Website and Graphic Design
Website and Graphic Design
This article was first published on July 13, 1998.
What restrictions need to be considered.
Unfortunately the World Wide Web does have its limitations, as does the various types of software and hardware being used to view the Web. If you are planning a Web Site that anyone will be able to access then there are some factors that will need to be taken into consideration.
Download Times
The time that a page will take to download will differ from person to person. This is because different people have different computers that work at various speeds, which are linked to the Internet in different places around the world via different speeds of modems and so on. As a result the time a Web Page, and a few of graphics, takes to download will vary tremendously. So the size of the HTML and graphic files take up, in terms of how much disk-space they take up, needs to be minimal.
Software Variation
There are several Web Browsers to choose from and each of these has numerous versions. Each Web Browser interprets the HTML differently giving a Web Page a different appearance if this fact is not taken into consideration. Good HTML programming will make sure that a Web Page works and looks good when viewed with different software. As The World Wide Web has developed and become more popular, new features have been added to HTML (Frames, Style-Sheets and so on) and new languages have been developed (JavaScript, Java and ActiveX for example). These new features are not always recognised by the different Web Browsers. With this in mind the design of a Web Site needs to accommodate older software that can not handle such features.
Monitor Size
You may need to consider the size of the the different monitors. For instance it would be unfair to design a page that looks great on a 21 inch monitor and utilises all the space available on that screen. A majority of people will be seeing your Web Site on a much smaller screen, sometimes smaller than you might think; a laptop screen for example.
Number Of Colours
The number of colours used in graphics has a huge affect on how the Web page looks and how fast it takes to download. If you intend using a vast number of graphics then it would be advisable to restrict your pallet to 16 colours. If you really want to use more or need to display photographs then you will need to contemplate how they will look when viewed on a monitor that only uses 256 colours or even just 16 shades of grey.
Whilst on the subject of graphics you will need to allow for the people that do not download the graphic files. Having no graphics might affect the navigation of the site and the absence of graphics can change the whole layout of the text on a Web Page, if certain specifications are not included in the HTML code. More importantly it would be wonderful if your Web site worked when read or listened to by a user using a text-only Web Browser.
The simple solution to keep everyone happy is to always use ALT, WIDTH, and HEIGHT within the Image tag.
For example:
<IMG SRC="home_icon.gif" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="24" ALT="Back to the Home Page">
If you use graphics as spacers or horizontal/vertical rules use the ALT element of the IMG tag and place a space between the quotes. This will stop text-only Web Browsers from putting [image][image][image][image] in the middle of the page.
Limitations are listed in the summary below;
September 7, 2010
