Current Web Design Articles

Web Design, HTML, and XML Articles from 2006

By Jennifer Kyrnin

06/20/06 - CSS 2 Selectors
CSS 2 selectors extend the reach of CSS selectors to allow you more power and control over what you can style in your documents. Once you understand CSS 2 selectors you'll have more wildcards and depth of styles for your cascading style sheets.

06/19/06 - CSS Selectors
CSS selectors are the basics of cascading style sheets. Once you understand CSS 1 selectors you'll be able to select many of the more common elements and situations to create a well-styled document.

06/12/06 - What is CSS3?
CSS 3 is the modularization of Cascading Style Sheets to allow additions to the specification as well as limit the properties used in a given situation. With a specification that is modular, additions and changes to that specification become much easier.

06/05/06 - Fixed Width Layouts Versus Liquid Layouts
Web page layout has essentially two different methods: liquid and fixed width layouts. Learn the pros and cons of each, and how you can decide to use one or the other for your site.

05/29/06 - Head Rush Ajax by Brett McLaughlin
A review of the book Head Rush Ajax by Brett McLaughlin. A quick and dirty way to get your Web site up and running using Ajax.

05/22/06 - The HTML Label Tag - Make Your Forms Accessible
Using the label tag to label HTML forms elements that don't have implicit labels gives you more control over the design and accessibility of your Web forms.

05/15/06 - The Back Button - How People Use Web Sites
The back button is the most important button on a Web page, and it's not even part of the page itself, but the browser.

05/08/06 - Images Should be Clickable
Graphics on Web pages are one of the places that customers tend to gravitate towards, they want to click on them. So you should make them clickable.

05/01/06 - Book Review: Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Web usability is something many developers don't think anything about, but if you don't think about usability your sites won't be usable. Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think doesn't force you to think about usability. Instead, it shows you, with pictures and humor how to make your Web sites better.

04/24/06 - Thinking About Positioning - Using CSS to Layout Your Web Pages
Understanding how to do CSS positioning is a lot different from understanding why you should do it. This article attempts to explain some simple tricks to help you learn to position your Web pages with CSS.

04/10/06 - Don't Tell Your Readers What Browser to Use
Don't expect your readers to change browsers. What if they put in a DVD and the player said I'm sorry, this DVD won't play unless you have the Sony Trinitron HDTV player and 42inch receiver. Your Web page shouldn't be doing that either.

03/27/06 - Use Real Text for Testing Page Designs
Learn when to use lorem ipsum and when to use actual text that people can read when designing a Web site.

03/20/06 - What is Web Administration?
There is more to building Web pages than just learning HTML, but many Web designers and developers forget about the layer underneath the Web pages, the Web server, the security, and the programs that make your Web page work.

03/13/06 - How Useful is Your 404 Page?
Most Web servers have a way for developers to edit and maintain their 404 page. In many cases, you can even set up 404 pages for different areas of the Web site and to suit different purposes. But it's easy to create a 404 page that is basically useless.

03/06/06 - Web Pages Should Go Away, Eventually
When you move pages or take them down, it is often tempting to put up redirects so that your customers don't get lost or confused. This also helps prevent link rot. But is that really helping things in the long run?

02/27/06 - Origin and Design Goals for XML
The ten design goals for XML and what they mean.

02/20/06 - What is the Semantic Web?
The Semantic Web was devised by Tim Berners-Lee as a way to make the Web into a giant database. With the current status of data on the Web, computers do not know what data they are displaying it. Instead, all that the markup language usually tells about a document is how to display it or structure it. The Semantic Web makes the data understandable to computers as well, so it can be cataloged and used more efficiently.

02/17/06 - How Cookies are Used by Web Pages and Web Browsers
Cookies are used to store bits of information. Cookies can only get the information that the Web browser can get or that the person browsing gives to the cookie.

02/13/06 - What is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is a watchword for the new definition of the Web and the Internet. The idea is that Web 1.0 was a creation of Web pages that provided information to readers. Web 2.0 takes that information and interacts with the reader to allow the reader to find the information he or she wants in the format that is most useful to them.

02/06/06 - CSS Editing Software: Which One is Right for You?
If you're looking to find the right CSS editing software to meet your needs you should take this questionairre. After just a few short questions, you'll have a list of some of the best CSS editing software tools available to meet your needs and your budget.

01/30/06 - What is a Podcast?
There are many misconceptions about what a podcast is. This article will teach you what a podcast is, why it's called a podcast, and give you references to start your own podcast.

01/23/06 - What do Your Links Say and Where Do They Lead?
When you click on a link, you want to know where you're going. If your link text doesn't match what's on the page the link goes to your reader can get confused and possibly lose trust in the Web site where they clicked.

01/16/06 - CSS FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions About Cascading Style Sheets
There are many things that you need to know to learn to write Cascading Style Sheets. This FAQ will help answer some of the more common questions about CSS.

01/09/06 - What is a User Style Sheet?
User style sheets allow you to control how pages that you visit look. They fix usability issues and can help deal with tags and elements that you might find annoying.

01/02/06 - Large Web Sites Don't Change Much
If you've been visiting one of the larger Web sites on the Internet for a long time, you may have noticed that many of them don't do massive redesigns the way that smaller Web sites tend to. Redesigns can be very difficult for customers to get used to unless they are done in an iterative approach.

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