Independent Digital

Why You Should Use CSS
By Allan Burns

It seems more and more webmasters are using CSS for the design and layout of their sites rather than depending on tables and HTML mark up. As well as being more efficient in terms of page size and reusing CSS templates many webmasters believe that it also contributes towards search engine friendliness.

Jacob over at Blogging Pro has written an article based on his personal experiences and points out what he believes to make a better more search engine friendly site.

For a long time I have always loved using tables for site layout, but the general consensus is now that tables are bad for layout. I agree once you start nesting tables things start to get complicated and messy. All of this extra HTML in your page gets in the way of the real content that the search engines are after. If you separate design from content the search engines can just crawl the content and ignore the design.

Separating content from design also means that pages are much easier to update, rather than having to rewrite every page all you need do is alter the stylesheet. This saves you no end of time and saves you no end of bandwidth, the browser only has to pull down the stylesheet once if you use it for all of your pages. Not only have you saved on bandwidth costs but you have speeded up page loading, this is good for both your visitors and the many bots that crawl your site.

I have started to use CSS in more of my sites and I am going to use CSS solely on my next site which means learning about how CSS is used for layout. One of the sites that I have found useful is the Web Design Group where they have a guide to cascading style sheets. The site also includes lots of links to other CSS resources.

If you are not using CSS it would be well worth your time learning the CSS tags and their properties. Think of it as a future investment, the time you spend now will pay for itself in better search engine ranking, saved bandwidth and you will cut down on your maintenance and development time for your new sites.

From the Blog of Allan Burns. Plenty of tips to keep you busy on yuor website.

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The Well Designed Webpage
By Gene DeFazzio

Balance, organization and focus

The well designed webpage has balance, organization and focus. If all the pages of your website follow that type of pattern they will have that clean, uniform appearance that most web designers shoot for. Cluttered and unorganized content turns people off . Don't underestimate the power of your webpage layout it can make or break a website.

Optically clean and user friendly graphic design and text are essential to the credibility of a website. A well thought out approach to webpage design will provide easy navigation, user friendly access, and present its content clearly for the visitor to digest. Balance is essential to this.

Balance

Balancing the content of your webpages is more that just producing an attractive layout. Providing a means for your visitors to easily scan your webpages is far more important. People coming to your website are looking for some specific information and/or product details and the sooner they find it the better your website's performance will be.

Producing a well balanced webpage layout entails presenting your visitor with a pleasant visual experience. Most top performing websites demonstrate this effect by clean and well focused layouts. The minute your eye perceives this type of webpage there is a sense of order and balance. The eye will grasp this type of layout as a pleasant pattern, uncluttered and organized.

Organization

The well designed webpage makes good use of white space to lead the eye around the content. It also emphasizes the main features of the page with a logical organization of both text and graphics. Be sure your webpage is properly balanced and organized into logical information zones. Avoid clutter that will cause a distraction.

If you ask why something works and you push back far enough, eventually everything seems to be based on contrast: the ability to distinguish one thing from another. Composition, sequencing, even legibility all rely on devices that affect the contrast between things.

Chris Pulman, The Education of a Graphic Designer

Information, presented on a webpage, follows its own rules of balance and organization is the key. The main focus of the page should be the most obvious thing a visitor sees. This would be in the title of the page and the header text. Next follows the content or body copy. Placed at the heart of the webpage your main content text will be naturally seen by the visitor as a natural progression of the title and they will read on.

Focus

Avoid placing navigation bars, ads and links in inappropriate places on your page. (e.g. most clicks on ads come from the ones that are embedded in the content of the page anyway) They should never detract from the main focus of your webpage. These should always be treated as supporting elements only, never as points of focus or allowing them to become distractions from your main content.

The focus of a webpage should always be its main message. Other elements, even necessary ones, should be seen as framing the content and must never be allowed to overpower it. Keep your supporting material unobtrusive and present your message as the focus of your webpage by careful framing and emphasis.

Gene DeFazzio is the webmaster and author of the Rocketface(R) Workshop http://www.rocketface.com/ - A informational website for novice webmasters and home of the comprehensive webmasters tutorial "How to Design a Website".

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Easy Website Construction
By Gene DeFazzio

Website construction

You have decided on the design of a new website and the time has come to assemble and construct it. But, before you do, you should organize your data in such a way as to make sure construction goes easily and organization is the key to making this happen.

Gather together all of the elements that make up your website design: web pages, scripts, graphics, forms, etc. and place them in a directory folder dedicated only to your site. This directory folder should be organized on your hard drive just as you intend it to be organized on the internet.

When you have organized your website directory folder in this manner you will have at your disposal all of the building blocks that make up your site. This will provide for easy maintenance and manipulation of your website in the future.

Steps to constructing your website

Now that your data is organized use the following checklist to be sure that you construct your website correctly. The main steps are as follows;

The first (index/homepage) page should fit, on screen, in an area 640 - 740 pixels wide by 460 - 520 pixels high. - This ensures that nearly every visitor to your introductory page will see its important information. Short text lines in all links - Be as descriptive as possible in your text links but keep them short. (i.e. 40-60 characters). Short paragraphs - Visitors scan web pages and only read the information that they are looking for. Long paragraphs are difficult to read on a computer screen. Keep them brief. (i.e. 4-8 Lines).

"Alt" labels on all graphics - Search engines and web surfers who are without graphics capabilities cannot see images. The "alt" tag is a way to describe the missing image.

Index or site map for large website - All web sites should have a site map. It is the backbone of your navigation system and provides access to all of the pages in your site at a glance.

Color coordination - Use only two or three basic colors for your website and stick to that color scheme throughout your site. This provides continuity. Also, be sure to reflect this in your text link colors.

Quick download time - People do not like to wait while a web page is being downloaded. Optimize your index/homepage to download in less than 30 seconds, the quicker the better.

Use of browser-safe color palette - If you want your graphics and text to display uniformly for all of your visitors use browser-safe colors only.

All pages, other than your index/homepage, should be designed for a width of 640 - 740 pixels; the length can be whatever is appropriate for the content.

Clear, easy to follow navigation - Website navigation is the single most important factor in providing a pleasant experience for your visitor. Simple is better when designing your navigation system.

Consistency from page to page - visitors will know they are still on the same website regardless of which page they are viewing. Use common headers and footers throughout your website.

Organization of the information and of the website - Simplicity and order must be the rule when you set-up your website. This is as important to you as it is to your visitors, now and in the future, as your site begins to grow.

White space or negative space - This is how to direct your visitors eye around a web page. Make good use of borders, line breaks and spaces.

Contrast of text and background for easy reading - Remember, reading on a computer screen is hard on the eyes. By providing high contrast and low key backgrounds on your web pages eye fatigue will be reduced.

Good object/text alignment - A balanced web page layout is imperative for a professional appearance. Pick an alignment style and stick with it. This also helps your visitors comprehension when they read the content of your website.

Note: Always try to keeps things 740 pixels wide or less, simply because you want to design for the lowest common denominator or screen resolutions which by most standards is 800x600. Some people have less, going as low as 640x480, but to design for that just doesn't leave enough space to accomplish anything worth doing. Organization is the key to easy website construction I can't say enough about the importance of organization in website design. When you know where everything is you free yourself up to do other things. And, one of the most important things is to have the time to exercise your creative talents. Its easy to get caught up in the day to day mechanics of designing and maintaining a website and poor organization just makes the job harder. Too much of this type of busy work will stifle your creativity and you can grow stale.

Gene DeFazzio is the webmaster and author of the Rocketface(R) Workshop http://www.rocketface.com/ - A informational website for novice webmasters and home of the comprehensive webmasters tutorial "How to Design a Website".

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