I can’t tell you how many times that my programming experience (in Java, PHP etc) has guided me in my web design work … and strangely, even in other aspects of my life not at all related to topics ‘nerd’.
… Ah, nerd wisdom prevails in all aspects of life.
Anyway, here yet again, is another example where programming guides me: this time, it’s all about web design and code.
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Over the last few years, the consensus in the web design community has been to streamline code. In real terms, that comes down to:
- collapsing html
- collapsing css
- … and consolidating css code into one file, to minimize the number of server hits.
… The idea is to speed up web page load times and to reduce web server loads.
This is an important goal and something all web designers should be concerned about. The problem is that if you are concentrating on optimizing your CSS or HTML to speed things up, you are concentrating on the wrong parts of your websites.
The fact is, that most of the optimization opportunities is actually found in your images, Flash movies and other multimedia content - not the code.
Continue reading ‘Cleaner code is better than faster code’
I can’t stand articles that make you read two pages before getting to the point. With that in mind, let’s look at how I think css code should be organized.
In a nutshell: css code should be divided up into at least 4 separate pages:
- page-structure.css
- text-styles.css
- misc.css
- ie-styles.css
How about we call this the ‘killer’ css structure.
Before I go into the details of what each css file contains (if it’s not already obvious), I want to quickly cover WHY you might want to use this basic css structure for all your websites.
Continue reading ‘How to organize your css code: the ‘killer’ css structure’
Floating around the universe, are certain universal principles that transcend disciplines. I would like to explore a few of them here, and talk about how they can be applied to web design.
The Three Master Principles
#1 Simplicity
This is such an important principle, that it can easily be made into the top three web design principles, just as location is to real estate:
- location
- location
- location
… we could say the same thing about simplicity in web design:
- simplicity
- simplicity
- simplicity
The important thing to take to heart, is that your web sites should be designed to be as simple as possible. You want to keep it simple for two main reasons:
- To make it easy for you to update.
- To make it easy for visitors to navigate the web site.
The simplicity principle applies to design, structure and the code.
What do I mean by ’structure’ of the web site?
I am simply referring to the URL structure. So we are talking about directory structures, page names etc. I’ve detailed this in my article on intelligent paths in websites.
I think the other two (design and code) are self evident.
… Now let’s look at principle number two:
Continue reading ‘The 3 Master Principles of Web Design’
I’ve released another video tutorial on Dreamweaver CS3 where I look at the three ways Dreamweaver gives you to edit web pages.
Video: Dreamweaver CS3 Editor Views
You can find all the Dreamweaver CS3 videos in the Dreamweaver section of killersites.com:
Dreamweaver CS3
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
Killersites.com is an old site, nearly 12 years old now!
Over that time (as we added more articles and tutorials), our directory structures and file naming styles changed as conventions changed. So now I have a huge mess to clean up.
… There is a lot of information buried in killersites.com that people just don’t find.
Fortunately, over the last 12-13 years of building websites and web applications, I’ve been able to figure out the best way to organize a website:
In this article, I discuss how to create an easier to maintain, more user friendly website by way of using intelligent paths.
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So what are ‘intelligent paths’?
I’m talking about URL structures of course! So that means a few things:
- Building a SENSIBLE website directory structure.
- Using meaningful words in page names and directories.
- Using lower case text for page and directory names.
- Using dashes between words in both page and directory names.
… Let’s go over the details.
Continue reading ‘Intelligent Paths Make Websites Friendlier.’
