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The art - science of good web site design

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by j-mart

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Recently, though it is something I have had no training or experience in I have produced a couple of web pages. When I started this I did not have the slightest clue how to go about this project and only because I could not get anyone else to do it for the buget available (zero $). I have managed to get fairly basic web site up and running, nothing flash or particularly memorable but it does the job it needs to and it gives me a start point to learn some new skills (if anyone is interested it is here ).

The company I work for is also looking at its present web site and have decided that the present effort is very ordinary and it would be a good move to upgrade it to present a much better first point of contact for potentual customers, and have started some preliminary work with a web design company.

A good web presence is a very important part of promoting a company and is often the first point of contact for new customers. When I am looking for parts for products we manufacture, a supplier that has a good web site that I can easily find the data I require to select their products, their products are more likely to be selected.

As I see it, a good web site has to be well programed to load quickly be easy to navigate, yet catch your eye and have the right style to go with the image your company wants to put out into the market place, a balance between the art and the science of design.

As I am not very knowlegable on either of these things as they apply to good web design I am interesed in geting a good meaningfull discussion going on this subject as there are many in the TR membership with much experience in this area. It would be great to know what tools they prefer design philosophies etc.

When I started my project as I did not have a clue how to make a start I used Open Office's wizzard to create my first page, but found it did not produce very good results, next I tried Quanta Plus, which was better, but now I use just a text editor and a bit of learning and write the code directly.

It would be great to get some opinions on the topic of good web design, possibly see some examples to go along with some of these points of veiw. both the good and the bad.

3 replies

by jaqui

murph1.png" width="1039" << width is an issue for anyone not using at least 1100px screen width at that setting. my display won't go above 1024 so I get horizontal scrolling just from that.

The Banner across the top isn't centered over the body content.
[ little things like that stick out for me. ;) ]

The colour contrast is just a little on the low side. a brighter yellow would show up much better.

take a look at what the W3C validator says. :)

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fhomepages.paradise.net.nz%2Fj-mart%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0
[ if they sessioned it, which they used to, http://www.w3.org then html validator on the left side of the page and enter the url for Murphys Law ]

The general rule of thumb is to use the least cluttered layout you can, with the least scrolling possible.
Presentation is usually the holdover from print, with the lighter backgrounds being considered better for a business site.
[ which is why we get blinded with the white glare from most company websites. ]

by j-mart

You have made some good points for me to
sort out. I will look into making some
adjustments and improvements.

Getting the right look for a page is a
mixture of the technical and the art side
to make it eyecatching. Some seem to just
throw in all the flash animation they can
to try do dazzle the page viewer, some are
lean and functional.

by jaqui

looking at it and commenting on what is noticeable is the best way to point out the small details that can easily be overlooked yet cause usability issues.

I myself use the xhtml1.0 strict DTD, and external style sheets.
This allows a better breaking apart of structure, presentation and content.
with the XHTML DTDs you can have the content in a separate text file, structure in the html and presentation in the css. this makes maintenance much easier.

change content, it's only a text file
change the look? only the one css.

XHTML uses the same tags as HTML, only there are no attributes on them to speak of, that is all in the style sheet.

To use a dynamic script, you have to have it put the (X)HTML out anyway, so learning that is always a good idea.

an example would be to write a function to start a page, which would be the DTD and head sections of the page. it would need to have the actual (X)HTML in it as output statements.

A really good habit to get into is to use relative sizing when you need to specify a size, this allows the page to scale with different screen resolutions. Most web design software will stick absolute sizes in, which causes issues like horizontal scrolling.

The common resolution to design for is still 800 by 600. It might seem odd, but it helps a lot of people who need to magnify content if you work with that resolution as a target, it means less magnifying for them.
[ yet many web/multimedia designers say screw that, work with larger resolutions ]

The W3C validation is not important in any absolute sense, I just prefer to make sure that a site / page I work on does pass.

I checked quite a few "shopping cart" scripts against it recently, only one passed. I wonder how "secure" the credit card processing is if the script can't even output validating (X)HTML.

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