What You Must Learn About Web Design

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What You Must Learn About Web Design
From blogs to storefronts, great web design is always key in presenting your content to the world. Who will trust what you have to say if your site looks unprofessional? The information contained in this article will help you to build a website which looks great, functions cleanly and brings you the traffic you deserve!

Keep the size of your web pages small. A lot of modern web pages are full of unnecessary elements, including huge images, Flash advertising, and lots of AJAX. Many people, especially those in rural areas and other countries with less-developed internet infrastructure, don't have high-speed Internet and will have to wait forever for a large page to load.

Use JavaScript to include a custom font on your webpages. Libraries like Typekit and Google Web Fonts make it easy to include esoteric fonts on webpages, even if most visitors don't have those fonts on their computers. It works by embedding the font itself into JavaScript so that it can be decoded by the client on the fly.

Always mark files that must be opened in an external program with an icon. Many sites host PDF files, and less commonly, DOC files, that must be opened in Foxit Reader and Microsoft Word/OpenOffice, respectively. These files should be marked with an icon representing the file type, and a link to download the appropriate viewer if the user does not have it.

Wherever your logo appears on your site, you should accompany it with a complementary slogan or tagline. Ideally, this tagline should be catchy and informative, and should offer some basic summary of the purpose of your site or product offering. The combination of your logo and tagline should appear on every page to create a sense of cohesion.

Don't load rich content automatically. Rich content mainly refers to music and videos, but anything other than text or graphics qualifies. Many people browse in work environments where sounds suddenly playing is a big problem. Also, many people find such rich content annoying in general. Rich content should require some interaction from the user before playing.

The file types that you utilize for your website's graphics directly affect file sizes which in turn affect how quickly your website loads. In general, it is best to use JPEGs and GIFs for your graphics. While BMP and PNG files might be better for creating web graphics, these file types tend to use significantly more disk space. Convert your graphics into file types with more manageable sizes if you want to ensure that your visitors have a great user experience at your website.

To help your website function the way it is intended to, make sure all your links are working. If you have broken links then your visitors may get frustrated when they try to click on something that interests them. Frustrated visitors is not something you want because they end up leaving your site mad.

Learning web design gets easier when you practice often. To test your knowledge of the basics, try designing some pages using HTML and C+. Remember that practice makes perfect and that you have to start somewhere.

Having a website and designing it yourself means, you need an office space. Eliminate distractions and maximize efficiency of the work space, so you are always ready to work. Keep all of your tools and materials within easy reach and keep the space optimized for your workflow needs.

If you are new to web design, you should start with a very basic layout. This allows you to modify the structure as you become more comfortable with design principles. By starting with the basics and slowly increasing the complexity, you ensure that you develop solid fundamentals, which will give you a solid grasp of the fundamentals.

If you are thinking about different topics for websites, it is important that you secure a domain name for the site, immediately. Choose something creative, but reserve it as soon as you can so it is available to you whenever you decide to start creating your website. Even if your idea is very original, someone else could think up the same thing. We are all stimulated by the same media and social events.

I hope you've learned from this article and feel confident that you're ready to get started in the world of web design. Whether you are just starting to create your own site or you plan to build websites as a career, your first step is learning how it's done. Now you can move on to the fun stuff, enjoy!