Slickbyte Media Design concepts
This section will discuss some of the ways the technology can be used in creating websites that are both engaging and functional. This involves a balance of familiar look and feel navigation for ease of use along with forward thinking design to create a unique look and separate your site from the many that are online.
Structured code
If one is well versed in website design then this information will be second nature, so I will attempt to layout the methods and needs for structured design in a manner that will explain it to the average lay person.
There has been a shift from a more "free form" method of coding to a more structured approach that separates content from form. Content being all the written and visual information on a site and form being the layout and visual aspects of the site.
For many years a large group of designers and industry professionals called the World Wide Web consortium or W3C has been working on standards for web design and browser compliancy to set a standard for coding on the web. This is all in an effort to bring the myriad of websites and computing platforms into one single structured way of coding and displaying web content thus minimizing the inherent problems associated with cross platform communications.
The W3C has for some time provided a service that would verify the compliancy to the most recent standards (There are links at the bottom of each page of this website that will bring up such a report) and in the past because of browsers that included many deviations from the web standards. For many designing to W3C standards was more of a matter of pride. More emphasis was put on getting sites to work properly with some popular albeit non-compliant browsers.
Coding to standards is now becoming more of a necessity, partly because of the advent of smaller more portable computing devices such as PDAs, smartphones and tablets. These devices do not have the resources to create browsers that can allow for nonstandard coding and have pushed the industry into becoming more adherent to a standard for designing websites.
Structure and maintainability
We have discussed the concept of structure as it relates to cross platform compatibility, however there are other reasons for designing in this structured manner. One of these is maintainability of a site. and another is the ability to update content without effecting the visual design. More importantly having the ability to change the look of a site quickly and efficiently without running the risk of inadvertantly losing or adversly changing the content.
This separation of content and form is achieved through the use of Cascading Style sheets (or CSS). This is a system where a file is created apart from the HTML code that contains all the information pertaining to the look and feel of web pages. This file can be linked to all the pages on a website, thus controling the visual aspects of your entire site. Some of the aspects of a website that are controlled are:
- Size and positioning of different sections
- Bacxkground color and background images
- Font types, color, styles and indentation
- Display attributes of specific types of text such as addresses, quoted material etc.
- Changes to attributes of anchors and links when unvisited, visited, or rolled over
This is just a brief list of the many design items that can be controlled by CSS and utilizing as much of their capability can make maintaining a site much simpler thus less time consuming.
Structure and Cost
We now come to the issue regarding the cost of designing and maintaining a website. If one is hiring a designer then the cost is money. For a person designing their own website the cost is time, and both are real costs.
If a designer is paid by time for work performed, having less time spent on updates and maintenance translates to a cost saving. This saving is important for a commercial site to maximize profits, or a hobby site to minimize the resources used.
Usually content and form are updated at different times, so keeping the two functions completely seperate can cut down the time substantially. The time saved by not having to update multiple pages, or by constantly testing pages to ensure the look and feel remain consistent and error free, can be more than the total cost would have been without CSS.
As a designer it is important to minimize time spent as well. Even when charging by the hour spending less time on a project can be adventageous.
If charging by the hour, a higher rate can be charged while decreasing the cost to clients. This could increase the amount of work provided by a particular party and making up some of the difference. This savings to a client could lead to possible referrals.
Another benefit of spending less time on particular tasks is the ability to service a larger number of clients with the same amount of resources thus providing a more profitable and sustainable client base.
These are only a few reasons structured design is advantageous to all parties, not to mention the decrease in downtime when updates are required and the ability to keep up with changes in the landscape or business requirements.
