Front and Center: A Few Things to Consider

The impact and importance of the image tracing tool can't be denied. Being able to develop and manipulate a page design around the images that will be included in the page is a popular feature seen in other Web design products. This is a powerful addition to FrontPage and, like many of the features added in this release, part of the feature set that makes FrontPage 2003 a tool equal in power to the competition. It is great to see it included. There are, however, a few dangers to using the tracing tool and the general approach of making Web pages as you would produce content traditionally printed. (These dangers are true of any Web design product that uses this paradigm for design.)

If you use the tool to produce Web designs that do little more than mimic an artist's rendition of what your site "should look like," you face a lot of potential problems. The simple fact that your artist designed your site in another graphics program instead of a Web design product shows that he doesn't understand Web design. Why would he develop on another platform if he did? (I'm sure I'll get some email because of that last comment, but I stand by it.)

There are variables in Web design outside of your control, such as font selection, font size, screen size, screen resolution, color quality, and the like. If you forget these issues in Web design and take a more "page layout" approach to development, you will find your pages are ineffective on other configurations and completely unusable on any nontraditional browser. With the hundreds of browsers and platforms surfing the Net, you can't assume anything and shouldn't design anything based on such an assumption. For example, some browsers resize images based on screen real estate. You are not guaranteed that they will manipulate your layout proportionally or that they are even capable of doing so.

I'm not saying that you can't bring good layout to effective Web design; I'm saying that you need to make sure that your page includes both.

Artists are powerful (and necessary) in effective Web design, but they often don't understand your design medium. Stay on top of this important issue.

In addition, accessibility issues also come to play here. Every time extensive design is done with tables and graphics, the chances of producing a truly accessible site become less and less.

For more on accessibility, FrontPage, and Web design, see "FrontPage's Accessibility Features," p. 235.

The image tracing tool is not without merit when developing a solid Web design. Making sure that text is positioned well around a graphic or that text doesn't fall into a menu image is a solid idea. In addition, if you know the platform your audience will be viewing your site on, you obviously have more leeway in developing your site to specific design conditions.

And, as always, you can develop different sites for different browsers, but unless your budget is in the tens of millions, I suggest that there are better places to spend your money.