Posted March 07, 2008 by JCDerrick (view all posts)

Web Design is the creative skin of the internet. Without webmasters or designers the internet would be about as fascinating as Windows 3.1 or even DOS. Luckily for the last decade, starting with the Netscape folks, we've had web browsers and standards by which to code and design graphically appealing websites. In turn, the code that's driven these website has also jumped leaps and bounds. In the end, we've been able to make the web really amazing.

This AnA section is meant to allow visitors and members to ask questions about web design from a professional webmaster. Questions pertaining to CSS, Graphics, xHTML, HTML, coding languages, browser compatibility (or lack there of), and website applications (including those used to create pages) are more than welcome.

We also welcome your questions on topics like Google Adsense, Analytics, or Adwords. eCommerce and online marketing questions are encouraged as well.

Click on the "In-Depth" tab to see the experience our lead webmaster has in fielding your questions. We hope if you have something to contribute that you'll also pitch in with your advice and/or experience.

I, JCDerrick, will be fielding the majority of questions in this AnA area. I have 11 years of webmaster experience and designed this site. I have also designed other large sites like Hawaii-Guide.com. Currently I am working at my job to redesign the South Carolina Education Television homepage as well.

I am familiar with the following online code/technologies:
xHTML and HTML (fluent)
CSS (fluent)
php
mySQL
Javascript

I am familiar with the following web building tools:
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 (best web layout tool)
Notepad (seriously, pure coding has its advantages)
Adobe Photoshop CS3 (best graphics tool)
Adobe Illustrator CS3 (great for larger graphics and .png files)
Adobe Fireworks CS3 (great for .gif files)
Adobe Flash CS3
Google Earth Pro

I am highly experienced with these web software applications, sites, or programs:
phpbb
Expression Engine
Google Analytics
Google Adsense
Google Adwords
Google Webmaster Tools
PayPal
Google Checkout
Mercantec
eBay
Digg

I am familiar with compatibility for these browsers:
Firefox 2
Internet Explorer 7 (IE7)
Internet Explorer 6 (IE6)

I am *somewhat* familiar with these server platforms:
IIS
Redhat

Rules coming soon...

1024 Views and 10 Comments

Response by: on 06/02/2008 at 07:28 PM

Nice! I've bookmarked it.

STAFF: Response by: JCDerrick on 05/19/2008 at 09:37 PM

I agree with what you said about the majority of monitors being able to display "true colors" and I have found the "web-safe" colors are no longer really needed. I'm sure some would argue that, but I think it's safe to use any color you like this day in age. The same goes for width of websites. While some users will use the 800px resolution, even on their larger LCD monitors, the standards for web page widths are changing; and the bulk of users are using higher resolutions to support this change. This site, and most others I've designed lately, have geared closer to 900-1000px in width, which really is useful when trying to move information above the proverbial "fold." It's ironic we still even use that term, fold, but it's still a big deal when making impressions on a website.

Your Rating:

Response by: on 05/18/2008 at 01:44 AM

In your opinion do we still need to use the browser safe color palette? This is a palette of about 216 colors that should display the same on most browsers, monitors, and operating systems. But most people use monitors with millions of colors, so limiting your designs to only 216 colors may seem extreme.

Response by: on 05/06/2008 at 01:51 PM

If you have a plan and a workflow that you follow every time you start to build a CSS Web page, you'll get the best results out of what CSS can do for you.

STAFF: Response by: JCDerrick on 03/20/2008 at 08:24 PM

Hi Avelladore,

EE by default comes without any styling or templates. Only the gallery has a default set of templates. But what they currently call the "weblog" module (the core of the system; which will get a new name in v2.0) is dependent on you for design. The way I use the weblog module here on PRO News is vastly different than how I use it at Hawaii-Guide.com. It's a amazing module. As noted, the "weblog" name is slightly confusing and dates to the original roots of what is now Expression Engine. It's far more than just a blog, and I suspect that's why they will change the name in version 2 (due out later this year we hope).

News is not a specific module... it was designed using various features available in the weblog module and with custom fields/categories I created. Under the hood, the entire PRO EE system is based on the same type of weblog set up; including the News, Blogs, Guides, AnA, and Film Analysis area.

The current build of EE is 1.6.2 and we're running that. It was released give-or-take a month ago and was a minor update to the previous build.

Hope that helps.

-John

Your Rating:

Response by: Avelladore on 03/20/2008 at 03:38 PM

Hello EVERYONE!

I'm HACHEMK at the forums haha.
Congrats on your new EE Site!

I have a question though, do the tabs at the top (Popular Forums, News and Headlines. etc...) come builtin or do you create them. Also, in the News and Headlines section, are you using a specific module for news. One last thing, which version of EE is this?

STAFF: Response by: JCDerrick on 03/16/2008 at 06:27 PM

Hi dab. With CSS you don't have to even touch a .js file to make drop down navigation work. Our top navigation uses only CSS (for Firefox and IE7/IE8). Only reason you might use .js file is for a sliding effect or to correct any issues with older browsers like IE6 (we only have a javascript file for IE6). There are several tutorials online to help with these CSS-based drop down menus if you're interested. But essentially you're just nesting a list within a list. It's amazingly SEO friendly and doesn't take any external code to load the menu. Hope that helps.

Your Rating:

Response by: on 03/16/2008 at 03:44 PM

Are the drop down menus CEO friendly? I've been wondering if javascript menues could ever be valid, ceo friendly navigation. I've always been told never to use Javascript for navigation.

STAFF: Response by: JCDerrick on 03/14/2008 at 05:06 PM

Hi Lyden,

If you mean floating as in you've floated an element left or right, you'll need to put that floated element inside a non-floating element to position it. You can then use absolute positioning in CSS to move that div container around on the page. You master div container is a good idea mainly bc of how various browsers will parse your floated element.

margin: 0 auto will center any item horizontally on the page that's not a floated element. As for vertical alignment, I'd probably need to see an example to be able to help there. Typically only images and text are centered vertically on a page.

Hope that helps and let me know if you have any other questions.

Your Rating:

Response by: on 03/14/2008 at 10:02 AM

Hi Mr. Webmaster,

If I've designed a basic floating web page design in Photoshop (800 x 600) and want to publish it in Dreamweaver, using CSS, what's the best way to centralise the page vertically AND horizontally?

Thanks very much for any light you can shed.

Lyden

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