Creating usable websites

[dreamselite]

We all know that these days every one can design a website but the question remains how to design eye catching website . I have read many books ,articles and tutorials about web design and have realized that every web designer has his own way of designing websites.

After I read all of that and made extensive research , I decided to write something about it and to share some of my experience with you .
This is my first article and I must say I'm not a writer but I hope you will find it very informative.

Of course I wrote about something which you might already know about but I believe there is always someone out there who needs such information and tips and benefits from them.
In the article I have gathered and explained some good tips (Do's and Don't's) which will give you an astonishing results if you follow them well.

Below are the tips for designing an eye catching website which you will be proud of .



1. Consistency:
It is always better to keep your design from page to page consistent so that the visitor knows that he is still in the same site and didn't jump to another site.
The page or site color scheme and navigation should be the same throughout the site.


2. Navigation:
Always keep your navigation simple . Tell the visitor which page he is on. This can be done in many ways and the way which I think is the best way is to remove the link from the page which he is on .
For example, Let's suppose that you have the following navigation text on your home page ...
Home -- About Us -- Contact Us -- Services -- Order
Then suppose that the visitor clicked on the services page .
When the services page is loaded then the link which says services will not be a link instead it will be a normal text with different color . That helps the visitor know which page he is on .
If you are using graphic buttons then You can provide a different version of the button and make it without a link .


3. Use Browser Safe Colors:
What are browser safe colors anyway? Browser safe colors are 216 colors which remain the same when displayed on any computer or browser.
Colors which are not browser safe may dither when displayed some computers ,meaning if a computer can't display a color 100% it will then display the nearest color to it instead.
So make sure that you use browser safe colors throughout your site.


4. Minimize the use of Graphics:
A site with a lot of graphics will take forever to load. Even though graphics make sites better but it is always better to minimize the use of them for many reasons including but not limited to the following :
A lot of Graphics make your site or pages take forever to load which will make the visitor of your website close the page or hit the back button .
Search Engine Spiders have problems with graphics because they will not be able to index any page that has a lot of graphics .
Of course you can use small, yet fast loading graphics instead of the big ones . Also You can use them as a table or cell background but make sure that the text is readable before the background image is loaded.
And don't forget to use the ALT tag for all of your images.

5. Flash:
Flash is is much like the graphics . Even though Flash brings your site to life but avoid using a lot of it on your site because that will make it load forever .
You can use small Flash animations and also You should give the url of the Flash Plug-in for the visitors who haven't got the Flash Player on their computer.
After all You want people to be able to see your Flash animations .
So don't over use it because they say Flash is evil.

6. Frames:
Frames are not good for many things including but not limited to the following :
Search engines have problems with them .
The links can be opened into the wrong frame.
Distracting scroll bars are displayed when the content doesn't fit it and many other things but There are many reasons which make us sometimes use Frames on our websites which some are the following
Frames enable us to manage sites easily. Suppose you want to update the header of your website ,if you designed it with just an html then You will have to update all of the pages on the site but Frames made that easy by just updating one page and You will not have to update the rest.

There are many alternatives to the frames . You can use PHP Includes to include the desired file to the desired location .

You can use this code to do so .
. Where the filename.php will be the file name which you want to include.
But The page which you are going to insert the code must be saved as yourpage.php and have .php file extension

Also You can use Extended Server Side Includes which is like the PHP by using the following code


But The page which you are going to insert the code must be saved as yourpage.shtml and have .shtml file extension.

So avoid using Frames on any part of your site.


7. Organize Your site files well:
It is good to organize your site files well and divide them into categories for easy file management.
For example suppose you have a lot of products and then you can organize them as follows

products/product1/ or products/nameofproduct/

So the url of the product will be like http://yourcompanyname.com/products/product1 or http://yourcompanyname.com/products/nameofproduct/

In that way You can organize your web files easily .


8. Use Limited Colors only:
Avoid using many colors on your site . Limit your colors to four or six .

9. Links:
Your links should be descriptive . And should be readable . Also Use one color for all of your major links .
These were some tips which is necessary to use for designing an eye catching website.

After all We all want to design great sites .

[ti-design.bizhat.com]

Very, very interesting. But you could have as well provided us with the link and summarize the content:

http://www.theukwebdesigncompany.com...cle.php?id=847

its polite to cite the source... Without proper citation it looks as if you wrote it yourself, and that's not very fair, is it...

[dreamselite]

hey i know it tony sorry for that. I thaught since i had permissions from kooshin's webmaster and as i had also got permission to post this article on my website i can post it here too.
Thanks to remind me that i should specify the authors name as its his hardwork that we have got such a great article.

[ukspaderz.bizhat.com]

Something that really bugs me about some 'amateur' websites, it the corny midi files that they have playing in the background. Why do people feel the need to do this? If I want to hear music I've got Winamp!

Another thing is excessive use of animated graphics. I've seen sites that are so 'flashy' that they would promote an epileptic fit. If people are looking at flash graphics, then they are not looking at the content of your site.

The moral of the story is.... just because you know how to add music and graphics, doesnt mean that you necessarily have to!

[dreamselite]

Hi,
You are right friend. When i first started learning HTML i was interested more in the way data is organized. This made me learn more of User Interface design. Many research have proved that animations consists of motion. Until your site is not about Marketing, Games, Entertainment, or something related to history,etc where Animation is used to present data then animations only make the visitors loose attention to the main content.

If you want proof of my words then make an page with animation at the top and text below it. Try to read the text as the animations continues. That animation will probably distract you.

Besides Internet is to exchange information. The job of a designer is to present it in a beautiful way and not to make the visitors angry.

This things make me kee working on my own website everyday. I almost make changes to my website everyday. Coz we have to keep on learning and experimenting as we will never be perfect. But we can try to attain it.

Anyways bye for now.