An Introduction to Web Design

The Internet is: “ A "network of networks" linking millions of computers worldwide for communications purposes”. Basically lots of computers communicating with each other . . .

1969 – ARPANET linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. 4 hosts. 1986 - 2300 hosts 2006 - well over 400,000,000 hosts and growing rapidly

The first ever website - Tim Berners-Lee

Google now lists over 8 billion individual pages That’s one for every person on the planet, with 2 billion to spare!

What makes a good web design?

Attractiveness Usability Accessibility (Text size, use of screen reading software, accesskeys) Graphics vs. load time Browser compatibility – different browsers / operating systems / screen sizes. Visibility (being found in search engines)

Frysteel.com = a complete mess

Mystery Meat Navigation

webpagesthatsuck.com

Search for “Web Design Inspiration” on Google

Visitors want one of the following: Information OR To be entertained OR To buy something Anything that gets in the way of these objectives should be avoided! E.g. “splash” screens

HTML = the structure of a website

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) tell a web browser how elements of a page appear. e.g. All paragraph text is Arial, size 12. The page background is blue. Links are underlined, orange CSS = the appearance of a website