Hmmmm, Good Advice For Being A Good Client…
We jumped when we saw the title of this post: How to be a good client, but then when we read the content, it wasn’t what we had in mind. Don’t get us wrong, it’s all good advice, but we’d really like to take this time to advise readers on how to get the most out of hiring an online freelance web designer:
1. Link to an example of what you want. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. You can talk to a designer all day, “I want an arty header and a side link bank, but it should move with the scrollwheel and have green and blue colors…” That can still be interpreted 100 different ways. Find a picture to start with, then detail how you want it different.
2. Take the designer’s / developer’s word for it. We don’t know how many clients out there have made their own lives miserable by saying “I want the whole site in Flash.” or “Can I get it with animated GIFs and use this big image as the background?” You hire an expert; if they say that something isn’t a good idea, listen to them. That’s what you’re paying them for is to know their stuff!
3. Be clear about your purpose. You need to detail what you’re going for in a business model. Something like “We sell lady’s dresses, so we want a site with a virtual wardrobe where they can try on different styles, a section with articles about fashion tips, and a social photo sharing section where customers can upload photos showing how hot they look in our outfits.” The virtual wardrobe helps buying decisions (sell lady’s dresses), the articles draw search traffic (bring ladies to buy dresses), the photo-sharing part encourages customers to come back (so they buy more dresses). Each part of the site should make some kind of business sense.
Things like that… readers, do you have any more ideas?
How to Adapt to Web Design from Print Design
There’s a joke that goes: “I want to learn web design. How long will it take?” “A year or two.” “Great! That’s much less time than it took me to learn print!” “Oh, you used to be a print designer? In that case, it’ll take five to seven years.”
We’re crazy about this post about introducing print designers to web design. It is quite helpful, and isn’t nearly as sarcastic as we’re going to be. So when you’re done with that, come back for our footnotes on five things we wish print designers would learn faster:
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Dynamic Site Design
Many websites like those of newspapers constantly update the website. These websites will have different content every time you visit them. Such dynamic websites need to provide you with the latest content. What these sites require is to pull information needed from a database or a form. The information is normally populated when the static site is created. However, for dynamic websites, it is populated when the individual page is requested. The design has to be such that it adapts and maintains a professional appearance even when there is a large amount of information on the page.
More On Dynamic Site Design
Dynamic websites have generally different amount of content. If the page size is kept limited to a specific level then the page may appear crowded when the content is huge.
To ensure that the pages do not appear crowded and to make the design SEO friendly, the design may be made using a combination of JavaScript and DHTML that can help create tabbed browsing within pages. The content for the dynamic websites can be taken in two ways namely server side includes and client side includes. With server side includes you can have the server read the information from a database in the format that would be suitable for the website design. With client side includes, servers send information to the web page. The client’s browser receives the programming and the command is performed. For example, if you have list of images for display and want to change image when your visitor moves the mouse over it then such a script is useful.
PNG Images And Your Web Design
The task of designing a website is incomplete without putting images on its pages. However you need to be careful choosing the image format that you intend using.
There are currently three types of image formats which are supported by all the browsers. They are JPEG (joint photographic experts group), GIF (graphic interchange format) and PNG (portable network graphics).
More On PNG Images And Your Web Design
This is due to the fact that every time the image changes, the background for the logo has to be edited. On the other hand, in the case of the PNG format, the image will float with a faded drop of shadow. This will help make your web fast, simple and dynamic.
The PNG format has the distinct advantage of displaying full colour photographic images and supports a managed color palette. It never degrades in quality and saves the original file information. This quality makes for brighter and crisper images.
Making Your Website Look Professional
A professional looking website can be very instrumental to your success. Especially in the case of a corporate website or in the case of an e-commerce website, having a professional looking website is absolutely essential. Don’t forget that most people will judge you by their first impressions of your website. Hence, if your website is able to capture the attention of your audience and if it is also able to impress them with its professional outlook; then chances are that these visitors will also become your loyal customers.
Making Your Website Look Professional 2
For your website to look professional, it is important for you to choose a color scheme that is in concurrence with your company or organization themes. By choosing soft and “eye friendly” colours, you will be able to capture the attention of your visitors more easily. In addition, by incorporating your company logo and your company colours into the website, you will be able to convey your ideas more professionally.
Dealing with Problems in Your Web Site Development
Designing a website is a process that takes time and patience to succeed. In many cases, you will spend many days planning and designing your website. As a successful designer, you will try to be meticulous and you will try to make sure that you are able to get the best possible design for your website. However, sometimes no matter how hard that you may try, you just might have problems with your website development. After days and weeks of hard work, you may find out that the end product really does not look like what you intended.
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The Mystery Behind Disappearing Web Images
It is very important to make your web page very attractive. Relevant images and videos are generally added to give that great look to web pages. Most of you would probably use Dreamweaver, Nvu,, Expression Web and other WYSIWYG editors to make it easier to add images. However, a page that you are editing may have the image but find that it has disappeared when the page goes live on the Web. So where did your image go? The common problems that cause such disappearance may be that our images weren’t uploaded or were uploaded incorrectly or the images though uploaded correctly were not linked correctly to the HTML.