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Jul
22nd

Why does the invalid HTML work?

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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The reason why people do not validate the HTML is that whenever they test, the page will seem to display without any problem. Why that is the web browsers, will be able to display the HTML, which is technically incorrect? Does this mean that we need not worry about the HTML or the invalid HTML (or PHP or JavaScript or CSS)?

For this the answer is:

When the web browsers were invented, most of the programmers recognized that there was much possibility that there would be thousands of people writing the HTML and creating the web pages as well. When so many people are trying to use the markup language or programming language like that of HTML, then it could be more frustrating quickly if each tiny results are shown in the page. So then, the programmers of the web browser decided that the browsers should be more forgiving.

All these means is that if the web browser views the WebPages, then it has the rule of HTML and it attempts to interrupt them in order to display your own WebPages. However, when it comes across something or the other, which is unexpected, from the older specification or incorrect, then the browser will ignore and tries to guess what the designer will want.

This will mean that a lazy or a novice designer will be able to get away with the incorrect code and have the pages that will display in browser window eve without a single problem. Some of the errors that occur are minor and the errors will be like that of leaving off alt attribute in the image tag. This is invalid technically but in anyway the browser will display the image. Some of the errors that occur are bigger kike that of leaving the closing the table tag off. In the old version of the Netscape, this problem could cause a table and each and everything would be after it in the HTML in order to simply disappear. IE did not mind the missing of the table tag and it would also display the page. Most of the designers who all did this would not test in the Netscape and would not know what the problem is for about long periods.

Why do you want to bother with the valid HTML?
While almost all the browsers will try to attempt the HTML even if the errors are there, so there are few good reasons in order to validate the HTML.

The HTML might display and it might display entirely different than if it was written correctly.
The errors that occur will compound each other.
Most of the browsers are really forgiving.
The invalid HTML especially if it is been deprecated then it might be supported by the browsers

Therefore, it will be good if you test your WebPages in the Web browser but by validating the HTML and CSS will surely help you to make that stand the test of new browsers and time as well.


May
25th

Valid HTML Code plays a vital Role for Search Engine Optimization

Most of the newcomers and webmasters to the Webpage design will overlook at the crucial feature of promoting the Website and for this one of the thing that you need to have is valid HTML code.

So what do you mean by valid HTML?
Most of the WebPages that are there are written in HTML. As most of the languages have their own grammar, syntax and vocabulary, even HTML has got its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary as well. Each and every document that is written in HTML should follow all the steps.

HTML keeps on changing constantly like any other language. As HTML has turned out to be one of the relatively complex languages and it is easy to make some mistakes while writing codes.

The HTML code that doesn’t follow the rules of HTML is called as invalid HTML code. You should know why is the HTML code that is valid is pretty important for Search Engine Optimization and also for your marketing attempt.

Search Engines that are available today have to pass all the HTML codes that are written in your websites in order to find the content that is relevant. If at all your HTML codes contain some errors, the Search Engines will not be able to find out the content on your pages and at that moment your SEO attempts and the quest for High Rankings on the Search Engines will end there.

HTML standards are obeyed by Search Engine Crawlers. Search Engines can index your Website when and only if the code is compliant to the HTML standards. If at all there is an error in the webpage, then the Search Engines will stop crawling your Website. If your page is missing a single bracket, then also your webpage would not be found on the search Engines. If at all your webpage is missing with few important tags, then the Search Engines may ignore the entire content of your WebPages.

So how will you check the validity of the HTML code? Fortunately, for everyone’s luck there is HTML validator that will validate your HTML code for validation.
The HTML validator that is released by the Search Engine Optimization community and it is called as “W3C HTML Validator”.
This is the service that is available that helps you to check out the HTML documents for the purpose of “conformance to W3C HTML”, “HTML Standards” and for “XHTML Recommendations”.

To make sure that the errors are corrected that are outlined by W3C validator, just enter the address of the Webpage that has error at “Netmechanic invalid HTML repair page”. Here you will have the options to fix the errors.

Though, not all the errors of HTML will cause problems for your webpage in the Search Engine Rankings. Some of the errors can keep the web spiders from indexing all of your WebPages and helps you to not to spoil your efforts of “Search Engine Optimization”. If your HTML code is valid, then it makes it easier for the Search Engines Spiders to index your Website and you have to ensure that there is no biggest mistake in your WebPages.


May
4th

Setting up a Price for your Web Design Work

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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If you are initially beginning out as Freelance Web Designer, you may have to do the thinking related to on how much you are going to charge for a project?, and will you charge exactly for the project. You have to take in some considerations before quoting a price such as,

What is the project about?

Before evaluating any kind of Web Design project, you have to determine on what the project will entail. Some of the questions be asked are
Total number of pages that has to be created
Is there any designs or/and images that has to be used or else the images or design have to created as part of the project you have accepted?
You have to ask if any content has to be written, or will that be written by the designer?
Will there be programming, Flash, multimedia, or any kind of scripting required?
Your prices have to be quoted depending on the answers from the client
When do your clients want the project to be completed?
You can generate more amount of money if the work is of more urgent.

What the experience do you have in you?
The more experience you have the more money you can earn and also you charge more. Bear in mind that if you do not have experience and it is what your client wants from you.

How much long term maintenance is needed?
Very often, whenever a Web site is started the clients of the website might not have thought beyond just getting site’s page up. You as a Web designer should ensure that your clients have covered with maintenance. You have to get a separate contract if your client demands you for the maintenance cover.

What will be the going rate?
To determine the going rate is hard. One of the possible ways is to checkout with the local area. For more information you can take assistance from the Websites as well.

How much you will want to make?
After everything the bottom-line is – how much you want to make. Take this for example; you might have taken a project you like to do as it would be more fun, or challenging or interesting. That might reflect in your bid. On the other side of the work is that you might not feel comfortable doing that job or have to do lot of extra work just to complete it and it would be the situation where you have to hire another designer.

Some General Rules
If you do not have the sufficient resources do not bid for that project. Do get as clear as possible and the contract has to be specific enough. If the contract that you are going to bid is vague, you may find that you yourself will provide more services than what you might have expected.
Be careful with the pro bono work.
Always do be honest with the clients. If you can meet the deadline tell tem that you can do so or if you cannot meet it do tell them.


Apr
8th

How long should your webpage be?

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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There is lots of focus on the Web design sites on how wide and your webpage should be as width is very much important to a webpage. Have you ever thought on how long should your webpage be? Conventional wisdom tells that one shouldn’t make a page longer than a particular screen full of text as readers will hate to scroll down the page. The content below the screen full is called as fold and most of the webpage designers have a belief that the fold will not be visible for the readers.

The study done by UIE has found that most users will be ready to scroll over the pages without a single comment.

Scrolling is not the only thing that hides the information

One of the most common arguments that are found against writing long pages is that it more often causes the information on the page to be hidden that is below the field and readers will not be able to read or see that. When you put that information on any other page will altogether will hide the entire information. In other words we can tell that, if some 100 people visit the first page and later only 50 make it to the second page and only 25 visits the third page and so on. The viewing drop rate will be very much high from second page.

Normally when a page is long, for the reader there will be a visual cue in the form of a scroll bar on to the right side of the page. In order to make their pages to look too short, most of the designers will change the length of their page’s scroll bar. If it is done in this way, people will not see that and will be reading the entire page. When you create small pages and provide a link to the nect page where you can give more information without telling the user on how long is the page. If the information is put in only one page, the readers will show interest and will scan the entire page.

Some thing block the scrolling

If at all you have long pages and want your users to scroll through the entire page, you have to see that nothing blocks the scroll bar. These are some of the elements on your webpage that implies that the page is over. The elements are
Lines of text links
Horizontal lines
Social media links or navigation icons
Short or wide graphics

Finally how long should be your webpage?

Your page length will ultimately depend on your audience. Like adults, children will not be having long attention spans and here if a topic is good to read, then it will be of no matter how long is your page.
So no article should or must exceed two printed pages
If your content is merited, you can put it one page and make your reader read the page and make them to go to nect page.


Mar
26th

The Basics of your Webpage Layout

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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Whenever you create or design a Webpage design, the Layout of your Webpage is the most overlooked aspects in you design. Most of the people think on “how to do layout but forget the basics of Web layout.

Space and whitespace

You have to make use of the space that is available as a whole but do not be specific. In other words, you have to use layout sections that are relatively sized on your WebPages so that they can contract and expand to fit correctly fit the browser’s window. Here you have to keep in mind the screen resolution. Keep in mind that most of the Web designers have moved far away form the resolution of 640 x 480. Having only the logo on the monitor is not a good customer service.

Do use colours in order to define spaces. If at all you want to have specific width to your page, center your page on the browser screen and add a different colour to the background. By doing this way, it will help the page appear resizing for different browsers. Browsers which are large will have more background colours and the smaller ones will be having fewer colours.

Graphics and images

You need to align your images properly. Nowadays, the most common layout mistakes that is found is to put up images in to the pages in such a way that it looks more willy nilly without a proper or forgetting the layout. If you are just using the “img” tag and later write some text to follow the image, then you will be having the image and one line full of text to the right side of it. Make use of this “align attribute” and this will help you to make images to be the part of layout.

On your page, do balance text and graphics correctly. Along with animations and images, it’s pretty easy to get carried away and these both animations and images will make the page to read really hard. Whenever you’re considering the layouts for your WebPages, keep in mind that images are one of the major parts of your design bust not afterthoughts.

Width of your text

You have to mainly think of your text width. This text width is often called as “the scan length” and this refers that how many words will be displayed in one line. Many people will be able to read 7 to 11 words on a single line. If the line is longer than 11 words, it will not be able to read and it gets hard. If there are more words it will be very much distracting to read. When you are in to designing your layouts to your pages, ensuring that major areas in the page will display the text and that should be with readable width.

It is inadvisable to centre your text. The first technique that is learned a new designer in page layout designing is the center tag. Centring the pages is too hard and it is very much difficult to read.


Mar
20th

Steps to Follow Before you plan to construct your Website

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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It would be more tempting to fly right into Web designing and learning HTML, JavaScript and CSS and all that, later part will be very fun. If you haven’t decided to consider where to put up your WebPages or when you want put up your WebPages what are all the privacy and legal issues that you might face and if you don’t consider all these issues before, you will run obviously into hardship. But without facing many problems, it is easy to get a Web hoster and to set up the domain. At once if you have all these in your hand, it’s easy to move forward.

Set up Web Hosting

When you have built your WebPages and until and unless you are going to display only on your system, you require a place to display your WebPages on the internet. The place on the internet is administered by a Web Hosting company. In the market today, there are a lot of Web Hosting options and it ranges from Web Hosting companies offering free Hosting service (usually ad-supported) to pay hosting services and in this paid services, you can own a server and maintain it according to your own needs or else you can share the space in the servers with other Websites as well.

The primary thing you have to do before constructing a Website is to find a good Web Hosting service.

Get a Domain Name

Domain Name (Definition): on the Web or internet Domain is nothing but the name by which the particular computer is identified. It is commonly allied to IP address. It can be purchased in various combinations of numbers, letters and symbols.

This isn’t absolutely significant for all the Websites and this is obtained because it makes your site to be accessed more easily. Most of the people have domain name for their site and will not expect to make money out of this. It is too inexpensive to have a domain name and if you don’t have one for your Website, it will be so silly.

Try to learn all the legal issues that are surrounding WebPages

As there are legal issues for each and every thing and even for these WebPages there are some legal issues that are to be considered when trying to put up WebPages. In these issues, Copyright is the biggest one- this means you shouldn’t copy other people content without their prior permission and also there some other issues like protecting and linking children online. So learning some of these basic legal issues will obviously help you.

If you want your customers to stray with you, protect their privacy matters.

As the days are progressing, privacy is developing as a legal issue on the internet as more countries are enacting their laws like COPPA to protect one’s privacy issues. So, for many people their privacy is very serious concern and if you don’t maintain your customer’s privacy, they will surely leave you. So be utmost careful while building the WebPages and collecting the data from other sites.

So get ready to construct your Website.

Bear in mind that planning is very much vital before constructing a Website and if you have plan in your hand, you can build a better Website and the outcome will be better.


Mar
12th

Checklist for solving Problems in Web Design

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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It will be frustrating job to find out what has gone wrong with your Web design. Some of the things will be impossible to fix and some other things will be difficult and can be fixed but if you are very much systematic regarding your analysis, you can fix the problem very quickly.

Your HTML should be validated

Whenever you have the problem with your WebPages, do validate your HTML. There are several reasons behind validating your HTML but when you have a problem in your WebPages do validate your HTML. There are a many people who validate HTML automatically. If you have the habit of validating your HTML every now and then, it is well and good. By validating, it makes sure that it’s not a small problem.

CSS should be validated

The next place where you will have most problems is with CSS. Validating CSS serves same as validating HTML. If there are some errors, validation will make sure that, there will be no problem with CSS and that will be not the cause of your problems.

Validate other dynamic elements and your JavaScript

As validating your CSS and HTML you have to validate your JavaScript, JSP, PHP and other dynamic elements.

Simplify your Pages

If you have been validating your CSS and HTML regularly and it didn’t help, you have to narrow down the pages to fix the problem. One of the easiest ways is to delete some portions of the page until the problem is solved. Now, you have to cut down your CSS in similar manner. The thought behind simplifying your page is not that you will leave the entire page with the fixed amount of content but you are focusing on how to solve the problem that has occurred.

Subtract and add back

Finally if you have found the problem, narrow down the page and start subtracting the elements that give you problems. For example: if you have found the problem in certain division and along with CSS that styles the division, start to delete each line one by one.
After every removal test your page. If you have removed or fixed the problem you will come to know what kind of problem is that. Once you have solved the problem, begin adding the elements that you have erased and ensure that you have to test the page after every change. When designing a Webpage, you will come to know certain little things will make vast difference. You have to test the page after every check because you will come to know that place where the problem is occurred.

First design WebPages for standard compliant browsers

The most common problem faced by these Web designers is around getting the pages looking similar in all the Websites. It is impossible sometimes or difficult to have all the pages of all the Websites to have the pages similarly.

Keep your code simple

Once you have solved all the problems, you have to keep watching that similar problem doesn’t arise again.


Oct
16th

Creating Accessible HTML

Author: Editor | Files under HTML Tutorials
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As we all know that internet has been a boon for everybody on this planet and especially for those with some disabilities. But one most important thing to be kept in mind before the designing of the website is the accessibility. Accessibility in terms of website indicates the degree or the measure to which any particular website is usable especially by people with certain disabilities. The main key to accessibility is flexibility. Always remember that people might be using numerous varied technologies to view your web pages depending on the availability of resources.

Availability of proper options and ease of use are the two basic premises of accessibility. A website which has been designed on these grounds will surely be fun and will have optimized loading time. One of the easiest and the simplest methods to check accessibility of your website is to run through an HTML checker. The primary function of the HTML checker is to check through your entire HTML code thoroughly and help you see where your HTML page is inaccessible and finally redisplaying that particular page with images as annotations. This HTML checker is designed to check for all kinds of accessibilities whether it is related to the browser compatibility or the disability access problems.

Always ensure of having a workable text option in your web page as this will allow the people with visual disabilities to access through your pages easily and conveniently. This implies that you should always make use of the ALT tag when ever dealing with graphics and also create alternatives to IMAGEMAPS. And also remember to always give textual description of your graphics as this will prove to be quite important for your web page. The use of font tag with some hard coded values should be avoided especially for visually impaired people. The background should be kept monochromal or lighten the color of the background. Try to keep your website simple and easy by using textual listing of options and avoiding the use of hierarchical menus as far as possible.

The next important factor that comes into picture is the economic accessibility. Everybody cannot of the option of similar bandwidth or internet accessibility options. A website should be such that it should be designed kept in mind the slowest operating system, Lynx terminal thereby using the ALT tag and the textual version of imagemaps. The image and sound files should always be an optional part of the HTML code and not the necessary requirement. Always remember the website should be accessible by people from all walks of life. The vocabulary and the choice of appropriate and easy to understand words is very important. It is always possible to make the entire text and the subject understandable and clear without actually using 20 subjunctive clauses and 8 syllable words. Always make the text easier, simpler and comprehend.

Always remember that your HTML can be made accessible simply by keeping it simple by using clean and easy language. The webpage should support the slowest operating system i.e. Lynx friendly and relative font sizes should be used. The use of ALT tag and hyperlinked text for images and graphics description is always advisable.