Web Design

Websites are used by individuals and companies to capture the attention of potential clients. The purpose of the website may be to tell visitors about a person, or to explain about a company's products or services. In order to do this a website must be designed so that it is interesting for people to view and they can easily find the information they are looking for. There is a range of application software that helps to create websites, and there are many advanced features for creating eye-catching effects.

Most websites will use a template (sometimes called the master page) on which the majority of the web pages are based. Typically the template willl caontain a menu/navigation bar, company name and logo. You can identify which area of each page are part of the template beacuse they are on every page.

Flash: applications software used to add animation and interactivity to web pages.

To view a website that is created in Flash, or that contains a Flash file, you need to have downloaded Flash player. This is a free piece of software (often referred to as a 'plug-in') and most websites that use Flash will also contain a link to download the Flash players.

Hotspots: area of a page that change when the mouse hover over or clicks on them. A hotspot can be invisible, for example and area of an image that does not immediatly look as if it is clickable.

WYSIWYG: an acronym for 'what you see is what you get'. It is a term used to describe software that allows the user to view something very similar to the end result while the document id being edited.

Most web-design software will code the website in HTML (hypertext mark-up language). You can design a website without ever seeing the HTML code behind it. For example, in Dreamwaver you can choose between Design view and Code view. Design view gives a view similar to how the final pge looks in a web browser. This is known as WYSIWYG, which stands for 'what you see is what you get'.