Summary of Web Design Course Content
Learning Objectives
- to understand the relevance of the development of the Internet and the World
Wide Web to the structure and design of web pages
- to consider the concept of good design and recognise that design has to
be relevant to its purpose and is also a matter of personal taste
- to be able to design a web page on paper, to transfer the design to the
screen, and upload the finished project to a webserver
- to understand what kind of images are appropriate for use on a web page
and be able to optimise images and insert them on web pages
- to understand the need for website navigation and to make hyperlinks within
a webpage, between 2 pages on the same site and to an external website
- to know how to use the Web in order to obtain web page resources and develop
further skills
History
- old technologies
- Internet dates to mid-1960s and World Wide Web to early 1990s
- developed as a resource for sharing text files, not for multimedia
Design
- design should be relevant to purpose of site
- beware outlandish colour schemes, audio that cannot be switched off, images
that take too long to download, horizontal scrolling
- use a table/grid to fix web page elements in place
Administration
- Set up a folder (container for keeping all elements of web page together)
- Avoid uppercase characters and spaces in filenaming
- Concept of webpage as a jig-saw and all pieces being put together in the
browser
Images
- *.jpg, *.gif, and *.png are all usable file types on web pages, but note
compuserve patent on *.gif images
- optimise image in image editing software rather than trying to re-size in
web-editor - need to create small files to minimise download times
- images on web-sites are protected by copyright - as far as possible create
own images
- a good free image editor is Irfan View - can be downloaded from the Web
Links and Navigation
- every website needs some form of navigation between pages and back to the
home page - may be achieved in different ways, but needs to be considered
at the design stage
- links within a page require an anchor to be dropped and a link made to that
anchor, eg an anchor at the top of the page and a link at the bottom to return
to the anchor
- links between pages must be relative, not absolute
- links to external sites must be complete, that is include the "http://"
part of the address
Resources on the Web
- lots of free graphics, buttons, javascript, counters, etc, can be downloaded
- try searching
- many tutorials online
- freeware and shareware web and image editing programs
Uploading to the Web
- get some webspace
- use an ftp tool
Have fun and let me have your URL once you have a web presence