Three Basic Web Design Guidelines

Three Basic Web Design Guidelines:

The appearance of your web site is one of the most important aspects of your success. Your product or service will literally be judged by the appearance of your web site.

Poor web design is one of the leading causes of small business failure. There are literally thousands of home-based Internet businesses struggling to make a living online. Most, make very little or no money and end up closing their site in defeat.

I have received many messages over the years from struggling Internet marketers wanting to know if I could look at their site and tell them what they're doing wrong. Most of the time, I can tell them the problem as soon as their site has loaded -- poor web design. They failed to take the time to learn how to properly design their sites -- how to design a professional looking site specifically designed to sell their products and services.

If you really want to succeed, you must take the required time to educate yourself.

Creating a Template

When you begin designing your web site, your goal should be to create a template that you can use to create each page of your web site. This will give your entire site the same look
and feel.

A template is simply a web page "shell" that contains your entire page design, logo, images, navigational links and a specific area for your content. However, your template won't contain any content, as each time you create a page with your template, you'll save it with a different page name.

Formatting Your Pages

I highly recommend placing your entire page content within HTML tables. Tables will enable you to have complete control over your content and how it will be displayed.

For example, you can create three tables, stacked on top of each other, for each section of content. The cellpadding, cellspacing and border attributes should be set to "0" to enable your tables to seamlessly flow together. In addition, the widths for each table should be the same. The top table would contain your page header content, the middle table would contain your content and the bottom table would contain your footer content.

As placing your entire page content within a single table will significantly increase your site's load time, stacking your tables will enable you to benefit from the powerful formatting capabilities of tables, while at the same time, keep your site's load time down.

If you've ever designed a web page without using tables, you know how limited you are as to how your content will be displayed. Your text will be displayed right up against the left border and will span across the entire width of your page -- certainly not a good way to design a professional looking web site.

Tables will enable you to display your content in sections like a newspaper, set up a specific number of rows and columns, and even place additional tables within your main content table to create special content sections with colored backgrounds.

Your Storefront

Your main page is the storefront for your business and should specifically let your visitors know exactly what you're offering. If your potential customer can't find your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking for it. They'll go on to the next site and probably never return. They're visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site offers. Provide them with what they're looking for and you'll reap
the benefits.

Branding will play a major role in your success. Make sure you place your company logo and slogan in the top left corner of each page. This will not only assist your visitors in remembering your site, but it will also give your pages the same look and feel.

Instead of trying to cram all your content into your main page, consider creating sections. These sections can contain highlights of your information with a link to further information. You can set your sections up in tables with colored heading sections for information such as articles, products or whatever you'd like.

It's much better to keep your main page down to the most essential elements and link to the detailed informational pages.

A good rule of thumb is "less is more." In other words, keep your main page as small as possible and include your most important elements.

Navigation

When you begin designing your pages, keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other than your main. Make sure you include good navigational links on every page. Place your navigational links together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links and maintain a nicely organized and uniform appearance throughout.

Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your main page to any other page on your site down to three or four.

Fonts

One of the most important parts of a web page is text. The way in which you display the text on your web page will have a great impact on your success. It can make your page look very professional or very unprofessional.

When placing text within your web page, always be consistent with your fonts. In other words, don't use different fonts throughout your pages. The standard fonts used on the Internet are Arial and Verdana. The standard text size is 2. Arial and Verdana are the standard simply because they are the easiest to read on a computer screen.

Headlines, which require a larger font size, are a bit different. A popular headline font used is Georgia, as it displays nicely in the slightly larger font size.

Background and Text Colors

Use caution when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. In addition, always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site.

Select your colors very carefully, as colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well.

Bright colors, such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more cheerful or happy. Colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors, such as brown and black, have a depressing effect.

A good rule of thumb is to use colors based on the type of effect you're trying to achieve. However, it's always best for your text areas to have a white background with black text.

Above all else, you must take the time to educate yourself before you begin. I can't stress this point enough. If you don't, you're honestly just wasting your time. Although it may take a little longer, it will be well worth it in the long run.

Top Five Web Design Tools

Just like in most other professions, a web designer is set of tools is what brings a concept into fruition. There are many applications available to our disposal, but there are some that just stand out from the crowd. The tools in this article are what is regarded as the most popular tools used for web design.

Last week, you were asked to vote on what you thought was the best web design tool. Close to 280 of you shared your opinion on what the best web design tool is.

In this article, you will find the five web design tools that garnered the most votes.

5. Fireworks

Adobe Fireworks is a commercial raster and vector graphics editor hybrid from Adobe that is available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Designed specifically for web designers (unlike adobe), Fireworks brings you a plethora of tools and options that make full web layout prototyping a breeze.

Among its notable features are: "slices" for slicing and dicing a design into HTML for rapidly creating prototypes (though you should avoid using auto-generated source code for the end-build), the ability to package an entire site design components for interactive and impressive site prototypes, and optimization tools for making your web graphics as lightweight as possible.
4. Dream weaver

Adobe Dream weaver is a commercial application for web development that is available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Its featured-packed suite of tools and options include: syntax highlighting and very smart Code Hinting, a built-in FTP client, project management and work flow options that make team work effortless, and Live View – which shows you a preview of your source code. Dream weaver tightly integrates with other popular Adobe products such as Photo shop, allowing you to share Smart Objects for quick and easy updating and editing of graphics components. 
3. Panic Coda

Panic Coda is a shareware web development application for the Mac OS X operating system. It seeks to reduce the amount of applications (such as an FTP client, C.S.S editor, a version control system, etc.) you need to develop websites and to improve your team is work flow. Coda is one-window web development philosophy uses a tabbed interface for text editing, file transfers and even "Books" which embeds web books that are search able (it comes with The Web Programmer is Desk Reference but you can add your own).

It is simple and intuitive interface allowed Coda to garner the Apple Design Awards Best Mac OS X User Experience in 2007.
2. Photo shop

Adobe Photo shop is a very popular commercial graphics editor available for the Mac and Windows operating system. Created for professional photographers and designers, it is the ideal application for manipulating images and creating web graphics. Photo shop has all the necessary tools and options you need such as: Filters – which automatically adds effects to your image or a selected section of your image, extensibility and automation with Brushes, Actions and Scripting, and enhancement features like Layer Comps and the Revert option.
1. Firebug

Firebug is a free, open source in-browser web development tool for the Firefox web browser. It is many features include: on-the-fly HTML editing for tweaking or debugging, a Console for logging, analyzing and debugging JavaScript, and an intuitive Document Object Model (DOM) inspection tool to help you quickly see how the elements of a web page relates to one another.

We make software so you can make Websites.

Since 1996, we have focused on one simple goal: making easy-to-use software so you can create cool Websites. If you are just getting started or if you already have a Website, you should try our award-winning HTML Editor, Web Form Builder, and other Web design software to create or improve your site today!

We care about our customers. When you buy our software, you get support for life. We offer help with our software through our Customer Care Center with e-mail, phone support, user forums, and more.

We hope you share your experience with the Coffee Cup Team and our software with other people, because you really are the reason we make software.
We Want Your Website to be Great

Since we released our first Web design programs more than 10 years ago, we have created a lot of HTML and Flash™ software to help people just like you. Our philosophy since the beginning has been to create more programs, software, and services that let you create better Websites. With that in mind, we developed Web Form Builder, a revolutionary software program for creating Web forms, and Photo Gallery, which makes putting your pictures online a breeze. All our Web design software is available as free trial downloads so you can play with the programs before you buy them. We are dedicated to helping you by offering extraordinary software support so we can succeed together.

We created our software with the help of millions of users worldwide. Once you join our family, every idea or feature you suggest counts. Do not be surprised if your suggestion becomes a new program or feature you can actually see and use. We listen to our users because we make software to help improve your business or personal Websites. That is what we are all about. Consider us a partner and a friend, because at Coffee Cup, it really is about the fresh software and warm people.
Software History and the HTML Editor

Coffee Cup Software was started inside a real coffeehouse in the early summer of 1996. Back then, good software to create cool Websites was really hard to find, so the first Website for the coffeehouse was made with hand-coded HTML using Notepad. One day, while chatting with a few regulars about creating Websites, the idea of a simple yet powerful HTML editor was born. We wanted to create a nifty piece of software that would make it easy for people like us to build our own Websites. One of the regulars was a programmer, so we got to work. In August of 1996, the first version of our HTML Editor was released.

Since the coffeehouse already had the domain name, our first software program was called the Coffee Cup HTML Editor, and the company was named Coffee Cup Software. Yep, it happened just like that — the company was named after the HTML Editor and the Website URL.

Soon, the coffeehouse was closed as we focused on creating and releasing shareware applications like the Image Mapper and Direct FTP. The rest is software history.
Trial Software Downloads
The HTML Editor
Visual Site Designer
Shopping Cart Creator
Shopping Cart Designer Pro
Shopping Cart Designer
Web Form Builder
Direct FTP
Photo Gallery
Website Access Manager
Google Site Mapper
Web Juke Box
Web Video Player
Flash Fire starter
Lock Box
Website Font
Flash Menu Builder
Flash Website Search
Live Chat
Ad Producer
News Flash
Web Video Recorder
Web Calendar
Flash
Password Wizard
Pix Converter
Rip & Burn
Website Color Schemer
Image Mapper
Style Sheet Maker
Web Cam
Animator
The Short Story

Coffee Cup Software started in a real Coffee House 1996. Our first program was the HTML Editor. Over the last 10 years we have created a lot more Web Design & Flash Software. Our philosophy has always been to create software and services so you can make better Websites. We are dedicated to helping you by offering extraordinary support so we can succeed together. Consider us a partner and a friend, because we really are about Fresh Software and Warm People.

Web Forms

There are many ways to mark up a form, including using a table or the label tag. Take a look at these methods and tips to ensure your forms are structured so they benefit the user and the site owner. Also covered are some techniques to customize the forms. (From the book Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook, by Dan Ce, from , 2004, ISBN: 1590593812.)

Interactivity has always been an integral part of the Web, letting the user and site communicate through the exchange of information. Forms allow us to collect input from users in an organized, predetermined fashion, and have always been sort of an “anything goes” area when building websites. For instance, discover that marking up a form can be handled in approximately 10,000 different ways. OK, perhaps not that many, but there are several options to consider as well as steps that we can take to ensure our forms are structured in a way thats all benefit both the user and site owner

Graphic Design Business Tips

Graphic Design Business Tips:

Below are 3 common problems that can go wrong and while they may sound simple and the solutions are simple, thousands of designers fall victim to these pitfalls.

1. Clients Who Won’t Pay

We all want to get paid and there are several ways to protect yourself against not getting paid. The first big mistake is to not require a down payment. Many designers do the work on spec or let the clients pay at the end, which is a big mistake. There are a few ways you can bill clients, but I prefer to simply bill half upfront and half when done, or get the full amount upfront for smaller jobs.

You should also use invoicing software or fill out an invoice template and a contract and have them all signed by the client so you have the project and payment details in writing. This will give you more power if you have to actually use the law to get your money, but hopefully it will not come to that.

2. Endless Revisions

This is an easy one to forget. You may be a great designer, but its an inside joke in the design community that the client always picks the worst design so they may not pick the design you worked hardest on, which means lots of possible revisions.

Many clients can be very picky and detail oriented, which is fine because they want to be happy, but if you do not limit revisions your project could turn into a nightmare where you actually don’t make any money because you had to put in so many extra hours.

As an example, you could offer 3 initial concepts for a logo design and then 3 revision rounds once they have picked one of the initial concepts to move forward with. You should also specify the price for additional revision rounds in case they want more.

3. Poor Planning and Timing

If you don’t plan out a project to the last detail and set a time frame you will run into major issues as well. For example if you are doing a website you need to know EXACTLY how many pages you need to create, what each page will have on it and so on. Talk about this with the client and make sure they give you everything you need before you start and get it in writing.

Creating a wire frame can be really helpful. A wire frame is basically a quick outline of what a design or website will look like and what will go where. This way you don’t miss anything and wont run into spending more time adding missing items later, which could cost you money.

Many clients also have very tight deadlines so you need to be able to gauge how long a project will take you and you need to get this in writing as well. For example you could say the estimated time to complete the project will be 3 weeks, but it could take a week more depending on extra revisions and such. Its better to add a few days or more to your estimated project deadline to give yourself a buffer.