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Web Design, HTML, and XML Articles from the About.com Guide to Web Design and HTML

By Jennifer Kyrnin

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03/18/2010 - Choose an SEO Marketing Firm
If you build websites you know that SEO is very important if you rely on search engines to get readers. But it can take a lot of time and effort on a continuing basis to optimize websites for search engines. So it's a good idea to look at search engine marketing firms. But there are a few things you should know before you pay them to optimize your site.

03/14/2010 - The @page Rule
The @page or at page rule is a an at-rule for paged media. It is a way of defining specific styles by the page of a document. You can also add specific styles for the first page of a document and the left and right pages of a paged document.

03/07/2010 - What Web Designers and Web Developers Hate About Project Managers
Most large Web teams are made up of many people. And in order to keep those teams and projects on schedule and under budget, there is usually a project manager as well. But while a good project manager keeps teams working together smoothly, they can often be annoying to the Web designers and developers working with them.

03/04/2010 - What Web Developers Hate About Web Designers
Web developers and Web designers both work on websites, often on the same site at the same time. But they don't always work smoothly together. Web developers are the programmers of a website and tend to worry less about how the site looks than how it works.

03/04/2010 - What Web Designers Hate About Web Developers
Web developers and Web designers both work on websites, often on the same site at the same time. But they don't always work smoothly together. Web designers are the artists of a website and tend to worry less about the function of the site in favor of making it look good.

02/26/2010 - Select a Web Host - Features of a Good Host
There are dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of Web hosting providers out there. Trying to choose between them can be overwhelming. Many beginning Web designers start out with only one criteria - the host must be cheap or free. But most people find that the cheapest hosts offer drawbacks that slightly more costly hosts don't have. Make sure you're getting exactly what you need.

02/23/2010 - How Do You Balance Your Time as a Freelancer?
Freelance Web design is a balancing act. There are many different tasks you need to do from marketing and getting customers, designing and building pages, providing customer service, billing and accounting, and more. There is no one way to balance the work you do, but you can get help from other designers to see how they do it and share your techniques.

02/16/2010 - What is Web Content?
Web content is the information and pictures that we come to read and view on Web pages. When a customer comes to a website, they don't care about the HTML or how the page is built, they just want to be able to read and look at the page with minimal distractions. Understanding what Web content is is critical to learning how to build great Web pages.

02/10/2010 - The 10 Cheapest SSL Certificates
SSL certificates are generaly fairly expensive, but there are some less expensive options, and if you want your customers to be secure on your site, using an SSL certificate that is signed by a reputable certificate authority is important.

02/08/2010 - Legal Pages for Websites
Most new website owners are focused on the basics of their site: the home page, content, and perhaps an about us page. But there may be some legal pages you would want to write as well, to protect you and your business. Find out what legal pages all websites should have.

02/07/2010 - Why Are Web Pages So Ugly?
I did a test and went to 10 random Web pages to see if I could find one that was aesthetically pleasing. And most were covered with garish advertising, bad color combinations, flickering flash and animations, tiny text and other annoying and ugly design decisions. As a designer, I often cringe when I see a bad design decision, but I used to believe that there were people out there trying to make good designs. Now I'm not so sure.

02/04/2010 - FlexiMenuJS Review
FlexiMenusJS is a JavaScript menu generator for Dreamweaver. It is a Dreamweaver extension that will help you build DHTML menus with JavaScript.

02/02/2010 - Can I Use a Free SSL Certificate for my HTTPs Pages?
A common question about creating a secure Web server (https) is whether you can or should use a free SSL certificate. The short answer is that it is possible to use a free certificate, but except for testing it's not a good idea.

02/01/2010 - How to Get Your Site Name in the Favicon Area
Modern browsers now have a way to display identity information on sites that are sent through secure (https) connections. The way that some browsers display it makes some people think that the change is to the favicon, but it really isn't. This tutorial shows how the different browsers display site identity information and points you to some resources so that your site can have that information displayed as well.

01/25/2010 - What is a Website Wireframe?
When you're planning a website, it can be tempting to jump right into the HTML editor and start building. But the best designs are done with planning, and the first type of planning you should do is a wireframe. A website wireframe is a non-graphical representation of the page(s) on the site. Wireframes can be fancy with complete representations of the entire site or they can be simple sketches on a napkin or anything in between.

01/24/2010 - Before You Add Multimedia to Your Website
Before you decide to add sound, video or animations to your Web pages, you should consider the ramifications of doing that. Many people find multimedia to be annoying, and you could risk losing customers if you use it. So keep these tips in mind when you decide to add sound, video or animations to your Web pages.

01/21/2010 - How to Create a Simple Shopping Cart with PayPal
Paypal makes it easy to turn any website into an ecommerce site. You can create a shopping cart or buy now button easily, and all you need is a Paypal account. This article will take you through the steps to create a Paypal shopping cart with HTML and through the Paypal interface.

01/12/2010 - Sams Teach Yourself Drupal in 24 Hours by Jesse Feiler
In 24 lessons, you will learn how to install and run a Drupal CMS website. Each lesson is designed to take an hour or less.

01/11/2010 - Prioritize Your Content and Put Important Stuff First Using CSS Float for Layout
Learn how to use CSS floats to lay out your Web pages in any fashion you like, without changing the HTML. Putting the most important content first in the HTML gives robots and search engines a leg up in knowing what content is important.

01/08/2010 - CSS Margin
CSS margins are an important tool for Web designers to understand. They provide control over the box elements by adding or removing space between the margins.

01/05/2010 - How to Use Web Metrics
Most Web designers and website owners have some type of analytics package that they can use to evaluate how their website is doing. But most people use it only in the most minimal way. While you can get a lot of information just by watching the pageviews on your home page, there is a lot more information in your analytics than that. Learn how to use your analytics package effectively.

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