website

• Content: The content of the website must be meaningful and it should appeal the targeted users.
• User friendly: The website must be designed in such a way that a user can easily interact with it or in other words a site must be user friendly.
• Look: The look of the hypertext and graphics used in the site must be consistent. It must have a formal style.
• Search: THe site must be easy to search even with normal search engines.

A website generally consists of text and images which are added to the web page using tags. The very first page of a website is known as a Home page.It is also known as a splash page. The other name of this page is an Index Page. It is much similar to the page of a book which contains information about the contents of a book.It generally includes the disclaimer information, language selection and company or organization logo depending upon the website target. Every page of a website is a separate Hyper Text Markup Language(HTML) language file which has its own Uniform Resource Locator(URL). When all the pages of a website are joined these are joined together using Hyperlinks. Today the speeds of browser is quite high therefore the leading time span is shorter. So the use of home pages become less if the site is designed for commercial purpose. After completion of web designing task the website need to be uploaded on the internet so that the public can use the site.This uploading is done with the help of File Transfer Protocol(FTP) client. After the uploading of website on the internet the webmaster applied different types of techniques so that there are more chances of hitting the website by the visitor. A webmaster is generally a person who took part in the designing, development and marketing of a website. The strategy generally used by the webmaster is to submit the site to big search engines such as Google and Yahoo and by transferring their website link to the other sites.

HTML - A Markup Language

• Structural Markup: Its main purpose is to define the role of text. Text can also be style sheets.
• Presentation Markup: It defines the appearance of text rather defining its functionality.
• Hypertext Markup: The role of hyper text markup is to join several documents.

Attributes of HTML: One element in HTML can take more than one attribute

The id attribute serves as a identifier for the element. It can be used by cascaded style sheets to determine their presentation properties. It can be used by the web browser to concentrate on a particular document.

The class attribute is used to classify the same elements for different purposes.

Transferring of HTML document

Basically the HTML document is transferred from one system to another like any other file. But two ways are generally preferred:

Over HTTP: The world wide web contains HTML documents which are transferred from a web server to a web browser with the help of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. The web browser then execute the data with the help of information which was transferred with the document.

HTML e-mail: Two things are required for an HTML e-mail. First is a GUI editor to compose the mail. THE second one is rendering engine to display that message. However this method is rarely used because the HTML e-mail can lead to confusion in spam filters.

HTML Files Naming Conventions

The HTML files have a extension of .htm. It is very much similar to old days operating systems and file systems such as DOS and FAT respectively, which also uses three alphabets for a file extension. At present two flavors of HTML are available. These are XML based HTML and SGML based HTML.

web-style-sheets-for-web-designing

Benefits of style sheets

The advantages of using style sheets in the designing of a web page are:

Speed: In a web site with Cascaded Style Sheets the user will experience a less time in loading a website. The first page of the website will take more time to load because it needs to transfer the style sheets and its content in the memory of browser. But after the completion of first page loading the other pages will be loaded in a very rapid time as the information about the style sheets and its content has been already transferred in the browser memory.

• Maintenance: All of the style sheets can be loaded in one file therefore it requires less maintenance and decreases the chances of human errors as they have to manage a single file only.Also the webpages with style sheets requires less effort for its editing.
• Accessibility: Websites with style sheets technology are displayed in a similar fashion in different browsers(Opera,Safari, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox). If a browser is unable to understand a particular style sheet then it can ignore it and can display the content to the user.
• Customization: THe information about style is stored externally. So if a user intentionally or accidentally disable the content, it will still remain in readable form. The webmasters provides a lot of style sheets by virtue of which the look of a website can be completely changed without any alteration in its content.
• Consistency: The style sheets files contains only the information which a web designer wants to convey. Thus provides consistency in a website by removing all the meaningless things. The other advantage of using style sheet is that the designer does not need to worry about the style properties at the composition time. The properties need to be defined only at the presentation time.

Disadvantages of using style sheets

The usage of style sheets have certain limitations also One such limitation is that the web tools find it difficult to adapt the style sheet specifications. THe other disadvantage is that the use of style sheets make the changes in the semantic vocabulary of the style elements due to which they are changed into a general vocabulary format. So a web master has to define certain elements to convey their meaning.

asp-and-aspnet

contains six built in objects. these are Response,Request, Error, Server, Application and Session. Session for example is an object whose task is to maintain the variables from one page to another page during a cookie session. The ASP webpages are stored in a file with .asp extension. But some companies uses .aspx extension for security purposes. But this extension is provided on a ASP.net page. The active Server pages are designed mostly in VB script BUT other scripts such as Java script and Perl script can also be used.

ASP and its Version

Upto now ASP has releases its three main versions

ASP 1.0 : It was released in 1996 and was an add on component of Internet Information Server(IIS 3.0)

ASP 2.0 : It was released in 1997 and was an add on component of Internet Information Server(IIS 4.0)

ASP 3.0 : It was released in 1996 and was a free component of Internet Information Server(IIS 3.0)

Difference between ASP and ASP.net

Some of the users are confused with these terms. According to them these are two different names of a same technology but both the technolgies are completely different

ASP uses script languages such as Java script, VB script, Perl script while ASP.net can use any of the .net technologies which includes J#,VB.Net, C# etc.

ASP has a maximum of six inbuilt classes while ASP.net can have a minimum of 200 inbuilt classes.

ASP does not contain any component based on server while ASP.net contains Server based components such as Buttons, Text etc.

ASP does not provide Page level transactions feature while ASP.net provides this feature.

ASP cannot be used for event driven processing while ASP.net can be used for event driven processing

Web Browser is an application software that helps the user to extract information in the form of text, images, videos, audios etc.from the webpage which in turn is located on a web site. generally a Web page has hyperlinks to other pages on the same website or at different websites. Web browsers

web-browser-and-web-server

allows the user to access the information by traversing these hyperlinks. Web browser also executes the HTML code that is why the appearance of a wepage on different web browser is different. Generally web browsers are used for world wide web access but they can also be used for content retrieval in file systems. A list of popular web browsers include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Fire Fox, Opera, safari, AOL Explorers The Hyper Text transfer Protocol acts as a medium between web browsers and web servers in access of a web page. This protocol provides a way to web browser due to which it can send the request to the server and also can retrieve the response from the web server. The HTTP 1.1 version is generally used which is supported by most of the browsers today except Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer supports this version of protocol but not fully. The web pages are located with the help of Uniform Resource Locator which is treated as an address by the web browser. The URL pattern for different protocols also differ. For example the URL of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is http: for Gopher protocol it is gopher while for File Transfer protocol it is ftp:

Web servers

A Web server is a system program that accepts request from the client (web browser) and after its interpretation gives back the response Beside this a web server can also provide the following facilities

• Authentication: The web server checks the request before sending back the response.
• Content Compression : It can also cut off the size of the response content without altering the meaning.
• Virtual host: It can also link various web sites using only one IP address
• Support for file: IT provides support to large files.
• Bandwidth throttling: To lower down the response time of any request and to serve a number of clients at any instant of time.
• Web server also maps the path of the Uniform Resource Locator to:

a local file system if the request is static.

a program(Internal or External) if the request is dynamic.

ajax-a-web-development-technique

The various techniques which on combination resulting in Ajax technology are:

Cascaded Style Sheets and XHTML for website presentation.

The Dynamic Object Model(DOM) for data interaction.

The XMLhttp request protocol for communication.

XSLT and XML for data Manipulation and Interchange

Java Script to bundle all these technologies.

Important Points About AJAX techniques

The Java script is not the solitaire technology to aggregate all the technologies VB script can also do the same purpose.

Instead of XSLT and XML you can also use plain text and Java Script Object Notation technique for data manipulation.

IFrame can also serve as a means of asynchronous communication.

Advantages of Using AJAX

Sometimes a web page contains a very large content. By using conventional methods of content retreival each request is need to be reloaded but AJAX technology provides the power to directly target the content that needs updation.

AJAX technology provides the mechanism to the web applications to respone rapidly at a request. The user always receive fast response no matter the updation is done at the server side or not.

This technology reduces the traffic congestion as the style sheets are used in this technology which needs to be requested only once.

Disadvantages of AJAX

The webpages using Ajax technology are not attached to the browser history engine. So if by some reasons the page gets enabled then we cannot go back to the previous page with the help of back button, rather we reach to a page which was visited before it.

The making of a bookmark for a particular site becomes difficult.

Web Designing - A Client Server Technology

extracted on demand. in the form of a web page. Thus a website works on a client server technology. The client or end user sends the request to the server and after the interpretation of that request the server sends back the result in the form of web pages. The information such as text, Bitmap images, Joint Photographic Expert Group(JPEG), Graphics Image Format(GIF) are stored in the webpages with the help of HTML, XHTML and XML tags. You need plugins for complex vector graphics and animations. Plugins are nothing but a software. A few examples of plugins software are Adobe, Flash etc. By the passage of time the functionality of the web browsers have increased. Thanks to the efforts of World Wide Web Consortium, which is a governing body whose task is to improve the technology of web browsers and web designing. The future plan of world wide web is to develop a web browser that will not need any plugin software for animation and Vector graphics.

Static Pages: The content of these pages are permanent. So no changes are made to the web pages unless the master programmer needs to update the pages.

Dynamic web pages: In dynamic web pages the content is automatically updated according to the clients request. All this is achieved with the help of scripting technologies such as Java script, CSS(cascaded style sheets), PDF etc. Web designing and web development are considered to be same by some people. But the dramatic change in Information Technology has provide a boundary line for their separation.

The first website was developed in 1991. when Tim Berners Lee combined the idea of Internet with hypertext. Both the techniques were already known. But no one uses them in a way Tim Lee did. With the tremendous growth in web designing a lot of companies have been set up to fulfil the demand of web work. Many western countries company are setting up their offices in developing countries like India, Romania etc. To take advantages of very cheap labor rates.

After the uploading of website the designer must need to spend some time on the planning strategy. The Planning strategies include:

website-planning-and-documentation

• Purpose: It is necessary to explain the website purpose. In other words the designer must need to analyse for which purpose the website is designed? Who is the targeted audience? What information will the end user or the visitor will receive from the website. He should also need to set short and long term goals. He has to designed the website in such a way that if he need to update the content then he can do it easily. Also the designer need to monitor the progress of website from starting to end.
• Audience: Audiences are the targeted person for which the website is designed. These are the visitors who will visit your website on the Internet.The website must be designed after observing what information the visitor wants from your website as the visitor visits the site for finding a particular type of information.
• Content: The next step for the planning of a website is to analyse the accuracy. In a website the information is stored in the form of a content. Before writing that content in a webpage You can temporarily publish the website for a group of visitors and ask for the feedback. If they find something wrong with the content then delete that content from the website.

Documentation of website

It is a prototype for the website.the documentation of a website improves the chances of the success of a website because if their is a need of improvement in the website you can do it on time. For a perfect documentation the content is thoroughly analyzed and the information structure is observed. With the help of this information structure the site map is designed. There are three ways of designing a site map that includes:

• Linear website diagram: It will help the user to understand the flow of website in a single sequence.
• Hierarchical Website diagram: It will provide more the user more than one way to track of the website structure.
• Branched chain website diagram: IT will provide the user different links to different pages.

The layout of a web page is determined using Storyboard. In this method a record is maintained for the each page, Title of the page and the purpose of the page. These storyboards are created either manually or with the help of softwares.

Webmasters and Search Engine Optimization

During mid nineties Search Engine identified that the web designers or webmasters are putting a lot of effort to rank well by them. The webmasters were using a large amount of keywords to do that. So search engines like Infoseek change their algorithms to deal with such type of situation. After changing their algorithms the search engines were able to remove the site with aggressive Keywords and techniques from their search results.The most popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo have crawlers to locate the web pages for search results. The webpages that are linked to pages on other search engines do not need any submission as they are automatically find. A few search engines such as Yahoo uses paid submission technique for Search Engine Optimization. This technique includes the submit pages in its database with guaranty, But offers no guarantee for site ranking in search results. Due to this drawback yahoo search engine was criticized by the web advertisers. The other disadvantage with Yahoo search engine is that its both directory, The Open Directory and the Yahoo Directory requires manual submission.

On the other hand Google search engine uses free submission technique that guarantees that all the submit pages will be found. It also provides web master tools due to which there is no need of manual submission SEO is based on two techniques. The first technique is a good designing techniques according to the search engines. It is named as white hat search engine optimization technique.THe other technique is not fully accepted by the search engines and they try to minimize the effects of this technique if used in any website optimization. It is also known as Black hat technique. The results of white hat techniques are good for optimization while a website is temporarily banned or in some cases permanently banned if uses this technique.

designing-a-fast-loading-website

• Less use of images: Use a minimum number of images in your website. Images enhances the website appearance but increases the load time for a website. that is the reason why the websites of Google and Yahoo contains a very few images. Thus to make a fast loading website keep the design as simple as possible.
• Image Optimization: If you think that some images are necessary for your website then optimize these images. Image Optimization means to cut down the size of images with a specific method. Image Optimization can be done by using less number of colors. More the number of colors you choose for the image, more is the loading time. Now a days a lot of image optimization tools are available online which you can use to cut down the image size. The other technique you can use is to specify the file format of the image.
• Usage of Tables: Tables are load rapidly in comparison to other content because it is a simple HTML code. So wherever possible use a table on the web page.
• Use less animation: Animation draws the attention of the visitor to your website. But animated gifs takes a very long time to load. So use animations only when there is no other option.
• Use cascaded Style Sheets: CSS are nothing but a simple HTML statement. So these are loaded fastly. The use of CSS also improves the text style used on a web page and it easily draws the attention of the visitor.
• Use Simple Icons: Always use simple icons to improve the load time of your website.
• Use background Images: Instead of using a big image of uniform size use background image to convey the information. It will save the precious load time for a website.
• Use Flash creatively: It is a popular tool in designing a website. If a website is designed almost in Flash it will look amazing but will took a very long time to load. So use Flash in designing your website creatively.
• Check the website load time: It is an essential tip in designing a website with short load time. Before finalizing your website design check the load time on tools such as Net mechanics. It will give you the clear cut information about its load time.