Web Page Design

Reading: Internet Literacy, chapter 16. Note: This is a review module that can be skipped by students who have already had a basic course in Web page authoring. If you plan to work through this module, on the other hand, you will need a copy of the Internet Literacy textbook described in the textbook section of this course outline.

Topics

An Adobe advertisement states, "If you can dream it, you can do it." The goal of this chapter is to make you aware of the design elements you can use to create interesting and effective Web pages.

Web Page Design

The first Web page you will make in this course is your own résumé. Many students have told how putting their résumé's on the Web helped them get jobs. To view a sample résumé on line, go to Professor Hofstetter's résumé.

Web Page Elements

Chapter 16 of your textbook contains a detailed presentation of Web page design elements in action. Read this chapter carefully, because it will provide you with important background for creating your own Web pages in the next part of this course.

Designing Your Résumé

Study carefully the résumé design layout at the end of Chapter 16. Then draw a diagram of how you plan to design your own résumé. Think especially about the menu of choices that your résumé will contain. Possible items you might include on your résumé are:

Planning Your Links

Since it is possible to link any document, audio, picture, movie, or software application to your Web page, you will be able to link your résumé to examples of your work to prove your worth to a prospective employer. Think about the examples you would like to link to your résumé, and include these links in your résumé design.

Color Combinations

You need to be careful choosing foreground and background colors for your Web pages. There are sites on the Web where you can see what different color combinations look like. To explore different foreground/background combinations, follow the links to the color tables at the Interlit Web site.

Tiled Backgrounds

Tiled backgrounds are created when a bitmap smaller than the screen is drawn repeatedly up, down, and across the screen until all of the screen surface has been covered. Tiles should be seamless, meaning that when the bitmap replicates itself up and down the screen, you cannot perceive the edges of the bitmap or detect a regular interruption in the pattern caused by the edges of the bitmap not fitting against each other smoothly. For some examples of good tiles to use on Web pages, click the tile icon at the Interlit Web site.

Experiencing Frames

When Web pages contain frames, more than one window appears on your Web page, and you can interact with the information in the windows independently. Some users find frames confusing and prefer not to use them. That's why Web pages with frames often allow the user to turn the frames off. To try an example, follow the Interlit Web site links to frames.

Principles

No matter how experienced you are at Web page creation, virtually everyone can benefit from a review of some basic principles of Web design. This lesson reviews principles of screen design and navigation and provides links to some rubrics that provide more detailed criteria for evaluating the quality of a Web design.

Templates

In Dreamweaver, templates are one of the most powerful tools for the Web designer. You use a template to give the pages at your site a common look and feel. The template consists of editable regions that the Web page author can change, and non-editable regions containing fixed content that appears on every page. When you make a change to a non-editable region of a template, Dreamweaver automatically propogates that change to all the other pages you created based on that template. This lesson shows you how to unleash the power of Dreamweaver templates.