HTML Design Principles

Many website designers do not understand the importance of website design principles and elements. If you have been through educational training for website design you will know the importance of common design principles and elements, but most of us who create websites do not. You will be much better off if you do understand the importance of these things for your website design.

Keeping Your Website Balanced
You can maintain the balance in your website by using colors that complement each other, such as a dark color for only a few things and a much lighter or even white color for the most of your website design. This keeps the balance in your website and makes it easier on your visitor's eyes. Having a website that just looks good is not good enough. You must also be constantly thinking about your visitors as you design your website, and maintaining a balance of colors in your website can make your visitors happier and want to stay a while.

Creating an Prominent Part
If you want to make your visitors see one thing on your website before anything else, you will need to make it stands out from the rest of the design. You can use a variety of methods to create a focal point for visitors, such as using a different color, making it smaller or larger than other parts of your design, and even creating a specific shape for what you want to stand out.

The Lines in Your Website
There are always lines in websites. Some lines are horizontal (which make the visitor feel calm), some are horizontal (which are more active, and others are diagonal (which are very active). The lines in your website can have a direct effect on your visitors. If you want to create a business website, use horizontal lines. If you are creating a website that is specifically made for kids, you can use the very active lines that make it fun for kids.

Website Color
This is something that is very important for website designs. Different colors can make people feel a variety of feelings, and some can even bring strain to the visitors' eyes making it hard to look at the website, let alone read anything on it. Colors can either complement each other or clash with each other. Most websites have two to three different colors in the theme of their website. If the colors clash, it will not look so good. You should use the least amount of different colors on your website as you can. Too many different colors will look horrible and even confuse a visitor. You should start with black and white (white for the background and black for any text) and add in a light color if you want to.

Website Space
You can create a variety of illusions with what you do with the space on your web pages. A lot of the time good website design is all about knowing what to put where. This is a brief overview of a website's common design principles and elements. They all play an important part in your website's success.

For more information about how html works, click here.
For more information about practical design html, click here.

Observing the Protocols: HTTP, WWW, URL and HTML

Many among us sail through our lives blissfully ignorant of the reason our web addresses start with the secret code "http//:" Increasingly we think it is superfluous because when we omit entering it into the address line of our browser, usually we arrive at our destination regardless.

I have even seen people dropping the "www." part of the web address, and they sometimes connect anyway. What does it all mean?

Let's start with http. It is an acronym for the tongue twister HyperText Transfer Protocol. When you type this into your web browser, you are telling it that you intend to interact with the internet according to a specific set of rules (protocols), and the internet will respond in return.

Your web browser, such as Internet Explorer(tm), is software which helps you communicate with the internet by sending your requests out and retrieving the files you are seeking. When you search the internet or type a URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or web address) into the address bar of your browser, you are in effect requesting to view files.

These files could be text and images. Your browser assembles and displays them according to more rules, this time the rules come from the language of the internet, HTML ("Hypertext Markup Language").

When you navigate to a website, your browser looks for a file named index.htm. This file contains the basic structure of the overall site, and tells your browser what other files to look for and how to display them on your screen.

When you click on a link, your browser sends out another request, and either replaces the page you are viewing with a new page, or opens an entirely new page and displays the files.

The huge portion of the internet which uses http:// to find websites which in turn use HTML language for displaying files is called the World Wide Web. Thus the URL http://www.website.com is basically saying:

Ms. Browser, please use the HyperText Transfer Protocol to access the World Wide Web and obtain files from website.com. Then display them on my screen according to the rules written in the file index.htm, which is written in Hypertext Markup Language.

And the amazing thing is... it does!

Why HTML is Better for Web Design

Flash and heavy image websites may look good, they often do. But how effective are they? Not as effective as you may think. Most people think once a website is created it is going to found by everyone on the internet. They couldn’t be more wrong. This article will talk about why HTML is a key to a website and its success.

HTML is the only language search engines can understand, anything else is like a foreign language. Search engines cannot read flash. They cannot read JavaScript. They cannot read images. That is why you are going to want to find a web designer who is going to be able to create a strong based HTML website.

Now I am not saying that if your website is heavy in flash, JavaScript and images it’s not going to be found. You still have you Meta tags, you did remember those right? Search engines work on keywords, word that people are going to use when finding your website. If you have read my article on Better Goggle Rakings you will be familiar on this, if not, I would suggest reading that next. If your website was developed in flash, you will still have the Meta tags working for you, but those can only take you so far. Websites that are heavy or well balanced in content are better. When a website is made in flash the text is imbedded in the flash file, the swf or it is loaded externally. It is not directly in/on the page for the search engines to find. Same goes with JavaScript and images. With images you have a little lead way, the alt tag. For those of you who are unfamiliar with HTML code, the alt tag is what you code into an image. So when you hover over an image, you will see the popup with the title written in it. But if you content is on the image, forget about getting a good ranking. A general rule of thumb, websites should have about 200 words of content, rich with keywords and unique content.

HTML is great and all, but there are a few things it cannot do for you. Animations, sometimes good, but are often used wrong. Floating menus, animated menus and drop down menus. Again, these can look very good if done well, but they are invisible to search engines. Links are a big thing to them too, search engines love to see a lot of links, incoming and outgoing to websites. If you are linked with websites of a higher page rank thank you is can be better for you and help your page rank. Now with that said here are some things that HTML will give you that other languages cannot. Keyword related navigation, again, back to the links. The links on your website should relate into what they are taking you too. Sounds obvious huh? You wouldn’t believe the amount of links I have seen taking me somewhere else other than what the menu said. Real text; keyword rich, unique content that will bring your customers to your page along with good page rank from Google. Lastly, with HTML, the page is your canvas, free to do anything you want and still have it be effective enough for your customers to be able to navigate you site.

So what’s a website with out any images? Not a whole lot in my opinion. But you just said websites shouldn’t have images on them. Wrong. I said that a website with heavy imagery is not always good. Take my website for instance, images all around you, but the pages are balance with my content, content that is keyword rich. So read some tutorials on Photoshop, slice it up and put some quality content in it and you should have a pretty effective website. Just keep in mind all of the above. Websites that look stunning are not always a good thing. Your website should look good, but it should be effective and smooth for the user to navigate through.

Having your website created by me will not only guarantee you a strong design and strong functionality. It will rank well in Google, keep your customers coming back and they will not be getting them lost in the navigation.

Practical Tips for Designing HTML & Plain Text Newsletters

If you’re completely unfamiliar with how e-newsletters are designed and what benefits they bring, you might wonder why people put so much attention into laying out the design and the details of e-newsletters. You might think that all that matters is that the information we want written there is present. In the contrary, this article shall explain to you why HOW the lay out of your e-newsletter is as important as the information you wish to impart to your readers.

Lots of newsletters appear on the internet. The basic types of newsletters are in HTML or plain text. Good newsletters explain themselves clearly and are very focused making them well-written information sources. Lately, HTML newsletters are increasingly taking the place of plain text newsletters in the e-mail. These types of newsletters tend to have a few graphics, hyperlinks and more complicated layouts than those of plain text newsletters, which don’t have any links or complex layout and rely more on good writing and organization.

If you make online newsletters, keep in mind these newsletters are likely to be seen on computer screens. Users, have little patience on long, poorly organized and hard-to-read newsletters. They want to get to the important stuff right away. For an effective newsletter that would peak your target’s interests, here are some basic design tips for you:

For HTML newsletter-makers, basically, keep your writing plain, simple and immediately hits the target. Avoid the use of incredible jargons that would only confuse the readers and lose their interest.

Learn to use links extensively by providing it in context, for example, give an article’s short summary and then link them to the complete versions. Don’t provide links in a bunch at the beginning or end of the newsletter - use them like in a typical web page would.

After a descriptive article for your HTML newsletter, follow up an easy to use and hyperlinked table of contents. Be sure that these would lead to anchors in the articles contained in the newsletter or will launch a browser, especially if the newsletter doesn’t actually contain the articles mentioned in the table of contents. Make sure that the summaries of longer articles contained in your newsletter are not computer generated – meaning, they should have to be written by humans. These would add to the summary’s element of being meaningful.

Explain main points, following a short explanation in bulleted lists. This would make your newsletter easy to scan. The table of contents could also be a bulleted list.

Use hierarchical elements for accessibility and visual reasons. Take advantage of what HTML offers in terms of document hierarchy.

For plain text newsletter makers, since plain text newsletters don’t have the style and structure facilities found in HTML, emphasis could be made by maximizing the use spacing, capitalization and symbols. These accents might just get your target browsers interested. Do not run the article text and table contents’ text together like one long document.

Use a good subject line that will tell what’s in the newsletter right away, especially if the newsletter is to be e-mailed. Use dashed and bulleted list in order to emphasize what follows.

Since the text newsletters are harder to scan, make them simple by including at least two or three subjects or items only. If you need to say more, make additional newsletters for other items or subject matters.

With all these points mentioned, it can now be said that an appealing interface also brings more benefits to everyday simple things such as e-newsletters. They’re pretty basic but can compound the response you’re already getting from your so-so designed newsletters. Try following these simple guidelines in laying out your newsletters and then you can watch your reader numbers go up.

Should You Bother Learning HTML to Build Webpages?

After learning about the history of html and how it works, today we'll learn about the WYSIWYG editor for HTML.

The most popular method to build webpages today is to use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software. Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver are prime examples of WYSIWYG software. Both programs allow you to create webpages as though you were creating a document with your favourite word processing software like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. Its as simple as entering paragraphs, headings and inserting clipart or images.

WYSIWYG software like those listed above are prefect for beginner webpage builders who want webpages constructed quickly without having to learn HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).

All webpages are brought to life using HTML codes, regardless what webpage building software is used. WYSIWYG programs simply create the HTML codes as you construct a webpage (in the background, without you knowing), so you don't need to understand them.

This is without a doubt the biggest advantage over any other type of webpage building programs. It means that if you can press keys on a keyboard, you have what is required to create your very own webpage!

However, most WYSIWYG programs don't give you absolute, total control over webpage design (ie, exactly the way you want the page to look). There are design limitations.

For example, you may want to place headings, sub headings and a navigation menu in a particular arrangement on the webpage, but no matter how many times you try, the program won't permit such placement or position them correctly. This is one big disadvantage of WYSIWYG programs if you desire a custom look to all your webpages.

Knowledge of HTML, however, can assist you to overcome such design shortfalls in WYSIWYG programs. How is this possible? Let me explain.

If you understand HTML codes, then you understand why webpages appear the way they do in a web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. This is powerful stuff because the moment you change/modify HTML codes, the webpage will take on a new design/appearance.

And don't forget that HTML codes are exact, giving you total freedom over how everything appears on the webpage. Most WYSIWYG programs allow you to view and modify the HTML codes. As you can see, knowledge of HTML is beneficial.

The downside to HTML is the learning curve. It takes time to understand how HTML works and why, but once you know, using HTML to create totally custom designed webpages is easy. For the beginner, HTML can be challenging, but don't despair because there are HTML tutorials available that teach you basic and advanced HTML in a matter of days!

So the question is - Should you bother learning HTML to build webpages? The answer - yes and no.

It is obvious that WYSIWYG software speeds up production of webpage development regardless of your knowledge on how to build webpages. However, to further refine and tune your webpages exactly to your liking, it is usually necessary to add and modify HTML codes. So yes, HTML is worthwhile learning if you are unsatisfied with the webpages produced by WYSIWYG software.

There is little point learning HTML if you are 100% satisfied with the webpages made with WYSIWYG software.

One thing is certain. Using WYSIWYG software and learning HTML codes is the answer for those of us who want webpages made exactly to our requirements. Learning HTML is not as hard as you think. To get started, simply search any major search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN using the search phrase "html tutorials", its that easy!

Hello World

HTML is not a programing language. But in this leason, we'll use "hello world" thing to start. How to write "hello world" in HTML? Before that, I want to explain the mechanism:

1. First, we write "hello world" in our text editor.
2. After that, we save it in HTML format. We can save it as blablabla.html, or any name with .html extension.
3. Then we open our web browser.
4. With this browser, we open our blablabla.html file.
5. Our web browser will interpret HTML codes (usually called tags) in .html files. So we can see the Hello World in our web browser.
6. We can have a tea now.

What code should we write in our text editor to display Hello World? Here are the steps:

1. Turn on your computer, open your text editor.
2. Write in the first line "Hello World" (without ")
3. Save it as "hello world.html" (without ")
4. Open it with your web browser
5. Enjoy your tea...

I'm sure all of you will have the same questions about it. Where in heaven is the html tags? Is it as simple as that? Is this a joke? Bla bla bla?

And my answer will be: No, it's not a joke. It is that simpe. And we'll learn the codes or the tags in the next leason. So please be patient!

Lets Get Started

Ok. That's enought for boring histories about HTML. I'm pretty sure that you come to this site to learn the "how to" things. So Let's Get Started...

Are You Ready?!?!?

One....

Two...

Thr...

Wait a minute!!! Before we start to practice HTML things, I want to make sure that we have all the tools to practice HTML things. So please make sure that you have these tools:

1. A PC, note books, mac, or any machine that have an operating system.
2. A working operating system. Windows just fine, but Linux will be better.
3. A powerfull web browser. I recomend you to use Mozilla Firefox. You can download mozilla here. Or if you only have Internet Explorer, that would be just fine.
4. A text editor. Notepad will be the last thing I use to make HTML codes. In this time, I recomend you to use Alley Code. You can download Alley here.
5. Tea, or coffe. But please don't drink soda or coke. Because it will be bad for your health..

Now, we have everythings we need to learn HTML. So, Lets Get Started...!!!