Sites That Make Sense

Written by Stephanie Cordray


Context isrepparttar whole picture of your site: What it's about, how you navigate throughrepparttar 132568 different pages,repparttar 132569 information about your business, and of courserepparttar 132570 graphics. You are creating an environment forrepparttar 132571 visitor through your choices for these aspects of a website. This environment you create determinesrepparttar 132572 message you are sending and how a visitor might experience and feel about your site. The type of business or site subject in part determines what context is best for you. Context is oftenrepparttar 132573 least considered factor for new designers. Context isrepparttar 132574 "glue" that builds your site into o要e significant message to impart to your visitors and how that message is understood.

This glue holds together allrepparttar 132575 aspects of your site:repparttar 132576 usability, download times, text, graphics,repparttar 132577 look and feel, interactivity, and other aspects. Some expamples of context arerepparttar 132578 differences between a site for a bank and a site for computer games. A bank site is usually conservative with formal textual content and very businesslike graphics whereas a game site will be upbeat, usually a lot of neons and flashy bright colors and informal textual content. Gettingrepparttar 132579 idea? These sites work well within their contexts but never shallrepparttar 132580 twain meet. Banks are serious business, game sites are all about fun. You want your bank to take you seriously don't you? Whereas you want to be entertained o要 a game site.

When planning your website,repparttar 132581 best place to start is with a text document or pen and paper if you are more comfortable with those instrument, and design it fromrepparttar 132582 top down. Designing from top down gives yourepparttar 132583 opportunity to decide what message you want to impart to your readers forrepparttar 132584 end result. After you have decided that, you can begin to fill inrepparttar 132585 steps fromrepparttar 132586 overall picture torepparttar 132587 smallest detail of your site. This part of site building can take weeks of planning beforerepparttar 132588 first web page is ever made while other sites start out with an initial ideal and evolve from that ideal.

Items to consider when planning your website are: Font color and type Should be consistent and appropriate torepparttar 132589 site. o要e thing I hear a lot among designers about this issue isrepparttar 132590 use of comic sans font this font is generally regarded as unprofessional and while it has appropriate uses such as in fun sites it's not a very good font overall. For most sites it's best to stick to something that is easily readable such as sans serif. Color is also a sticky point. I've seen sites that can use bright colors and it works and other sites where it fails abysmally. For instance, using a bright bright yellow text color o要 a black background.. it hurtsrepparttar 132591 eyes and is guaranteed to send your visitors away sooner than you might want them to leave.

Linking and navigation Links should be inrepparttar 132592 same place o要 each page. Whether you use buttons, drop down menus, or text links they should be consistent and inrepparttar 132593 same place throughout your site. Include links that your visitors can use, not just links you find interesting.

Logo Your logo is your brand or trademark for your company whether it is product or service oriented. Each page should haverepparttar 132594 same logo.

Textual Content Site Title: The site title shows atrepparttar 132595 top ofrepparttar 132596 browser bar when a visitor comes to your site. A site's title should not o要ly containrepparttar 132597 full name of a site(if it differs from your domain name but also some descriptive information about your site. For instance, Designers Edge's title not o要ly containsrepparttar 132598 site name but also that is it a site about web design, free graphics, and 3d art. Should contain what you wantrepparttar 132599 readers to understand about your site. Headings and descriptions. Headings are your way of drawing attention to a particular section of textual content. They should be simple, complete, and consistent. They should give a good summary ofrepparttar 132600 textual content over which they preside.

Flash Deadly Sins (that can kill your web business)

Written by Alan Steward


Flash Deadly Sins - How Flash can kill your web business

Looks like every client wants a Flash site these days butrepparttar reality is...as flashy as these sites may look, there are many negatives you may want to consider before delving into Flash.

Deadly Sin One - Long Load Times

This isrepparttar 132565 most obvious problem with most Flash sites. Flash files can get large in a hurry and ifrepparttar 132566 page takes too long to load, your visitor will move on without even seeing your site. Ideally, you would want your Flash web page to load just as fast as a 'regular' page with text and images. And yes, it can be done!

Problem #1 - Images

The whole reason why Flash was developed was to be able to use vector graphics on web pages. Vector Graphics are infinitely smaller than pixel based images, they can be resized to any size and animated without creating large file sizes. Unfortunately, many designers use regular pixel based graphics like photos in their Flash design and end up with huge files. Rule #1 for good Flash design should be...Use Vector Graphics only!

Problem #2 - Sound

What is a good picture without sound? Once you have this great Flash animated page, you want to add sound to it. This isrepparttar 132567 #2 culprit resulting in large file sizes and slow loads. The trick here is to use loops. Flash Music Loops are ultra short slices of music, that when looped in Flash play great background music sound tracks that load fast and sound great. You can find Flash Music Loops at http://www.flashmusictracks.com These loops that are near CD quality and most are only 15k or less in size. They also offer a free Flash Music Player that allows forrepparttar 132568 music to continue playing even ifrepparttar 132569 visitor switches to another page, you can even select a different music track or stoprepparttar 132570 music at any time while browsing, totally impossible with any normal Flash implementation. Another thing that helps keep file sizes down is to use low-res MP3 files for button effects and sound effects. You don't really need 128k MP3 quality when most computer's speakers will sound just as good with 24k or 32k MP3s. Another easy file size saver...use mono!

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