Making your web site accessible
Published August 1, 2010 | 
Keep in mind the needs of disabled visitors when you are designing your web site, especially for those who are blind or partially sighted
Besides keeping your web site focused, it is also import to consider accessibility. Some of the people who visit your web site will be suing different monitors that yours or running it at a different resolution. More importantly, however, some users will have poor eyesight or even completely blind. How do you ensure that your web site is user-friendly to people with these limitations?
You might need to make some changes to the way you code your site to sthat you don’t alientat this group of users. It is possible that they may be using a screen reader which reads the words out loud. Some screen readers are more advanced than others but in all cases you should do your part to help your web visitor. Stick to the guidelines given here as well as clean HTML and CSS and your web site should be more accessible. Continue reading
Posted in Web Design | 
accessibility, alt tag, color blind, disabilities, navigation, screen reader, title tag | 
Leave a commentWriting for the Web
Published July 12, 2009 | I’m really not much of a writer. I have the technical part pretty much down, i.e., spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc., but when it comes to being creative — nothing! There is a lot of free stuff out there — and I mean truly free. If you are like me without a creative writing bone in your body, there are articles written by those that do have them. These can be found on such sites as EzineArticles.com.
Since this articles is about writing, however, and not publishing other’s work, let me remind you to use that word processor on your PC to its fullest extent. All of the really good ones provide tools to check spelling, grammar and punctuation. If you don’t have one of these good ones, I suggest that you check out OpenOffice.org for their free software suite.
Many people find it difficult to read from a screen rather than paper. They also seem to have a much shorter attention span.
Using Adobe Kuler
Published June 7, 2009 | Adobe has a great free tool to help you design the color scheme for your web site. Adobe Kuler (pronounced like “cooler”) can be found at http://kuler.adobe.com. If you have an Adobe ID sign it with that to download and share color schemes. You can also sign up (free) even if you do not have an Adobe ID. You do not have to sign up unless you want to save or download your color schemes.
There are three ways to choose a color scheme:
- Pick one of the ones already developed by other Kuler users
- Create a new one using the color wheel
- Create a new one based upon an image (one you upload or select from Flickr)
Let’s look at each of these three and how you would use them for your web site. Continue reading
Posted in Web Design | Adobe Kuler, analogous, color, complementary, monochromatic | Leave a commentCreating a Unified Look
Published May 11, 2009 | When visitors come to your site and go from page to page (hopefully, they will stick around that long!), do they know that all the pages they visit on your site are all part of your domain? Your web site should have a consistent look and feel throughout all your pages.
Color schemes
If you are not an artist, you may need assistance in picking the colors for your site. If you are a complete novice or know that you tend to match stripes with plaids, you are probably better off using a predesigned template. If you do have color sense, you will still need to keep a few “rules” in mind when designing your site. Stick to a few key colors: three to five are best. Complementary color schemes work very well, e.g., blue and orange. Monochromatic or analagous color schemes will also work. See Kuler article for more on picking color schemes. Continue reading
Posted in Web Design | browser compatability, color schemes, fonts, page layout, type, typefaces | Leave a commentLimiting Your Content
Published May 5, 2009 | When developing your web site, it is very important to focus on what you know. Keep your content relevant to your anticipated users. When planning your web site, narrow your focus and then stick to it.
Limiting Design
Your web site design should help people find the information they are seeking. This is really two separate categories. First, you will want to make sure that you have a consistent design throughout your site. This can be accomplished through a template or cascading style sheet (more on this in another article). Secondly, you will want to keep your pages short, less than 1,000 words.
Keep vertical scrolling to a minimum — a sales page and blogs seems to be the accepted exceptions. Horizontal scrolling, however, is never acceptable. The “standard” width is currently designed to work on a 1024 x 768 monitor resolution. This amounts to about 960 usable horizontal pixels. Keeping your design narrow is ideal as it is difficult to read across wide columns of information. There’s a reason newspaper columns are so narrow! Continue reading