Capture Visitors’ Attention Through Your Home Page

What made me decide to share with you this article is the experience I had when I was working as a part-time freelancer. I remember that whenever I planned the design for websites, I always made it a point that the home page is the most attractive page on the site. I made sure that the home page can capture each viewer that visits the site, not only to scan the home page but to enjoy exploring the whole site.

The home page is the page that loads when the Home button is clicked and usually the first page you see when a website loads. Therefore, it is one of the most important pages on your site. Do you agree?

A home page is also like a teaser…

A teaser is one way to advertise, and a homepage advertises too (even a website). A teaser “teases” viewers that drives them to be curious. A homepage should have this characteristic too. Viewers must be curious the first time they see the homepage and make them explore the whole website.

In this article, I will be sharing some of my ideas on how can you let your viewers love your site and tease their eyes by making your home page capture viewers’ attention. But let us know first on what should be the characteristics a home page must have.
Must-Have Characteristics of a Homepage
1. Attractive

Every pages of a site must attract viewers. This way, they won’t get bored while visiting each page of your site. But the home page must be more attractive than the other pages of the site because this is the first page your viewers will see. In creating your homepage, you may ask the question, “How can I make the home page attractive?” The answer to this question is good designing.

Appropriate and Attractive Color Scheme

Colors capture viewers’ attention, especially if they are used in an appropriate manner. If your expected viewers are children, the best colors you can use are the bright ones but make it pleasing to the eyes. If you are designing for a company, then you should choose colors that can give a professional look.

rapid xhtml is one of the websites with very attractive color scheme and still remains to be appropriate for the website. The dominating color, which is White plus the nice shade of Blue they used blended well on the other elements of the site such ash the header, the orange mascot and navigations of the site. It’s very appropriate, clean and professional in look.

Creatively Designed Header

Headers also attract people. With modern designing, headers are now becoming very dynamic and really creative. Take a look at the example below. There are different kinds of tools gathered together and on the monitor part, there’s a video clip playing. This is a good concept of telling the audience that the website is related to media such as photography, video, audio, etc.

Easy-to-Understand Navigation

To capture lots of viewers, you need to have a well-designed navigation. Viewers want everything to be spoon fed on your site, so when they see your navigation they should already understand how it works and so.

Carbonica is one good example that has a well-designed navigation. The designer made a nice concept where the buttons are labeled so that people know on what to expect when they clicked a certain button. Like when clicking the motorcycle button, the page that loads is a calculation of a motorcycle’s emission.

2. Focused

Home page must focus on its purpose. For instance, if the website advertises a company’s services then the viewers must instantly know what the website’s purpose is. And that is to advertise the company and its services.

Viewers do not want to waste their time thinking on what could be the site is all about. Instantly, they want to get the information as soon as the page loads. Like when you are searching for a specific book in a library. If you are looking for a PHP for Dummies book, you don’t want to waste your time going around each section, rather you will just go to the Computer section of books to find what you are looking for. That’s what viewers expect on each site, and you can already give them an idea on what your website is with your home page.

Shopify did a great job on putting focus on what they do. From the domain name up to the home page, you can already grasp what services the website advertise.

3. User-friendly.

One thing that viewers expect on a website is how friendly it can be used. It should provide a comfort and fulfilling time when they explore the site. Many people will say that a home page is just a single page, so it is not important if it is easy to use. I tell you, if the viewer finds it hard to explore the home page then they will just press Alt + F4 or Ctrl + T.

What are the criteria of a user-friendly home page?

Speed

Your home page and other pages must be fast in loading. Or else, your viewers will get disappointed on your site.

Content

There are two things to focus on the content: language and grammar.

In terms of language, English is the widely used all over the world. It is very annoying for viewers when they cannot understand the language you use. If I were to ask, I prefer English to be the language to be used on a website.

There are some people who tend to get annoyed of wrong grammar and leave. So before posting, be sure that the grammar is correct.

Buttons

It should be easy to use and understood by your viewers. Especially in the home page, for this is the starting place of your viewers. So if your buttons are not user-friendly, then they might just leave your page and search for a related one.

Custom Toronto is one of the best examples of site that I find very convenient when exploring. The content is well-written and some information teases you to know more of it, while its buttons are not complicated to use.

4. Drives curiosity.

Awhile ago, I have mentioned that the homepage is like a teaser that drives curiosity on your user. I will give you another analogy. The flyers people distribute inside shopping malls offer 70% off on all or certain items. The offer might suit your needs either be it a boutique or a restaurant. If it suits you, you might go. That’s how a home page must work, it should drive the curiosity of your viewers to visit your site and let them get back next time.

Some Tips to Ponder

I have here some tips that can help you create a captivating home page. To give you comfort in reading, I have categorized each tips based on the elements to be found on a home page.
1. Do not be a spoiler

Home pages are intended to tease viewers, and will have the move to explore. Do not spoil them by putting all information they need on the homepage.
2. Attract

Attract to get their attention by:

Choosing a good background. You can use an image, or a graphic for your background or you can also leave it plain and simple. See the websites below as an example.

Writing a relevant information. Information is very important for viewers, even if this is the last thing they notice. Put a relevant information about what you would like your viewers want to know regarding your site. Make your content as brief and precise as possible for viewers hate to read very long paragraphs.

When creating a content, make sure the following are met:

* Your headline is very catchy.
* Use words that are pleasing to the ears.
* Be creative in choosing words, and make sure people understand the terms you use.
* Your words are spelled correctly.
* The content is grammatically correct.
* Your content is relevant to what you want to express.

Focus on your subject.

These questions can help you to decide on what to put on your home page:

* What is your purpose?
* Who you are?
* What are your goals?
* What do you want to convey?

Just focus on what you intend to show and convey on your home page.
Wrapping Up

There you go. Creating a catchy home page is not that difficult. You just need to:

* Know the basic of designing.
* Be appropriate.
* Be creative to be attractive yet remains to look professional.
* Focus on what your website is.
* Do not spoil them through your home page. Tease.

I hope this article can help you a lot in creating your home page to attract your viewers. Feel free to put some comments below :)

For more information on please visit NJ Computer Doctors online at: http://www.computerdoctorswebsitedesign.com/website_design.html

10 Ideas for Creating Innovative and Unique Web Designs

I am a big fan of Twitter. I consider it the one tool that helped me develop from a person who simply knew how to make websites to a web designer because the exposure to fantastic designers, tutorials, recommended readings, and impressive examples helped me build my design toolset and grow my abilities on both a technical and creative level.

So whenever someone asks my advice on how to become a better designer, things such as social networks (like Twitter and Facebook), design galleries and RSS feeds are at the top of my list of things that you should be using to learn and improve.

With that said, I think it is important that we take all of these things in moderation and limit our consumption of design tutorials and sources of "inspiration". While all of this is a great method for keeping up with the design community and making sure you’re using the latest and greatest methods and standards, I find it a poor formula for sparking true creativity and innovation.

I find an increasing discomfort with the idea of starting a project — be it a personal or professional one — by looking at what other designers have done. Looking at how your problem has been solved before in order to come up with a solution is probably a good idea, but here is the problem, though: we aren’t mathematicians, we are called upon as a source of creativity and asked to produce beautiful and unique experiences.

I believe that most designers do strive to be unique individuals. I believe we always attempt to produce new and exciting results to share with this great community. If this is truly the goal, then we mustn’t be afraid to produce bad results. By bad results, I mean terrible, terrible, awful web designs that should never see the light of day. In order to learn, grow, and innovate, we mustn’t be afraid to fail often and fail early.

There are a few things you can do to help you reach this place of experimentation and out-of-the-box thinking; this article shares a few of them.
1. Start with a Blank Canvas

Starting with another design or any portion of work that you have done before is a great way to save time on a project. In reality, a lot of unused design work can be reworked and recycled into new projects, increasing your productivity. This is a practice I encourage as it saves a huge amount of time and pulls what might have been a great idea that didn’t click on a previous project out of the trash bin. But this is not a great way to come up with that cool new design that is going to set the world on fire.

Start with a blank canvas. Don’t even set the background color to white (which is the default in many popular web design graphic editors such as Photoshop); you may not know if that’s the color you want to go with yet. Try not to restrain yourself to starting at the top of the page layout (the header) or starting with a wireframe layout (if you already don’t use this process). Have a great idea for how navigation might work? Found sudden inspiration for a fantastic way to display page or post titles?

Starting with the details can be the opposite of a normal workflow because we typically start from big to small (i.e., layout structure and then content). However, this is a great way to get the creative juices flowing.

You may be surprised by how well working on a small detail can spark new thoughts in your brain about different areas of the site (which Sacha Greif advises to try out as well on his article on busting through web designer’s block).

Before you know it, you will be skipping around your canvas trying to keep up with the great ideas bouncing around.
2. Think Outside the Box; Don’t Use a Pre-Described Layout

Grid systems such as the 960 Grid System are wonderful for displaying web content, not only because they are easy to set up and because they increase your efficiency in deploying and maintaining website projects, but also because they improve the usability and consistency of your web page layouts.

With some projects, there is something to be said for consistency and cross-browser support, especially if you are dealing with a broad, mainstream target audience.

On the other hand, having such a strict layout mechanism may be the biggest handcuff on a designer looking to think outside of the (layout) box.

What if it didn’t matter what size your page was? What if it didn’t matter how it was laid out?

For a change, create the product and then challenge yourself to a new solution. There is no rule that states your site cannot be accessible unless it fits in a 960-pixel box. So instead of curbing your ideas around these restraints, build the idea and find a way to make it work.

Instead of sticking within your comfort zone, explore different layout types, look at how new standards like HTML5 and CSS3 (with progressive enhancement) can make your work better, and so on.
3. Do Not Use a CMS

Much like set layouts and grid systems, content management systems of today are amazing tools that save time and effort while maintaining beautiful design standards and pretty good flexibility. Platforms like WordPress, Expression Engine, and Drupal are very malleable and are used in innovative ways, but they still do provide designers with restrictions. Especially when combined with grid systems, which many publicly free themes do in order to speed up development, content management systems can be dangerous to your creativity.

It is no rare occasion that I find my first iteration of a client’s website design to be my favorite. 99% of the time, the progressive decline of an initial design can be attributed to a client who wants content added, taken away, or displayed in a particular fashion that the initial layout wasn’t meant to do.

If you are working on a creative project or a project just for fun, take advantage of your newfound freedom over content. Think about it: We use CMSs because we want an easier way to deal with site updates and changes, but if we eliminate this concern — at least on occasions where this is acceptable — we open so many new possibilities for the design.
4. Avoid Online Inspiration

For projects we want to be truly unique and innovative, we should probably avoid looking at what other designers have done before us. This means we mustn’t start our innovative web design project by looking at design galleries and design showcases.

Online galleries and blog posts containing inspirational examples of web designs are useful for getting inspiration. I look through these sites and blog posts all of the time — I love to see what other web designers are up to, and I even recommend you do, too.

Really, my big issue with finding inspiration this way is that it’s just no fun to start your new design with someone else’s design in mind.

Admittedly, this is hard. For example, clients who aren’t sure what they want in their website often find it helpful to provide you with links to websites they like in order to visually demonstrate what they’re expecting. It’s also difficult to start completely from scratch when you’re having a bad day, and to get your creative juices flowing, visual stimulation through design-aggregating websites and blog posts can jumpstart idea-generation.

However, if you want to produce a site that’s unique, see what you can come up with on your own. It won’t always be great — and that’s fine — fail often and fail early. Try to avoid the trap that you have to do as good as the competition when you could dig an even better solution out of your own mind.
5. Try at Least One Thing You Haven’t Done Before

Taking advantage of your experience and building projects based on techniques that have worked well in the past tends to become a standard practice for a lot of us — it’s quicker, easier, and efficient. But this gets stagnant pretty fast, and as part of an industry that shifts in nature very quickly, we should always encourage ourselves to try out new things and forge new talents. Is this going to work out well for you every time? You can bet your ass it won’t, but it will work at least once more than it will if you never try.
6. Pretend Like You Don’t Have to Code It

Let’s set one thing straight. In the "Should web designers know how to code?" debate, I’m of the opinion that web designers do indeed need to know how to markup and their own web design (at least in CSS and HTML).

However, web designers that know they’ll end up having to code a web design means we will have experienced-based design hesitation and restraints while producing the look for a new site (e.g., "I know this transparent PNG won’t work in IE6, and I don’t want to deal with that, so I’ll just avoid it"). The more HTML and CSS browser-rendering issues I encounter, the more it affects the way I develop the mockup of my sites in Photoshop.

Knowing how hard an element or interaction design is going to be to implement using CSS, HTML, and client-side scripting shapes the way I execute my ideas on a graphic level. This really isn’t bad at all. In fact, that’s why you should know how to code your own web designs. Knowing what the medium’s limitations are is key to crafting realistic and usable websites. And if you have deadlines to meet and know of a way to alter a design to save time and retain visual quality, you’ll be a more prolific web designer.

But, in terms of creative freedom, constantly thinking about how difficult or impossible things are to implement is a big restraint, and if we want to create something out of the box, ignorance is bliss.

For projects that need to be innovative — projects that are risk-loving — temporarily pretend that you don’t know how HTML, CSS, and JavaScript works. See what you can come up with. Is it realistic? Does it translate well on the web where people need to use your design?
7. Go Old School

Many designers today are well-versed with the idea that using tables in your web design is sloppy and a bad practice. But this isn’t the entire truth. Tables still hold an important place in our web designs, and while I wouldn’t encourage you to use them to develop a web page layout, they do still have relevant applications such as displaying tabular data.

Tables aren’t the only elements left up on the shelf in the garage these days. Using marquees or blinking elements also stirs up nightmares for a lot of designers, and their poor reputations linger from a dark time in web design.

Trying to find a classy way to use a marquee-like element (which you should do using JavaScript or CSS3 because the tag is deprecated), for example, will most likely be a challenge and a productive exercise in producing a creative solution to bring an old option back to the surface.

Revisiting some of our long lost friends in order to restore their reputation can be a fun project and can spark a lot of creativity.
8. Go New School

Browser testing and debugging sucks. It is one of the worst — yet most necessary — tasks involved in every web design project we embark on. Since web browsers (and other platforms that we have no control over) are displaying our work, it is easy to consider them the most crucial constraint on what is possible in web design.

However, competition in the browser market is ramping up, with browser vendors constantly trying to one-up each another (even Internet Explorer’s playing the game). Competition is good because browsers are less likely to accept the status quo, implementing future web standards more quickly than ever before.

Unfortunately, cross-browser compatibility tends to rain on our parade and limits the extent to which we will go when it comes to exploring how HTML5 or CSS3 can improve the form and function of a project. However, with enough understanding of the new specs, you should be able to use them without neglecting web browsers that do not/will not have support for these future standards.

9. Provide Unique Constraints

Most of what I’ve discussed so far are meant to encourage you to think outside of the box and provide your mind with limitless possibilities of what you can do with your designs. However, if you find yourself fighting a mental block or struggling to take advantage of your newfound freedom, one of the best methods for generating some unique ideas is to give yourself some restraints. Of course, we don’t want to slap on the same old limitations we always have; instead give yourself some clever limitations and see how you can bend your design in order to play by the rules you give yourself.

These constraints can come in any form. For example, what if you avoid using 5 colors that you almost always use in your web designs? What if you designed a site using nothing else but Arial font? What about keeping the page weights of your web designs under, say, 95KB? Pulling off an appealing design within limitations such as these will force you to use your skills to work your way around the walls you build yourself.
10. Collaborate with Others

Working as a member of a team can be both a wonderful and a wonderfully frustrating experience. On one hand, dedicating experts into specialized areas of a website’s production will often yield better results in less time. On the other hand, communicating your own thoughts and ideas with another person can be a challenge, along with trying to interpret their take on the problem the team faces.

However, partnering up with another designer (or a group of designers) can be both fun and inspiring. This technique can be seen at its finest in Dribbble rebound challenges. While Dribbble did not invent this idea, it has brought a lot of light to it with a large and very talented design pool to draw from. Designing based on another person’s work is a great way to force creative results based on the unpredictable efforts of a different designer with limited restrictions.
Conclusion

What will happen if we execute all of these ideas?

Well, let’s take a look:

* Your site will not have a standard layout
* Your design might not function in content management systems without a lot of work and tweaking
* You won’t be utilizing any of the experiences you have accumulated
* You won’t be taking advantage of the experiences other design professionals have willingly shared
* Your design will involve experimental ideas that may not work
* You may be using techniques that are considered old-school (like marquee or blinking elements)
* You may end up using code that not all web browsers support (e.g., CSS3 and HTML5)

Sounds like a pretty awful way to build a website to me — but it may just work.

Really, though, if these ideas produce just one good idea, a new technique, or a better gauge of your professional skills, then you have had succeeded in my book.

If you find just one new idea that is your own and that you love, then you have hit a home run in terms of getting better at web design. This will not happen all of the time; it won’t even happen most of the time. The real value in exploring your own creativity is to be able to use just one idea that no one else has done before.

What other methods do you use to spark creativity in your work? Have you tried the ideas discussed in this article before (and how did it go)?

Check out our Latest Under Construction website page

Under Construction: http://www.njcomputerdoctors.com/

DJ Don Puttin" on The Hits

New Jersey Computer Doctors is proud to announce our latest completed website design project. DJ Don's Puttin' On The Hits

DJ Don and Puttin' On The Hits! is committed to providing top quality service. Your satisfaction is our number one goal! We are available for Weddings, Graduations, Summer bbq's, Holiday Parties and more! We are happy to perform at charity events and legitimate fundraiser benefits.

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Puttin' on the Hits! - Choosing a DJ company for your next event can be a very difficult decision. Your satisfaction is our number one goal! We are available for Weddings, Graduations, Summer bbq's, Holiday Parties and more! We are happy to perform at charity events and legitimate fundraiser benefits. Puttin' On The Hits! of New Jersey is the best choice. With many years of experience, our DJ's and Emcee's know and have what it takes to bring out the best in every event.

Our professional and reliable staff have full knowledge of what works and what does not work on every type of event. Through music selection and personal interaction, our DJ's and Emcee's motivate and entertain your guests, leaving them with lasting memories for years to come. Not all DJ's are alike. That is why at Puttin' On The Hits!, we have a variety of DJ's to fit your style and needs.

So why should you hire Puttin' On The Hits! for your next event?
Simply put, because we are the best. What is the secret to our success? We have professional, reliable,
and creative DJ's and Emcee's who will cater to your style and wishes. The difference between our competitionand us, we listen. We take in all of your wishes and combine them with our experience and you get the most fun possible in any one night. Our experienced staff will help plan your event from the beginning to the end. If it is a Wedding Reception you are planning, we will make all introductions and announcements as well as smoothly transitioning through all of the formalities.

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WHERE ARE WE?

Puttin' on the Hits! is located in Barnegat, NJ, 35 miles north of Atlantic City, 75 miles south of New York City and 60 miles east of Philadelphia. We are minutes away from Long Beach Island and Seaside Heights, two major summer vacation resort areas located on the Atlantic Ocean.

View the newest Website Design online at: http://www.puttinonthehits.com/

For more information please visit NJ Computer Doctors online at: http://www.computerdoctorswebsitedesign.com/

About NJ Computer Doctors

For more information on please visit NJ Computer Doctors online at: http://www.computerdoctorswebsitedesign.com/

We are a full service cost-efficient, expert Computer Repair, Service, PC Upgrade, Website Design & SEO company located on the New Jersey Shore.

We offer the following Web Development & Internet Marketing Services:

Web site design, web development, web site maintenance, Organic SEO Marketing, corporate web design, commerce web design, flash design,graphic design, illustration, multimedia design, 3D design & development, brand building / micro sites, 3D product modeling, 3D animation.

Customized Web site Development programming for small to enterprise level business web sites.

Search Engine Optimization - to help raise your profile on all the major search engines. Shopping carts, complete e-commerce solutions, flash, 3D animation, integrated streaming video, database integration, MYSQL, CSS, PHP, c-panel & Dreamweaver driven modular and dynamic design.

Website hosting - Computer Doctors offers competitive website hosting packages starting at $9.99 a month. All websites are hosted on a green energey server via. Go-Daddy. All website design packages come with 2 years of complimentary website hosting courtesy of Computer Doctors.

New Jersey Computer Repair from Computer Doctors will provide professional computer service in your home or office, at a time that is convenient for you.

That is correct, all you need to do is mention that you saw us on the internet and you will automatically receive a 15% discount off your service call from Computer Doctors.

Computer Doctors LLC. offers a wide variety of comprehensive services and benefits that are designed to cater to the specific needs of our customers. Our experienced, professional and amiable staff members are dedicated to ensuring your 100% satisfaction on each and every job. Call today to experience the many benefits that dedication and business integrity can bring.

SERVICE & SALES OF PC'S AND SERVERS
PC HARDWARE & SOFTWARE INSTALLATION
PC REPAIR SERVICE
PC TROUBLESHOOTING
HOME PC SUPPORT
BUSINESS NETWORK SUPPORT
VIRUS REMOVAL, PROTECTION, INSTALLATION & REPAIRS
CUSTOM BUILT PC's
NEW COMPUTER SET-UP
COMPUTER REPAIR TRAINING HOME & OFFICE
DATA BACKUP & RECOVERY
COMPLETE WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT & MAINTENANCE
WEB & GRAPHIC DESIGN/WEB SITE PROMOTION

About NJ Computer Doctors

For more information on please visit NJ Computer Doctors online at: http://www.computerdoctorswebsitedesign.com/

We are a full service cost-efficient, expert Computer Repair, Service, PC Upgrade, Website Design & SEO company located on the New Jersey Shore.

We offer the following Web Development & Internet Marketing Services:

Web site design, web development, web site maintenance, Organic SEO Marketing, corporate web design, commerce web design, flash design,graphic design, illustration, multimedia design, 3D design & development, brand building / micro sites, 3D product modeling, 3D animation.

Customized Web site Development programming for small to enterprise level business web sites.

Search Engine Optimization - to help raise your profile on all the major search engines. Shopping carts, complete e-commerce solutions, flash, 3D animation, integrated streaming video, database integration, MYSQL, CSS, PHP, c-panel & Dreamweaver driven modular and dynamic design.

Website hosting - Computer Doctors offers competitive website hosting packages starting at $9.99 a month. All websites are hosted on a green energey server via. Go-Daddy. All website design packages come with 2 years of complimentary website hosting courtesy of Computer Doctors.

New Jersey Computer Repair from Computer Doctors will provide professional computer service in your home or office, at a time that is convenient for you.

That is correct, all you need to do is mention that you saw us on the internet and you will automatically receive a 15% discount off your service call from Computer Doctors.

Computer Doctors LLC. offers a wide variety of comprehensive services and benefits that are designed to cater to the specific needs of our customers. Our experienced, professional and amiable staff members are dedicated to ensuring your 100% satisfaction on each and every job. Call today to experience the many benefits that dedication and business integrity can bring.

SERVICE & SALES OF PC'S AND SERVERS
PC HARDWARE & SOFTWARE INSTALLATION
PC REPAIR SERVICE
PC TROUBLESHOOTING
HOME PC SUPPORT
BUSINESS NETWORK SUPPORT
VIRUS REMOVAL, PROTECTION, INSTALLATION & REPAIRS
CUSTOM BUILT PC's
NEW COMPUTER SET-UP
COMPUTER REPAIR TRAINING HOME & OFFICE
DATA BACKUP & RECOVERY
COMPLETE WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT & MAINTENANCE
WEB & GRAPHIC DESIGN/WEB SITE PROMOTION

Web Design Versus Web Development

For more information please visit NJ Computer Doctors online at: http://www.computerdoctorswebsitedesign.com/

The terms web designer and web developer are used interchangeably in the media and advertisements. But, they are not the same thing. Design involves what the visitor sees on your website, development involves the site’s functionality. This article explores the difference between these two disciplines.

A website contains several distinct aspects:

Look and feel – primarily the graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
Content – information, products, etc available on the site.
Functionality – functionality includes interactive features that the web site provides to the visitors and the required infrastructure needed to provide them.
Usability – the site from a visitor’s perspective and includes things like program interactions, navigation and usefulness.

Look And Feel

Look and feel includes overall appearance of the website. A Graphic designer decides on what colors and fonts to use and how to layout each of the sites pages.

The graphic designer needs to have a good appreciation for aesthetics and feeling for what combinations of colors and imagery will project the image that the website owner wants visitors to have of the site.

Content

Content is all of the text that is found on a website and includes everything from the privacy policy to a very persuasive sales letter extolling the benefits of a product and asking the visitor to part with their hard earned money and everything in between. If it is written text then it is part of the content. You need a copywriter and editor to create good content.

Functionality

Functionality includes all of the interactive aspects of a web site and includes animation. The common denominator is that programmers using the various web programming languages that work either on a web server or in a web browser create all of these functions.

Flash can be used to animate graphics. Perl, php and java are programming languages used on the web server to create sophisticated dynamic web pages. These pages can work independently but most commonly with a database to create all of the features we have come to expect from a website.

JavaScript is used in browser to create a lot of cool effects such as swapping images when a mouse moves over an image, “ticker tapes”, links changing colors, etc. JavaScript works in the user’s web browser rather than on the web server.

There are also other “backend” applications that are transparent to the visitor such as form processing, content management and other administration programs that make it possible for non-programmers to maintain some aspects of the website’s data.

All of these programs have to be integrated into the HTML code to be used on the webpage.

Usability

Usability is the website viewed from the user’s point of view and involves mostly testing things like:

Does the look and feel are actually portraying the proper image?
Is the navigation is user friendly?
Does the navigation lead the visitor to where the owner wants them to go?
Does the site load quickly?
Do the applications work properly?


Design Versus Development

Unfortunately, there is a lot of overlap and integration needed between web design and web development. When you toss in content creation and usability testing, it becomes a real mess.

Can a single individual do all of these things? There are some people who can do all of these things but most people only do one or two of the tasks.

Web design usually involves content creation and look and feel while web development involves creating the functionality and testing its usability.

Web designers need to be proficient with graphic design tools like Photoshop. Most also know HTML so they can implement their designs. However, using animation on the site and layout for the site’s content are also part of the web designer’s responsibility.

Many site owners provide the content for the website but a web designer needs to be able to edit and even rewrite the content if necessary. Web designers also normally do the usability testing for the navigation and site loading speed.

Web development programmers create the functionality for the website, but all of that functionality must be integrated into the HTML pages on the site. Alternatively, the HTML content could also be integrated into the program. Web developers also do usability testing on the site, at least for the functionality they create. So the programmer also needs to have some HTML knowledge as well.

In either case the web designer and web development programmer need to work together to assure that the website does everything that the site owner requested.

Bottom Line – Only large companies can afford to hire separate experts in graphic design, content creation, programming and usability testing when building a new website. In most other cases, the web designer and web development programmer are two different people who must work together to create a successful website.

Separating the Content from its Presentation

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The main idea behind the concept of separating the content from its presentation is to allow website developers a useful framework to develop their website giving them the ability to change the website’s appearance whenever they like without needing to redo the content structure. This article will explain the rationale behind separating content from presentation.

Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t just one method for implementing this concept. More than that, since the introduction of technologies such as CGI, ASP, and PHP that allow web developers to generate dynamic web pages, a lot of companies have found creative ways to develop their website applications using this concept as their foundation.

Over the past few years, the internet community has been trying to create a set of standards for creating web sites. A new technology called CSS or Cascading Style Sheets has been introduced. There is nothing actually new in the way CSS handles a web page’s presentation. CSS allows the developer to define a style for each html tag element. This is similar to the method developers (programmers) used in the old days when they attached a variable to each html tag defining its style. The major difference is that CSS style definitions can be interpreted by most of the existing browsers available while in the older method the dynamic web page engine performs the interpretation.

The internet standards organization W3C has encouraged the use of CSS by enhancing its ability to control the web page’s look and feel. New style options have been added to the CSS specifications that have not been added to the HTML description language. There’s no doubt that this was a smart move. It’s forced web developers to use CSS to achieve an attractive web page that also supports the principle of content separation. Unfortunately CSS did not find its way into the internet mainstream easily because of compatibility issues with most web browsers. These days CSS is widely supported by most of the major web browsers, while CSS2, an enhanced version of CSS still has serious compatibility issues.

Obviously, the separation of content from its presentation deals not only with the styling aspects, but also with browser compatibility issues. The styling aspects were the first to be handled by web developers and web designers. As the complexity of information technology (IT) systems become increasingly more difficult to maintain, the internet community is looking for a solution that will become a standard so that content can be easily be managed. One goal for this standard is to define a “language” that IT systems can “talk” with each other and exchange information. Large corporations have historically used many different software platforms in their networks to conduct business. Internet based applications can provide a single platform that can act as an intermediary between all of these different systems and allow communication between them.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) has been adopted as a standard to present the content itself. OFX (Open Financial Exchange) is a close relative of XML that has been widely used by financial institutions who have been using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems to transmit orders and invoices over private networks, intranets and the internet for several years.

The need to present the content in a standard way that separates it from any design elements was so urgent that for the first time in software development history all the three major players (SUN, IBM, and Microsoft) actually agreed with each other and XML become a standard almost overnight and was adopted by many content providers and news agencies.

Yet the concept was not fully implemented. CSS handles the styling aspects while XML handles the document content. What about the webpage layout? New websites are been published each day by thousands. Every day millions of new web pages are being added to the internet’s global database. Webmasters have found that changing the page background color or the font color might not be enough to keep their website fresh and polished to compete with other new websites. However, changing the website layout can sometimes involve a lot of effort because it involves modifying the web page source code. XSL was introduced to solve that issue. Consider XSL a set of rules that can describe a web page layout. Combine it with XML (and optionally with CSS) you will get a valid html file.

XSL is very similar in its mechanics as any other dynamic web page generator. Beside the fact that XSL is platform independent, its biggest advantage is that it can be processed on the client side. The web server sends the client the content using XML format and the layout definition using XSL format. By doing that, the load on the web server’s CPU is reduced allowing it to perform other tasks more quickly. However, XSL was not adopted by all the major web browsers. So unlike XML, XSL has not found its way to the market easily.

Before you run back to your desk and start redesigning your website according to these magnificent standards, you should be aware that those technologies are really not needed most of the time. In fact, using them unnecessarily can cause performance problems. CSS usually will not cause your system to slow down. Just try to keep your CSS file as small as possible. Many web developers maintain large CSS files with lots of unused style definitions. Deciding to work with XML is a serious decision. If your website generates dynamic web pages supported by databases like MySQL, adding additional XML functionality will definitely reduce your website performance. Sometimes you won’t have a choice and will need to upgrade your hardware to maintain your website’s performance. There is no rule of thumb for this issue. The decision should be based on each system and its engineering demands. My advice to you is to think two steps ahead. Try to predict what kind of future services your website will be providing. Plan your website properly at stage one and save yourself lots of effort later.




About the Author:
Warren Baker is an Internet business consultant for WebDesigners123.
WebDesigners123 connects the Web Designers with Webmasters who need their services.

Annoying Website Design

Have you ever considered that your website may be annoying? When it’s comes to website design, knowing what visitors hate most is a must, unless you don’t want them to visit you again. This article describes what you should exclude from your website. If you know about an annoying website, feel free to send this article to its webmaster.

A few weeks ago I received an email from a colleague asking me to check one of the website he had developed. He is a web designer and his client wanted a nice attractive flash header. The flash header was great. You can’t miss it at all. Some nice graphics elements were flying in while sound effects created just the right atmosphere. However, after starting to explore the website, the header became very annoying because every time you clicked on the website the header restarted. What was pleasant initially became very annoying very quickly, disturbing your concentration and making it difficult to read what was on the page.

He is not the first to create what I like to call – "annoying website design". Many webmasters, especially new webmasters are totally “in love” with their ideas and tend to go overboard with their design in one way or another. It’s nice to have an attractive header, but is it really necessary to assault the visitor’s mind with it? In my opinion, absolutely not!

Webmasters sometimes forget that their website design should send a message to the visitor that should reflect the website topic and not the programmer’s skill level.

Is Your Website Design Annoying?

Well…. It’s not that hard to be annoying. However, some webmasters are much better than others at annoying their visitors. Check my top 5 list and decide for yourself whether you have been annoying your visitors.

Background music – Unless you are operating an online internet radio station or sell music CDs, why play a midi/wav file in the background continuously on every page?
Huge font size – If you are designing a website for people with a disability then you are doing the right thing, but if not then you are shouting. People don’t like it when someone shouts at them.
Small font size – Do you want to be heard? Keep a normal tone, don’t shout but "speak" in a reasonable volume.
Overlapping layers – Layers can be very useful up to the point. But not when they are being used to put an annoying message in the visitor’s face. Don’t try to force your visitor to read your messages. Try persuasion instead of brute force.
Popup windows – Even though popup windows are now blocked by many add on tools, webmasters keep using them. The annoying part of popups is sometimes we actually miss important information because of those anti popup tools. Haven't you heard the old phrase "if you can’t beat him, join him”? Don’t use pop up windows. Put your important messages in a central place on your website.

Most likely each one of us has our own private top five lists. You probably have many more annoying design cases in mind. Well, you’re right, the list is much longer then that. I just wanted to describe some of the highlights in order to bring this important subject your attention.

Some of you are probably reading those lines and smiling while some others have a feeling a deja-vu. Keep in your mind that as a webmaster the last thing you want to do is put lots of effort into your website and then find out that your visitors hate it. It's not a matter of taste, it's more about being the same polite person we all try to be when we go to a party.

I tried to point out a few things that might be useful to some web designers and webmasters. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to send this article to my friend, hopefully he’ll send it to his client :)

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