Topics: Design: Layout
Web page layouts: ways and means and meaning. Grids and rules; columns fixed, liquid, and elastic. Size, color, and contrast. To center or not to center. Layout and genre. Print paradigms and new media approaches. Let the web be the web. (59 articles)
Responsive Images: How they Almost Worked and What We Need
by Mat Marquis
Issue 343January 31, 2012
With a mobile-first responsive design approach, if any part of the process breaks down, your user can still receive a representative image and avoid an unnecessarily large request on a device that may have limited bandwidth. But with several newer browsers implementing an “image prefetching” feature that allows images to be fetched before parsing the document’s body, some of the web's brightest developers are abandoning responsive images in favor of user agent detection, at least as a temporary solution. For us standardistas, UA detection leaves a bad taste in the mouth. More importantly, as the number and kinds of devices continue to grow, UA detection will quickly become untenable—just as browser detection did back in the bad old days before web standards. What's really needed, argues Mat Marquis, is a new markup element that works the way the HTML5 video element works. Sound crazy? So crazy it just might work.
Fluid Images
by Ethan Marcotte
Issue 328June 7, 2011
Learn to how to make fixed-width images fluid and how to add them to your fluid grids to build a site that responds to the size of the viewport without sacrificing aesthetics. We are delighted to present an excerpt from Ethan's new book, (and the fourth title from A Book Apart), Responsive Web Design.
CSS Floats 101
by Noah Stokes
Issue 325March 8, 2011
The float property is a valuable and powerful asset to any web designer/developer working with HTML and CSS. Tragically, it can also cause frustration and confusion if you don’t fully understand how it works. Test or refresh your knowledge as Noah Stokes explores float theory and behavior, and guides us through common float-related coding pitfalls.
Designing Web Registration Processes for Kids
by Debra Levin Gelman
Issue 323February 8, 2011
Designing websites for kids is a fascinating, challenging, rewarding, and exasperating experience: You’re trying to create a digital experience for people who lack the cognitive capacity to understand abstraction; to establish brand loyalty with people who are influenced almost exclusively by their peers; and to communicate subjective value propositions to people who can only see things in black-and-white. Fortunately, it’s possible to create a successful registration process for these folks with an understanding of how their brains work. Debra Levin Gelman explores how to design effective registration forms for kids based on their context, technical skills, and cognitive capabilities.
A Simpler Page
by Craig Mod
Issue 321January 11, 2011
Want to design a book? There are mountains of beautifully designed examples to inspire you. But what about digital books? How do you create elegantly typeset, gloriously balanced reading experiences when tablets render type differently and support different fonts, text can extend in every direction, and type can change size? Craig Mod (Flipboard, Art Space Tokyo) addresses these questions and presents the initial release of Bibliotype, an HTML baseline typography library for tablet reading.
CSS Positioning 101
by Noah Stokes
Issue 318November 16, 2010
If you’re a front end developer or a designer who likes to code, CSS-based layouts are at the very core of your work. Designer slash developer Noah Stokes scrutinizes the CSS position property to show how you can use it to create standards-compliant, table-free CSS layouts. Test or refresh your knowledge of static, relative, absolute, fixed, and inherited positioning, and how they work together to create any web layout the mind can conceive.
Art Direction and Design
by Dan Mall
Issue 317November 2, 2010
Sure, your design’s composition is perfectly balanced, the typographical hierarchy works, and the contrast is bang on. But, when you step back and take a look, how does it make you feel? Does your design evoke the right emotion? Dan Mall explains the difference between art direction and design on the web and challenges us to do it again, this time with feeling.
The Look That Says Book
by Richard Fink
Issue 313September 7, 2010
Hyphenation and justification: It’s not just for print any more. Armed with good taste, a special unicode font character called the soft hyphen, and a bit o’ JavaScript jiggery, you can justify and hyphenate web pages with the best of them. Master the zero width space. Use the Hyphenator.js library to bottle fame, brew glory, and put a stopper in death. Create web pages that hyphenate and justify on the fly, even when the layout reflows in response to changes in viewport size.
Responsive Web Design
by Ethan Marcotte
Issue 306May 25, 2010
Designers have coveted print for its precision layouts, lamenting the varying user contexts on the web that compromise their designs. Ethan Marcotte advocates we shift our design thinking to appropriate these constraints: using fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries, he shows us how to embrace the “ebb and flow of things” with responsive web design.
Taking the Guesswork Out of Design
by Daniel Ritzenthaler
Issue 283May 5, 2009
Clients, like other humans, often fear what they don't understand. Daniel Ritzenthaler explains how sound goal-setting, documentation, and communication strategies can bridge the gap between a designer's intuition and a client's need for proof.
In Defense of Readers
by Mandy Brown
Issue 278February 17, 2009
As web designers, we concern ourselves with how users move from page to page, but forget the needs of those whose purpose is to be still. Learn the design techniques that create a mental space for reading. Use typographic signals to help users shift from looking to reading, from skimming along to concentrating. Limit distractions; pay attention to the details that make text readable; and consider chronology by providing transitions for each of the three phases of the online reading experience.
The Elegance of Imperfection
by David Sherwin
Issue 280March 24, 2009
Asymmetry, asperity, simplicity, modesty, intimacy, and the suggestion of a natural process: these attributes of elegant design may seem relevant only to a project’s aesthetics. But the most successful web designs reflect these considerations at every stage, from idea to finished product. Bring heart to the experiences you create by infusing them with intelligence that transcends aesthetics and reflects the imperfection of the natural world.
The Details That Matter
by Kevin Potts
Issue 277February 3, 2009
We no longer lay out pages with composing sticks and straight edges, and design is no longer a trade position requiring a lengthy apprenticeship, but an eye for details is every bit as important today as it was in the early days of graphic arts. Learn the habits of successful designers, who think critically as well as creatively, and who see the forest while never losing sight of the trees.
Fluid Grids
by Ethan Marcotte
Issue 279March 3, 2009
How awesome would it be if you could combine the aesthetic rigor and clarity of fixed-width, grid-based layouts with the device- and screen size independence and user-focused flexibility of fluid layouts? Completely awesome, that's how awesome. And with a little cunning and a tad of easy math, ALA's Ethan Marcotte gets it done. We smell a trend in the offing.
Zebra Striping: More Data for the Case
by Jessica Enders
Issue 267September 9, 2008
As designers or marketers, we share a desire that our tables and forms be easy to scan, read, and use. Does the widely practiced shading of alternate rows help, hurt, or have no effect? A previous study proving inconclusive, designer and researcher Jessica Enders has tackled the conundrum again, coming up with statistically relevant data and a set of recommendations.
Sketching in Code: the Magic of Prototyping
by David Verba
Issue 261June 17, 2008
The rise of Ajax and rich internet applications has thrown the limitations of traditional wireframing into painful relief. When you leave the world of page-based interactions, how do you document all but the simplest interactions? Flowcharts and diagrams don’t work. Prototyping saves the day by focusing on the application and conveying its "magic." Prototypes can help you sell a decision that is fundamentally or radically different from the client’s current solution or application. Sit a stakeholder down in front of a working prototype and show him or her why your approach is compelling.
Faux Absolute Positioning
by Eric Sol
Issue 261June 17, 2008
CSS layout is awesome, except when your layout calls for a header, a footer, and columns in between. Use float, and content changes can cause columns to wrap. Use absolute positioning, and your footer can crash into your columns. Add the complexity of drag-and-drop layouts, and a new technique is needed. Enter "faux absolute positioning." Align every item to a predefined position on the grid (as with absolute positioning), but objects will still affect the normal flow (as with float).
Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help?
by Jessica Enders
Issue 258May 6, 2008
Just because a design convention exists doesn't mean it works. Our field runneth over with design patterns, but is low on evidence of their utility. Jessica Enders drops some science on the widespread belief that zebra stripes aid the reader by guiding the eye along a table row.
Sign Up Forms Must Die
by Luke Wroblewski
Issue 255March 25, 2008
You load a new web service, eager to dive in and start engaging, and what’s the first thing that greets you? A sign-up form. We can do better, says Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Via a technique of "gradual engagment," we can get people using and caring about our web services instead of frustrating them (or sending them to a competitor's site) by forcing them to fill out a sign-up form first.
Designing For Flow
by Jim Ramsey
Issue 250December 4, 2007
Ask a web designer what makes a site great, and you're likely to hear "ease of use." Jim Ramsey begs to differ. Web applications in particular, he tells us, work best and engage most profoundly when they challenge users to overcome difficulties.
Understanding Web Design
by Jeffrey Zeldman
Issue 249November 20, 2007
We'll have better web design when we stop asking it to be something it's not, and start appreciating it for what it is. It's not print, not video, not a poster—and that's not a problem. Find out why cultural and business leaders misunderstand web design, and learn which other forms it most usefully resembles.
How to Size Text in CSS
by Richard Rutter
Issue 249November 20, 2007
It's a tug-of-war as old as web design. Designers need to control text size and the vertical grid; readers need to be able to resize text. A better best practice for sizing type and controlling line-height is needed; and in this article, Richard Rutter obligingly supplies one.
If I Told You You Had a Beautiful Figure…
by Aaron Gustafson
Issue 246September 25, 2007
Laying out images consistently within a design is difficult, especially when you hand the keys over to someone else to fill in the content. ALA Staffer Aaron Gustafson demonstrates how a little clever JavaScript goes a long way toward resolving inconsistencies in image layout.
Conflicting Absolute Positions
by Rob Swan
Issue 241July 13, 2007
All right, class. Using CSS, produce a liquid layout that contains a fixed-width, scrolling side panel and a flexible, scrolling main panel. Okay, now do it without JavaScript. By chucking an assumption about how CSS works in browsers, Rob Swan provides the way and means.
Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid
by Wilson Miner
Issue 235April 9, 2007
As web designers, we sometimes may feel we're on a relentless journey to bridge the gap between digital and traditional processes. Wilson Miner brings us one step closer by offering up a way to work with typographic baselines on the web.
Multi-Column Layouts Climb Out of the Box
by Alan Pearce
Issue 232February 6, 2007
“Holy Grail,” “One True Layout,” “pain in the @$$”... Alan Pearce presents a cleaner approach to designing multi-column layouts.
Quick CSS Mockups with Photoshop
by Casper Voogt
Issue 231January 23, 2007
It may seem like we're trying to party like it's 1999, but rest assured, we're not. Casper Voogt shows us a way to use Photoshop, ImageReady, and slices to produce mockups that utilize clean XHTML and CSS.
Paper Prototyping
by Shawn Medero
Issue 231January 23, 2007
Running with scissors isn't recommended for kids, but it might be ideal for your next big development project. With interfaces becoming more complex and schedules growing shorter, the best prototyping tools may be simpler than you think.
Whitespace
by Mark Boulton
Issue 230January 9, 2007
So you think you know all about whitespace. You may be surprised. Mark Boulton, type expert to the stars, shows how micro and macro whitespace push brands upscale (or down) and enhance legibility in print and online.
Sliced and Diced Sandbags
by Rob Swan
Issue 222August 22, 2006
Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to get text to flow around an irregularly shaped image? Wouldn't it be even better if we could automate the process? Have no fear: Rob Swan is here to show us the way.
Where Am I?
by Derek Powazek
Issue 221August 8, 2006
It’s 2006 and we’re still messing up global navigation. Derek Powazek gets back to basics and offers a few simple guidelines for getting it right.
Home Page Goals
by Derek Powazek
Issue 211January 30, 2006
Home pages may get plenty of design attention, but that doesn't mean they don't need improvement.
In Search of the Holy Grail
by Matthew Levine
Issue 211January 30, 2006
Just in case you might want a three-column layout that doesn't require the usual sacrifices, we thought we'd share this technique. Not that you'd want that or anything.
Thinking Outside the Grid
by Molly E. Holzschlag
Issue 209December 19, 2005
CSS has broken the manacles that kept us chained to grid-based design...so why do so few sites deviate from the grid? Molly E. Holzschlag can tell us that the answer has something to do with airplanes, urban planning, and British cab drivers.
Design Choices Can Cripple a Website
by Nick Usborne
Issue 207November 8, 2005
Do you test your designs? If not, Nick Usborne wants you to take responsibility for your design choices and the very quantifiable effect they can have on websites that are built for business.
CSS Swag: Multi-Column Lists
by Paul Novitski
Issue 204September 26, 2005
Multi-column lists: can't live with ’em, can't achieve perfect bliss without ’em. Paul Novitski offers a staggering six possible methods for accomplishing this commonly requested layout trick. Examine your options and choose wisely.
ALA’s New Print Styles
by Eric Meyer
Issue 203September 19, 2005
Print away, you fiends! Eric Meyer presents the ALA 4.0 print styles and discusses the challenge of translating a complex screen layout into a well-designed and useful printed page.
Introducing the CSS3 Multi-Column Module
by Cédric Savarese
Issue 204September 26, 2005
Cédric Savarese would like you to meet the CSS3 multi-column module. It may not have extensive browser support yet, but this semantically sound method of dividing content into columns may be more relevant than you think.
Spruced-Up Site Maps
by Kim Siever
Issue 197March 30, 2005
The clean-n-simple site map gets a nice haircut and and a shoe-shine as Kim Siever shows us how to hook custom bullet styles to troublesome nested lists.
Hybrid CSS Dropdowns
by Eric Shepherd
Issue 197March 30, 2005
Yup. It’s yet another CSS dropdown article — but one that resolves many problems associated with common dropdown methods and degrades beautifully. Hybrid CSS dropdowns allow access to all pages, keep the user aware of where she is within the site, and are clean and light to boot. It’s a tasty little vitamin pill, so quit sighing and try it.
Bulleted Lists: Multi-Layered Fudge
by Nandini Doreswamy
Issue 195February 16, 2005
A passion for web standards can become a broken heart when effects that are easy to achieve with table layouts seem to defy the earnest CSS- and markup-conscious designer. Fortunately, new ALA author Nandini Doreswamy loves a challenge. Here she shows how to create two columns of bulleted lists in the flow of text.
Cross-Column Pull-Out Part Two: Custom Silhouettes
by Daniel M. Frommelt
Issue 191January 11, 2005
The cross-column pull-out gave us a new technique for marking up a layout with a pull-out positioned between columns. Now we examine a variation of the technique for wrapping around the edges of a non-rectangular image positioned between columns.
Big, Stark & Chunky
by Joe Clark
Issue 191January 11, 2005
You’ve designed for the screen and made provision for blind, handheld, and PDA browser users. But what about low-vision people? Powered by CSS, “zoom” layouts convert wide, multicolumn web pages into low-vision-friendly, single column designs. Accessibility maven Joe Clark explores the rationale and methods behind zoom layouts. Board the zoom train now!
Cross-Column Pull-Outs
by Daniel M. Frommelt
Issue 190December 21, 2004
Print designers like to wrap text around images that sit between columns. Now you can, too. Daniel Frommelt takes us where no web layout has gone before.
Pocket-Sized Design: Taking Your Website to the Small Screen
by Elika Etemad, Jorunn D. Newth
Issue 187August 31, 2004
Among the many websites that are out there, few are standards-compliant. Among those few, only a handful sport style sheets adjusted to the needs of handheld devices. Of those which do offer styling for handhelds, not all will fit the smallest, lowest-resolution screens without presenting the user with the ultimate handheld horror: namely, horizontal scrolling. This article presents a set of general suggestions for creating a handheld-friendly style sheet that works well even on handheld screens no wider than 120px.
Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style
by Nick Rigby
Issue 184June 29, 2004
Multi-tiered drop-down menus can be a hassle to build and maintain — especially when they rely on big, honking chunks of JavaScript. Nick Rigby presents a way to handle this common navigation element with a cleanly structured XHTML list, straightforward CSS, and only a few concessions to browser quirks.
Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins
by Ryan Brill
Issue 183June 15, 2004
Two- and three-column, liquid page designs with header and footer are easy to dash off using old-school HTML table layout methods. Designing them in CSS is trickier, and can sometimes even require you to structure your page’s content elements in a specific (and undesirable) order. Negative margins to the rescue! Ryan Brill whips up two quick CSS layouts to demonstrate the power of negative thinking.
Dynamic Text Replacement
by Stewart Rosenberger
Issue 183June 15, 2004
Let your server do the walking! Whether you’re replacing one headline or a thousand, Stewart Rosenberger’s Dynamic Text Replacement automatically swaps XHTML text with an image of that text, consistently displayed in any font you own. The markup is clean, semantic, and accessible. No CSS hacks are required, and you needn’t open Photoshop or any other image editor. Read about it today; use it on personal and commercial web projects tomorrow.
CSS Design: Creating Custom Corners & Borders Part II
by Søren Madsen
Issue 172February 27, 2004
Part I showed how to create fluid, dynamic CSS layouts with customized borders and corners. Part II advances to the next level, extending the technique to work with more complicated backgrounds such as gradients and patterns.
Exploring Footers
by Bobby van der Sluis
Issue 170February 6, 2004
With old-school table layout methods, vertical positioning is a piece of cake. With CSS layout, it’s a piece of something else. New ALA contributing writer Bobby van der Sluis shows how to regain control of footers and other vertically positioned layout elements via CSS, JavaScript, and the DOM.
Elastic Design
by Patrick Griffiths
Issue 167January 9, 2004
Not quite liquid, yet not fixed-width either, Elastic Design combines the strengths of both. Done well, it can enhance accessibility, exploit neglected monitor and browser capabilities, and freshen your creative juices as a designer. Patrick Griffiths shows how to start.
Faux Columns
by Dan Cederholm
Issue 167January 9, 2004
It’s a beginning CSS designer’s nightmare and a frequently asked question at ALA: Multi-column CSS layouts can run into trouble when one of the columns stops short of its intended length. Here’s a simple solution.
Flexible Layouts with CSS Positioning
by Dug Falby
Issue 155November 15, 2002
Want to spend less time on CSS hacking and more time on design? Need your site to look as good on a 160x160 PDA screen as it does on a 1024x768 PC monitor? In Flexible Layouts with CSS Positioning, designer Dug Falby shares two techniques for practical grid-building.
CSS Design: Taming Lists
by Mark Newhouse
Issue 151September 27, 2002
Do you crave the disciplined order of proper (X)HTML lists but long for control over their presentation? You can put a stop to their wild ways and bad behavior. Mark Newhouse shows you how to tame those lists by making them submit to your CSS while maintaining logical HTML structure.
CSS Design: Going to Print
by Eric Meyer
Issue 144May 10, 2002
Say no to “printer-friendly” versions and yes to printer-specific style sheets. CSS expert Eric Meyer shows how to conceive and design print style sheets that automatically format web content for off-screen delivery. Includes tips on hiding inappropriate content, styling text for the printer, and displaying the URL of every link on the page.
Fix Your Site With the Right DOCTYPE!
by Jeffrey Zeldman
Issue 142April 12, 2002
You’ve done everything right, but your site is breaking in the latest browsers. A faulty DOCTYPE is likely to blame. This essential ALA article will provide you with DOCTYPEs that work, enabling you to fix your site with just one tag.
Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks, & Techniques
by Mark Newhouse
Issue 119August 17, 2001
Think you need HTML tables to craft complex liquid layouts? Not so! In this tip-packed tutorial, Mark Newhouse shares advanced yet practical CSS techniques any working web designer can use.
From Table Hacks to CSS Layout: A Web Designer’s Journey
by Jeffrey Zeldman
Issue 99February 16, 2001
Redesigning A List Apart using CSS should have been easy. It wasn’t. The first problem was understanding how CSS actually works. The second was getting it to work in standards-compliant browsers. A journey of discovery.
A Dao of Web Design
by John Allsopp
Issue 58April 7, 2000
Web designers often bemoan the malleable nature of the web, which seems to defy our efforts at strict control over layout and typography. But maybe the problem is not the web. Maybe the problem is us. John Allsopp looks at web design through the prism of the Tao Te Ching, and decides that designers should let the web be the web.
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