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Web Design Tips Archive

December 2006
How to deal with web colors - Have you ever created web pages or graphics in which the colors always change when being viewed in different machines? Why does this happen? It's because different platforms use different color palettes. Both Macs and PCs have 256 colors in their system palettes, but only 216 of them are the same colors.

The major browsers, Netscape and Internet Explorer, use the same palette-management process to pull colors from the system palettes. So, if you specify colors by randomly choosing by favor, those colors will be forced by browers to display incorrectly using the color in the system palette.

How do I know which colors will not change when they are viewed on different machines? The 216 web colors are in the form of 00 33 66 99 CC FF.

November 2006
Use transparent GIF images - Graphics are usually stored as rectangular images. If you want to present a graphic image with an irregular outline shape, consider using transparent GIF images.

Also, remember that you can sometimes get the same effect without using transparent GIF files. Just use a background color for your Web page, and choose the same "background" color for your image. When the browser paints the image, the "background" color of the image will be indistinguishable from the page background color, and you will get the same effect as the transparent GIF. Of course, this only works if the page background is a solid color, but it is dead simple and it works with any graphics file format.

 

October 2006
Webpages, Food, and color - Color is a very important feature of your Web site. If you ever took a cooking class then you know that one of the most important things to consider when preparing a meal is color. The same is true when designing a Web site.

The trick is to find that happy medium where the colors compliment each other and make your pages look simply scrumptious.

September 2006
Reuse your graphics images - Reusing your graphics images is a great way to speed up and brighten up your pages. All you have to do is make several references to the same graphics file from different places on your page, or from different pages at your site.

When a Web browser accesses your site, it will get the graphics file only once, and then it will keep it in a cache on the browser's computer. From then on, any other reference to the file will cause it to be retrieved very quickly from the cache, and it won't spend any time getting it over the Internet.

If you reuse your graphics images you don't have to compromise between fast pages and lots of graphics. You can have both!

August 2006
Columns - How many columns you use in your Web pages changes your whole Web site. Usually when someone creates their first Web page their Web site design is something simple and pretty plain. A lot of people like to use two column Web pages for their Web site design so they can have their writing on one side of the Web page and their navigation on the other. This Web site design looks much better than the plain Web page and it makes your Web site easier to navigate. Then there's the 3 column Web page. This Web site design is not better or worse than the 2 column Web page. It's used if you have a lot of navigation or if you want an extra column for special writings or links on your Web pages.
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