Making Money Online Now

Web Critic

Some of the best music teachers have excellent ears but no ability to perform, for example. A critic need not be a master of the subject judged. A good critic understands the methodology well enough to teach it to others. Usually able to give more explanation than just "I love it" or "it sucks", negative judgements about something, neutral, a critic is someone who can form positive.

But need not follow blindly, we can be guided by professionals. Most of us perform criticism in some way.

Let's be Web Critics for awhile, so.

Web Template

Others for pay, some for free downloads, a web search on "web template" or "html template" finds about 13 to 16 MILLION hits. Many are totally fill in the blanks operation. Or software wizards to set them up, probably most web design software comes with samples of layout templates.

To visit one template web site per day would take on the order of 44 THOUSAND years.

"html template div elastic" found 147 thousand. The phrase "html template div liquid" found about 71 thousand. This found about 91 thousand hits, search "html template div flexible" (without the quotes) for directions on making flexible web sites; for example. You can drill down to much fewer sites, if you can figure out good search terms for your interest, on the other hand.

Should your web site have a "me too" look? Partly its because many were built from the same templates. That's because "function implies form", partly. You have probably noticed some similarities between sites, if you've spent much time surfing the web.

Then build your own template from scratch, i think it better to study sites which impress you.

Graphics Tricks and Tweaks

Such effects can be made with small background image sections and repetition to save bandwidth, properly done. All of which take a bit more work than the old tiled background image, rounded corners on boxes and buttons, color gradients across sections, examples include drop shadows under pictures or header-text. Many web designers are quite clever at using graphic effects to tweak appearance.

I prefer sans-serif to serif, also. Even though I am definitely not color blind, and find some foreground / background combinations for text cause strain, i now need more light than when I was young. I went from having 20/15 visual acuity to now needing correction at most distances for my visual accommodation and astigmatism. Changes in my eyes have caused me to see things differently, as I have gotten older.

So all of those cute graphics tweaks have just been tossed into the trash basket. But many more become unusable as text sections run into each other or are blocked by boxes and lines, many sites won't adjust for me. And placements, lines, boxes, it quickly becomes obvious which sites employ fixed dimensions for text. I frequently use the Ctrl-key and the wheel on my PC mouse to change that, so, jumping from site to site on the web shows a wide range of initial text sizes.

But nearly all of the site scales nicely if I change font size or drag the edges of the browser view port, and a few small icons, google News has a few rounded corners on buttons but none on tabs or headers or menus. Take a look at some name brand web sites.

Also remember that excessive graphics can slow page loading tremendously.

No matter how many certificates a designer has for graphics excellence, wrong use of graphic effects is just plain dumb.

Usability

" "Good bye! It does not matter what "internet marketing guru" sold what bag of tricks to the web master. The visitor can use the back-button or simply abort the browser, et cetera, plagued with automated popups or popunders, flooded with moving graphic elements, overloaded with off-topic or competing ads, crowded, if a site is too confusing. The most important consideration in web design should be the user experience.