Web design covers many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of the website. Various areas of web design including web graphic design; interface design; authoring, including standard codes and proprietary software; user experience design; and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams that cover different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover everything. The term web design is usually used to describe the design process related to the front-end design (client side) of a website including writing mark ups. Web design partially overlaps with web engineering in the wider scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have awareness of usability and if their role involves making mark ups then they are also expected to follow web accessibility guidelines.
Video Web design
History
1988-2001
Although web design has a fairly recent history, it can be linked to other areas such as graphic design. However, web design can also be viewed from a tech point of view. It has become a big part of people's daily lives. It's hard to imagine the Internet without animated graphics, typographical styles, backgrounds, and different music.
Beginning web and web design
In 1989, while working at CERN Tim Berners-Lee proposed to create a global hypertext project, which came to be known as the World Wide Web. During the years 1991 to 1993, the World Wide Web was born. Only viewable text pages use a simple line-mode browser. In 1993 Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, created the Mosaic browser. At the time there were several browsers, but most of them were Unix based and text was naturally heavy. There is no integrated approach to graphic design elements such as images or sounds. The Mosaic browser broke this print. The W3C was created in October 1994 to "lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing a common protocol that promotes its evolution and ensures interoperability." This does not allow any company to monopolize browsers and programming languages, which can change the effects of the World Wide Web as a whole. The W3C continues to set the standard, which is currently viewable with JavaScript. In 1994 Andreessen formed Communications Corp. which came to be known as Netscape Communications, the Netscape 0.9 browser. Netscape generates HTML tags themselves regardless of traditional standard processes. For example, Netscape 1.1 includes a tag to change the background color and format the text with a table on a web page. Throughout 1996-1999 browser wars began, as Microsoft and Netscape were fighting for major browser dominance. During this time there are many new technologies in the field, especially Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, and Dynamic HTML. Overall, browser competition does lead to many positive creations and helps web design evolve very quickly.
Evolution of web design
In 1996, Microsoft released its first competitive browser, complete with its own features and tags. It was also the first browser to support style sheets, which at the time was seen as an obscure authoring technique. The HTML markup for the table was originally intended to display tabular data. However, designers quickly realized the potential use of HTML tables to create complex multicolom layouts and vice versa was not possible. At this time, because design and good aesthetics seem to take precedence over good mark-up structures, and little attention is paid to semantics and web accessibility. HTML sites are limited in their design options, moreover with previous HTML versions. To create complex designs, many web designers must use complex table structures or even use empty spacers. GIF images to stop empty table cells from collapsing. CSS was introduced in December 1996 by the W3C to support presentations and layouts. This allows the HTML code to be semantic rather than semantic and presentation, and improves web accessibility, see tableless web design.
In 1996, Flash (originally known as FutureSplash) was developed. At that time, Flash content development tools were relatively simple compared to the present, using basic layouts and drawing tools, limited precision for ActionScript, and timelines, but allowing web designers to go beyond HTML points, animated GIFs, and JavaScript. However, since Flash requires plug-ins, many web developers avoid using it for fear of limiting their market share due to lack of compatibility. Instead, designers return to animated gif (if they do not use motion graphics at all) and JavaScript for widgets. But the benefits of Flash make it quite popular among certain target markets to ultimately work its way towards most browsers, and powerful enough to be used to develop the entire site.
End of first browser war
During 1998 Netscape released the Netscape Communicator code under an open source license, allowing thousands of developers to participate in improving the software. However, they decided to start from scratch, which guided the development of open source browser and soon expanded to a complete application platform. The Web Standards Project is established and promotes browser compliance with HTML and CSS standards by creating Acid1, Acid2 and Acid3 tests. Year 2000 is a big year for Microsoft. Internet Explorer released for Mac; this is important because this is the first browser to fully support HTML 4.01 and CSS 1, improving standards in terms of standard compliance. It was also the first browser to fully support PNG image formats. During this time Netscape sold to AOL and this is seen as an official loss Netscape to Microsoft in the browser wars.
2001-2012
Since the early 21st century the web has become increasingly integrated into people's lives. Since this has happened the web technology has also moved. There are also significant changes in how people use and access the web, and this has changed the way the site was designed.
Because the end of the browser a new browser war has been released. Many of these are open source which means that they tend to have faster and more supportive new standards. New options are considered by many to be better than Microsoft Internet Explorer.
W3C has released new standards for HTML (HTML5) and CSS (CSS3), as well as new JavaScript APIs, each as a new but individualized standard. While the term HTML5 is only used to refer to new versions of HTML and some of the JavaScript API, it has become common to use it to refer to a whole new set of standards (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript).
Maps Web design
Tools and technologies
Web designers use different tools depending on the part of the production process to which they are involved. This tool is updated from time to time by newer standards and software but the principle behind it remains the same. Web designers use vector and raster graphics editors to create web-formatted images or design prototypes. The technologies used to create websites include W3C standards such as HTML and CSS, which can be manually encoded or generated by WYSIWYG editing software. Other web tool designers may use including tagging validators and other testing tools for usability and accessibility to ensure their websites meet web accessibility guidelines.
Skills and techniques
Marketing and communication design
The marketing and communication design on the website can identify what works for the target market. These can be age groups or cultural strands; thus the designer can understand the trends of his audience. Designers can also understand the types of websites they design, which means, for example, that business-to-business site design considerations from B2B may be very different from consumer-targeted websites such as retail or entertainment websites. Careful consideration may be made to ensure that the aesthetics or overall design of the site does not clash with the clarity and accuracy of the content or ease of web navigation, especially on the B2B website. Designers may also consider the reputation of the owner or the business represented by the site to make sure it is well described.
Design user experience and interactive design
The user's understanding of the website's content often depends on the user's understanding of how the website works. This is part of the user experience design. The user experience is related to the layout, clear instructions and labeling on the website. How well users understand how they can interact on the site can also depend on the site's interactive design. If a user feels the usefulness of a website, they are more likely to continue using it. Users who are skilled and experienced with the use of websites may find the website interface more unique, but less intuitive or less user-friendly but still useful. However, users with little experience are less likely to see the benefits or usefulness of a less intuitive website interface. This is driving the trend for a more universal user experience and ease of access to accommodate as many users as possible regardless of user skills. Most design user experiences and interactive designs are considered in the design of the user interface.
Advanced intermediate functionality may require a plug-in if not advanced language coding skills. Choosing whether or not to use interactivity requires plug-ins is an important decision in the design of the user experience. If the plug-in is not pre-installed with most browsers, there is a risk that the user will not know how or the patience to install the plug-in just to access the content. If the functionality requires advanced language coding skills, it may be too expensive both time and money for the code compared to the number of function enhancements that will be added to the user experience. There is also a risk that continued interactivity may not be compatible with older browsers or hardware configurations. Publishing functions that do not work reliably is potentially worse for the user experience than not trying. It depends on the target audience whether it may be required or worth the risk.
Page layout
Part of the user interface design is affected by the quality of the page layout. For example, the designer may consider whether the page layout should remain consistent on different pages when designing the layout. Pixel width pages can also be considered important to align objects in layout design. Most popular fixed width websites generally have the same set width to match today's most popular browser window, at today's most popular screen resolution, at today's most popular monitor sizes. Most of the pages are also parallel to aesthetic problems on a larger screen.
The fluid layout increased in popularity around 2000 as an alternative to HTML-based layout and grid-based design in both page layout design principles and in coding techniques, but very slow to adopt. This is due to the consideration of the screen reading device and the various window sizes that the designer can not control. Thus, the design can be broken into units (sidebars, content blocks, embedded ad areas, navigation areas) sent to the browser and which will be installed into the viewing window by the browser, as best as possible. Because the browser recognizes the details of the reader screen (window size, relative size to windows etc.) Browsers can make user-specific layout settings into fluid layouts, but not fixed width layouts. Although such a display can often change the relative position of the main content unit, the sidebars may be moved underneath the body text rather than to that side. This is a more flexible view than a hard-coded grid-based layout that does not match the device window. In particular, the relative positions of the content blocks may change when leaving content inside the block is not affected. It also minimizes the user's need to scroll the page horizontally.
Responsive Web Design is a newer approach, based on CSS3, and a deeper level of device specification in page stylesheets through the use of enhanced CSS @media
rules. In March 2018 Google announced that it would launch its first mobile indexing. The use of responsive designs is well placed to ensure they meet this new approach.
Typography
Web designers can choose to limit variations of website typography only to some who have similar styles, rather than using different types of typography or style types. Most browsers recognize certain secure fonts, which are mainly used by designers to avoid complications.
The download of letters is then included in the CSS3 font module and has since been implemented in Safari 3.1, Opera 10 and Mozilla Firefox 3.5. This then increases interest in web typography, as well as the use of font downloads.
Most site layouts combine negative spaces to break text into paragraphs and also avoid aligned text in the middle.
Motion graphics
The page layout and user interface can also be affected by the use of motion graphics. The choice of whether or not to use motion graphics may depend on the target market for the website. Motion graphics can be expected or at least better received with entertainment-oriented websites. However, targeted website viewers with more serious or formal interests (such as business, community, or government) may find unnecessary and disturbing animations if only for entertainment or decoration purposes. This does not mean that more serious content can not be upgraded with animated presentations or videos that are relevant to the content. In either case, motion graphic design can make the difference between a more effective visual or a disturbing visual.
Motion graphics that are not started by site visitors can result in accessibility issues. The World Wide Web consortium standard of accessibility requires site visitors to disable animation.
Code Quality
Website designers can consider it a good practice to adapt to the standards. This is usually done through a description that determines what the element is doing. Failure to meet the standards may not make the website unusable or error prone, but the standards may be related to the correct page layout for legibility and ensure that the encoded element is properly sealed. These include errors in the code, a more organized layout for the code, and make sure the IDs and classes are correctly identified. Pages with bad code can sometimes be called tag soup. Validating via W3C can only be done when the correct DOCTYPE declaration is created, which is used to highlight errors in the code. The system identifies errors and areas that are not in accordance with web design standards. This information can be corrected by the user.
Generate content
There are two ways a website is created: statically or dynamically.
Static website
Static websites store unique files for each page of static websites. Each time the page is requested, the same content is returned. This content is created once, during the design of the website. This is usually written manually, although some sites use automated creation processes, similar to dynamic websites, whose results are stored in the long run as completed pages. These auto-generated static sites are becoming more popular around 2015, with generators like Jekyll and Adobe Muse.
The benefits of static websites are that they are simpler to host, since their servers are only required to serve static content, rather than running server-side script. This requires less server administration and has less chance of exposing security holes. They can also serve pages faster, on cheap server hardware. These advantages become less important because the cheap web hosting is expanded to also offer dynamic features, and virtual servers offer high performance for short intervals at low cost.
Almost all websites have some static content, since supporting assets such as images and stylesheets are usually static, even on websites with very dynamic pages.
Dynamic website
Dynamic web sites are built quickly and use server-side technology to generate web pages. They usually extract their content from one or more back-end databases: multiple database queries in relational databases for catalog queries or to summarize numerical information; others may use document databases such as MongoDB or NoSQL to store larger content units, such as blog posts or wiki articles.
In the design process, dynamic pages are often mocked or spread using static pages. The skills required to develop dynamic web pages are much broader than static pages, involving server-side coding and database and client-side interface design. Even medium-sized dynamic projects are almost always team effort.
When dynamic web pages are first developed, they are usually encoded directly in languages ââlike Perl, PHP or ASP. Some of them, especially PHP and ASP, use a 'template' approach where server-side pages resemble completed client-side page structures and data entered into places specified by 'tags'. This is a faster development tool than encoding in a pure procedural coding language like Perl.
Both of these approaches have now been replaced by many sites by tools that focus on high-level applications such as content management systems. It builds on a common purpose coding platform and assumes that websites exist to offer content according to one of several well-known models, such as time-sorted blogs, thematic magazines or news sites, wikis or user forums. These tools make the implementation of such sites very easy, and tasks based on pure organization and design, without the need for any coding.
Editing the content itself (as well as the template page) can be done either by using the site itself, and by using third party software. The ability to edit all pages is provided only for certain categories of users (for example, administrators, or registered users). In some cases, anonymous users are allowed to edit certain web content, which is less frequent (for example, in forums - adding messages). An example site with anonymous changes is Wikipedia.
Homepage design
Usability experts, including Jakob Nielsen and Kyle Soucy, often emphasize the homepage design for website success and confirm that the homepage is the most important page on the website. But practitioners in 2000 began to discover that more website traffic passed through the homepage, headed directly to internal content pages through search engines, e-newsletters, and RSS feeds. Leads many practitioners to argue that the homepage is less important than most people think. Jared Spool argued in 2007 that the homepage is actually the least important page on the website.
In 2012 and 2013, swivel comedy (also called 'slider' and 'rotating banners') have become very popular design elements on the homepage, often used to display featured or newest content in limited space. Many practitioners argue that merry-go-rounds are ineffective design elements and undermine the optimization and usefulness of website search engines.
Jobs
There are two major jobs involved in creating a website: web designers and web developers, who often work together on websites. Web designers are responsible for the visual aspects, which include the layout, coloring and typography of web pages. Web designers will also have knowledge of markup languages ââlike HTML and CSS, although their level of knowledge will differ from one web designer to another. Particularly in smaller organizations one person will need the skills necessary to design and program the full web page, while larger organizations may have web designers who are responsible for the visual aspects only.
Further work that may be involved in creating a website includes:
- Graphic designers to create visuals for sites like logos, layouts, and buttons
- An internet marketing specialist to help maintain a web presence through strategic solutions in targeting audiences to the site, using online marketing and promotion techniques
- SEO authors to research and recommend the right words to include in certain websites and make the website more accessible and found in many search engines
- Internet copywriters to create written content from the page to attract the targeted audience from the site
- A user experience designer (UX) combines user-focused design considerations that include information architecture, user-centered design, user testing, interaction design, and occasional visual design.
See also
See also
Related Disciplines
Note
References and further reading
External links
- W3C Consortium for web standards
- Web design and development on Curlie (based on DMOZ)
Source of the article : Wikipedia