article 629

Website Design Tips: HTML, JavaScript codes, tips, tricks and techniques

Web Source Web Design Tips
by Shelley Lowery

Preloading An Image

Place this code between your <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags.

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">

</SCRIPT>

Tip provided by: Web Source: Your Guide to Professional
Web Design and Development. http://www.web-source.net

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Web Source Web Design Tips
by Shelley Lowery

Creating An Automatic Drop Down Navigation Menu

This is a simple navigation script that will redirect your
visitors with a drop down menu that will automatically
advance to the selected page without a submit button.

Place this script where you'd like your menu to appear.
You can add as many links as you like, but keep in mind
you must use full URLs, starting with "http," when linking
to web sites outside of your own.

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
function AutoLink()
{
var number = document.FormAdvance.WebLink.selectedIndex;
location.href = document.FormAdvance.WebLink.options[number].value;
}
</SCRIPT>

<FORM NAME="FormAdvance">
<SELECT NAME="WebLink" onChange="AutoLink(this.form)" >
<OPTION SELECTED>Choose a Link
<OPTION VALUE="yourpage1.html"> Page One
<OPTION VALUE="yourpage2.html"> Page Two
<OPTION VALUE="http://www.outsidelink.com/go.html"> Page Three
</SELECT>
</FORM>

Tip provided by: Web Source: Your Guide to Professional
Web Design and Development. http://www.web-source.net

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Web Source Web Design Tips
by Shelley Lowery

Decreasing A Website's Load Time

The main page of your web site should load in 8 seconds or
less with a 56K modem.

According to two recent surveys, conducted by Forrester
Research and Gartner Group, ecommerce sites are losing $1.1
to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due to customers click-
away caused by slow loading sites.

Tips for keeping your load time down:

- Avoid large, slow loading graphics
- Avoid using too many graphics and/or banners
- Avoid using too many animated graphics
- Optimize your graphics
- Avoid using any unnecessary code
- Avoid making your pages too large
- Avoid using too much Java
- Avoid using too many JavaScripts

If a page takes too long to load, your potential
customer will not wait. Ultimately costing you business.

Tip provided by: Web Source: Your Guide to Professional
Web Design and Development. http://www.web-source.net

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Web Source Web Design Tips
by Shelley Lowery

Don't Forget Your META tags

When designing a website, make sure you include proper META
tags in the HTML of each page. META tags are HTML code that
enable the search engines to determine what keywords are
relevant to a specific site.

About 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from
the eight major search engines. It would be a good idea to
make sure you've done your homework and fully understand how
to optimize your web pages prior to designing your website.
This will save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com/
AltaVista - http://www.altavista.com/av/content/addurl.htm/
Hotbot - http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.asp/
Lycos - http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html/
Excite - http://www.excite.com/info/add_url/
InfoSeek - http://infoseek.go.com/AddUrl?pg=SubmitUrl.html/
WebCrawler - http://www.webcrawler.com/info/add_url/
NorthernLight - http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html/

For further information on META tags read the tutorial
entitled, "Building Your Site."

- http://www.web-source.net/building.htm

Tip provided by: Web Source: Your Guide to Professional
Web Design and Development. http://www.web-source.net

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Web Source Web Design Tips
by Shelley Lowery

Selecting the Perfect Background for Your Website

When selecting a background for your website, make sure you
select a background that will compliment your text and
design.

Tips for design:

- Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the
attention away from the text.

- Always be consistent with your background theme on each
page of your site.

- Colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your
visitors as well. Bright colors such as yellow and orange,
cause you to become more cheerful or happy, while colors
such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors
such as brown and black have a depressing effect. A good
rule of thumb would be to select colors based upon the
type of effect you're trying to achieve.

The appearance of your website can mean the difference
between your success and failure.

Tip provided by: Web Source: Your Guide to Professional
Web Design and Development. http://www.web-source.net