Well Designed Homepage?  .... What does it really take?
By Mikko Aarnio

Designing Entire Site

a Little Style Guide

Here is some style rules so read this one carefully. Here is again those list which show us some rules.

  1. Establish site wide consistency rules.
  2. Decide on a standard width.
  3. Establish a typographic hierarchy for site wide consistency.
  4. Think about your audience.
  5. Make opportunities for feedback.
  6. Use visitor demographics.

1. Consistency is important in all design, but it's extremely important with the Web. Because one mouse-click can send someone to a new site at any time, a consistent style provides a significant visual cue to let people know that they are still on the same site.

2. You must decide a standard width for your site, before designing it, because there is two common widths. There is 485 pixels (that's the Netscape Navigator's Macintosh default) and 600 pixels (Netscape Navigator's Windows default). You can tell your audience to resize the browser to your standard width.

3. You should also establish guidelines for the hierarchy of typographic elements at your site. Just as with a magazine or a book, start a body-copy level and work up from there, designing treatments for titles, sub headers, and any other display type your site requires.

4. This is really important for the web. You have to think about your audiences connection speed, type of computer & platform and type of display. Your visitors may have PC or Mac, and they may be barreling through your site with T1 or plodding along with 9600 bps modem. Even if they all use PC, the number of monitor colors can range from 2 to millions. And there's just hardware problems! Their browser may be Navigator, Internet Explorer, Mosaic or just one fancy garage development. Different browsers use different font type too. Netscape Navigator's is Times Roman while Mosaic's users see the Net with Helvetica. Of course, users can change the font, so there may be someone who like Wingdings the best way to see the Net. Just keep in mind that you're designing for all of these variations, not just one. Whenever possible test your site using different types of hardware and software, and find out what equipment people are using (see next tip).

5. You should create a e-Mail link, so your visitors could send you messages instantly, asking questions and tell opinions etc. Creating a posting section - and then reading the comments there - is another good way to get feedback.

6. If your site has registration (or survey), the information you collect from it can be very useful in planing or changing the design of your site. By asking visitors, what OS, modem or browser they are using, to get a better sense of how many graphics to put on a page, how wide to make your site, and so on.

Now you are ready to continue to the lesson 2! Just click Next!

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