Web Design with HTML and CSS

Designing for the web

Lesson 2, Fundamentals of the Web 33

As screen sizes get larger and display resolutions increase, there are a greater number of
discrepancies that can occur, making it even more important to design for all the displays on
which your site will be viewed and we discuss how to tackle this dilemma in Lesson 7. While
it is impossible to design a site that looks the same in every browser at every resolution, you
can still create designs that work across various devices and displays.

A fi xed layout designed for a 1280 × 800 monitor (left) will be cropped on a 1024 × 768 monitor.

Understanding how your audience will read your web content

Most web users gain information they are seeking through reading. But writing for a website
should diff er from writing for brochures or other printed documents.

Web readers are more likely to “scan” stories rather than read them in full detail. Eff ective
content is organized, edited, and structured so it works well on a site; it isn’t merely copied
and pasted from printed brochures. You’ll discover that you want to create headings that
clearly mark the separation of a story from other content, or format text so it does not span
the entire width of a monitor.

You’ve discovered several key concepts about how the web works, the technical
underpinnings of websites, and some key design considerations. We wrap up this section with
some self-study ideas and review questions before jumping into the next lesson.