04-07-2002, 10:11 PM
Well, I thought that I moght provide some tips for better website design, seeing as I have a bit of time. It may come in use to some people:
1. Plan your site first, on paper! Makes it much easier to do everything on the computer when you have a plan of everything in front of you. Draw storyboards (mock-up pictures of each page on the site, or, of a base template you will use.) Also draw flowcharts to demonstrate the linking between pages and or information flow between database and website.
2. Is the site for someone else? If so, always ask as many questions as possible, so you can have the best idea of what they expect from the site. Ask questions like, who are the target audience? What level of technical/computer expertise do they have? Are they visually impaired? (If so, don't use CSS to specify the text size since it will force the text to be that size, regardless of the user's selection. What type of internet access are they likely to have? Will Flash or Shockwave be of any benefit? Things like that.
3. BANDWIDTH: Just because you may have a 2mbps broadband internet connection doesn't mean to say that others have such a fast connection. Test your site on multiple computers, on different internet connections. If the site runs slow, check that all graphics are compressed properly, and, go through the HTML code and check for duplicate tags, and or unneccesary font tags, or tags which aren't always needed such as </img> (a closing img tag) or instance. You can get away with just using <img src="filename_goes_here"> for inserting images. The <BR> tag (break tag) also doesn't require a closing tag.
4. Need to do a special menu system, or similar? Don't use a pre-built one, do your own, this will fit your needs much better than a prebuilt one. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp features many useful tips on specialist website development/application development. They even describe how the MSDN menu system was built!
5. Can't work out how to use a function in Photoshop? Baffled by Server Behaviours/Recordsets in Dreamweaver Ultradev? Ask someone at a message board! Some people are very knowledgeable.
6. Avoid over-crowding information on a website! Overcrowding just makes everything harder to read.
7. Does your site really need the Flash intro movie? Bear in mind that these can take a long time to load for users on slow net connections. These users may get tired of waiting and move on to another site.
8. Avoid complex navigation structures between pages. These can make it hard for the user to find what they are looking for.
That should be enough for now, but, I may provide more advice later on, for tasks in Photoshop 6.0, or Dreamweaver Ultradev 4, or Macromedia Director 8.5..
1. Plan your site first, on paper! Makes it much easier to do everything on the computer when you have a plan of everything in front of you. Draw storyboards (mock-up pictures of each page on the site, or, of a base template you will use.) Also draw flowcharts to demonstrate the linking between pages and or information flow between database and website.
2. Is the site for someone else? If so, always ask as many questions as possible, so you can have the best idea of what they expect from the site. Ask questions like, who are the target audience? What level of technical/computer expertise do they have? Are they visually impaired? (If so, don't use CSS to specify the text size since it will force the text to be that size, regardless of the user's selection. What type of internet access are they likely to have? Will Flash or Shockwave be of any benefit? Things like that.
3. BANDWIDTH: Just because you may have a 2mbps broadband internet connection doesn't mean to say that others have such a fast connection. Test your site on multiple computers, on different internet connections. If the site runs slow, check that all graphics are compressed properly, and, go through the HTML code and check for duplicate tags, and or unneccesary font tags, or tags which aren't always needed such as </img> (a closing img tag) or instance. You can get away with just using <img src="filename_goes_here"> for inserting images. The <BR> tag (break tag) also doesn't require a closing tag.
4. Need to do a special menu system, or similar? Don't use a pre-built one, do your own, this will fit your needs much better than a prebuilt one. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp features many useful tips on specialist website development/application development. They even describe how the MSDN menu system was built!
5. Can't work out how to use a function in Photoshop? Baffled by Server Behaviours/Recordsets in Dreamweaver Ultradev? Ask someone at a message board! Some people are very knowledgeable.
6. Avoid over-crowding information on a website! Overcrowding just makes everything harder to read.
7. Does your site really need the Flash intro movie? Bear in mind that these can take a long time to load for users on slow net connections. These users may get tired of waiting and move on to another site.
8. Avoid complex navigation structures between pages. These can make it hard for the user to find what they are looking for.
That should be enough for now, but, I may provide more advice later on, for tasks in Photoshop 6.0, or Dreamweaver Ultradev 4, or Macromedia Director 8.5..