Designing for Different Resolutions

So you've designed a startling site. It looks great on your computer, and you're bucking convention by putting the navigation bar on the right side. But if you don't pay attention to monitor resolution, some of your audience may never see that navbar and won't get past the first page. Since I work full time on the computer, I prefer to use a Macintosh with a large screen and good color resolution. But many people are surfing the Web with an old PC and a smaller screen. What they see is dramatically different from what I see, so I must account for those differences in everything I create.

Kay, Michael. Webmonkey (1999). Design>Web Design

Director MX Versus Flash

Director, which hit the scene way back in 1988, was always considered the ultimate multimedia authoring tool. Then the Web came along and Shockwave, a format that translated Director projects for the Web, was born. It was pretty wowie in its day (circa 1995), but the size of Shockwave files, along with the browser plugin users needed to see them, really slowed Shockwave down. Enter Flash's SWF format, which was designed solely for the Web so it was faster and easier to use than Shockwave. And the rest is history: Flash is everywhere, and whipper-snapper Web developers are all, 'Shockwave who?' But Shockwave has its uses. Flash may be better than ever these days, but you can still outgrow it. Say you need better video performance, or you want to create a game or educational tool that uses a joy stick. Or maybe you're looking for the depth of 3D animation. When it comes to interactive projects in the non-Web world (yes, it's true, there is life outside the Web) — such as CD-ROM games, educational materials, reference books, and presentations — sometimes Flash just isn't enough. If you're tackling a big-league, off-Web project, or a particularly intricate website, then perhaps it's time to take another look at Macromedia's Director MX.

Kay, Michael. Webmonkey (2003). Design>Multimedia>Web Design>Flash

XML Structures for Existing Databases

Relational databases are a mature technology, which, as they have evolved, have enabled users to model complex relationships between data that they need to store. In this chapter, we will see how to model some of the complex data structures that are stored in relational databases in XML documents. To do this, we will be looking at some database structures, and then creating content models using XML DTDs. We will also show some sample content for the data in XML to illustrate this. In the process, we will come up with a set of guidelines that will prove helpful when creating XML models for relational data.

Williams, Kevin, Michael Brundage, Patrick Dengler, Jeff Gabriel, Andy Hoskinson, Michael Kay, Thomas Maxwell, Marcelo Ochoa, Johnny Papa and Mohan Vanman. VBXML (2002). Design>Information Design>XML>Web Design

XSLT Programmer's Reference: XSLT in Context

The purpose of XSLT, what kind of language it is, and how it fits in with other technologies you're likely to use in a typical Web-based application.

Kay, Michael. XML Advisor (2004). Design>Web Design>XML>XSL