CIS251 Web 2.0 Page Design



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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

In the last chapter of his book, "Save the Pixel -- the art of simple web design," Ben Hunt sums up the web design process in "Save the Pixel in a Nutshell." His 12 steps lay the foundation for designing a award-winning web site.

Before you "put it all together," you want to be sure that the your Web site is designed for on-the-go mobile users as well as traditional desktop viewers.

If you have recently taken a class in Web design and development, you are probably familiar with the two most popular Web layouts: Fixed-Width and Fluid. (Definitions from Blended HTML and CSS Fundamentals by Bojack and Scollard).

Fixed-Width Layout


A layout in which the column widths don't change when the browser window changes size.


Fluid Layout


A layout that expands and contracts so the contents fill the entire screen width.


But what do you know about adaptive layouts? Adaptive layouts use a design approach called Responsive Web Design (RWD), to respond to size of the viewport and display the content optimally for the user's media device -- be it a tablet, I-Pad, or smartphone-- So if you are viewing the Web page on a PC, you get the PC version of the Web site; if you viewing the site on a mobile device, you get the mobile version of the site.


Responsive Web Design (RWD)

In CSS2, some of you may have used media types. For example, you might have used different styles to created a printed version of your Web page --perhaps changing the text color to grayscale when printing. Media queries in CSS3 are very similar. Rather than looking at a specific cdevice, they detect the capabilities of the device, such as


  • Width and height of the browser window
  • Width and height of the media device
  • Orientation of the display
  • Viewing resolution


If the viewer's browser supports media queries, you can define CSS styles that checks to see if the viewer has a small device, such as a smart phone or a medium device, such as an I-Pad or tablet, and apply a specific layout for that device.


Check Natasha's Travel Site on any mobile device to see if the media queries detect your viewport and serves up the correct styles.


The quick and simple, "CSS-Based Background Blend" tutorial will walk you through the steps of creating gradient images in GIMP®for the body and content sections. You can use this in your final Web design; however, CSS3 already provides these techniques, but not all browsers support them fully.