Why to Use PNG Images in Your Web Design

The PNG image file format is not new to the web. It originally developed in the mid-90s as a solution to the shortcomings of the traditional GIF image file format. However, because early browser applications offered only spotty support for the PNG's advanced features, web designers, developers were limited in its use.


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One large hurdle in particular faced by PNG's was Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Far and away the most popular browser, IE offered particularly poor support for the file format. However, with the release of IE 7 as well as several JavaScript hacks, this has all changed, and PNGs are more popular than ever.

But who cares!? And besides being one letter short of my favorite 1972 video game, what makes a PNG so great? Below, are three reasons why PNGs are the best image format since the Polaroid.

They’re See-Through! (Alpha Transparency):
As compared to the GIF, PNG offers a far less basic form of transparency. With GIFs, a particular color (or colors) is able to be saved as transparent, leaving colors either entirely opaque or transparent. There is no in-between.

PNGs have a distinct advantage in this area. The PNG file format supports "semi-transparent pixels," meaning a PNG can be saved with a soft drop shadow and floated over any background. It can be used as a watermark on a textured or gradiented background. It can even be smoothly faded from fully opaque to transparent, revealing the web page contents beneath.

Summerour.net features a logo which demonstrates this function. The homepage layout called for a logo with a soft drop shadow over a textured background of architectural sketches that regularly change. Using a GIF or JPG would be highly impractical, because every time the image changed, the logo’s background would need to be edited. A PNG, however, is floated over the image with a faded drop shadow, making the task quick, simple and dynamic. PNGs make the look and feel of your page flexible.

They Look Great! (Lossless Compression ):
Every time a JPEG is saved and compressed, it loses some of the original file's information and the image quality degrades. The GIF file format offers lossless compression (so the file can be saved and resaved without losing image quality), but it only supports a limited 256 color palette, making it useless for full-color photography and other such complex images.

PNG offers the best of both worlds. It displays full color photographic images, like the JPEG, but it also supports a managed color palette, like the GIF format. While the PNG will typically have a larger file size than the JPEG for photographic images, it does have a distinct advantage: its compression is lossless, meaning images never degrade in quality or suffer from "compression artifacting" which affects many JPEG images.

The results are crisper, brighter images that will “pop” on your pages unlike ever before.

They’re Self Optimizing! (Gamma Correction ):
Adjusting the brightness and contrast of images to look correct on a wide variety of monitors and operating systems is a common problem facing web designers. This problem is primarily related to different monitor Gamma settings.

Gamma is a method monitors use to distribute their luminance evenly across the display. Unfortunately, different operating systems (in particular the Mac and Windows) use different Gamma settings. So an image that is color-corrected for the Macintosh operating system may look too dark on the Windows operating system and vice-versa.

The PNG file format offers a solution for this problem. The image can be saved with built-in Gamma correction, enabling it to anticipate the operating system's Gamma settings and automatically adjust its brightness and contrast. By using a PNG, designers can simply color-correct the image for their personal operating systems and let the PNG do the rest.



http://www.selfseo.com/story-19263.php

How to Layout Your Web Pages

1. Screen Resolution - Most Internet users these days use
a 15-17 inch monitor. Therefore, use a screen resolution of
800x600 pixels when designing your web page. Some still
use 13-inch monitors and many have large monitors over
17 inches.

The way around this is to use percentages when designing your
web page. The web page will then resize to the particular
resolution the visitor is using. For the designer, this takes
more work than using a fixed width for your pages. If you want
to design your pages with a fixed length, then it's best to use
a resolution of 800x600 pixels.

2. Contrast - strike a good balance between graphics and text.
It is easy to have too much text on your site (unless it is a
book or an article). Visitors usually scan web pages so make
sure you use short sentences, small paragraphs and it contains


Too many graphics on your web page may create too much clutter.
It also slows the loading time of your site. Only use graphics
to emphasize the points you are trying to make. Remember, a
graphic can also distract people from the message you are trying
to convey.

3. Color - Have you ever gone to a site where there is a dark
background and dark text? You can hardly read it. Try to stick
to a light background with dark colored text. For example, a
white background with black text is still the easiest to read.
Beware of using a dark textured background. The text will become
unreadable. The color should not distract your reader from the
main points of your site.

4. White Space - this is the space between the elements on a web
page. If there is none or too little white space, your web page
will appear disorganized. Try to make the page look clean,
simple, easy to read and navigate.

5. Navigation - the key to good navigation of your site, is for
your visitor to find the information quickly and easily. It must
be clear and simple. If the presentation and organization of the
content is vague, the visitor will get lost, frustrated and move
on to another site.

The home page is usually the web page that contains all the
initial navigation to your web site. However, planning your
homepage is only a small fraction of your job when designing
your navigation. The deeper you can plan your site's structure
and navigation, the more successful your site's navigation will
be.

With clear, clean, simple and attractive layout of your web
pages, information is easily retrievable. Your visitor will have
an enjoyable experience and wish to return.



http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/articleweb27.html

DHTML or Flash

The last five years has seen an exponential growth in the use of shockwave and flash animations in creating websites. The old tried and trusted techniques such as D/HTML are slowy moving over to make room for this newer multimedia delivery vehicle. Scripting, such as Javascript, is viewed with disdain by some and ignored by others. Yet the people who advocate the use of flash/shockwave in creating multimedia-rich sites are not asking the right question: Is all that glitters gold?

An important facet of flash / shockwave glossed over by most people is that these technologies are a packaged scripting environment: In other words - most of what you can do in flash, you can do in DHTMl with a liitle effort. A question that pops up at this stage is: Why would I want to go through all of that? The answer is simple and is illustrated by way of practical example.

Pick a topic - any topic - and type the relevant seach keywords into your favorite search engine. Now try to find a flash site under the first thirty results. You will be surprised to find that this 'silver bullet' of web design does not even feature. The majority of search engines do not support the indexing of shockwave / flash sites - this can have a detrimental effect on your Internet business if you rely on search engine traffic to generate revenue. Remember one thing: Content is king and the only recognised content is in HTML pages.

Bells & Whistles: Where, When and What

Deploying rich multimedia sites are becoming more and more a design requirement. However, the objective of your site should be the determining factor between using D/HTML or Flash for multimedia content. Exposure and the generation of revenue solidly discounts the use of Flash as the major site component - search placement is too important to sacrifice for a simple thing such shiny buttons. D/HTML provides an attractive alternative to ensuring that your site is indexed properly by search engines.

However, Flash should not be put out to pasture based on this: Limited Flash content can still be an asset on your Internet presence if used judisciously. Corporate Intranets are another matter entirely: Flash provides the perfect delivery vehicle for rich business applications, where DHTML would be more of a liability than an asset - e.g. training material, presentations and etcetera.

In conclusion, the objective of a site should determine which of the two technologies are the preferred medium for mutimedia delivery.



http://www.trademarkwebdesigns.net/web-design/web_design58-article89978

Your New Website is Inside

Today's Internet is a lot different than it used to be. With new developments such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and web standards, building websites the same old way just won't cut it anymore. The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) creates guidelines and regulations that designers strive to follow to make their sites as accessible and functional as possible. Compliance with W3C standards ensures that your site achieves its full potential across a range of systems. However, the W3C regulations continue to change everyday. Do these new rules and regulations on the Internet mean that your website has to suffer aesthetically? The answer is NO. With CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), web designers have the ability to do anything on the web, from browser compatibility to full control of all the aesthetics of any web page. CSS also gives a more solid foundation for SEO, usability, and compliance with web standards.

From a development aspect of web design, the first great advantage of CSS is cross browser compatibility. Every web designer has sat down at a foreign computer and opened one of their websites only to find that the layout is mangled. Everything is either in a different spot or not present at all. This happens because different Internet browsers, and even different versions of the same Internet browser, display websites slightly differently. Web designers are forced to test their builds on as many browsers as possible to minimize this problem. However, users constantly upgrade their computers and download new features to enhance their experience on the Internet. As a developer, you can never control all the variables, but you can eliminate the majority of the problems by using CSS - an extreme advantage when one considers that everything on the Internet is about usability. If the user is at ease and comfortable then they are more likely to return to your site, purchase your product, recommend your service to others, etc. If they get confused because the navigation moves or doesn't function properly, they are more likely to move on to another site.

Web designers know that the power of CSS gives them many options, but a great deal of designers do not use CSS to its full capabilities. By learning about this language, you can develop it to do more. The cascading part of CSS is the most important feature and yet it is still the most over-looked. CSS makes it possible for the designer to alter one file and, in doing so; make modifications to the entire site. For example, rather than adjusting every font tag individually, this programming technique allows the designer to alter every font in the entire site by changing a single tag in the CSS file. CSS also creates code that is cleaner and less bulky than other scripting languages. Less code means that the search engine "bots" will have enhanced access to the content on your website. In turn, your website will be indexed more effectively, matching your site with appropriate inquiries from users looking for your services. Older development techniques like frames and tables limit the search engines' ability to crawl your website, so the bot will leave without registering the content. This significantly limits the search engines' ability to view and catalogue all of your information, and ultimately limits your presence online.

Increased ease and efficiency is another great benefit of CSS. Once you have obtained a decent knowledge of the programming technique, however, it is very easy to let the styles of the CSS control the way you design. CSS functions much like building blocks. At the bottom levels, building is very easy to accomplish, but the larger you go the more advanced and detailed the work becomes. I see many websites that boast about the designer's ability to utilize CSS, but the site is rather plain and boring. I am a big fan of minimalism but not when it results from a lack of creativity. Which brings me to the question, has the ease of CSS made designers lazy? For some, the answer is yes, but others use the many advantages of CSS to connect creative design with utility and performance. As a full-time designer, I devote all of my energy to creating graphic-focused, visually stimulating websites with CSS as the structure everything is built on.

A website doesn't have to be simple or boring to work properly. CSS does not limit the design graphically but instead gives the designer the power to create an aesthetically pleasing and fully functional website. If you took two identical designs and built one with tables and one table-less (CSS), the CSS site would have a higher usability across more platforms, it would rank better with the search engines, and the overall performance of the website would be better. Graphically intense CSS layouts do take more time to think through and build out, but that is why I make custom websites. In the ever-changing online world, CSS-based sites are the most up-to-date and effective way to build W3C compliant websites that push the limits of design and function.




http://www.trademarkwebdesigns.net/web-design/web_design58-article89986

How to make backgrounds for myspace

Many people that owns myspace profiles have surely been visiting all these myspace resource sites trying to look for good backgrounds, but rarely have they found one good which they like. These people might have a photo or a drawed image that they want to implement in their profile. Sometimes, they also have a small image that they would like to use as a pattern. But they can't code themselfs.

So, what to do then? Well actually, you can easy add an image to a profile without any coding experience. It's funny that people don't know that they just can use a simple Myspace Background Generator which will do the job for them.

However, after using that generator. You will get a piece of code that you need to insert in your profile. But when you have finally done that and are looking on your profile, you might think: Hey, something is missing.

There's no transperancy. The image covers as a frame around the profile. But the background on the profile is still just white.

To make trasperancy, you must first decide; what should be transparant?

After you have decided which html-elemented that should be transperant, you might add this code inside the styletag: td, table, tr, span, li, p, div, textarea, DIV {background-color:transparent}

After you've done it, you will hopefully have a background image that fully cover your profile. If you aren't satisfied with the results, You might try to add and remove some elements until you're happy. Good Luck!


http://www.trademarkwebdesigns.net/web-design/web_design58-article89982

CSS Design for change

While you may well have read many articles on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and you may have grasped the basics for including a little bit of style using the raw code, but you are still lacking the techniques needed to fully implement a design that you have scribbled on a beer mat.

So how do you go about getting the scribble into a working CSS design?

One way is to outsource your scribble to a graphic designer, who will transform it into a useable digital image, then all you have to do is rearrange a few divs here and there.

Another way is to give it your best effort using all the free stock images you can find across the net, or even scan your CSS design, preferably to a manageble size for layout purposes.

How do you implement the newly created design into those div tags?

If you have grasped CSS thus far you will know that an external CSS file will manage your whole website, simply by using one single line of code within your CSS file you can implement your new design using;

background: url("pathtoyourimage/whateveryourimageisnamed.gif") no-repeat center;

This single line can be used with different images throughout your page design, all you have to do is shuffle the divs around a bit using the margin attributes.

Before long you will be creating jaw dropping CSS Designs all from a scribble on a beer mat!



http://www.trademarkwebdesigns.net/web-design/web_design58-article89988

Top Ten Website Design Secrets for Internet Marketing Success

When it comes to marketing your website, you should really work on the design of your site and optimize it so it makes you the maximum amount of money per visitor as possible. The design of your website is very important and plays a huge role in your website's success or failure. Consider the following tips when designing your website:

Secret 1 - Clear Writing

It is very important when you write copy, or have copy written by a professional, that it be very clear and to the point. You do not want visitors to have to guess what your site is about, you want to make it clear up front.

Secret 2 - Include Links

Include links to other websites that have indirectly related products. Then, have the websites you link to link to your website as well. This will really help you out with improved search engine rankings and is well worth the effort.

Secret 3 - Make Graphics Small

You want your web pages to load quickly so avoid using large, detailed graphics that will slow the loading time of your website down. Most people won’t wait for large images to load and will simply move on to a competitor’s web site. It does not matter how great the graphic is if nobody ever sees it so keep this in mind when designing your website.

Secret 4 - Free Tools are Available

There are many free tools available on the Internet to help you design your website. Utilize these tools to create a professional website that attracts as many customers as possible.

Secret 5 - Be Persuasive

Always be persuasive in the copy you provide on your website. People are visiting to decide whether or not to buy from you so make sure that you persuade them to stay on your site and make their purchase from you.

Secret 6 - Use Text More Than Images

Use more text than pictures and graphics. There are two reasons for this. Reason number one is text loads quicker than graphics and people are not going to stick around a long time waiting for your website to open. Reason number two is that search engines rank your website on its text or content, not images. You need good quality content that will make the search engines rank your pages high.

Secret 7 - Organization

When designing your website, it is important to keep it very well organized so that your visitors will be able to find exactly what they are looking for quickly. If you do not design your website with organization in mind you will lose customers.

Secret 8 - Include Valuable Information

Make sure all valuable information is readily available. Anything a customer might need should be included on the website, from phone numbers to directions or any other important information.

Secret 9 - Focus on Prospective Client’s Needs

Throughout your website and copy you want to focus on your client’s needs and how you can solve their problems with your services and products. Nobody is going to your website to learn about how you got started, they're looking to buy your products. Focus on this to increase your conversion rates and boost your income.

Secret 10 - Banner Exchanges

Exchange banners with other websites in order to make your page look more professional and to increase your visitors.

http://www.kumbhdesign.com/was/5/Web-Design-Articles/