|
Web design always starts with setting of goals and tasks of the future site. Why do you need a site? What is its target audience? What results do you want to achieve?
It is the answers to these and similar questions that should form the basis of web design of a project. The set of works in development of the logical structure and decorative appearance of web pages is usually understood under the term “web design”. The main task of web design is to secure convenient presentation of information for the user of a site or a web application and satisfaction of the aesthetic taste of the audience.
Modern web design starts from separation of appearance and content. Thanks to such approach it has become considerably easier to make changes in the site content without affecting its design or to change design without changing content. In many respects it is possible thanks to modern content management systems – CMS.
The fundamentals of web design are laid on the stage of developing requirements specification. It is the document which describes the requirements concerning visual presentation ans structure of the site. Requirements specification often describes wishes concerning program realization of the site.
After development and approval of the requirements specification the stage of design development begins. The first thing you should do is to create the modular grid. The modular grid describes arrangement of elements on the pages of the site.
Modular grid of any web page contains at least two blocks: for the main text of the site and for the menu. Modular grid is divided into more blocks if there is a necessity to add some more elements on a web page. These elements can be: an additional menu, a header or a footer.
The size of blocks of the modular grid is chosen individually. You can choose any size. But you should take into account that according to usability requirements appearance of a horizontal scroll bar during page display is inadmissible – it influences on the perception of the site by visitors negatively. That is why the total width of the site blocks must be less then maximum width of displays of representatives of the target audience of the site.
The name of the site can be chosen in accordance with the name of the company or the author. It is usually stated in the header as well as the logo of the site (if one is necessary). The main menu block of European sites is usually located on the left, in accordance with the direction of writing (from left to right). The main menu can also be located on top, under the header.
If the site is intended for browsing on displays with various resolutions web design is usually flexible or horizontally centered.
As soon as the information model of the future site is ready you can proceed to the artistic part of web design. Web design is usually performed in the form of templates – certain sets of elements and their interconnections. It is the templates that permit to separate development of visual design of websites from content.
There are two kinds of templates: the template of the main page and templates of type pages of the site. The template of the main page is as a rule designed more “intricately” and templates of the rest of the pages only maintain the main idea.
Design is developed in a graphics editor and then made up into an html file. With the help of html (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) you can set all necessary parameters of a web page: arrangement of elements, font size, font color, background color etc.
Development of a template needs obligatory cross browser testing, i.e. testing of template compatibility with various browsers and their versions. Different browsers can interpret html code in different ways, therefore such testing is necessary in order to escape possible “breakdown” of design.
When design of the site has been tested and is completely ready it is “attached” to the functional “groundwork” which has been developed by programers. If you use CMS developed templates are “uploaded” into the corresponding directory on the hosting. That's all! Your site is ready to be filled with content!
TAGS
introduction to web design,
web design fundamentals,
web design,
website design |
web design 
