Leftovers Too Good to Leave Out

As is normally the case when I write our newsletter, there is a lot of good information that I collected as I researched over this past month that didn't quite make it in the "final cut." Below are some extras that would be worth looking over as well.

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For each newsletter I write, I use LinkedIn to ask questions that will hopefully give me a sense of what information I may not know yet, as well as what information people in our network would be interested in hearing about. This month, I asked, What should every designer know about creating designs for the web? As usual, many of the replies were great. One comment that stood out came from our own Nolan Caudill, who wrote:

"One other aspect is that implementing advanced aspects of design such as alpha transparency, for example, is a painful exercise when dealing with Internet Explorer 6. I usually take it as a personal challenge to see if I can get these designs working in IE6, and succeed more often than not, but sometimes compromises have to be made in the design, with IE6 looking slightly different than the others. This is usually tough to stomach for a designer, and rightfully so, but with the diminishing importance of this browser, the designer should know that this user may have to see a slightly different version of the site."

 

There are search engine optimization concerns with the cloaking methods I mentioned (FLIR and sIFR). Google's webmaster help site says:

"Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

• Using white text on a white background
• Including text behind an image
• Using CSS to hide text
• Setting the font size to 0"

However, Google has officially endorsed the sIFR method. My opinion at this point is that the jury is still out, but if you can avoid hiding text, in general, it's probably worthwhile to do so.

Finally, most developers would probably agree that one of the biggest headaches they encounter when working with a designer is the format in which the design is provided. We always request that our agency partners provide the designs as a layered Photoshop file (.PSD). It also helps if that file is well organized with labeled layers, rasterized type layers if the fonts can't be included, instructions if needed, and any unneeded layers removed. Initially, I was going to make this a "chapter" of this month's newsletter, but our designer, Justin Kerr, already said it all in his blog post Design Guidelines for Agencies, Part 4: Preparing Website Designs for Production. Justin's whole series on design guidelines is really worth reading, too.

Also, check out The Myth of the Fold, by CXPartners.