Publishing

Publishing for the Web…..  why the big fuss?  Because a website is a gate to the world, a gate that opens to a not so narrow path.  A website cannot be successful and it is useless, if it doesn't satisfy the needs of the Web surfers, or if it fails in terms of usability and accessibility.  

When you publish a website you think design and content.  Both are equal important, both could mean the difference between success and failure.  Great content and a poor design or great design and poor content are not a happy marriage, no matter how you look at it.  But this article is going to focus on design, specifically on designing for screen resolution. 

The most frequently used screen resolution nowadays is 1024x768.  This shouldn't determine you to design and publish solely for this resolution.  You should optimize your site for it, but, as screen resolutions do vary among users, you should design for all!  How to?  Pretty simple: liquid layouts.  Publishing your content in a liquid layout guarantees that all your visitors will be able to see your site, no matter what resolution their screens might have.  

The layout of your newly published website should work flawlessly at all screen resolutions.  If you've got a pretty old website, you should consider a redesign and republishing, or you might end up losing valuable customers.  When publishing a website this is what you should focus on (vis-à-vis to resolution and layout): 

· Can the users see the content without scrolling too much (an especially without scrolling from left to right)? 

· Is your site readable?  Think font sizes, colors and the width of the columns (if any). 

· And one of the main publishing aspects: is your web page aesthetic?  Meaning: no distorted graphics, no aggressive colors, no flashing images.  

Your page should look good at all screen resolutions, starting from low (640x480) to high (1600x1200).  I cannot state enough how important is for web publishing that you ensure a decent grade of visibility at all screen resolutions, especially in a world where people access the web using mobile devices and PDAs.  And more and more users opt for bigger screens (for example 2048x1536).  So, unless you optimize your pages for all screen resolutions, it will come the day when you'll be forced to make a higher investment and redesign your website anyway, to ensure best user experience.  And the screens are just getting bigger and bigger.  Yet big screens are still too expensive.  So the most common resolution still remains 1024x768.  So if you design your website for it you cannot (not just yet) go wrong.  

Again, layout is just one aspect of Web publishing, but a crucial aspect.  Publishing for the web is no longer a job for amateurs.  If you want a personal site, you should probably consider a blog instead of a complicated and more difficult to maintain website.  But if you are serious about your business and want to have a website that shows your products and services in a professional manner you should definitely hire an experienced web design company, able to create all resolutions and all browsers compatible designs.