Planning and Designing Your Site in Java

Create QR-Code in Java Planning and Designing Your Site

Also, the coding and database for the dynamic functionality, if any, depends on the Web server type (linux/unix servers use PHP/mySQL and Microsoft servers use NET and SQL databases) so designers and developers need to plan accordingly Before building the site, you need to decide upon other issues that affect the overall design of the site, including monitor resolution, browser optimization, and breadth of content We discuss these issues in detail in the sections that follow

When visitors come to your Web site, how much of the Web site design they see in their browsers is somewhat determined by the elements within their browser, like the address bar, navigation buttons, status bar, and scroll bars, and their monitor resolution setting Monitor resolutions can be set anywhere from 600 x 400 to 2560 x 2048 The smaller the numbers, the larger the site appears in the monitor display; the larger the numbers, the smaller the site appears Currently, most monitors come with a factory preset resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher Nevertheless, because you have no control over what monitor resolutions visitors will have, consider doing some advanced market research to find out who your audience will be, and what monitor resolution they re likely to have This information helps you determine the ultimate width of your Web site design For a few years, the standard was to design a Web site for a monitor set to 800 x 600 resolution However because less than 10% of all Internet traffic uses that resolution anymore, the new standard is to design for monitors optimized for 1024 x 768 and higher resolution settings That said, because a design at 1024 x 768 pixels would be too wide to fit in a browser window with the aforementioned browser widgets, the design would need to be a little smaller about 955 x 600 pixels to fit without invoking horizontal scrollbars For a great discussion about designing for multiple screen sizes, check out the whitepaper titled Screen Size Matters by Catalyst Group Design at wwwcatalystgroupdesigncom/cofactors/upload/catalyst_ resolution_whitepaperpdf

When designing Web sites, you need to consider whether the audience will include people with visual and other disabilities If so, you should add accessibility features, such as image labels and keyboard shortcuts, to your site Dreamweaver has the tools that let you author accessible content that complies with government guidelines In addition, Dreamweaver supports designers who need accessibility features themselves to create accessible sites To turn on Accessibility features in Dreamweaver, which prompts you to add Accessibility tags and attributes to objects when they are inserted onto a page, follow these steps: 1 Choose Edit Preferences (Windows) or Dreamweaver Preferences (Mac) The Preferences dialog box opens 2 Choose the Accessibility category on the left to reveal the accessibility options on the right 3 Next to the Show Attributes When Inserting option, choose the content that you want to be prompted for For example, to always be prompted to add accessibility tags or attributes to images inserted on a page, select the Images option 4 For Web designers with disabilities who are using Dreamweaver to create Web pages, consider the following options: Enable the Keep Focus option to access an accessibility panel after you open it This is a good option for Web designers using screen readers who need accessibility settings to create Web pages in Dreamweaver Consider disabling the Off-Screen Rendering option if using a screen reader This option is turned on by default but may cause conflicts for designers using screen readers 5 Click OK to accept the new preferences In addition to these accessibility features, Dreamweaver comes with several sample Web page designs that comply to accessibility standards To access these sample designs, choose File New to open the New Document dialog box, and choose an accessible page design from the Blank Page category If you do use accessibility settings on your Web pages, be sure to run an accessibility report to test your page or site against the government s Section 508 guidelines as part of the testing process prior to publishing your site See Book V, 1 for more about testing To find out more about Accessibility initiatives, visit the Web sites for both the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative (wwww3org/wai) and Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act (wwwsec tion508gov)