All posts with the tag of Web Design

17th March 2011 by Simon Norris | Web Design

Design is a very complex subject and it has many definitions but one I particularly like is ‘to plan and fashion artistically or skillfully’ (dictionary.com). Design is a highly skillful activity and requires dedication and creativity. Good design is a process and one that is made up of many elements. It is the successful combination of elements that deliver a great design that make it compelling, engaging and ultimately, invisible.

9th February 2011 by Gemma Savagar | User Experience

A great website layout will deliver an intuitive, effective and enjoyable experience. Layouts are the foundation of presenting information clearly, attracting attention to the right parts and guiding people to their goals. This article focuses on layouts and how to help users interpret them correctly and positively as they scan the page. This guidance can be used throughout the website development process.

3rd December 2010 by Jon Fisher | User Experience

To many online retailers, the holy grail of behavioural change would be engaging more customers in deciding to purchase! In a UCD ecommerce process what persuasive elements do we include and at what time? How do we “persuade and not force”? Exactly how hard do we push potential customers? This article proposes a potential framework for designing persuasive techniques into the design of an ecommerce website in order to maximise revenue and create great user experiences!

2nd November 2009 by nomensa | Web Design

Most websites nowadays incorporate some kind of community aspect which allows users to provide feedback to the site’s owners and to each other. In fact, ‘building community’ is one of the most important aspects of any modern website. Websites that focus on their community or group nature are described as being social sites, an umbrella term that can cover a great number of disparate services. This article will describe how Developers can utilise social design patterns on a site in order to promote or dull certain behaviours in an online community.

5th January 2009 by Matt Lawson | Web Design

Focus is one of the lesser used Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) pseudo-classes. People familiar with CSS should be aware of the more commonly used pair, link and visited, but will often find that the focus and active pseudo-classes have been missed out. This article aims to explain why they are important and how they can [...]

24th November 2008 by Emily Coward | Web Design

Creating an accessible and flexible layout for a website can be a difficult task. More often than not web developers encounter problems with the flexibility of the design they are trying to produce as HTML/CSStemplates . Designs should be flexible enough to work at a variety of resolutions. However some designs produced at a width of 1024px just don’t translate well to a width of 800px. The limited amount of space available at 800px often means the content on the page is too close together or text overlaps ridiculously when the font size of the page is increased. This means that the display of content on the page can be difficult to comprehend when the browser window is narrow, but looks great when the window is a lot wider.

3rd November 2008 by Léonie Watson | Web Design

Checkpoint 3.2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 recommends that developers “create documents that validate to published formal grammars”. In other words, the checkpoint encourages people to use code that follows the official rules for that language.

1st May 2008 by Matt Lawson | Web Design

Structuring tables correctly is an important step in developing an accessible website but sadly it is rarely achieved. Many website developers do not realise the importance of creating accessible tables in their designs and, time after time, I find myself auditing pages with tables that fail due to lack of basic table structure.

With this in mind, I am hoping to pass on some quick, simple tips for creating tables. This is by no means an extensive list of table attributes, but those which are required to make a simple table accessible for all users.