Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates, Fourth Edition

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Chapter 1 ■ Overview of Web Development Today
to update as XHTML sites, it usually takes more time and costs more to
do so.
5. Many designers have yet to learn discretion when using the power of
multimedia software. Although vector-based images compress well, the
file sizes found on many multimedia sites are still considerably larger
compared to traditional Web sites. This is because designers often use too
much animation, graphics, and audio, which increases the download time
of a page and which isn’t always apparent when a user has broadband
access. This goes back to Rule 1: Just because you can does not mean you
should. The issue is not just with the download time of a page. It is also
frustrating, for example, for users to go to a site where they have to see the
same intro animation every time they visit. It should not be required to
have to click past an intro to get into the site.
Note
Because users may view a site at work, it is usually prudent to create the default setting with the
sound off in an animation.
Mortised Philosophy
David Siegel, in his best-selling book Creating Killer Web Sites (Hayden Books,
1997), described mortising as piecing two images together using a table. Mortising,
however, can be a much broader term, which represents the philosophy of
piecing together graphics, text, and functionality, such as forms, to build striking,
graphically appealing sites that are fast, highly usable, and flexible.
Such sites bring together the best of both usability and multimedia worlds,
combining them into professional designs that can be viewed by nearly all of
today’s Web users (see Figure 1.8). Mortising not only complements the functionality
of a site, but it also enables designers to use techniques that the graphic
design industry has spent decades perfecting without sacrificing download time.
Just because a site looks appealing does not necessarily make it a mortised site.
Mortised sites are about more than aesthetics. Many WYSIWYG (What You See
Is What You Get) HTML editors, such as Microsoft’s Office SharePoint Designer
and Adobe’s Dreamweaver, allow a novice to create very appealing sites.
Mortised sites are knowledge-driven rather than purely software-driven. This
difference enables a designer to use XHTML, CSS, and images in creative ways