Web Design

1) What is Website? How you develop a Website? Mention its tools, technique and methods.

Ans:- A website is a collection of related web pages, including multimediacontent, typically identified with a common domain name, and published on at least one web server .

• A website may be accessible via a public Internet Protocol(IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network(LAN), by referencing a uniform re source locator(URL) that identifies the site.
• Web pages, which are the building blocksof websites. Typically composed in plain textinterspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Mark-up Language ( HTML ).

Steps to Develop Website :

Step 1: Choose Your Website Platform: – Before you start worrying about colour schemes and domain names, you’ve got to decide what platform you’re going to build your website with.

: HOSTING YOUR SITE :

Web hosting is like rent for your website, including the pages, images, documents, and other resources needed to display that site.

• Web hosting uses a web server, which is where you put that website resource so others can access the through the Web. You can build a fully functional website on your personal computer.

STEP 2: REGISTERING A DOMAIN NAME: – A domain name is a friendly

URL people can type into their browser to get to your website.

Some examples of domain names include: webdesign.about.com

STEP 3: PLANNING YOUR WEBSITE :

I) Navigation design : How users will move around your site affects its information architecture as well as the overall usability of that site. Plan out the pages a site, create a sitemap, and develop a navigational structure from there.

ii) Content : As the saying goes, “content is king” online. The quality of your site’s content will play an important role in its success.

– Content is everything that your pages will contain, such as text, images, video and more.

STEP 4: DESIGNING AND BUILDING YOUR WEBSITE:

2) Explain Web Design Process.

Ans: – Web Design Process:

• The size of a website varies from tiny to very large i.e. few HTML pages to several thousand pages.
• The tiny or very small sites are usually built by the single developer where no strong site building methodology is adopted.
• The unplanned sites exhibit some common problems such as broken links, Malfunctioning, script etc.
• The code developed using this method leads to a maintenance problem. The success factors for hosting and maintaining huge sites are as follows:

à Planning

àTop Down Design

àImplementation a Testing

àDeploying a site in a structured manner.

Note: Ad hoc is the term used to refer unplanned and temporary arrangement made to accomplish a task.

Basic Web Process Model: There are various phases involved in website development just like any other software.

• The process model must help the developers in the following ways:

àTo address the complexity of the site.

àTo minimise the risk of project failure.

àTo deal the near certainty of change.

àTo deliver the site quickly

• The ‘waterfall’ model is the most common model adopted in software engineering.
• This model describes the phases in the lifetime of the software.
• Though most web developers adopt the waterfall model for site development, – The waterfall approach makes the developers plan everything but it requires vast experience.

The following diagram shows the waterfall model:

3) Explain SITE Types & Its Architecture.

Ans: – SITE TYPES:There are several ways to categorise websites. The following three are the general categories of websites:

A Public Website: An Internet website also called external website is one that is not explicitly restricted to a particular class of users.

à An intranet website: It is private to a particular organisation, generally run within a private network rather than on the Internet at large.

à An Extranet site: This type of website is available to a limited class of users, but is available via the public Internet.

• The major difference between the three basic site categorizations is an audience. – The public website designers know little about the users whereas the designers of private websites can meet every user of the site and take input.
• The following list shows the grouping types:

àInteractivity

àFrequency of change

àTime of Page Creation

àSize

àTechnology Usage

i) Grouping by Interactivity:Sites may allow users to just view the content or modify to some extent.

• A ‘static site’ is one where content is relatively fixed and users are unable to affect the look or scope of the data they view.
• Accessing a static website is like reading a paper magazine where users normally flip back and forth between pages.

ii) Grouping by Frequency of Change: The contents of the site may be changed over time. Changes may happen daily, weekly, monthly and so on. – The sites that never change are said to be static.

SITE Architecture :

There are two structural aspects of my website. They are:

i) Logical structure: The logical structure will describe documents that are related documents i.e. link between documents. ii) Physical structure: The physical structure describes where a document actually lives i.e, the documents directory path on a web server or its location in a database.

• The designers must hide the real path. In other words, users should not be shown the physical file structure of the site.
• There are four main organisational models used in websites. They are: a) Linear b) Grid c) Hierarchy d) Web

a) Linear Model: The linear form is very common in many sites. The information is presented in a linear fashion just like the flow of textbook contents.

– This model is adopted whenever a step by step procedure is necessarily in linear order.

4)Explain Navigation Theory and Practice.

Ans: – Navigation Theory and Practice:

• Navigation is a journey to move from one place to another place through a path. – In large websites, voluminous information is organised in a very complex structure. In addition to this sites are interlinked. Site users are usually interested in reaching a specific page quickly.
• For this, designers must place the navigational elements clearly and appropriately.

There are really only five general areas for navigational elements in a web page. top, bottom, left, right and centre .

i) Top Navigation: In most of the websites, ‘navigation choices are placed at the top of the screen because they will be shown immediately. – Page contents are normally downloaded in top-down order.

• Also traditionally in graphical user interfaces, menus are placed at the top of the screen.
• The disadvantage of this navigational style is scroll problem.
• When the user reaches the bottom of the page again, scroll up to the top of the page for the link is a tiresome job.

ii) Bottom Navigation: Placing navigation controls at the bottom of pages is less preferred as it forces scrolling unless page content is less.

– Using frames or other technologies, it is possible to fix navigation at the bottom of the screen that appears on the screen.

iii) Left Navigation: This style of page design is very common because most readers will scan information from left to right.

• This helps to navigate directly to the reading path of the user.
• Sometimes, left navigation controls distract reading and also occupies more screen area.
• To have navigational controls at the left side of the page without gobbling screen area, few approaches are adopted.

They are:

àContents must be placed in such a way that only scrolling should be possible (without panning across the screen).

àOpen a new window for wide content.

iv) Right Navigation: Recently, placing navigational elements at the right side of the screen has become popular.

• This style facilitates limiting mouse travel because navigation controls are nearer to scroll bar.
• Right navigation has serious drawback i.e. depending on a user’s monitor or browser size, the distance from left to right of the screen may vary greatly. – Right navigation is highly discouraged but not ruled out.