:: CyberNet Solutions Newsletter - August 2002 ::
:: Web Design Tips and Tricks ::
:: Bullets::
Believe it or not, there is more than one type of bullet. Simply change the font or bold the bullet to change its appearance.
For example:
<font face="arial"><li></font>text for bullet</li>
will be different from
<font face="verdana"><li></font>text for bullet</li>
which will be different from
<font face="verdana"><b><li></b></font>text
for bullet</li>
:: Graphics ::
When using graphics on your site, keep them consistent. Use the same font, style, color scheme, and shading as much as possible to help maintain consistency throughout your site.
:: Site Design - Keeping it Fresh ::
Website design is like painting the Golden Gate bridge (or, more aptly, keeping it painted). Once you finish one design for your site, it's time to come up with something new and fresh.
A total site re-design every 6 months to 1 year will give you an opportunity to accomodate the growing amount of content that you've been adding to your site for the past months (you have been regularly adding new content, haven't you?). This is also an opportunity to use some of the feedback you've received from site visitors, launch new site sections and features, and make use of what you've learned the last couple of months by reading newsletters like this one.
:: JavaScript ::
Test your JavaScripts in both Netscape and Internet Explorer!
You wouldn’t believe how many people fail to do that, thereby forcing visitors with the unsupported browser to click through dozens of JavaScript error messages.
Thankfully, Webcoder has taken some of the pain out of trying to write such code by offering a concise summary of what works and doesn't work in both browsers. Check it out http://www.webcoder.com/reference/2/index.html
:: Web Friendly Fonts ::
Worried about your visitors not having the right fonts installed? It's easy to specify multiple fonts in HTML.
Here's an example:
<font size="4" color="#0066FF" face="Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">
The browser will first look for the Tahoma font, then Arial, and then Helvetica. If it can't find any of those, it will use the browser's default sans-serif font. It will display the text using the first font in the list that it finds on the visitor's computer. All you have to do is list the fonts in the "face" attribute, separated by commas as I have done above.
Notice that the last font specified ("sans-serif") doesn't refer to any particular font, but the Web browser's default font of the sans-serif style. Other styles that you can use are "serif", "cursive", "fantasy", and "monospace". Always include one of these as the last item in the font list to ensure that all browsers will have something to fall back on.
:: Killing Frames ::
Don't want other people framing your site? There's an easy way to stop them.
Using HTML : Simply insert a link with 'target="_top" in it.
e.g.
<a href="newpagewithoutframes.html" TARGET="_top">This
page will break the frames</a>
Using JavaScript :
Just insert the following piece of JavaScript code between the <head>
and </head> tags on your page:
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
if (self.parent.frames.length != 0)
self.parent.location="YOURURL";
//-->
</script>
Just change YOURURL to the full URL of the page you don't want frames on.
:: Text Link Titles ::
IE 4 and later support the title attribute of a link tag. What this does is display a pop-up balloon of sorts when a mouse is moved over a text link. This attribute can be used to aid navigation on your site, by providing more information about specific links.
Here's a sample HTML code snippet:
<a href="index.shtml" title="Visit the Front Page of
this site">Home</a>
Please forward all newsletter suggestions you would like to see in future editions to newsletters@cybernet-images.com We will do our best to follow up on the most popular suggestions in future issues as time and resources permit.
Regards,
Tim Watts, CyberNet Solutions
http://webdesign.cybernet-images.com
Phone: 604.817.4789