Web design tips and tricks

Welcome to the web design tips and tricks section of webdevelopersnotes.com. In this section you'll find several web design tips that will help you in creating an effective web site and providing a pleasant experience to visitors.

A web site display depends on several factors such as type of browser, the client platform, screen resolution etc. and you seldom have control over these variables. For details, please read the Variables in Web page design article under Web page design section.
The medium of the Internet is very different from the printed page or the television. It is highly interactive and dynamic and brings together several multimedia features such as pictures, sound, video and animation. It is thus of prime importance to understand the demographics of visitors to your web site and mould the site accordingly.

The web site vs. print and television media

A book, typical example of the print media, follows a linear structure from the first page to the last. Though readers can skip sections and go back and forth, the navigation aspect of the book is quite simple. The television on the other hand, does not provide the facility for the viewer to move between sections. A television program plays from the beginning to the end. Viewers have no control over the sequence of the program been shown on the screen (unless they use the remote to switch channels or shut of the T.V.).

Though web site can easily bring together the visual aspects of both the book and the television, it's in navigational aspects that they differ primarily from print and T.V. media. Navigation on a web site is created using hyperlinks allowing the visitor to jump across pages and determine the information to be displayed. Thus, navigation is without doubts the most important aspect of a web site.

Web design tips - two tips briefly explained

Web design tip on navigation

Navigation on a web site plays a very important role in making the site user friendly. As a thumb rule, a web site should follow the "three click" model. This means that a visitor should be able to access any page on the site using three or lesser mouse clicks.

Web design tip on display

The display of the web page is governed mainly by the browser and client-side settings. Testing the web page on all browsers, color depths and screen sizes would be very tedious. It is better to guess the kind of visitors you expect, keep an account of their settings and browsers and design accordingly. For example, I can safely assume that the visitors to Webdevelopersnotes.com would be mainly people interested in web development. They would be using the latest browsers (versions 4 and above), their monitors would be set to a high color or true color and the monitor screen size would be 800 X 600 pixels or more.

You'll find several web site tips and tricks in this and the Web page design sections helping you create good web pages and effective web sites so that they stand out from the ordinary so and thus, making you visitors stay for a longer time.

• Creating seamless backgrounds
• Beautiful seamless web page backgrounds
• Pros and cons of removing underlines from links on a web page
• Confusion caused underlined text on a web page
• Good Site Navigation part 1
• Web page titles - The HTML TITLE tag
• Choosing background and foreground colors
• A theme for your site
• Good Site Navigation part 2
• Text and background colors
• Headings and Fonts
• Good Site Navigation part 3
• What is a Site Map?
• Creating a Site Map for your web site
• Why are Site Maps important for a web site?
• Important points for a good site map
• Site maps and other nice ways to help visitors quickly locate information on your site
• Scripts to create Site maps for your web site
• The importance of sitemaps
• What is web site navigation?
• Different types of web site navigation
• Web site navigation - importance and tips
• Web site search feature and other navigation techniques
• Image maps - advantages and disadvantages
• Other file formats on the web
• Large files on web pages - helping visitors
• Linking on the same web page
• Prevent caching of web pages by browsers
• Flash intro usage on web sites - Advantages and disadvantages
• Important points to remember when creating Flash intros