December 2009
9 posts
2 tags
A Christmas Card from Triad →
Merry Christmas everybody! Here’s our office Christmas card if anyone wants to take a look at our festive mugs!
6 tags
Short Web Design Tips #7
When to use pagination.
Web pages are not the same as those in a book. Browsers let you scroll. Pages in a book have to be turned (if you want to keep reading of course).
I’ve seen a number of blogs that use pagination for relatively short articles, which seems to me to be needless. A good example of pagination on a long article can be found on the SitePoint website.
The main use of...
8 tags
Short Web Design Tips #6
Treat IE6 better than CSS3 supporting browsers.
I’ve seen a large number of tweets and blog postings say how great CSS3 is, and how to use it. Hell, I’ve used it myself. The thing is, only the newest browsers support what is still (in the majority) a working draft of the CSS3 specification.
According to the damned lies statistics (November 2009 browser stats from ars technica), IE6...
6 tags
Short Web Design Tips #5
Organise your content before your site plan.
If content truly is king, as I’ve read that it is many, many times, then spend more time with it.
Your content can be the main factor in forming your site plan. Organisation of information will produce a clear structure which can be put to use as the framework of content around which a site can be built.
Then you only need to worry about design...
4 tags
Short Web Design Tips #4
Tell the user where they are.
Whatever the hierarchy of pages in your site, a user must know where they are, and where they can go.
Simple highlighting, or other indications (such as an icon or arrow) on the menu and sub-menu items will suffice, or perhaps a breadcrumb trail for sites with a large amount of pages.
If a user is going through the motions of a set process, such as a checkout, it...
7 tags
Short Web Design Tips #3
Make your content readable.
Making the text on your website easier on the eye is just one line of CSS away, so there should be no excuse for you not to do this.
p { line-height: 1.5em }
I find that this line height is usually optimal for the main text content on a page.
7 tags
Short Web Design Tips #2
Only apply solutions to problems.
Deny the urge to crowbar a cool new gallery/slideshow/other cool jquery plugin into a site just because it’s ‘cool’.
If you find something great, bookmark it. Don’t create the need for an unnecessary solution where there is no problem.
One day, you’ll have a unique situation where one of those finds will fit the bill perfectly, and that is the time to implement...
5 tags
Short Web Design Tips #1
Design using a grid system.
It doesn’t matter which CSS framework you end up building the final site with, or if you write your CSS from scratch, the idea is to have a well structured layout.
A set amount of spacing between sections of content throughout will bring uniformity and an organised feel to the site, even in a ‘non-standard’ layout.
7 tags
Displaying a list of Weblogs with a particular...
This may only be useful in particular circumstances (most obviously when using ExpressionEngine), but nonetheless it was useful to me, so here it is:
I have a number of Weblogs set up for managing the content on a website. The majority of these have been assigned to a ‘Static Content’ field group, and it’s these weblogs that I intend to use as menu links, with the individual...