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.
Tag: CSS
Advantages Of Tableless Websites
HTML was originally designed as a semantic markup language intended for sharing scientific documents and research papers online. However, as the Internet expanded from the academic and research world into the mainstream in the mid 1990s, and became more media oriented, graphic designers sought ways to control the visual appearance of the Web pages presented to end users. To this end, tables and spacers have been used to create and maintain page layout.
Problems then started to arise from the use of these techniques. As many webpages are build with tables nested within tables, this resulted in large HTML documents which use more bandwidth than documents with simpler formatting. With slower performance, the internet slowly begun to decline and the Web development industry shrank. Because of this, several UI development was carried out by coders with greater knowledge of good coding practice. It was around this time that many became critical of messy coding practices and the idea of tableless design began to grow.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were developed to improve the separation between design and content, and move back towards a semantic organization of content on the Web. According to popular Web design outsourcing Philippiness companies, the term “tableless design implies the use of CSS to position HTML elements on the page but it should be noted that tables and CSS are not mutually exclusive. Many experienced HTML coders use CSS to manipulate tables frequently.
Advantages
There are several advantages through the use of tableless websites, these includes:
Accessibility
As a result of the separation of design (CSS) and structure (HTML), it is also possible to provide different layouts for different devices, e.g. handhelds, mobile phones, etc. According to different Web design outsourcing Philippiness companies, it is also possible to specify a different style sheet for print, e.g. to hide or modify the appearance of advertisements or navigation elements that are irrelevant and a nuisance in the printable version of the page.
Maintainability
In tableless layout using CSS, virtually all of the layout information resides in one place: the CSS document. Because the layout information is centralized, these changes can be made quickly and globally by default. The HTML files themselves do not, usually, need to be adjusted when making layout changes. If they do, it is usually to add class-tags to specific markup elements or to change the grouping of various sections with respect to one another.
Bandwidth Efficient
Clever implementation of tableless design can produce web pages with fewer HTML tags thus reducing page download times. According to web design consultants and Web design outsourcing Philippiness companies, using external style sheets to position page elements means more mark up language may be cached and further reduce download times for subsequent pages using the same resources.
Web Design
Fantastic And Creative Web Design Styles www.guidedcreative.com Recently, my department was tasked with a goal that left a few of us filled with a bit of anxiety (as it does most teachers when asked to take on this task)-our goal for the new year is to create or revise an online teaching portfolio. While most teachers are expected to have a completed portfolio they can call up at a moment’s notice, that portfolio is generally in print form and lacks the interactivity that is possible with today’s technology. So, I was excited to tackle this project and expand my already existing mini-portfolio to a full-fledged site with samples, student work, videos, images, and lesson plans.
George David Clark of The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses three tips for a successful portfolio in his 2012 article on the subject. According to Clark, in developing a portfolio, a teacher should focus on organizing to minimize By providing the target audience with a clear organizational structure and cutting content that doesn’t web developers support that structure, a teacher can ensure that one clear message regarding theory and approach to instruction is being communicated. In addition, a strong teaching portfolio should clearly chart a teacher’s development and maturation as a professional. Finally, Clark suggests focusing on the student as a measurement of success.
Christmas is coming and we should think how to cheer up yourself or your design related friends and I came up with list where I included all bestsellers and the most popular and recommended design related books I could find. I am reading slowly through these books myself and I plan to review and feature them in future one by one! Of course in blogosphere you can find endless articles you could read,but what’s great with books – books have very clean and detailed content structure explaining and teaching you everything point by point slowly and clearly!
With a swift and convincing stroke, the authors of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web tear down many entrenched ideas about web designers london . Flashy animations are cool, they agree, as long as they don’t aggravate the viewer. Nifty clickable icons are nice, but are their meanings universal? Is the search engine providing results that are useful and relevant? This book acts as a mirror and with careful questioning causes the reader to think through all the elements and decisions required for well-crafted Web design. -Jennifer Buckendorff -This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Standards, argues Jeffrey Zeldman in Designing With Web Standards, are our only hope for breaking out of the endless cycle of testing that plagues designers hoping to support all possible clients. In this book, he explains how designers can best use standards-primarily XHTML and CSS, plus ECMAScript and the standard Document Object Model (DOM)-to increase their personal productivity and maximize the availability of their creations. Zeldman’s approach is detailed, authoritative, and rich with historical context, as he is quick to explain how features of standards evolved. It’s a fantastic education that any design professional will appreciate. more information
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 (<td>), in paragraph tags (<p>) or span tags (<span>)
Below is an example of an inline style insert into a table cell tag:
<td width=”400″ align=”left” valign=”top” style=”color:#000000; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:11px;”>
This style would then apply to the text contents of that table cell. Other standard HTML formatting tags such as <strong>, <em>, <font> 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.
<td style=” Lucida Console, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; “>
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.