Web Design Troubleshooting Tips

Webdesign.org is a great site for all kinds of web design questions. They have tutorials and forums for different languages, Photoshop, Flash, Site Maintenance, and a lot of other design tools. One unique feature that I think distinguishes this site from the others; they have a whole section on color theory. Color schemes are such a big factor on the success of a website.

One problem I have with web pages that I edit at work; is that since the pages were already created before I took over, the styles are unorganized and mislabeled. The third CSS tip on this page will actually help me a lot in getting rid of these “junk” styles. Once you found the style that you want to get rid of, place your cursor in the element, then find the style in the Tag selector at the bottom of the workspace Right-click and choose Set Class to None to remove a class style.

You can also change the name of a style using the CSS Styles Panel. First Right Click on the style you want to change and select Rename Style. This will change the name of the style through your whole document.

On About.com I learned while creating my website was the need to test the site in multiple browsers. This article sites the differences between IE6, IE5, and IE7. They also tell you that you can write a different style sheet for each browser.

Validating your page is also very important. You want your pages to stay viewable through future versions of HTML. The article shows an example of how certain tags aren’t compatible is some browsers but can work in others. For example, IE supports the <iframe> tag, but Netscape does not. A great html validator that I use all the time is http://validator.w3.org/.

I have used a few "Good Principles" on this page. The first one I used is Alignment. Each paragraph is justified to make the page look similar to print media. I also used the "Century Gothic" font which is easy to read. Pictures are given some vertical space so they don't run into the text.