Common Sense Web Design

Always upload all of your new images FIRST before uploading the HTML files.

If you upload the HTML files BEFORE the images, you run the risk of having images not appear on your webpage — albeit during a brief period of time (hopefully).

If you upload the HTML files first, there can be a significant amount of time during which the images will not show up (until they are uploaded). That period of time can become long if some sort of glitch occurs immediately after you have uploaded the HTML files, preventing you from being able to upload the images immediately after.

Remember: the uploading of files to your website server should be performed in a specific order (images first) so as to avoid dead links that show up live on the webpage before you have a chance to remedy the situation.

Questions?  Contact Chicago web designer Christopher Merrill.

• Your full address
• Your zip code
• Your contact phone numbers
• Your contact email(s)
• Copyright information
• Trademarks
• Small version of your logo
• Sitemap
• Repetition of main links
• Link to contact us page
• Terms of service
• Privacy guidelines
• Disclaimer
• Site search

Redundancy is a good thing in websites. Just because the contact information is posted on your contact us page doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be posted in the footer (and other places as well). Perhaps the most common novice web designer mistake is to bury the contact information in a contact us page.

Remember, web users (myself included) will search your footer for links if their cursor is closer to the footer than to the header on your web page.

Every web page should have a footer, no matter how “artsy” the design.

If you want your website to look like “something no one has ever seen,” chances are, your users won’t be able to find their way around. There’s a reason why many websites look formulaic: because the formula works.

For more information, check out Freelance Web Designer Christopher Merrill.

Why do images get blurry after you enlarge them?

It is simple to reduce the dimensions of an image: open any image-editing program (Photoshop, Gimp, etc.) and reduce the height and the width of the image, making sure that the proportions are “locked.”

However, it doesn’t work the other way around: you can’t increase the dimensions of an image without causing the enlarged image to appear blurry.

This is because unnecessary details have been extracted from the original image before it has been posted. This is called “image optimization.” The file size in kilobytes has been reduced. Without optimization, the file would take much longer to download. This is why it is important when you purchase images to select a file size that is large enough for use on your site.

So when you enlarge an optimized image, the details become fuzzy. There are not enough  details there for the image to be crisp at the larger size.

To avoid this, make sure the original image is high-definition.

A word of advice: don’t overwrite the original large image with a smaller one. Once you have optimized an image and saved it under the same name, you won’t be able to go back to the original size.

A common mistake is to use many small images on the home page rather than displaying one strong image that represents your services.

See other web design mistakes.

It is tempting to use a line break (<br />) to “clean up” alignment.

The trouble is, different browsers will insert line breaks at different places. So if you manually insert a line break to “even out” things, the results might look good on some browsers, and not so good, or even disastrous, on other browsers.

You could get something that looks like this:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog a few minutes before the
hunter
appeared on the horizon with rifle in hand.

Remember, working in html is not like working in Word: what you see on the screen is only an approximation of what will be seen across various browsers. Results vary under different conditions, especially when it comes to word wrapping.

It’s best to allow the words to wrap where they may, even if the results are not ideal on some browsers.

The answer is YES.

With two screens connected to your computer you can move your cursor easily back and forth from one screen to the next.

Just think of the amount of time you spend switching between tabs on your computer.  Having two screens will make your life easier.  Think of the amount of time you spend switching between tabs on your computer, and think of the time you spend hunting for the tab you want.

With two screens you can view a web page and its source code at the same time.  You can even view two separate parts of the same page at the same time.  It’s a breeze.

Sure, having a second screen is an expense; and yes, you’ll need to make more room for it on your work surface, but the time (and aggravation) you will save will be well worth it.

Questions? Contact Chicago Web Designer Christopher Merrill.