Content Area

Glossary

Content Area

A web designer uses a content area which is the editable area of the page on a web page based on the page template. Using the content area, the web designer excludes only the window's border, title bar, and resize bar. One of the biggest challenges to the web designer is finding ways to place a lot of information on a page without losing visibility. The use of hypertext, hyperlinks and a page based model of sharing information, introduced with Mosaic and later Netscape, helped the web designer to define web content, and the formation of websites.

Because websites are often complex, a term content area management or content management appeared in the late 1990s identifying a method or in some cases a tool to help the web designer organize all the diverse elements to be contained on a website. Content management often means that within a business there is a range of people beside the web designer, who have distinct roles to do with content management, such as the content author, editor, publisher, and the administrtor, although getting it all on the web page is still the job of the web designer.

Glossary

Content Analysis

Content analysis and organization is done by the web designer and demands that the purpose of the website be clearly explained. Gathering a list of the necessary content, a web designer then arranges it according to the viewer's needs which is a key step in website design. In the process of gathering the content being offered, any items that do not support the defined purpose or accomplish viewer objectives should be removed. A web designer will normally test the content and purpose on a focus group and compare the offerings to the viewer needs.

The next step of a web designer is to organize the basic information structure by categorizing the content and organizing it according to viewer's needs. The web designer name each category with a concise and descriptive title that will become a link on the website. A web designer's planning for the site's content ensures that the wants or needs of the target viewer and the purpose of the site will be fulfilled.

Glossary

Flash Banners

Flash banners can be a great addition to a website and can be a great way to convey important information in a visually attractive manner. In order to make them as effective as possible, there are some important content and design considerations that should be kept in mind when creating the banner. If you're using a banner with transitioning content, keep the written words short enough so that people can read them quickly and so that you can maintain a decent transition pace. Short phrases or no more than one to two sentences are ideal.

A Flash banner on a website's homepage is a great-looking accent. A Flash banner on every page of a website is just distracting and becomes annoying after only a few visits to the website. Use it once, and leave it at that. When adding a content article to your website, be sure it is formatted correctly. The paragraphs should have a double return space in between so they won't run together. If the entire content article looks like one big connected paragraph, the reader is likely to skip it.