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Miami Web Design

The terms web designer and web developer are used interchangeably in the media and advertisements. But, they are not the same thing. Design involves what the visitor sees on your website, development involves the site’s functionality. This article explores the difference between these two disciplines.

A website contains several distinct aspects:

* Look and feel – primarily the graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
* Content – information, products, etc available on the site.
* Functionality – functionality includes interactive features that the web site provides to the visitors and the required infrastructure needed to provide them.
* Usability – the site from a visitor’s perspective and includes things like program interactions, navigation and usefulness.


Look And Feel

Look and feel includes overall appearance of the website. A Graphic designer decides on what colors and fonts to use and how to layout each of the sites pages.

The graphic designer needs to have a good appreciation for aesthetics and feeling for what combinations of colors and imagery will project the image that the website owner wants visitors to have of the site.

Content

Content is all of the text that is found on a website and includes everything from the privacy policy to a very persuasive sales letter extolling the benefits of a product and asking the visitor to part with their hard earned money and everything in between. If it is written text then it is part of the content. You need a copywriter and editor to create good content.

Functionality

Functionality includes all of the interactive aspects of a web site and includes animation. The common denominator is that programmers using the various web programming languages that work either on a web server or in a web browser create all of these functions.

Flash can be used to animate graphics. Perl, php and java are programming languages used on the web server to create sophisticated dynamic web pages. These pages can work independently but most commonly with a database to create all of the features we have come to expect from a website.

JavaScript is used in browser to create a lot of cool effects such as swapping images when a mouse moves over an image, “ticker tapes”, links changing colors, etc. JavaScript works in the user’s web browser rather than on the web server.

There are also other “backend” applications that are transparent to the visitor such as form processing, content management and other administration programs that make it possible for non-programmers to maintain some aspects of the website’s data.

All of these programs have to be integrated into the HTML code to be used on the webpage.

Web Design

There are basic rules which every web designer knows to follow when creating a website. These rules are like simple fashion rules for a designer. If followed your website will never be badly dressed. They are not the kind of rules which are made to be broken. Stick to them and you will have the basis for an incredibly designed webpage.

Page Continuity

All the pages in one site should look as if they are part of the same site. There should be continuity of elements, banners, logos, template and colours through the site. Do not use one font on the first page and a different font in half of the supporting pages. It is confusing users.

Load Time

Pages should be quick to open as users will often return to search listings if they are required to wait. To aid this do not use large graphics, video, flash movies or auto play audio.

Colour

Colours should be as inoffensive as possible. Use lime, yellow, pink, aqua as sparingly as possible, and definitely not for the body text or background. Colors should tie in with the logo or company color. Even the link color should be changed to support this site color scheme.

Graphics

Graphics, photographs and logos are an important part of website design. They help to break up text into manageable sections and make the content easier to read. A page of text with photographs is much more inviting for users than a page of plain text. It is not a good idea to use background graphics, rather than making the text easier to read they are distracting. Check that all graphics work in the most popular browsers (Explorer, Mozilla, chrome, AOL browsers, Mosaic, Opera. White space between an image and a section of text make a page easier to view and looks neater.

Fonts

Fonts should be easy to read. Do not select a body font which makes reading content a chore. Text size should not be too small or too large. 12 is a good size in most commonly used fonts.

Navigation

Your site should be as easy to navigate as possible. If your site is large it should be easy for users to find a site map and all pages should have a clearly displayed link to the home page. The navigation buttons should be grouped and displayed I the same place on each page.

Links

Links should be underlined to make them clearly visible to users. Check and double check that your links are current. There is nothing more frustrating for users than links which lead nowhere. It looks sloppy and unprofessional and does not create the feeling of competency that you want your site to inspire.

Make things easy for users. Display all contact information... do not make them guess how to find you. Include a contact form... keeps user on the site rather than requiring them to login to their own email.

There you have it, the web design rules which all designers keep in order to create clean, nice looking websites.




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