Article Discussion: 5 Web Design Tips You Can\'t Live Without

In the world of web design both novice and experienced designers often have their faults when laying out websites.  Don\'t fall into the trap of making \"common\" mistakes.  In this article Steve opens up his own bag of tricks and gives us five design tips that may just make your next project that much more successful.


The Topic/Review Can Be Found Here: 5 Web Design Tips You Can\'t Live Without

Very Good Article.
Nice work from the Author.

Please fix the glitch in the metatag generator page (link from the 3rd tip www.websitegravy.com/metagen.php)

Thank you again for well wriitten article.

-iAhmed

An interesting article. However,
Why should you use css, just because the browser's support it? There is no reason given here, and it does not affect the typography at all.

Good article, would help some one new to all this webdesign stuff.

Concerning css. Why use it ? Because the amount of time it saves defining the fonts of your site. All you need to do is make one css file then attach it to all your pages. Then in text boxes just use class="style" and it changes it to the set out css. Saves time and you never have to worry about making sure the text is formatted to verdanna and font size 11 or whatever you like.

It isn't necessary but it is helpful. Concerning flash use. You can make good looking flash websites containing all your content and fit it into a small file size, I also think macromedia are getting better at compressing the data.

You probably know about this but with php you can make sure it checks the users browser settings and it resizes everything so it fits.

Another point to consider is who are you making a website for? A lot of the people you will make sites for won't know any html or how to change the text of their site. You may be paid to change it for them. However lots of users want to constantly change text. For example news updates. PHP here comes in handy here and I think it is a way forward.

You may think im completly wrong but im only 16 and this is just what I have learnt so far in making sites for people.

q3

I agree with q3utom... CSS has many benefits, one being the cleaner code that's produced.

The larger your page sizes are, the slower your site will load. Thus, by linking to an external stylesheet, you increase the speed at which your pages will load. One the user has downloaded the stylesheet, all subsequent pages will simply make use of the CSS file in the cache, causing the pages to render quicker.

Besides, the font tags are deprecated, and are no longer considered the "standard". You have a lot more flexibility with CSS than you do without.

Great article!

If you need to be convinced why CSS is better than <font> tags and the like, take a look at:

URL

And for a path that will lead you to a multitude of CSS resources:

URL

I agree that CSS is a very powerful tool. I've only been using it for a couple of months, and am completely sold. Wholesale changes to the look of a site are possible in minutes if you take some upfront time to create appropriate classes and then incorporate them in your HTML.

Having said that, CSS can also mess things up pretty dramatically. A case in point: the use of "letter-spacing" to spread out the letters in your text. Done incorrectly, you can create overlapping, unreadable text.

The author mentioned that he likes to spread out his text using CSS. It would have improved the article had he included some example CSS declarations for accomplishing this.

Thanks for an otherwise useful article.

Good points Greg - Ill be sure to pass them on to the author for you!