The Internet is a fast-changing virtual world and, as technology continues to advance from year to year, web design trends and techniques continue to change. In order to succeed with any online venture, it is essential for web designers to keep in pace with these trends. Following are some of the major current trends in the web design industry today.
Customized Typography
Long gone are the days when web designers had to restrict themselves to a small handful of web-safe fonts like Courier, Times New Roman and Arial. These days, there are plenty of tools which make it possible to have dynamic, embedded fonts on a website. Typography is an important element of presentation and using it correctly can convey an important artistic message. It can also greatly help your website to have a more unique and memorable appearance. We're no longer in the 90s, so there's no need for any website to look just like the next one. Many free CSS3 tools such as Typetester and CSS Typeset are available to help you choose and configure fonts for your website without having to worry about any coding and other complications.
Improved Navigation
A lot of web designers make the mistake of putting more thought into the aesthetics of a site's navigation than the actual usability. While it is important to keep things looking good, it is even more important to keep things user-friendly. One of the most popular trends at the moment is the use of fixed-position navigation tools. It is frustrating for users when they scroll down the page only to have to go back to the top again to find the navigation buttons. Having the actual content of the page scroll separately while having the navigation buttons always remain to the side of the window lends to a much more efficient and user-friendly design.
CSS3
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the standard way of formatting a website to customize its entire look and feel from fonts to columns and everything else. CSS3 is the current version and although CSS4 was drafted several years ago, it is still not supported by any web browser. CSS3 provides many advanced formatting features and it is compatible with all of the current versions of the popular browsers. Using CSS3 will allow you to greatly enhance the look and feel of your website by providing improved navigation, more customizable typography and various graphical features such as shadows, borders, multiple background images and more. CSS3 is currently leading the way in web design formatting trends.
HTML5
HTML has, for 22 years, been the standard programming language for presenting content on the Internet. The current specification is the fifth version and it is another trend that is high in demand. It is more user-friendly than ever thanks to providing a more human-readable code. It also provides some advanced features which allow you to structure your mark-up code. Other features included in the latest version include improved support for dynamic pages, new form types and various new elements. HTML5 is supported by all mainstream web browsers.
Post contributed by Beth Cooper, on behalf of DesignContest.com, a crowd sourcing company using Logo Design Contests to supply unique and affordable designs.
I'm very particular with site navigation so I focus on how it's designed and if people are able to interact with it very well. I started using HTML5 as well and get rid of flash in my designs. Great tips you got there btw.
ReplyDeleteResponsive themes is the emerging force given the number of smart phones and tablets on the market. Anything that improves usability has got to be a good thing right?
ReplyDelete