Building Preloaders and Progress Bars in Macromedia Flash

One of the unique features of web content built with Macromedia Flash is the ability to control when and how the content loads. When loading a heavy HTML page, the user is usually stuck looking at a blank window until the content starts appearing. Flash allows for the creation of animated preloaders, which give the user precise information about the progress of the loading process. A simple rectangular progress bar or percentage indicator will do the job, but why stop there? A preloader should be given just as much love and consideration as the rest of the site content, especially on a site that is trying to evoke a mood, or create an immersive experience. If a preloader is engaging enough, the user won't mind waiting for content, and the time it takes to load will seem shorter. The preloader is the first element someone will see when visiting your site. You can make a good first impression by welcoming your visitors with a snappy preloader.

Hirsch, Joshua. Adobe (2005). Design>Web Design>Interactive>Flash

Building Quality Web Sites  

Identifies the characteristics of poorly constructed Web sites.

Smart, Karl L. Intercom (2001). Design>Web Design

Building Relationships With Personalization

Understanding what personalization is all about regarding potential customers. Variables that can affect how fast a relationship can be developed.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2003). Design>Web Design>Adaptive>CRM

Building the Front End: Craft Intelligent and Intuitive Front Ends for Ajax Applications

With Ajax still one of the industry's hottest buzzwords, more and more applications are being built with Ajax technologies. However, it's not always easy to build a good application. This article focuses on how to build intuitive, easy-to-use Ajax-driven applications.

McLaughlin, Brett D. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

Building the Semantic Web

In the information age it is widely understood that there is now too much information. Some of this newly created information will most certainly be valuable, but despite marked improvement in search tools, finding the valuable information is a slow panhandle. Perhaps in light of this situation, the W3C under the direction of Berners-Lee has begun to build the foundation for the next phase of the web. This phase, called the Semantic Web, will make information stored with this technology much more processible by machines.

Emonds-Banfield, Peter. Orange Journal, The (2002). Articles>Web Design>XML>Metadata

Building the Treasure House: Creating Knowledge Bases on the World-Wide Web  

Web knowledge bases offer an excellent platform for delivering technical documentation and customer support information. They also represent an area of great opportunity for technical communicators to expand their skills, satisfy their customers, and create value for their employers or clients. This session explores the components of a web knowledge base and the tasks involved in planning and building one.

Massa, Jack A. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Documentation>Online>Web Design

Building Web Sites With Depth

Is the Web really the ultimate customer-empowering environment? The Web as a whole is empowering, because users have the option to click over to the competition at the slightest whim. So why do sites so often leave users feeling powerless? The Web increases accessibility and defies geographical barriers. But e-commerce sites often decrease accessibility and erect more barriers than you'd walk past in a store.

Nielsen, Jakob and Marie Tahir. WebTechniques (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

Building with Flash and MySQL

Building a blog is cool, but building a blog with Flash, MySQL, and PHP is so much cooler. Scott guides you through two days of coding and querying.

Gilbertson, Scott. Webmonkey (2003). Design>Web Design>Server Side Includes>Flash

Building with Rusted Nails

We can compare web design and development to the process of building a house or a structure. The development of every web site has a process that these craftsmen must follow in order to achieve the finished structure. These phases are generalized and somewhat vague at times, while some may even be grouped or varied in name, but they are all essential steps in each web construction.

Finck, Nick and Peter Fielding. Digital Web Magazine (2001). Design>Web Design>Workflow

Building Your Home on the World Wide Web: Researching, Designing and Maintaining a Web Page  

Good web design follows many of the same tenants true of good design in any media: a concern for contrast, harmony, unity, and tone. But home page design also provides ways of presenting a corporate image and sense of place in unique ways through imagery, color, textured backgrounds, links, and unusual layout features. Technical concerns unique to Web page design includes the need to minimize download time through reduction in the size, complexity, and color depth of images and icons, and repetition of icons, backgrounds, and tables. All sites should have an introductory overview, a heuristic navigation system, links to local and distant sites, a response method, the date the site was last updated, and a copyright notice.

Kahn, Russell L. STC Proceedings (1997). Design>Web Design

The Bull's-Eye: A Framework for Web Application User Interface Design Guidelines

A multi-leveled framework for user interface design guidelines of Web applications is presented. User interface design guidelines tend to provide information that is either too general, so that it is difficult to apply to a specific case, or too specific, so that a wide range of products is not supported. The framework presented is unique in that it provides a bridge between the two extremes. It has been dubbed the "Bull's-Eye' due to its five layers, represented as concentric circles. The center of the Bull's-Eye is the Component layer, followed by Page Templates, Page Flows, Interface Models and Patterns, and Overarching Features and Principles. To support this approach,requirements were gathered from user interface designers,product managers, UI developers, and product developers. Also, usability testing of the guidelines occurred on several levels, from broad guideline tests to more specific product tests. The guidelines and lessons learned are intended to serve as examples for others seeking to design families of Web applications or Web sites.

Beier, Betsy and Misha W. Vaughan. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Interface

Bulleted Lists: Multi-Layered Fudge

A passion for web standards can become a broken heart when effects that are easy to achieve with table layouts seem to defy the earnest CSS- and markup-conscious designer. Fortunately, new ALA author Nandini Doreswamy loves a challenge. Here she shows how to create two columns of bulleted lists in the flow of text.

Doreswamy, Nandini. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>CSS

The Business Case for Web Accessibility

Makes the business case for catering to the widest audience possible. Identifies groups of people who have problems accessing the web, and explains how building web sites they are able to use can positively impact your bottom line.

Budd, Andy. Blogography (2004). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Business Case

Business Entity Options

You've mastered Photoshop, Flash, PHP, CSS, XHTML and JavaScript; studied usability, accessibility, and information architecture; and can fake your way through XML. But there’s more to running a web business than that.

Kramer, Scott. List Apart, A (2002). Careers>Management>Web Design

The Business of Web Design

There's a lot more to being a successful web designer than designing good web sites. Your job is actually to satisfy your client. This section provides guidelines from our experience of running web agencies, which we hope will help you be more successful and more fulfilled.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Careers>Web Design

The Business Value of Web Standards

Industry accolades aside, how important is standardization to an individual business like ours? Do Web standards give organizations a return on investment? Does the transition to XHTML and CSS make financial sense? The answer to those questions is yes.

Veen, Jeffrey. Adaptive Path (2003). Design>Web Design>Standards

Business Web Sites for the Self-Employed  

Drawing on information provided by several self-employed technical communicators, Frick offers advice on how to design and develop a business Web site.

Frick, Elizabeth A. 'Betsy'. Intercom (2002). Design>Web Design

Business Web Sites for the Self-Employed: Part Two  

What does it take to get a Web site running on the Internet? When you have a site that is ready for some real-life testing, you are ready to put the site up. Publishing a Web site is a three-step process: getting a domain name, choosing a host, and posting the site.

Fugate, Alice E. And Elizabeth A. 'Betsy' Frick. Intercom (2003). Careers>Freelance>Web Design

Business-Centred Design

In traditional user-centred design, focus is on users’ needs and their use of the product, while marketing is left to the marketing department. On the web, usability and marketing go hand in hand. Whether commercial or not, a web site has to meet the need of its users and at the same time convince them to take action, for the objectives behind the site to be meet.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2003). Design>Web Design>Marketing>Usability

But There's Only So Many Ways to do Something, Right?

We're often victims of design piracy. Roughly once a week someone emails us with an anonymous tip that someone has ripped off our "UI look and feel" and is using it for their own site or their own app. It's amazing what people and businesses think they can get away with. We send the violators an email letting them know they can't take our work, our words, our code, or our design. 98% of the time the violators respond favorably and take the design down or alter it sufficiently that it's no longer recognizable as our design. 1% of the time it takes a few emails before they acquiesce. And 1% of the time it requires legal intervention.

Signal vs. Noise (2007). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Web Design

Buying Text Links

Discusses buying text links, and whether it's good or bad for your SEO campaigns.

Whalen, Jill. High Rankings Advisor (2006). Design>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

Bye, Bye EMBED

Break the chains of EMBED and live free. Elizabeth Casto explains how to embed movies without using invalid markup.

Castro, Elizabeth. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>XHTML

Caffeinate Your Hypertext

Suggests that knowing how to create a Web page is only a small step toward writing good hypertext. The article is the first installment in a two-part series on hypertext for anyone who writes anything for the Web. In a world where designers create systems to offload work to secretaries and writers, both technical and non-technical people need a sense of the possibilities opened up by hypertext.

Matias, Nathan. SitePoint (2003). Design>Web Design>Writing

Calculate Web Page Display Speed

Calculates the size of a web page and estimates its download time at various connection rates. It also gives you recommendations on how to improve page display time.

IAsummit (2004). Design>Web Design>Assessment>Bandwidth

Calculating the Cost of a Large-Scale Web Site

A well-designed information architecture with intuitive organization, labeling, navigation, and indexing systems can significantly reduce the amount of time that users spend blundering through the hierarchies of Web sites and intranets. How much is this time-savings worth? The case is clearest for intranets where the users are your employees.

Morville, Peter. Semantic Studios (1997). Design>Web Design>Content Management>Usability