The Basics of Navigation

You can have all kinds of great attractions on your site, but if your visitors don't know how to get to them, they'll just collect dust on the server. Worse yet, if visitors find your site's navigation confusing or convoluted, they'll simply give up and head off to explore the rest of the Web, never to return. So, good navigation design is an essential ingredient for any successful Web site.

Timberlake, Sean. EFuse (2000). Design>Web Design>Information Design

Coloring Outside the Lines

This series of articles about color is designed to help you get started right now selecting colors for your site.

Carter, Mary E. EFuse (2004). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>Color

Design and Impressions

Design is subjective: You can't please all of the people all of the time.

Will-Harris, Daniel. eFuse (2000). Design>Web Design>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric

How to Write Effective Text

It doesn't matter how dazzling your Web site looks if you don't have good, clear copy that appeals to your readers' basic desires--and is easy to read.

Will-Harris, Daniel. EFuse (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Site Planning Basics: What You Should Know Before You Design a Site

Good sites don't start in a web creation program, they start in your head. Before you even touch your web software, you need to get in touch with the reasons why you want to build a site and what you want it to accomplish.

Will-Harris, Daniel. eFuse (2003). Design>Web Design>Planning

This Site, From Scratch

It's easy to forget how much work goes into a Web site (or anything for that matter). You look at it, it looks slick and professional, and you just go about your business. That's the way it should be, but when you start to build your own sites, you have to 'stop and smell the pixels,' start to look at a site in a different, deeper way. To help you see the process that goes on behind a site (specifically this one), I kept a record of how this site started and the various stages it went through in organization, content, and design to get to what you see today.

Will-Harris, Daniel. eFuse (2000). Design>Web Design

Top Ten Do's and Don'ts

No matter how attractive a site's design, if it isn't practical, it's not doing its job. Design for the screen involves a new set of requirements to deal with and pitfalls to avoid.

Will-Harris, Toni. EFuse (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

Web Graphics Basics

Good web sites require a seamless integration of text and graphics. Here's the least you need to know about web graphics.

Bakalor, Mark. EFuse (2004). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design

Web Sense

Amazingly, people start building sites without creating a clear statement of what they want that site to achieve.

Will-Harris, Toni. eFuse (2000). Design>Web Design

Web Type 101, a Primer

While you may never consciously notice the typefaces used on a Web page, they subconsciously affect the way you feel about the page.

Will-Harris, Daniel. EFuse (2004). Design>Web Design>Typography

Writing for the Web

Writing for the web is really not that much different than writing for print. But you have to remember that since it can be more difficult to read on-screen, you have to take special care to make it easier on your readers.

Will-Harris, Daniel. EFuse (2004). Design>Web Design>Writing