Web Design and Graphics

Internet years are like dog years; much, much shorter than calendar years. This directs to the somewhat sore entrance that no web project can function in terms of long timescales. A web -application that gets two years to enlarge will be obsolete long earlier than it is released. In fact, in our experience, the life of a web project is more frequently deliberate in weeks than in months. The pace with which web projects have to be finished clearly puts the association under substantial stress.

Very frequently the clients don’t know precisely what they want to attain through the web application. They might not even have a plain thought of the target users. They very over and over again perplex their own purposes with the user’s causes for using the application. They are concerned about hackers and viruses, but want to present highest entrance to their users. The difference between yesterdays internet projects and the web applications of today is the truth that the latter carry the user’s errands, in dissimilarity to just providing in order and advertising jive.

Web technology, while in a stable state of development, places some serious restraint on web – applications. mainly in judgment to stand -alone applications that run on a normal P C. Very little “cleverness” or program logic can be programmed in the web application, error handling is very poor and the border is made up of chronological conversation. These issue, and many more, can make scheming a usable boundary quite challenging though not unfeasible.

So the average web project is often faced with
- clients and users who frequently have very fuzzy ideas of what they really want to attain.
- a disparity between the client’s and the users’ objectives. – technological fetters that confront the idea of functional applications.
- high expectations the web developers should create something concrete within tremendously short time -spans.

These cost-effective, technological and managerial constraints often result in an approach that can look like the Wild West.

The mobile phone has hard to believe reach – users have their phones with them at home, in the car, at work, in the store. Mobile devices are used on the go, are geographically susceptible, and are chiefly used to regain context-sensitive information swiftly: looking up a phone number, examination an address, reading a restaurant assessment, or finding a map and directions. Because the mobile atmosphere is a overwhelmingly different experience, it does not make sense to basically point mobile users to a fixed website and miss out on the exclusive potential of the mobile environment. Designers must not think of the mobile location as a poor proxy for desktop sites and applications. in its place, we must consider what works best within the context of real-world mobile browsing, and transport happy and functionality customized to the platform. In some cases, this means offering a separation of satisfied and functionality. It might also mean contribution satisfied and functionality sole to the mobile platform. Benefits of the Mobile Web

• Portability
• Location awareness (GPS)
• Accelerometer (measures tilt and motion. It is also competent of detecting turning round and motion wave such as swinging or shaking)
• nearness sensors (The iPhone screen blacks out when you put it to your face)
• Electronic scope
• Picture & video ability
• Phone connection and the ability to move faultlessly from browser to phone
• Multi-touch gesticulation support & content whooshing
• World-wide market dispersion

Challenges of Designing for the Mobile Web

When designing for the mobile Web, broad usability and convenience principles for the desktop surroundings still apply:

• Deliver useful and forceful content
• Give functionality and design that fit the user’s context
• Write standards-compliant XHTML and CSS code
• Follow convenience rule
• Use clear and brief language
• Make the site easy to steer

Some of the confront we face with the mobile platform include:

• difference in machine usability
• lesser screen size
• diversity of screen sizes
• many browsers
• Connection speed and dependability
• Lack of peripherals
• Input dissimilarity
• One-handed organize of devices

a) The Casual Surfer

These customers act in a similar way to customers of traditional web sites. Casual surfers are not really interested in any one thing, but have a few spare minutes between tasks to take a look around. In the world of desktop PCs, those few minutes might occur between meetings, or while the user’s on a short break. For a mobile customer, those few minutes might occur when the user’s sitting outside waiting to meet friends, in a car or taxi traveling somewhere, or even during the morning commute. If your site is focused on the sort of content that would appeal to casual surfers, then be aware of the limitations on the time and screen-size of your mobile customer.

The goal should be to make your content more “sticky”, so that casual surfers come back for more. For example, you shouldn’t serve up long pieces of content. Instead, aim for small, bite-sized chunks that are just enough to keep customers interested, but not so long that users can’t browse your site in the time they have available.

b) The Repeat Visitor

Repeat customers are those that are constantly returning for some sort of specific news or data. If your site is the kind of site that offers information about stocks, weather or sports scores, you probably have plenty of repeat visitors. The interface of a mobile device is very limited, so if you know what your repeat visitors are coming back for, time and time again, let that naturally bubble up to the top of the site. Avoid burying the content your customers want behind 3 or 4 clicks.

Mobile web site customization can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. A traditional site might ask you to log in, but on a mobile device, data entry is not as easy to perform, so it’s best avoided.

One option is to allow visitors to use their desktop machines to streamline their mobile experience. Take a page from Apple’s iTunes Music Store as an example. A repeat customer might customize his or her version of the mobile site while at a desktop machine; this could generate a special URL in which all of that user’s preferences are encoded. The next time the user visits your site from a mobile device, he or she can take advantage of this special URL, enjoying an experience that’s completely customized to his or her preferences.

c) The “Urgent, Now!” Visitor

Depending on your business, your definition of “Urgent, Now!” will vary. For an online store, a customer might consider the following message urgent:

“My books were supposed to arrive yesterday. They’re late. Where are they?”

A more seriously urgent scenario might be:

“I’m running 15 minutes late. Will I be able to catch my flight?”

For some customers, everything is urgent! But by identifying the most important needs of your customers and making the relevant information accessible within one click or less, you’ll increase the usefulness of your mobile site enormously.

4. Publish the Bare Minimum

One of the common myths about mobile web development is the misguided notion that content from your traditional web site can be easily re-purposed into smaller bit-sized chunks for the mobile version. A simple change of style from media="screen" to media="handheld" is all you need to do to magically mobilize your site, right?

Wrong.

While it’s indeed possible to filter content with the liberal use of display: none in your mobile style sheet, in reality, this isn’t a good idea. In fact, many CMS systems can output a mobile, streamlined version of your web site, but even this is not always what your customers will want.

The W3C defines the concept of One Web as follows:

One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the samerepresentation across all devices. The context of mobile use, device capability variations, bandwidth issues and mobile network capabilities all affect the representation. Furthermore, some services and information are more suitable for and targeted at particular user contexts.

As this definition suggests, some things are simply not available (or even usable) on some devices. Additionally, some devices (such as a mobile phone) are much better at certain activities (like making phone calls) than other devices. Therefore, a device designed for a specific activity should utilize its unique features on the Web.

While the concept of having only one site, and to simply style it differently depending on the medium the visitor is using, is popular with many standardistas, a separate mobile site is required in order to deliver an optimized experience for mobile users. Customers who are surfing on a mobile device have different needs and requirements, so to force-feed them the same content as that displayed on the traditional site is a recipe for disaster. The following images show a good example of this principle. The Best Buy mobile site displays only two functions (Product Search and Find A Store) — a far cry from the traditional site.

Tutorial on Designing for 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024 and higher

Designing web sites to fit all resolutions is a very important web design principle. Try out the Entheos site in all resolutions higher than 800 x 600 and you will find that it is designed to fit the page exactly. Therefore, visitors who have higher resolution can see more content in one page which reduces scrolling. Most web sites are designed for only one resolution. They may look perfect in a 800 x 600 resolution but if viewed in a 1024 x 768 resolution look a little empty. You’ll find a lot of wasted space around it making the web site look quite small.

From our research we have found that majority of our viewers are on the 1024×768 resolutions and higher. As time goes by more and more people are going to switch to higher resolutions as seen by our site statistics. It is therefore very important to design web sites for all resolutions. That is one of the principles we follow while designing web sites for our clients. With that bit of background information, lets get started on how to design a web site for all screen resolutions.

Step 1: Decide on the lowest Screen Resolution

Before you start you need to decide on your lowest screen resolution. Your web site will have to be designed keeping the lowest resolution in mind. Through our research we have found that less than 0.5% are on the 640 x 480 resolution So we ignore that completely. The next important resolution is the 800 x 600 resolution. Some of our visitors are on this resolution so we use this as our lowest screen resolution. This means that our web site has to fit all resolutions equal to or higher than 800 x 600.

Step 2: Design Your Web Site On This Resolution

Once you decide on your lowest screen resolution you need to design your web site for that resolution This means that all your graphics will be designed for this resolution. Design your web site and export the images as you would normally do.

Step 3: While converting your design to HTML make sure all your tables are measured in terms of percentages

Important: This is the trick to developing web sites for all resolutions. You need to work in terms of percentages and not pixels. If you work in pixels you are giving an absolute measurement to a table, whereas working in percentages gives a relative measurement. The table will be a given percentage of the screen resolution.

I hope you have understood this clearly. I’d like to explain this with an example. If you were to design a site for a 800 x 600 resolution, you would probably make a table with width 800 px and height 600 px. Now if you were to design a web site for all resolutions you need to make a table with width and height 100%, so that whatever the screen resolution may be the web page will scale to fit the page. It will be 100% of the screen resolution or whatever percentage you choose to give it.

The first step is to make a table with 100% height and 100% width. You could make it 95% if you want some white space around it.

Step 4: Insert images and content

Once you have designed your tables in terms of percentages you need to insert your images and content. The usual layouts will probably have a logo which can come on the top left corner and your navigation buttons in the top right or left navigation bar.

For more complex layouts you will need to use background fills to design your web sites. Remember since you are designing web sites to fit all resolutions you need to position your images accordingly (for your header). The easiest principle I follow (if possible) is to use the top left and right corners for fixed images and let the middle tile according to the size of the page.

Step 5: Test your site in all the resolutions

The last step is to test your site in all the resolutions that are available on your computer. To do this you need to:

1. Right click on your Desktop and click on Properties
2. Click on the tab Settings
3. Under Desktop area click shift the scale to 800 x 600, 1024×768 or higher if possible
4. Once you have chosen the resolution you want to check the site in, click on the Test button
5. If you can see the bitmap clearly you can click on Apply

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