2006 Web Design Articles

Web Design, HTML, and XML Articles from 2006

By Jennifer Kyrnin

12/13/06 - CSS 3 Opacity
Opacity is a method of making elements transparent in CSS 3. It is not supported in all browsers, but there are ways to get around it in the browsers that don't support it.

11/29/06 - How to Use HTML Codes for Special Characters
It's easy to include special characters in your Web pages, even if the characters aren't on your keyboard layout. Simply use Unicode and HTML character entity codes to define the characters on your Web pages.

11/20/06 - Definition Lists
When people think lists, they usually think of numbered or bulletted lists, but there is another type of list that can be very useful to Web designers - the definition list. This article covers when to use the definition list and how to style them so that they look nice on your Web page.

11/06/06 - Web Design Horror Stories
Everyone makes mistakes, it's a fact of humanity. But sometimes Web mistakes can be disastrous, and sometimes they are just funny. I have made some major mistakes in my time as a Web developer, and I'm sure I haven't made my last.

10/24/06 - How to Protect Your Digital Photos from Being Copied
Protecting your digital photos from people using them without your knowledge is essentially impossible. But there are some ways that you can make it more difficult.

10/23/06 - CSS Drop Shadows
Learn how to write CSS drop shadows without using any images. It's even possible to create drop shadows on text, but currently not in a standards-compliant or accessible way.

10/17/06 - How to Avoid Deprecated HTML
It's one thing to be told to use CSS in place of deprecated HTML, but if you don't know what to use it can be difficult. This article will show you how to use CSS in place of those deprecated tags.

10/09/06 - When to Use JPEG or GIF Format for Your Web Images and PNG Too
When creating Web graphics it's important that you use the correct format for the job. GIF and JPG files each have different uses, and should be used for different types of graphics.

10/04/06 - Taking Great Pictures for Web Sites
Taking photos for your Web site is very important - but you can completely destroy the effect if your photos are bad. Make sure that your photos are saying what you want them to say.

09/26/06 - Don't Forget the Missing Table Tags
Using the additional table tags like caption, thead and tbody as well as the summary attribute can make your HTML tables more accessible.

09/25/06 - When to Use Ajax and When Not To
Just because your boss or your marketing department or you think that Ajax is cool and you really want to build an Ajax application doesn't mean that you should. If you understand what Ajax is good for, you'll be better off when you do get the call and can create an application that uses Ajax well, and not just for the sake of using Ajax.

09/21/06 - Every Page is an Entry Page
If you want someone to find your Web site, does it really matter if they find your home page or some other page on your Web site? Many people focus so heavily on optimizing their home page for search engines, that they forget that other pages on their site might be easier to optimize and result in more page views.

09/18/06 - How to Use an Accessibility Validator
Unlike HTML validators, accessibility validators require that you do a bit more manual work to make sure that your sites are accessible. This document will help you understand how to use an accessibility validator so that your site actually is accessible.

09/14/06 - Noframes - The Key to Usable and Accessible Frames
Noframes helps you provide a site even if your customers can't use frames. Get help learning to use one of the lesser used frames tags - noframes.

09/04/06 - How Do I Include One HTML File in Another Using Dreamweaver?
The Dreamweaver library function is one of the best things about the editor, because it allows you to create include files for your site without having any actual include functionality on the server.

08/29/06 - Designing for IE - Design for Firefox First
It is often very difficult to design a Web site when you need it to look the same in both Internet Explorer and Firefox or Safari. The trick is to start with a different browser than you're probably used to starting with - design for Firefox first.

08/28/06 - Making Web Columns Appear to Be the Same Height
When building CSS designs you may find that the columns end up all different heights, which can look bad. But there is a way to fake it so that the columns appear to all end at the same place.

08/22/06 - CSS Outline Styles
The CSS 2 outline property is different from the border property in several ways. Primarily in that they do not take up space and they may be non-rectangular.

08/21/06 - Freelance Web Designers - What Does Your Web Site Say About You?
Your Web site can and probably will be seen by your customers, clients and future bosses. Is it saying what you want it to say about yourself and your skills?

08/08/06 - WYSIWYG Isn't Really - What You See May Not Be What Your Customers Get
Just because you use a WYSIWYG editor doesn't guarantee that your pages will look the same to your customers as what you see when you view your page in your editor. WYSIWYG is actually a misnomer when it comes to Web editing software.

08/07/06 - Alt Text - Not Alt Tag
The term alt tag is actually an incorrect term that refers to the alt text or alt attribute on images, applets, and input elements to define what is in those elements. Alt text is used to help accessibility and to provide a little more information on the Web page.

08/01/06 - Divitis - The Habit of Using Divs for Everything in CSS Layouts
One of the most common mistakes a beginning CSS layout Web designer will make is to put everything in divs. Sometimes even down to the paragraph level. While this might make things easier to think about, it's not semantic markup, and it ends up being harder to maintain, as it's impossible to look at the code and know immediately what it's supposed to be.

07/31/06 - Avoid Inline Styles for CSS
Once you've learned the basics of CSS it can be tempting to do things that ultimately make your CSS harder to maintain and use. But if you follow best practices for CSS, you'll have Web pages that are accessible and easier to maintain. One of the basic best practices for CSS is to not use inline styles.

07/24/06 - Rounded Corners Using CSS and No Images
Rounded corners on boxes is a popular way to make CSS designs look less boxy, but the most common method requires a large amound of images which can drastically increase the download time for your pages. This method uses stripes and inline elements to get the effect of rounded corners.

07/17/06 - White Space in HTML Can Slow Your Pages
Creating pages that download quickly is always important to Web designers, but once you've moved all the scripts and CSS to external locations and optimized your graphics what can you do? Whitespace, whether you put it in deliberately or because of programming adds a lot of it, causes a longer download time.

07/11/06 - Writing Web Pages that Meet Your Customers' Goals
Most Web pages are intended to answer a question or assist a customer with something. But if you're answering the wrong questions, you can end up annoying your customers more than you help them. Make sure that your content is focused on the goals of your customers, not the goals of your marketing department.

07/10/06 - What is mod_rewrite and How Do You Use It?
Using mod_rewrite you can change the URLs that your customers are viewing on-the-fly. Your customer types in one URL and your Apache server interprets it using mod_rewrite to point to a different location or script. Custom URLs allow you to control and protect your Web site.

07/04/06 - Low Vision Web Page Layouts
Because the Web is primarily text, people with low vision often only need to expand the size of your text to be able to read it. However, even with the most flexible layouts, there can be problems when the reader zooms in using the Web browser. So some designers developed the idea of creating alternate style sheets that were written specifically for low vision readers.

06/27/06 - CSS Specificity
CSS specificity is the way that Web browsers determine how two or more competing rules will apply in a given situation. If two CSS rules could apply to the same property, one will be more specific and so it will win over the other.

06/26/06 - CSS 3 Selectors That Work Right Now
CSS 3 is not yet complete, but there are some selectors already available that you can use to help improve your documents destined for a Mozilla/Firefox audience. CSS 3 selectors give you a lot more flexibility and power with your Web documents.

06/20/06 - CSS 2 Selectors
CSS 2 selectors extend the reach of CSS selectors to allow you more power and control over what you can style in your documents. Once you understand CSS 2 selectors you'll have more wildcards and depth of styles for your cascading style sheets.

06/19/06 - CSS Selectors
CSS selectors are the basics of cascading style sheets. Once you understand CSS 1 selectors you'll be able to select many of the more common elements and situations to create a well-styled document.

06/12/06 - What is CSS3?
CSS 3 is the modularization of Cascading Style Sheets to allow additions to the specification as well as limit the properties used in a given situation. With a specification that is modular, additions and changes to that specification become much easier.

06/05/06 - Fixed Width Layouts Versus Liquid Layouts
Web page layout has essentially two different methods: liquid and fixed width layouts. Learn the pros and cons of each, and how you can decide to use one or the other for your site.

05/29/06 - Head Rush Ajax by Brett McLaughlin
A review of the book Head Rush Ajax by Brett McLaughlin. A quick and dirty way to get your Web site up and running using Ajax.

05/22/06 - The HTML Label Tag - Make Your Forms Accessible
Using the label tag to label HTML forms elements that don't have implicit labels gives you more control over the design and accessibility of your Web forms.

05/15/06 - The Back Button - How People Use Web Sites
The back button is the most important button on a Web page, and it's not even part of the page itself, but the browser.

05/08/06 - Images Should be Clickable
Graphics on Web pages are one of the places that customers tend to gravitate towards, they want to click on them. So you should make them clickable.

05/01/06 - Book Review: Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Web usability is something many developers don't think anything about, but if you don't think about usability your sites won't be usable. Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think doesn't force you to think about usability. Instead, it shows you, with pictures and humor how to make your Web sites better.

04/24/06 - Thinking About Positioning - Using CSS to Layout Your Web Pages
Understanding how to do CSS positioning is a lot different from understanding why you should do it. This article attempts to explain some simple tricks to help you learn to position your Web pages with CSS.

04/10/06 - Don't Tell Your Readers What Browser to Use
Don't expect your readers to change browsers. What if they put in a DVD and the player said I'm sorry, this DVD won't play unless you have the Sony Trinitron HDTV player and 42inch receiver. Your Web page shouldn't be doing that either.

03/27/06 - Use Real Text for Testing Page Designs
Learn when to use lorem ipsum and when to use actual text that people can read when designing a Web site.

03/20/06 - What is Web Administration?
There is more to building Web pages than just learning HTML, but many Web designers and developers forget about the layer underneath the Web pages, the Web server, the security, and the programs that make your Web page work.

03/13/06 - How Useful is Your 404 Page?
Most Web servers have a way for developers to edit and maintain their 404 page. In many cases, you can even set up 404 pages for different areas of the Web site and to suit different purposes. But it's easy to create a 404 page that is basically useless.

03/06/06 - Web Pages Should Go Away, Eventually
When you move pages or take them down, it is often tempting to put up redirects so that your customers don't get lost or confused. This also helps prevent link rot. But is that really helping things in the long run?

02/27/06 - Origin and Design Goals for XML
The ten design goals for XML and what they mean.

02/20/06 - What is the Semantic Web?
The Semantic Web was devised by Tim Berners-Lee as a way to make the Web into a giant database. With the current status of data on the Web, computers do not know what data they are displaying it. Instead, all that the markup language usually tells about a document is how to display it or structure it. The Semantic Web makes the data understandable to computers as well, so it can be cataloged and used more efficiently.

02/17/06 - How Cookies are Used by Web Pages and Web Browsers
Cookies are used to store bits of information. Cookies can only get the information that the Web browser can get or that the person browsing gives to the cookie.

02/13/06 - What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is a watchword for the new definition of the Web and the Internet. The idea is that Web 1.0 was a creation of Web pages that provided information to readers. Web 2.0 takes that information and interacts with the reader to allow the reader to find the information he or she wants in the format that is most useful to them.

02/06/06 - CSS Editing Software: Which One is Right for You?
If you're looking to find the right CSS editing software to meet your needs you should take this questionairre. After just a few short questions, you'll have a list of some of the best CSS editing software tools available to meet your needs and your budget.

01/30/06 - What is a Podcast?
There are many misconceptions about what a podcast is. This article will teach you what a podcast is, why it's called a podcast, and give you references to start your own podcast.

01/23/06 - What do Your Links Say and Where Do They Lead?
When you click on a link, you want to know where you're going. If your link text doesn't match what's on the page the link goes to your reader can get confused and possibly lose trust in the Web site where they clicked.

01/16/06 - CSS FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions About Cascading Style Sheets
There are many things that you need to know to learn to write Cascading Style Sheets. This FAQ will help answer some of the more common questions about CSS.

01/09/06 - What is a User Style Sheet?
User style sheets allow you to control how pages that you visit look. They fix usability issues and can help deal with tags and elements that you might find annoying.

01/02/06 - Large Web Sites Don't Change Much
If you've been visiting one of the larger Web sites on the Internet for a long time, you may have noticed that many of them don't do massive redesigns the way that smaller Web sites tend to. Redesigns can be very difficult for customers to get used to unless they are done in an iterative approach.

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