Common Web Design Acronyms

By Frank Woodford

This article explores the standard acronyms used in web design today and explains what each one means as well as the technology behind it. It will be a massive help to new starters in the field and could potentially help more experienced user gain a better grasp of the things they are working with.

The web is full of scary technologies but getting a grip on the basic ones will make life a lot easier. As with everything that is connected with computers there are a lot of scary acronyms but we will be taking a look at a few of them and hopefully giving you a boost to your general knowledge.

W3C: The W3C are the World Wide Web Consortium and their goal is to "lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth and stability". This basically means they try their best to make sure internet technologies actually work and that everyone plays nice out there.

HTML: The most common acronym you will come across in web design is HTML. It stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. It is now overseen W3C.

HTML is essentially a simplifies programming language that helps computers (or more specifically, browsers) to understand text and what to do with it. It uses a standardised set of "tags" that surround some text to "mark it up" for a certain formatting. An example would be the tag strong which defines the surrounded text as important and generally emboldens the text.

By combining different sets of tags as well as editing their attributes you can soon open the door to thousand of possibilities for just simple text content.

XHTML: This stands for eXtended Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the natural progression from standard HTML and is a big part of the future for the web. It is part of the W3C project "The Semantic Web" and is part of an idea to get several new web technologies understood by browsers and humans and open new doors for what is possible on the internet.

DHTML: Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language is variation on standard HMTL. It involves a combination of HTML and special scripts (executed on the clients side) to create interactive effects or animation. DHTML also commonly uses CSS to help it define styles.

In today's climate DHTML is most commonly associated with JavaScript as many client based browsers and OS support it.

CSS: As part of the evolution of the web HTML and XHTML are no longer truly used to fully decide the full visual style of a web page, only define its content and how it fits in to a style. To handle the presentation of a site the W3C worked to help create CSS or Cascading Style Sheets.

CSS has many advantages including specifying a layout for all mediums (such as browser, printer and TV) and helps to reduce site loading time and complex page by allow a single file to control every web page on a site.

This article may be of use to you in the future so I recommend you bookmark or print it out just in case you ever think, "I wonder what HTML actually stands for?" I hope it has been of some use and that your future web developments go smoothly.


Frank Woodford is an experienced copywriter from Nottingham, England. He has worked along side many English based companies to generate content for promotional magazines and websites. He also recommends certain companies for web design Nottingham and enjoys basketball and squash in his spare time.
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So What Does Web 2.0 Design Mean?

By Tanicos Cosmin

Which are the most important aspects of Web 2.0 Design?

1. Centered Layout

2. Fewer Columns

3. Separate Top Sections

4. Simple Navigation

5. Bold Logos

6. Bigger Text

7. Strong Colours

8. 3d Effects

9. Gradients

10. Reflections

11. Rounded Corners

12. Cute Icons

What to avoid?

Here are a few things that you must avoid when designing a Web 2.0 website:

1. Animated GIFs, blinking logos or banners, anything that can distract the main contetn atention

2. Flash Web Sites

3. Websites without CSS

In this tutorial you will learn how to create Text Reflections in Photoshop.

1. Create a new Document, or if you already have the text in another document that you want to create a reflection skip this step.

To create a new document go to File, New and set the width and height as you wish. I will choose a 300px width and 100px height document size.

2. Enter your desired text

Select the Type tool from the Tools Palette and start typing your text.

3. Duplicate the Text Layer

Because our reflection will be vertical , first we need to duplicate the text layer. Select the layer containing the text, right click on it choose Duplicate Layer and the click the Ok button in the new dialog box that opens.

4. Rasterize the Duplicated Text Layer

This method is used to make the layer directly editable.

Attention!!!

After you rasterize a layer you cannot make further modification to this so check for spelling errors, colors and so on. To rasterize the duplicated text layer right click on it and choose Rasterize Type.

5. Flip the duplicated layer vertically

Next we have to flip the duplicated layer vertically so we can create the text reflection. With our duplicated layer selected (in our case "Text Reflection Tutorial copy" we will go to the Edit menu, choose Transform and then Flip Vertical.

6. Nudge flipped layer

Next we will have to drag the flipped text below the initial text. To obtain a perfect vertical movement keep the Shift key pressed when dragging downwards.

7. Edit Layer in Quick Mask Mode

Select the duplicated layer which contains our vertically flipped text and then from the Tools Palette click the "Edit in Quick Mask mode" button or press the Q key on your keyboard.

8. Select the Gradient Tool from the Tools Palette

We have to use the Gradient tool in order to create the fade of our reflections. Click the Gradient Tool from the Tools Palette, or press the G key on your keyboard. Make sure you are still on the Quick Mask Mode.

9. Choose the Gradient

From the Options bar we will choose the Foreground to Transparent gradient. Click the arrow next to the gradient bar to open the Gradients palette.

10. Drag the Gradient over the Text

Next with our Foreground to Transparent gradient selected we will drag from the center of our text downwards to the bottom of the text...Do not exceed the text area!! After you release the mouse button you will see a red fade over the text.

11. Edit in Standard Mode

After you have finished with the gradient it's time to exit the Quick Mask Mode. To do that click the same button which is now called "Edit in Standard Mode" or press again the Q key.

12. Delete the Marquee Selection

The result will be a Marquee Selection around our vertically flipped text. Next we will delete the selection by pressing the Delete key. Remember that you must have the flipped layer selected. After you delete the Marquee Selection the fade will appear giving us the Text Reflection. You can press CTRL+D to deselect the selection.



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