Building blocks of web design

Every website design professional needs a firm grounding in basics. Knowledge at the fundamental level is required to do a job successfully and to the client’s satisfaction. The following text elaborates on the basic building blocks of web design.

A browser is software that is used to view pages in the World Wide Web. Microsoft Internet Explorer is the most commonly used browser. Many people use Mozilla and Chrome. A web browser displays a web page. The browser widow can fill the full screen or it can be reduced in size by the person who is using it. The amount of information that can be displayed within a window depends on the resolution of the screen.

We will now discuss screen resolution. A screen displays innumerable dots of color. These dots are called pixels. The number of pixels that can be displayed is known as the screen resolution. The number of pixels can be determined by multiplying width by height. It is possible to vary the screen resolution for any one screen. It should be kept in mind that there will be a maximum resolution for each screen. Typical resolutions are 1280 x 1024 (high resolution), 1024 x 768, 800 x 600 and 640 x 480 (low resolution). The 640 pixel width had almost passed into oblivion.

To find the screen resolution, select Settings and Control Panel in the Start menu. Then select Display, and in the dialog box, click the Settings tab. You can now see the current screen resolution. To change the resolution, use the Screen area slider. The choice of screen resolutions depends on the screen’s physical dimensions. It is hard to read text on a small screen that is set at a high resolution. This is specifically applicable for small laptop screens. A user with less visual acuity may choose a lower screen resolution to get enlarged text and images.

The user always has the option of changing the browser window. There is no requirement to fill the whole screen. The viewer can display several windows simultaneously to take advantage of flexible sizes. For a website design professional, it means that the actual display area of a web page cannot be determined with certainty.

Users scroll when the material on a web page does not fit on to the screen. The visitor can use vertical and horizontal scrollbars to move inside the screen. Vertical scrollbars help to navigate from top of the screen to the bottom of the screen and vice versa. Since, many people do not scroll down; important information is displayed at the top. Websites frequently provides links at the top of the page that leads to the bottom. Thus, visitors can still access the information even if they are unwilling to scroll down. Website design Sydney professionals factor all this into their calculations when they create a website.