by Web Designer
Designing a website is no longer a task that only web professionals can do. With the latest design tools available, a person with no prior web design experience can build a real website and launch it in a couple of hours. However, that does not mean that the design is good. Anyone can fill in a template and make a web page. However, there would be nothing special about that website. Good design takes good planning. That is what sets the professional apart from the novice.
When you have an idea for a website, you first have to think about what type of content you want to include. Make an outline of the pages that you want to create. Organize them by main categories and subcategories. Do not forget to include basic pages like a contact page, an FAQ page, or a customer service page if appropriate. These will become the labels for your menu buttons.
Once you have an outline of your content created, it is time to figure out your basic design and layout. Start with your choice of color schemes. What combination of colors are appropriate for your subject area? For instance, if you are developing a website for promoting children’s education materials, you may want to use primary colors. A website that sells skin care products may require softer, more neutral colors. Look through literature that is relevant to your business to see what colors are dominant. You can use those for ideas. Colors make an impact on your visitors, so choose them carefully.
The layout of your content should include basic sections, like your header banner that should have your company name and logo, a navigation menu, an area for your main content, and a footer. Sketch a wire frame of a couple of potential layouts and label the sections. Imagine how your visitors will land on your home page and navigate to other pages. Content should be laid out in a logical manner so your visitors can find things easily.
When you have settled on a wire frame, it is time to create a prototype of your template. Use the website editor of your choosing. If you do not have the actual text of your content yet, you can use generic “lorem ipsum” text to populate your text areas. At this point, you just want get a test page laid out. When you are satisfied with how your template looks, you can start to fill it with real content.
Website users scan through web pages quickly to find what they want. You should make sure that your pages load quickly. Avoid using too many graphics and images on one page because that will slow down the load time.
Make the text of your content easy to read. Stick with a basic font type for the content, and be consistent with using fonts in the same family. A consistent look is easier on the eyes.
A well-designed website will attract more visitors. If you give your visitors a good browsing experience, they will come back again and again.
More and more is expected from today’s web designers. Visual design is just one small part of the job. Those designs also need interaction. They need to work…
HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites
- Used Book in Good Condition
A full-color introduction to the basics of HTML and CSS from the publishers of Wrox! Every day, more and more people want to learn some HTML and CSS. Joining the professional web designers and programmers are new audiences who need to know a little bit of code at work (update a content management system or e-commerce store) and those who want to make their personal blogs more attractive. Many books teaching HTML and CSS are dry and only written for those who want to become programmers, which is
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Awesome stuff! Learned a lot.
View CommentHello people I am starting a company called AABraham Tech, There’s gonna be
View Commenta selling department, an IT department, a web designing department ect,
estimate company growth after 3 years 10.5 million. But I have many
problems now I need some one to control the selling department, IT
department, Web designing department many more to come but if you are
interested in helping me send me an email to AABrahamTech@outlook.com you
don’t need to send a resume just tell me some qualifications and I’ll tell
you some open spots.
Wait, is he talking to kids?
View CommentI.cannot.like.this.enough. Gees, Chris; what a guy. As a web desiger /
View Commentdeveloper, I could listen to this kind of talk all day. So thanks :)
I love to hear Chris talk. Makes web design feel so easy ? It’s not. But
View Commentthe feelingz are real!
Cant believe this is 2 years old. Its very much valid now in Sep 2014.
View CommentThat guy is awesome
View Commentnic thught keep it up…
View CommentWeb design work-flow with Chris Coyier
View Commentthank you >>> it’s really meditation sound man !!! hhh
View CommentNice presentation. :)) very engaging.
View CommentGreat talk. I’m an hour in. 3 beer cans. No obligatory forehead can
View Commentcrush )-:
Great talk. I completely agree with the concept of getting out of the
View Commentbrowser and putting something to code right away, (because as he said you
are build a website not a static comp) however, I personally find making a
really well done design in Photoshop is essential when proofing the look
and feel to a client. For me, my first love is design and I learned code
and WordPress later, so Im sure that plays a part – but I prefer to create
a great static design in Photoshop that the client can approve and gain
expectations from and then I use that as my pixel perfect guide when I
translate it to code. There is some overlap, but generally I think you get
through coding that much quicker since you are just dealing mostly with
functionality and structure and the style is already planned out for you.
You are going have to use Photoshop for the images anyway so I find it
works to just slice it up or whatever from my design. i could see Adobe
Muse being a useful middle of the road solution though. This is a good
discussion.
Great personality. Awesome talk. Learned a lot and had fun doing so.
View CommentCool and energetic presentation, but InDesign is the best tool for
View Commentdesigning, doing typography, setup your grids etc. Using Photoshop for
webdev is ancient and from the slice age.
Great video! For all you web designers watching, I have a ton of quality
View Commentleads for sale daily for web design, online marketing, logo design and
more. If any of you are interested then Google the key phrase “omegaweb
web design leads” and when you get to the omegaweb site click on “Buy
Leads”. The leads we get are from quality design firms, so they are not
the usual garbage.
lol Chris is sic!
View CommentExcellent introduction to web development,
I admired Duckett’s approach to this book. He completely dispels with the buzzwords that glitter so many books these days. There’s mention of HTML5 and CSS3, for sure, but it’s done in such a way that it doesn’t seem gimmicky or hyped. The title of the book itself is evidence of this. Duckett clearly doesn’t want you thinking about HTML 4 vs. HTML5 or CSS 2 vs. CSS3. Instead, he wants you to understand the concepts that link together web technology and good design. Some of that is done with HTML 4 and CSS 2 while some is done with HTML5 and CSS3.
This book is really targeted at beginners without a technical background, and it does an exceptional job in serving this audience. The approach is perhaps the gentlest introduction to the concept of web programming that I’ve ever encountered. So gentle, in fact, I think that almost anyone could pick up this book and start to make a simple web page relatively quickly. It takes you right from creating your HTML file with a text editor, through learning HTML and CSS, all the way to deploying your file and adding Google Analytics.
Sprinkled throughout the book are useful tidbits about typography, contrast, design concepts, and even how multimedia plugins such as Flash work in conjunction with a web page. The very visual nature of the book makes picking up these concepts easy, as every piece of code is accompanied with a diagram, figure, or screenshot showing the result.
If you’re an experienced web developer, you’ll probably want to pass on this book since it will be far too basic. However, if you’re looking for a good book to introduce web development to an inexperienced web developer, or even someone who has no experience, then this book is a great place to start.
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That background info is very nicely done. Each page spread is like a poster clarifying things like what exactly a left-angle bracket is or just exactly how forms work. Many books in the field assume that all their readers know this stuff already, and a book for web designers that spent much time on defining serif vs. sans-serif fonts would be frustrating for most designers. This book sequesters basic info so old hands can skip it and beginners can readily find it again, as well as making it clear and memorable.
Half the book examines HTML, looking at structure, text, links, images, tables, forms, “Extra Markeup” such as comments and metadata, and multimedia elements. Each element is explained clearly with good examples, and HTML5 is included. The presentation is economical and straightforward, but lots of information is included: things like animated gifs and how to communicate with older browsers aren’t often included in books suited to beginners.
The second half of the book introduces CSS, HTML5 layout, and “Practical Information” like how to tell who’s coming to your site and how to organize information into a website.
The author intends this book for people learning how to build websites (and it’s certainly the best book I’ve seen to get you started) and for people who use a content management system like WordPress but want more control over their sites. I think it also will be very useful for people who learned HTML and CSS in the past and want to get more up to date. We often see sites built with outdated code because the owners can’t bring themselves to go through the learning process again. I get that — I took a class in HTML and it was probably slightly less creative and exciting than basic statistics class. This book isn’t like that. It’s clear and enjoyable, and you can download all the code from the author’s website if you really hate typing it.
I highly recommend this book.
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