HTML.co.uk

Today’s internet is lot different from what it initially used to be. With the latest developments such as web standards and the search engine optimisation, it is just not possible to cut the websites the same old way. The W3C lays down certain regulations and guidelines, which have to be followed by all the web designers so as to make their website functional as well as accessible as far as possible. Making the website compatible with standards of W3C ensures that your site is able to achieve its maximum potential across a wide range of systems. But the W3C standards keep on changing on a daily basis. But does this mean that your website will be suffering aesthetically? The simple answer is NO. With the evolution of CSS the web designers have the freedom to do almost anything on web. CSS also has the capability of giving much better usability, foundation for SEO and compliance with the web standards.

From the perspective of web designing, the biggest advantage of CSS is the cross browser compatibility. Almost every web designer would have tested his website on other computers just to ensure that layout is not mangled. The main reason for this is that different versions of the same web browsers as well as different web browsers would always display different websites differently. As a matter of fact, all the web site designers have to forcefully test their websites on as many browsers as possible so as to minimize these unwanted problems. As a web developer, it is virtually impossible for you to control all the variables present in your code but can definitely try to minimize these problems. It’s a well known fact that if the user has the ease and the comfort level on your, he will surely return back to the site.

Though all the website users are conversant with the powers of CSS but surely many of them have never utilised to its maximum capabilities. The cascading feature of CSS is actually the most important part of the web designing, yet it is most overlooked. The designer can easily alter one file, which is the style sheet and the entire site can be modified just by making the necessary changes in one file. CSS is capable of creating the code that is less bulky and cleaner as compared to the other scripting languages. Less code would just imply that the search engine would have a better access to the content of your web site. As a result of this your website will be indexed more effectively and will have more targeted users or clients.

Another great benefit of CSS that cannot be overlooked is its increased efficiency and ease in its use. Once you have successfully attained knowledge about the programming techniques, it is quite easy to control the designs of your website using CSS. For a website to work properly, it is not essential that it should be boring and simple. CSS surely does not limit the designing capabilities of your web site; instead it gives the designers the power of creating fully functional and aesthetically pleasing site.

Both usability and accessibility are becoming increasing important as well as critical for any kind of internet experience. These are the two important features which are most commonly missed out. In fact, usability is one of the most important features for the survival of any website. If your web page is difficult to use, people will leave it immediately. And accessibility means that developing those sites that are accessible to all the users who are interested in using them.

Accessibility can be defined as designing those websites which have an easy access by all regardless of their disabilities. You can also refer these sites as Universal Web Sites. Although the World Wide Web is increasing and gaining its popularity on a regular basis, yet there is large number of users who use speech browsers, have disabilities in the form of visual or hearing, do not have latest plug-ins and graphical users surf the web through slower mediums or reside in low lying areas or make use test only browsers and do not support graphics. In such situations accessibility is a major topic of concern.

Accessibility not only increases benefits for website providers but also for users to a great extent. It is quite critical issue for the success of any website. Once the website becomes accessible, the users regardless of their disabilities, barriers or constrains can now access the information, buy the products and can talk to the people associated with each and every web site. To sum it up, you can say that if a user is satisfied, he becomes loyal and ultimately keeps on using the web and recommends to others as well.

And with this the provider also gets benefited in a way that the targeted audience is increased, efficiency and the maintainability is further improved and as a result reputation is regained and enhanced. Therefore one single factor is responsible for delivering a win-win situation for both the end users as well as the providers.

Usability in generic terms can be described as the measure of the user’s experience whenever interacting with any system, website, technology or a product. If the web page is either not easily usable or is not able to describe its functions and features properly, people would not like to use it further. The web site should be very intuitive as well as should support an extremely well user interface because no user would get down reading the user manual or details and descriptions about its usage.

The website is usable if and only if it is easy and quick to learn, allows rapid recovery from errors, efficient to use, usage is enjoyable, aesthetically easy and last but not the least easy to remember. If the website with the above characteristics is prepared, it will not only benefit the users but also the providers. Users are satisfied, able to achieve their goals effectively and efficiently and therefore are able to cultivate confidence in both the product and the website. Similarly the providers reduce on time, cost and a lot of errors. It has been proved that this feature alone is capable of providing very high return on investments.

Therefore, always strive to make your website usable as well as accessible so as to make your users happy and thereby making your wallet more comfortable.

If I was to state one thing that makes me uncomfortable and I dislike most while browsing any website, my answer would be its load time. It is the most common and the biggest problem that websites take a long time to load and is surely disliked by all the users. It a well known fact that every individual has a very short attention span because of which a person can keep his attention focused for not more than 8 to 10 sec while waiting for a web page to be loaded. Although, the most ideal response time for any website would be 1 second, but this is really not practical considering the bandwidths available. This is where the HTML optimisation plays an important role.

HTML optimisation is a method or technique of minimizing the HTML file size without compromising on the appearance and the functionality of the web page while maximizing the speed of the page display and thereby offering maximum reader satisfaction. Therefore, it is very important for any web designer to consider three main aspects while designing any web page which primarily include optimising the web pages, brutalizing the graphics in your web page and structuring your site for speed. As the complexity and the need of web design is increasing by day, web designers are ignoring the importance of the load time.

There are a lot of extra characters such as spaces, comments, redundant attributes and returns that are very commonly being used in the web page. Carefully removing or deleting these characters will definitely not affect the appearance of the web page but will definitely help in reducing the size of the web page. Web page is all about balance between bandwidth and beauty. A skilled web designer is able to draw that thin line between functionality and appearance and can wisely design pages that not only appear good but at the same time display also quickly.

Try to eliminate all the leech graphics, leech here means that a graphic that is too big and heavy to sustain its load on its own. Icons should not be confused with graphics. An icon need not be realistic; it just needs to be recognizable in order to be effective. Therefore, avoid the use of very large icons in your website. It is always better to have text based navigation rather than ubiquitous image maps which would chew up a lot of bandwidth. A great way to unify a website visually would be to use a well optimized and well placed logo graphic instead of the un-optimised banner graphic which can only kill the web page’s load time. GIF images of words are nothing more than just being wasteful. Simple plain text transmits faster than anything on the net.

It would not take much of the time to do optimisation of your HTML but it has remarkable effects on the load time and definitely the user satisfaction. It is practically quite easy and achievable to reduce the load time to half without really compromising on the appearance or the looks of the web page.