Goodies Thoughts - Design Challenges
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Designing your website, let alone implementing your design, can be quite a challenge. Whether you are a beginner or advanced web developer you probably already realize that the canvas on which you create your masterpieces can be incredibly variable.
Designing a good looking and functional web site is probably one of the most difficult jobs in the design field. Other design fields such as print or even video all have a fairly uniform canvas on which your end design will appear. With print you know that the end product will be a business card or brochure or post card but with web design you know only that it will be viewed in a browser. The type of browser, its capabilities, the resolution at which your design is viewed all remain variable.
Those of you that have been doing web design for several years have witnessed vast improvements in the web designer's canvas, however. The diversity between browsers seems to be growing smaller and smaller with each passing version and there seems to be fewer and fewer browsers to contend with all the time. Anymore most designers only worry about conforming their designs to the two major browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape, which encompass upwards of 95% of all web surfers depending on whose survey you read. Some designers even opt to just design for Internet Explorer which is estimated at around 80%, again depending on whose survey you read.
With all of the improvements that have been coming down the pike you would think that web design would be a simple process by now. That's simply not the case. While technology advances are making the designer's job easier by giving her a more standardized medium, there still are many issues that web designers must tackle that are not directly related to the technologies. Here are a few:
Navigability
If you want people to hang out at your websites, one of the most important features you could add is easy navigation. There is no faster way on Earth to drive away viewers than to frustrate them by hiding what they are looking for.
Consistency
Don't confuse your viewers by radically changing your design from page to page. Consistency of design lets the user get familiar with the features of your site and "burns" the look of your site into their minds. There is a lot to be said for "branding".
Speed
Since broadband is becoming more prevalent you might think that download size is not really a concern anymore. Not true ... yet. With about 80% of all users still using a 56K or slower connection, download speed is still a very real concern. Keep your graphics optimized and don't go overboard with your imagery. File size is still important.
These are just a few of the contemporary concerns of the web designer. In future issues of Goodies to Go we will explore some of the different parts of creating and optimizing web designs. Being creative, consistent and functional all at the same time can be a challenge for most anyone.
*******************************
Designing your website, let alone implementing your design, can be quite a challenge. Whether you are a beginner or advanced web developer you probably already realize that the canvas on which you create your masterpieces can be incredibly variable.
Designing a good looking and functional web site is probably one of the most difficult jobs in the design field. Other design fields such as print or even video all have a fairly uniform canvas on which your end design will appear. With print you know that the end product will be a business card or brochure or post card but with web design you know only that it will be viewed in a browser. The type of browser, its capabilities, the resolution at which your design is viewed all remain variable.
Those of you that have been doing web design for several years have witnessed vast improvements in the web designer's canvas, however. The diversity between browsers seems to be growing smaller and smaller with each passing version and there seems to be fewer and fewer browsers to contend with all the time. Anymore most designers only worry about conforming their designs to the two major browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape, which encompass upwards of 95% of all web surfers depending on whose survey you read. Some designers even opt to just design for Internet Explorer which is estimated at around 80%, again depending on whose survey you read.
With all of the improvements that have been coming down the pike you would think that web design would be a simple process by now. That's simply not the case. While technology advances are making the designer's job easier by giving her a more standardized medium, there still are many issues that web designers must tackle that are not directly related to the technologies. Here are a few:
Navigability
If you want people to hang out at your websites, one of the most important features you could add is easy navigation. There is no faster way on Earth to drive away viewers than to frustrate them by hiding what they are looking for.
Consistency
Don't confuse your viewers by radically changing your design from page to page. Consistency of design lets the user get familiar with the features of your site and "burns" the look of your site into their minds. There is a lot to be said for "branding".
Speed
Since broadband is becoming more prevalent you might think that download size is not really a concern anymore. Not true ... yet. With about 80% of all users still using a 56K or slower connection, download speed is still a very real concern. Keep your graphics optimized and don't go overboard with your imagery. File size is still important.
These are just a few of the contemporary concerns of the web designer. In future issues of Goodies to Go we will explore some of the different parts of creating and optimizing web designs. Being creative, consistent and functional all at the same time can be a challenge for most anyone.
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