Web Design News Archive

Just about everyone has heard of or seen the monstrosity of a redesign that failed. However, bitterness can also be suffered by small businesses.  This scenario can be averted if existing traffic is taken into consideration in the redesign process. The guide below should help you to stay on track when creating a redesign project to keep older visitors happy.  If you are in the middle of one right now, you should also be able to get help. Redesign Correctly There are a lot of things to consider besides technical elements of your app or website, before you consider making a change to the current design.  Make sure you have an acceptable reason for the change(s), because your existing visitors have certain expectations. Request Current …

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I know as a designer sometimes it happens that you need an idea or a shade of inspiration for your design and find yourself completely blanked? I am sure that your answer is “yes”. And I am also sure that you have already found the solution. We all know that by visiting different websites, we can find the excellent ideas, which can really help us. There are a lot of great websites created to inspire the designers, so let’s have a look at some of them! Best Web Gallery Best Web Gallery is the place where you can find the best Flash designs and XHTML designs. It has an easy to use interface and here, you are allowed to preview a certain design while you …

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Are the functionality techniques you’ve been using a bit drab of late? Perhaps you have been meaning to add dynamic functionality to your websites, but you can’t seem to find a good solution.  No problem. I’ve gathered up a few techniques good for any website and especially, suited to take your interactivity skills to a whole other level. It’s just a simple steps which you can easily follow if you have some jQuery and CSS skills. On Page Text Search Many users are familiar with the web content search bars found on most sites, but many also may be looking for a better solution.  This technique addresses a user’s need to find text within the current website page. Here are the steps: 1. First, build an …

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E-Commerce is really hot nowadays, as it has become the most preferable and reliable bridge to buy and sell different things. Ecommerce is perfect for small businesses. And if you’re one of those who want to know, what can be done to make it more simple for the business? Then, the perfect answer is “content management system”. As we know there are lots of CMS options to choose from, and it is really difficult to select the right one, but if you are successful in getting the appropriate one, then you can be in the list of successful businessmen in no time. CMS is really easy to use with new exceptional plugins to manage everything related to selling and buying. Check out 5 of my …

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CSS is an amazing web tool, but it can easily get messy or sloppy.  To get the best out of it, you must stay organised.  So no more sloppy code, or unrecorded hacks.  Your education in organising your CSS code is about to begin. Keep organized.  Rather than dropping in classes and id’s at random, try and keep things structured.  Declare generic items first, followed by the not so generic items, and keep to that pattern.  That way other developers are going to be able to follow the code, which is one of the great advantages of using CSS. Title, sign, date.  Ensure that people know it was you that did the design.  This is helpful if another designer needs to clarify something with your …

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In part 1 of our tips for laying out content in web design, we showed you four ways to display content in a web design.  Though these tips are very useful in their own right, we have another four that we wish to bring to your attention, and we are going to start with a technique called progressive design. Progressive Design:  The idea behind this technique is that a user follows a natural flow over several pages to obtain the information he or she needs.  This is normally navigated by buttons like “click next”, and so on and so fourth, and is often used for completing forms, where sections are displayed one after another.  Another use is if your site wants to demonstrate to the …

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The development of web 2.0, or at least the use of the term begs the question what will be developed for web 3.0?  What developments are hidden round the corner, and what will you need to know as a web designer to incorporate what web 3.0 will be about. As web 3.0 is at the moment speculation, lets look at the definition of web 2.0 as stated in Wikipedia. “Web 2.0? refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.” One of …

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In our last two articles that focused on the dilemmas of freelance web designers, we looked at general tips, http://www.dreamtemplate.com/blog/web-design-tips/tips-for-new-freelance-web-designers/, and tips for effective project planning, http://www.dreamtemplate.com/blog/web-design-tips/freelance-web-design-and-project-planning/. This article looks at why bad planning is so common, or more accurately why underestimating the amount of time a project will take is so common.  Hopefully, once you have read this article, you will have a much clearer and better understanding for your future freelance web designs, and so you will be able to avoid project planning disasters. There are in essence four reasons why projects overrun.  These are: Bespoke features for a specialised industry. Grey areas or unknowns in the design. New, or unfamiliar technologies are required for the design.  Some may never have been used …

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This blog is a little special, as it deals with the concepts of RIAs’, or Rich Internet Applications.  Not all web designers use them, and it is a little bit of a specialist area, especially as some of the applications such as Flash, are a little controversial due to their scope of use, and their effectiveness when sites are constructed in their entirety using an RIA.  One of the many problems that are faced when using an RIA such as Flash, is how to get search engine spiders to crawl through it, and find content.  But, we are a step closer to this, to make RIA and searching, a reality.  When RIAs’ are developed and used, the normal remit is to ask questions involving budget, …

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