Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
have learned in past text passages, Web portfolio navigation should be
simplified to provide seamless usability and serve to communicate a functional
hierarchy.
There are several types of navigation systems that you can use in your Web
portfolio pages. They all perform the same function, to get the user somewhere
quickly and easily. Text-based navigation systems are easy to use and easy to
update. They are great for bottom-page navigation and for simple communica-
tion. Keep the text styles consistent. You can accomplish this by using CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets). A lesson in how to create styles and style sheets
appears later on in the topic.
Graphical based navigation systems use gif or jpg graphics to trigger events
instead of text. Using metaphors and image maps are typical ways to integrate
graphics. With these designs, you should be sure they have functional hierarchy,
they have to mean something and be in the correct order of overall functions.
Graphical navigation systems are more difficult to create and maintain due to the
fact they originate in a digital imaging or digital illustration application. You must
design the artwork separately and then export it to your Web site directory.
From there, you would need to import the graphics into Dreamweaver or
whichever Web development application you use. With text-based systems,
you create the menu directly in Dreamweaver with text tools.
Backgrounds
Have you ever gone to a Web page and seen one image repeated consistently
as a background? Visually, this is not very appealing. You need to know what
background image is so that later on he can avoid using one. Backgrounds,
better known as background images, are resource hogs that serve no commu-
nication purpose than to provide anguish to the user while waiting for them to
load. The only time that background images seem to be needed and can be used
are when non-Web browser safe colors are used in a design created in Adobe
Photoshop or another image-editing application. In this case, solid colors are
used for the background and although loading time is slowed down, the
background keeps an aesthetic decency due to the fact that solid colors tile
seamlessly. You still want to use them very rarely.
Alternatively, the horrible tiling of one image creates an annoying pattern that
ruins anything else placed in front of it. Bottom line: avoid background images.
