WD - Enhancing Your Website Lesson

Enhancing Your Website

Web pages can be enhanced by using a variety of options.  This lesson topic will provide a few details on how documents can be enhanced. 

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Cascading Style Sheets, also referred to as CSS, is the language web designers use to communicate to a browser on how to format an HTML document.  Like HTML, CSS has been in existence for some time and new versions have evolved.  CSS3 is the latest version and is used in conjunction with HTML 5 to visually enhance web pages.  Cascading is the process that web browsers use to determine which style will be applied to an element.  Web designers can create one style sheet for an entire website to maintain consistency in layout and look for each page.  The list below reflects some of the impact CSS has on web pages.

The Impact CSS has on Web Pages are: Set margins and borders, Specify font type, size, color, and effects, Set background colors and images, Define table layout and display, Design multicolumn layouts, Use an assortment of font options, Control text layout, alignment, and spacing and Create transitions

The graphic below reflects steps web designers apply to style.

StyleSteps.PNG

 

Click here Links to an external site. to access the Tutorial Republic CSS3 Tutorial to discover how to add markup to your HTML document.  An additional interactive CSS Tutorial can be accessed by clicking here Links to an external site..

Cascading Style Sheet Self-Assessment

Images

Images can be used to enhance the visual appeal of web pages.  Businesses tend to use logos on their websites to promote their business while other sites may provide images to promote a product or service. A higher file resolution delivers a better quality of image, but higher file sizes take longer to download. As you add images to your web pages, consider using compression software to reduce the file size without diminishing the quality of the image.  Because some visitors to your sight might have a vision impairment that requires them to use a screen reader program or other adaptive technology, you should include the <alt> tag when creating an HTML document or complete the information in an accessibility properties dialog box for web authoring tools.   Doing so will provide details about the image.  You should also consider the file format or the way the file is encoded and stored electronically.  To appear in a browser, your site's images must be saved in a format supported by most browsers. The most common image file formats used on the World Wide Web are graphics interface format (.gif), portable network graphics (.png), and joint photographic experts group (.jpg).

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