Design features of all web sites
As technology constantly changes, a web designer needs to adapt to those changes. The five major technology changes are resolution, browsers, color, compression and text. These technology changes occur on web sites as hardware changes in speed, data transmission, memory, and video quality.
Resolution is rated at pixels per inch. Today’s basic monitors displays at 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768, measured horizontally and vertically. These are the two target screen sizes that a designer should use.
Browsers are another important design decision. Most people in the United States utilize the Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer. The second opted browser is Firefox, developed by Mozilla. Opera, Safari, and Advent are other browsers that are easily downloaded and preferred by many users. Many users in Europe prefer Opera, while Apple users utilize Safari.
Color is the third important designer option. Web-safe color is the set of colors that are used by the two major operating systems, Windows and Apple. A web-safe palette consists of 216 colors.
Compression of a JPEG or GIF file is also an important step. GIF images generally consist of line art or images, while JPEG files are more photo realistic images. A JPEG is usually no more than twenty percent of the images original size, but consist of thousands of colors.
Text style is the last decision needed. There are nine major style fonts, but the combination of Time, Time New Roman, or Courier are the most common. These fonts ensure that information will be displayed in a consistent fashion.
These five decisions made by a web designer are essential to every web page. By using these five topics as a guide to building a web page, will make a web page better!
