Choosing a Design Format


When creating web pages, you can choose from among several options to select a design layout. Probably the most popular method currently in use is using tables to design pages. By using tables, you have a good level of control over where and how your content is displayed, and you can use either relative or fixed table, column, and cell widths to adjust for various screen resolutions. The difficulty of tables appears when you start to nest tables on multiple levels. Spacing tables and adjusting relative properties can get difficult as the number of nested tables increases.

Another option that has been losing some popularity is designing with frames. The attractive element of using frames is that content in one frame doesn't have to be reloaded and can stay static while content in another frame changes. This has traditionally been used in situations where the navigation bar was loaded into a static frame while the content frame changed as navigation links were clicked. Frames, however, can be difficult to manage and present additional issues with things such as getting your site correctly listed in search engines.

The third and latest design format involves designing with layers. Layers are tag-driven objects created to give developers complete control over where their content is displayed and how it relates to other objects on the page. The major difference is that layers enable you to think along not only the X and Y axes, but on the Z-axis as well. This means that you can stack layers on top of each other to create the perception of depth. The downside to layers, however, is that they are not fully supported in earlier browsers. This means that if your site might be accessed by a visitor with an older browser, the site may not render properly. If, however, you're developing in an environment where you are sure of the browser being used to access the pages (such as in a corporate intranet setting), layers can offer quite a bit of enhanced functionality beyond what tables offer.

Note

When developing with layers, one thing you need to consider is the possible browser versions your audience might be using. Versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape earlier than version 4.0 can't display layers and 4.0 browsers don't render them consistently. With that in mind, if your target audience might be using older browsers, you should consider a table-based or frame-based design.




Special Edition Using Macromedia Studio 8
Special Edition Using Macromedia Studio 8
ISBN: 0789733854
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 337

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