Getting in the Game

This chapter starts with a bang with the Wow Game Site. We show you how to construct the home page of a portal site for gamers. This page is the gateway to everything from a chat room to a forum. You'll learn how to pack in lots of diverse items on a home page using a modular design that pulls everything together. The beauty of this design is that it's easy to update. Substituting new graphics can give the page a whole new look without the need for a complete redesign. As you build this design, you'll learn the secrets to creating those sexy interface graphics you've seen on other sites with high-end graphics. We give you some easy recipes for creating cool, lightweight patterns in the section called Web Pattern Recipes. You learn how to make scan lines, grids, diagonal lines, boxes, and frames. Along with the recipes come instructions on how to use these patterns as repeating page background graphics and as pattern presets for filling foreground graphics. All that is found in the section on Applying Patterns to Web Graphics.