optimisation. Quite often many people will work in teams that may cover dedicated aspects of the website design game, but some website designers can cover all areas.

The website design term is usually used to describe the process of website design in relation to the design of the front end (client side) of a website, including writing page copy. Website design can overlap website engineering in the broader field of website development.



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Website design post

Website design is a relatively new job, that can be tied in with other fields such as graphics. However the website design is though of from a technology aspect. Today, it has become a large part of usual life of most the population. It would be difficult to imagine life without the web, animated graphics, different font styles, including the irritating music.

The net and website design

In 1989, whilst working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea for the creation of a global hypertext project, later to be known as the World Wide Web. From 1991 to 1993, the World Wide Web was born. Text-only web pages could be viewed by using a browser in single-line mode.

During 1993, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, created the Mosaic browser. At that time there were several browsers, however most of them are based on Unix and the text was naturally heavy. There had been no integrated thought to graphical design elements such as images or music. The Mosaic browser broke that mould.

The consortium was created in October of 1994 for "bringing the World Wide Web to its optimal potential by creating common protocols that promote evolution and to ensure interoperability." This notion put off any individual company property from being monopolised by a browser and programming language, which could have altered the effect of the World Wide Web world wide. The W3C  to this day continues to set the standards, which can be used today like JavaScript.

Andreessen Communications Corp. was started in 1994 and becamewould later be known as Netscape Communications, with version 0.9 of the Netscape browser. Netscape implemented their own HTML tags without taking into consideration the process of procedural methods. For example, Netscape 1.1 includes tags to change the background colours and format the text with tables in web pages.

From 1996 to 1999 the war of browsers began, such as Microsoft and Netscape fighting for the final domain browser of choice. During this years there were many new technologies being released, notably CSS, JavaScript and dynamic HTML. So, the browser wars has resulted in a lot of positive additions and helped evolve website design at a rapid pace.

The revolution of website design

In 1996, Microsoft released its 1st web browser Internet Explorer, complete with its own characteristics and labels. It was also the 1st web browser to support CSS, which at that time was seen as a method of creating dark. The HTML code for tables was originally utilised to show layout information. However, web designers noticed the benefits of using HTML tables to display complicated designs of several columns that otherwise is not possible. Presently, the design and good look and feel took importance over proper structure and practically no time was given to semantics and web accessibility. HTML sites were limited in their choices of design, and even more so with older versions of Hyper Text Markup Language. To create complicated layouts, the majority of web designers chose to use the structures of tables and even use white or clear spacer GIF graphics to keep integrity.

CSS was introduced in December 1996 by the W3C to support the presentation and design of web pages. This enabled semantic HTML code.

In 1996, Flash (originally known as then Fledgling Futuresplash) was developed. At that time, the development toolkit for Flash content was relatively simple compared to now, the usage of basic design and Flash tools, prior to limited ActionScript, and a timeline of drawing, but allowed the website designers to go beyond the point of HTML, animated GIFS, and JavaScript. But, since Flash requires a plug-in and search engines like Yahoo don't understand Flash content, proper website designers avoided using Flash for fear of limiting their market share due to the lack of compatibility. Instead, the designers continued to use animated GIF and JavaScript for power. The benefits of Flash did become quite popular among certain niche users and with time it worked its way into the vast majority of website  browsers, and powerful enough to develop entire websites. While Flash can help to make sites attractive or flashy, Google can't understand the content and won't achieve the website traffic of a real website.

21st Century website design

Since the start of the 21st century, the web has become integrated into the life of the population. As this has occurred Internet technology has indeed been updated. There have also been significant differences in how we access and using the web, what has changed is the way websites are designed.

Website design for today's browsers

From the end of the browser wars, new web browsers have been produced and released on the web Many of the modern web browsers are open source therefore they tend to have a faster development and are more compliant to the modern rules and website standards.

Todays standards for website design

The consortium has issued new standards for HTML (HTML5) and CSS (CSS3), besides the new JavaScript API, every one has their own standard, but unique from others. But, the term HTML5 is only used to refer to the new version of HTML and some of the JavaScript API, it is quite common to use it to refer to the complete new set of standards (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript). The new standards for website design is a huge bound forward for website designers to create excellent websites for todays website browsers.

Designer tools and technologies

Website designers use many design tools depending on what part of the production process that are involved in. These website design tools are updated due to the newer standards and requirements. The principles beneath the website design tools basically don't change at all. Website designers sometimes make vector graphics, raster graphics packages and other website creativity software to design graphics with HTML5 layout or website design prototypes.

The technology used to produce websites include standard HTML mark-up, that can be coded by hand or generated with software using modern WYSIWYG editors. There is also proprietary scripts using add-ons that does not go through the client browser. These are mostly WYSIWYG but often with the choice of a scripting language in the software to customise the website pages being generated.

Other tools for website designers include HTML and CSS code validation and other tools for website accessibility to ensure that the current website being created meet the rules of web accessibility.

Marketing communication and design

Marketing and interaction design of a site can identify what works for the target market. This may be an age group or particular, class of person; therefore, the website designer can understand the needs of the target audience. Website Designers can also know the type of website that they are creating, that is to say, for example, that for business-to-business the design considerations of business-to-business web sites will be different from a website designed for consumers, like a website targeting retail or entertainment. Careful consideration could be done to make sure that the aesthetics or the total website design does not clash with the clear vision and correctness of the content or the usability of the website, take extra care in a business-to-business website. Website Designers should also consider the reputation of the business owner of the website to be represented to ensure that they are shown in good light.

UX and Human-Computer Interaction of website design

The website user's knowledge of website content often depends on the user's thinking of the operation of the website script. This is part of the website design for the Human-Computer Interaction which is the user experience. The website UX relates to the website design, clear instructions and comments on the website. How good a website visitor understands how they can interact in a site may also depend on the interactive design features of the site. If a person believes that the usefulness of the web page, they will be more likely to be happy to use the site. Users which are trained and well versed with the ease of use of the web can discover an easy-to-use site interface more pleasant to use, although, less informative or less useful. Although, less experienced people are less likely to see the benefit and functionality of a lower intuitive Internet front end. This points out the requirement for a Human-Computer Interaction more universal and the usability to facilitate as many website people as is feasible, never mind of the intelligence of the Internet user. A lot of the website design of user experience and interaction website design are thought of during the design of the front end to the website.

Advanced interactive website capabilities might need browser helper objects. The choice of whether or not that you want to have the capabilities which uses plug-ins is a crucial decision in the composition of the user experience. If the plug-in doesn't come as part of the majority of browsers, there is the risk that the website user may not have the know-how, the patience or ability to install the modules only to access the website. If the feature needs advanced understanding of coding, it will be extremely expensive in time or money to code when compared with the total improvement of the function could be added to the user experience. There is also a risk that advanced functionality can not be compatible with older browsers, or hardware configurations. The publication of software that doesn't run as expected could be a lot more annoying for the experience of the person to work with. Depending on the target audience if it will be a possibility that powerful interactive website functions will be needed or if it will be beneficial in adding them in the website design.

Webpage layout

The website design may be influenced by the quality of the webpage layout. For example, a website designer can consider if the page layout of the website, it will be a theme on different pages in the design within the website. Page width measured in pixels may also be thought of as of importance to line up everything in the design and the layout of the website look. Most used websites have dynamic width set to match the current browser window. More widely used today, the maximum webpage width is set to the resolution of the current most popular monitor. Most of web pages can be lined up with the middle for the aesthetics on larger screens. In the good old days the design was usually fixed to the left of the browser window.

Fluid website designs have become more popular in the whole of 2000 as a different approach to the layout used? ?in website tables. Website design was based on the layout in the HTML tables in both the design stage of page look and coding methods. The idea was because of the devices and alternative display sizes of web browsers that the website designers have zero control over. Resulting that a website design can be divided into units (side bars, header, footer, blocks of content, areas of advertising, menu areas) that are transferred to the browser and that fits in the display on display by the browser, as well as the web browser can. As the web browser recognises the details of the website reader's display (size of the window, the font size relative to the window, etc) that the browser can make adjustments to design user-specific website designs to fluids, however the website themes are not fixed width. However using such a screen, you can mostly change the size of the main content units, the sidebars can be moved under the body content in place of to one side of it. This is more flexible than website design based on editable layout that does not fit in the device window. Notice the relative position of the blocks of content might they adjust at the same time as keeping the content in place in the block of content. This also minimises the need for the user to scroll the page horizontally.

Responsive Website Design

Responsive Website Design is the new method, based on CSS3, and a deeper part of the CSS specification of all devices using the page styles through greater usage of the CSS pseudo-selector.

Font faces for website design

Website designers might opt to limit the number of font faces for web sites for only a small number that are similar style, instead of using a wide number of fonts or type faces. The majority of Internet web site browsers recognise only a small amount of font types that website designers use mainly in order to avoid complications.

Font Downloading was subsequently added to the module of sources of CSS3 and now it has been implemented in Safari 3.1, Opera 10 and Mozilla Firefox 3.5. This has now raised interest in typography for the Internet, including the usage of download sources.

Website code quality

Website designers can consider that it is a good practice to play along with with the Internet W3C standards. This is normally achieved using a description in the header which specifies the web standard being used on each page. If they don't comply with the rules, it can make a web page not function or prone to page problems, the rules relate to the proper disposition of the pages for simpler reading and to make sure that elements are properly opened, used and terminated. This includes problems in the HTML and CSS, the design is to be better laid out for the code and ensure that the IDs and classes are identified correctly. Poorly coded pages are of no use. Validation through W3C is done when performing a proper DOCTYPE declaration, which is used to highlight problems in the code. The system identifies the errors and things which do not conform to the standards of website design. All problems should be fixed by the webmaster.

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