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Old 22-03-2017, 07:52 AM
JA
.....

JA is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 2,945
Quote:
Originally Posted by Merlin66 View Post
I have a "basic" webpage (built using "Creating Web Pages Simplified") but really need to improve the layouts and "feel".
http://www.astronomicalspectroscopy.com/
Can anyone recommend a book which might help me get there???
Books, no. As a consumer, advice plenty

Minimalist almost monochrome is best for backgrounds and text. Bring colour with your images, articles, headings and banner. These will POP against such a monochrome background and reduce reader fatigue.

Background: Black or Very Dark Grey/Charcoal with any boxes in same colour theme only vary brightness. If you must have a white background (please no), then at least off-white/very/very light grey. A site I frequent, dpreview has a user selectable colour theme: Dark or Light. It's a good idea in itself, but try it just to see the difference in fatigue. Here: https://www.dpreview.com/ there Dark/Light control is in the upper right of the page.

Text: Something like Arial. No serif type fonts. Colour very very very light grey or very very light blue, almost but not white. No other colours, except for headings (in larger font) and hyperlinks.

Logical Separation: Keep areas of the page that need logical separation, separate with a highlighted/same colour theme box (no border) .

Use a navigation pane on the left side to all subpages.

Scrolling: Reduce Scrolling where possible

Phone Number If it is a business, use a prominent phone number top right - don't make people navigate to a Contact us page to find this.

Above all, be consistent - the mind strives to understand whatever is put in front of it, so to reduce fatigue or worse, people leaving your page, create order by being consistent in your layout, whilst at the same time creating some interest, possibly through images or video provided as say a series of thumbnail images in a column on the right hand side, or possibly a format with a thumbnail image to go with EVERY article or story - Sort of like the Deep space subforum page here, where all threads have an image & title or like the news page of the dpreview site I linked to.

Sample image attached (Extract from webpage with banner removed so as to show more of detailed area)

Knock yourself out.....

Best
JA
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Last edited by JA; 22-03-2017 at 08:22 AM.
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