Jennifer's Web Design / HTML Blog

If you're trying to learn CSS, you should first learn the CSS 1 properties. These are the most widely supported CSS properties and you won't go wrong with them. There are a lot of things that CSS 1 can do for your Web pages but you'll never know if you don't try them out.

• Cascading Style Sheets Style Properties Library

Hedie asks:

"is it possible to embed an obscure font into a site so that I don't need to create images for section headings?"

My Thoughts
Embedded fonts are really popular with Web designers, and a complete anathema to font designers. There is a way to embed fonts using "Dynamic Fonts" with OpenType or TrueDoc, but they aren't widely supported.

If you have to use a specific font (such as for a logo or other branding element that requires it), then you should use an image of that text. But that isn't very accessible. So you are better off using CSS to define your preferred font family first, followed by alternates in decending preference. The last font on your list should be a generic font, in case a reader has none of your preferred fonts.

And you should include at least one family that is common to Macintosh and Windows computers. I've got lists of these common font families on my site.

• Common Macintosh Fonts
• Common Windows Fonts

As well as a comparison chart so that you can see how different the fonts look.

How do you get fancy fonts on your pages?
Do you rely on CSS only or do you create images of your headlines? Let us know by posting your ideas in the comments here or in the forum.

It's one thing to state that you design fast loading pages, but do you really? The best way to tell is to check the speed of your pages and find out. You can do this with Dreamweaver or with WebSiteOptimization.com. Keeping your pages loading quickly is important - do you walk the walk?

Do you check the download speed of the pages you build?

If you don't check your page sizes, why not? Are there other tools you prefer to use to check page download speed? Let us know in the comments.

Here are some of the most recent Web Design Firm listings submitted by fellow designers.

Submit Your Web Design Company

• FrozenSkys Software
  UK
  "FrozenSkys Software Specializes in web design and development, including bespoke programming, and also offers a full range of hosting and domain services."
• Clarity Multimedia
  Elmhurst (Chicagoland), IL
  "We understand the importance of balancing form and function in a website design."
• Rise Creative Group
  Orlando, Florida
  "Rise Creative Group is here to serve companies"
• Designz in motion
  Tucson, Arizona
  "Our clients enjoy no worries when it comes to their website."
• ICS
  Melbourne, Aus
  "We specialise in Asp.net and Dot Net Nuke websites"
• CARIBSCAPE Web Design
  Trinidad & Tobago, Caribbean
  "Shakespeare's character, Benedick, said it 500 years ago. The scene was Leonato's Garden in the play "Much Ado about Nothing" (Act II. Scene 3). His words sound like a perfect media design consultation today and I quote: "He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose"."
• Imagery Studio
  Bristol, RI
  "Imagery Studio has designed award winning web sites"
• Walnut Hill Design
  Amherst, NH
  "Walnut Hill Design caters to small to mid-sized companies looking to improve their image, branding, and market visibility."
• evaschusterweb.com
  South Lee, MA
  "evaschusterweb.com is interested in transforming your website into a content management site that you can administer without a programmer."

More Web Designers...
Hundreds of Web design firms listed.
Why did you highlight that Web Design Company and Not My Company?

Submit Your Web Design Company

One thing that novice Web designers don't realize is that even if you have a very powerful Web editor like Dreamweaver or Expression Web, you still need to think about CSS development from a coder's perspective. Hopefully, someday this will change and editors will be better at CSS development than they are now. (Note: these tools are good at writing CSS, they just aren't perfect.) If you have a plan and a workflow that you follow every time you start to build a CSS Web page, you'll get the best results out of what CSS can do for you.

• CSS Workflow - How to Start Work on a CSS Web Page

My Thoughts
Kevin clearly worked hard on this site. He's made good use of branding and the images are attractive and easy on the eyes. I normally don't like the reflection technique, but with the other faded and background images it works well. But there are some issues.

Read my full review

How would you critique this site?
What would you suggest to Kevin to improve this design? Are there other things Kevin could do to improve the site? Provide your own feedback on the site design by commenting here in the blog.

Other Site Designs

• L.M.Tees
• Aurora Media

Do You Want Your Site Considered for the Web Design Clinic?
There are two ways you can have your site reviewed on Web Design @ About.com. You can use either method, you don't have to use both:

1. Post a request in the Site Review Requests folder in the Web Design forum. This is the best way to get feedback, as you'll get responses from other Web designers in the forum, and selected posts will be chosen for the Web Design Clinic.
2. Submit your site to the Web Design Design Gallery and check the "solicit critiques" checkbox on the form. Pages submitted there will be reviewed by the About.com Guide to Web Design, Jennifer Kyrnin, and may be chosen for the Web Design Clinic.

CSS introduced a lot of new concepts in the way that we manage Web pages. And one of those things was the list of official color keywords. CSS color keywords are essentially the same as the SVG color keywords, but there are fewer of them. They are also more readily supported by most user agents and browsers. If you have just gotten started using color keywords, you should focus on the official CSS color keywords before moving onto the SVG keywords.

• CSS Color Keywords

Hedie asks:

"If you build your client a website and the deal is that they will take over the maintenance and all afterwards, wouldn’t it be best to build the site in tables? By this I mean using tables for the layout and CSS for positioning and styling (no nested tables). If your clients are not the tech-savvy, web-savvy clients and you are afraid that <div> tags will be confusing for them and they will not be able to work with them, would you build the site using tables?"

My Thoughts
Personally, I have found that DIVs are easier for most people to understand than tables are. For one thing, there are only 2 tags - <div> and </div> - that they put their text and images within. Tables require that they put them inside a <table>, <tr>, and <td> - and all the closing tags.

If your clients use a WYSIWYG editor, then I would definitely use div tags and CSS - since that is more accessible, more search engine friendly, and easier to maintain for the developer. From the perspective of the client, WYSIWYG will make maintenance about the same for div tags as with tables. This is especially true if you're going to use CSS for the positioning of the layout. As that's what is really difficult about CSS layouts - not the div tags.

Bottom line: if they are going to maintain the layout, then you'll have to teach them something about CSS and positioning anyway, so why teach them a method that is old? And if they're not going to change the layout, then it doesn't matter, so I'd still stick with a more modern method - namely CSS with div and block tags.

More Resources

• Why You Should Give Up on Tables for Design
• Web Page Layouts Shouldn't Use Tables
• Tableless Layouts - Using CSS Positioning to Layout Web Pages
• CSS Layouts Can Use More than Just the Div Tag

Do you change your pages depending upon who's maintaining them?
Do you make a distinction in your HTML code depending upon who will be maintaining the pages? If you do, what differences do you make? Do you provide special tools for your clients to maintain sites? Or do you make the pages as simple as you possibly can? Let us know by posting your ideas in the comments here or start a new thread discussing this in the forum.

Many people are finding lots of ways to spend more time online, and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are becoming ever more popular. It has taken me some time to really see the value of these types of sites - in fact, in some cases I get frustrated by how much time I end up spending on those sites rather than doing work that needs to be done.

Do you use social networking sites?
I use several social networking sites on a (semi) regular basis:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

There are a few other sites (like Dogologie DogPark and The Gaia Community and Shelfari) that I am a member of but I forget to update. Are you a member of these types of sites? Why or why not? Do you find them fun or a time sink (or both <grin>)? Let us know in the comments.

Personally, I've felt for a long time that writing HTML with a good text editor, like Homesite or BBEdit is faster, in the long run, than using a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver or Expression Web. Well, apparently, I'm not alone. In the April 21st Talk to the Newsroom article, Khoi Vinh, Design Director for the New York Times says:

"It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results."

I've been promoting the benefits of hand coding for years now, it's nice to see there are major sites out there who's developers agree with me.