Principles of Web Design

6th Edition

Chapter 2 – Web Site Design Principles

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Understanding the Web Design
Environment

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 Understanding the Web Design
Environment
• Many variables affect how web pages appear
• New screen resolutions
• New devices – tablets, smartphones
• Your designs must be portable and accessible

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 Understanding the Web Design
Environment
• Code to standards
• Test for compatibility
• View in multiple browsers
• Test on available operating systems
• Test on different devices

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 Browser Compatibility Issues
• Designing for multiple browsers is a challenge
• Test your work in as many browsers as
possible
• Test with both older browsers and new
browsers
• Try to minimize differences across browsers
• Modern browsers have better adherence to
web standards
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 Browser Compatibility Issues
Follow these guidelines:
• Follow W3C standards
• Validate your code
• Know your audience
• Test your work in multiple browsers and
devices

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 Connection Speed Differences
• Bandwidth has always been a challenge for web
designers
• Users do not like waiting for content
• In the US, broadband access has increased
• Broadband access is not universal around the
world
• Plan your pages for a variety of connection
speeds
• Test your pages at different connection speeds

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 Browser Cache and Download Time
• Web pages are stored on computers called web
servers
• Web addresses connect to a specific web server
• The server serves up the file for download
• All text and images are downloaded
• On return visits, your computer loads the files
locally unless content has changed
• Local files are stored in the browser cache
• Take advantage of the cache by reusing graphics

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 Device and Operating System Issues
• Users’ devices vary widely in equipment and
design
• This is a design variable you cannot control
• Test your content on as many device types as
possible
• Keep the following in mind:
– Monitors and display software
– Browser versions
– Font choices

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Designing for Multiple Screen
Resolutions

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 Designing for Multiple Screen
Resolutions
• Screen resolution is the width and height of
the computer screen in pixels
• Most monitors have many screen resolutions
to choose from, mobile devices are fixed
• This is a variable you cannot control
• The current most common resolutions are
1024 x 768 and 1366 x 768
• Wide-screen resolutions are popular as well
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 Widescreen Monitors
• Widescreen monitor use is widespread
• Wider screens are a challenge to designers
• Two design solutions:
– Flexible layouts fill the screen at different
resolutions as Figures 2-4 and 2-5
– Fixed designs do not change based on resolution,
stay centered in browser window as shown in
Figure 2-6 and 2-7

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 Mobile Devices
• Smartphones and tablets
• Must test on these devices as well
• Designing for mobile devices has many
challenges
• Many web sites now offer content designed
for mobile
• CSS Media Queries let you specify style rules
for different device types
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 Mobile Devices
• There are two strategies for serving content to
mobile devices:
• Separate mobile site – designed expressly for
mobile devices
• Responsive site – designed to adapt to
different screen resolutions

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 Mobile Devices
• Design examples:
• Separate mobile site – Figure 2-9 shows
Amazon mobile-only site
• Responsive site – Figure 2-10 shows Mashable
responsively-designed site

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 Solving the Screen Resolution
Dilemma
• Flexible designs:
– User controls the view of the content
– Less chance of horizontal scrolling
– More flexibility for multiple devices
– Better suited to text-based layouts and simpler
designs
• Fixed-width designs:
– Designer controls the view of the content
– Allow more complex page layouts
– More control over text length

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Crafting the Look and Feel of the Site

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 Balance Design and Content
• Access to your content and user needs should
guide your design
• Many sites have unnecessary design elements
• These factors can distract the user
• A web site’s design should complement the
content and support the reader
• Always choose simple and direct designs that
showcase content and allow easy access
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Plan for Easy Access to Information
• Information design is the most important factor
in the success of your site
• Determines how users access content
• Organize your content as a navigable set of
information
• Provide navigation choices to the user
• Users may browse or look for specific information
• Anticipate and plan for user actions
• Provide direct links to your most popular pages

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 Plan for Clear Presentation of Your
Information
• Design information to be easy to read and legible
• Break text into reasonable segments
• Provide contrasting colors that are easy on the
eye
• Use plenty of white space
• Readers have different online reading habits
• Include plenty of headings
• Control the width of your text

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Creating a Unified Site Design

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 Creating a Unified Site Design
• Plan the unifying themes and structure for
your site
• Communicate a visual theme with your design
choices
• Consider more than each page
• Plan smooth transitions
• Use a grid to provide visual structure
• Include active white space
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 Plan Smooth Transitions
• Plan to create a unified look
• Reinforce identifying elements
• Consistency and repetition create smooth
transitions
• Place navigation elements in the same
position on each page
• Use the same navigation graphics throughout
the site
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 Use a Grid to Provide Visual Structure
• The structure of a web page is imposed by the
grid
• The grid is a conceptual layout device
• The grid aligns your content into columns and
rows
• Impose a grid to provide visual consistency
• You can break out of the grid to provide variety
and highlight information
• The grid provides page margins and gutters
between elements

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 Use Active White Space
• White spaces are the blank areas of the page
• Use white space deliberately
• Good use of white space guides the reader
• White space that is used deliberately is called
active white space
• Passive white space is the result of mismatched
shapes
• Plenty of active white space reduces clutter and
clarifies organization

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Designing for the User

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 Designing for the User
• Keep your design efforts centered solely on
your user
• Find out what users expect from your site
• If you can, survey them with an online form
• Create a profile of your average user
• What do users want when they get to your
site?

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 Design for Interaction
• Think about how the user wants to interact
with your information
• Design for your content type
• Decide whether the user is likely to read or
scan
• Design pages for reading or scanning based on
the content type

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 Design for Location
• The user can traverse a page in a variety of
ways
• Consider the different ways your user could be
viewing your web pages

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 Design for Location
• Know what expectations your user might have
about your navigation and content
• Users have come to expect common elements
of a web page in certain locations

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 Keep a Flat Hierarchy
• Do not make users navigate through too many
layers of information
• Includes section on topic-level navigation pages
• Create content sections organized logically by
theme
• Follow the three clicks rule
• Use consistent navigation
• Consider providing a site map

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 Use Hypertext Linking Effectively
• You determine where users can go on your
web site
• Let users move from page to page or section
to section as they please
• Use contextual linking
• Avoid the use of “click here”
• Provide plenty of navigation options

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 How Much Content is Too Much?
• Don’t overcrowd your pages with information
• Be conscious of the cognitive load of the user
• Carefully divide content into smaller sections
• Present content in a structured manner
• Provide plenty of navigation cues

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 Reformat Content for Online
Presentation
• Cannot post print documents directly online
• Text length, font, and content length do not
transfer well
• Re-design paper content for online display

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Designing for Accessibility

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 Design for Accessibility
• Your audience includes users who have physical
challenges
• Design your pages to be accessible to users with
disabilities or technological barriers
• Common accessibility features can be
unobtrusive additions to your site
• Developing accessible content naturally leads to
creating good design
• Follow W3 Accessibility Initiative guidelines at
www.w3.org/WAI/

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 Accessibility Features
In Figure 2-32:
• Optional navigation links—Lets users with screen
readers skip repetitive navigation links and jump
directly to the page content
• ›High-contrast version—Lets users switch to a legible
alternate page version to make text easier to read
• User-controlled font size—Lets users adjust the font
size for optimal legibility
• Access keys—Lets users access sections of the site with
keystrokes, which are listed on the Accessibility page

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 Summary
• Craft an appropriate look and feel
• Make the design portable
• Plan for easy access to your information
• Design a unified look for your site
• Use active white space
• Know your audience
• Leverage hypertext linking
• Design text for online display
• Test your work continually as you build
• Build accessibility from the start

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