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If you’re looking for a way to prevent Search Engines from indexing a web page, this web design tip is for you.

This tag tells the robots not to index this page and not to follow any links within the page.

This tag tells the robots not to index this page, but follow any links within the page.

As web site designers, we always try to create a web site navigation scheme that (a) is consistent throughout the entire web site and (b) allows the site’s visitors to find what they are searching for quickly and easily. A consistent site navigation scheme shows your potential customers that you are thinking about their ease of finding your products or services on your web site.

The following list shows some basic web site navigation schemes:

• Text links
• Graphic images - navigation buttons
• Graphic images - image maps
• Drop-down Menus - Javascript, CGI, etc.
• Dynamically generated URLs

Text Links

Many web newbies understand that blue, underlined text is a hyperlink. For this reason, we think that it’s generally a good idea to include text links in your web site design along with other graphic images.

The link colors in your text should be familiar to your visitor, if possible. Blue text usually indicates an unvisited link and purple or maroon text usually indicates a visited link. If you elect not to use the default colors, your text links should be emphasized in some other way: boldfaced, a larger font size, set between small vertical lines or square brackets, or a combination of these. Text links should be unique — they should not look the same as any other text in your web pages. You do not want people clicking on your headings because they think the headings are links.

Advantages:

The biggest advantage of using text links is the quick download time. If you are using large (in K) graphic images on your web pages, then it might be best to have a navigation scheme of text links. The other advantage of text links is that some of the text can be keywords.

Disadvantages:

The biggest disadvantage of text links is that they can be boring to look at, especially if you have a large amount of blue links sprinkled throughout your web pages. People like simplicity and ease of navigation. Thus, if there is a way to make your text links more visually appealing and easy to discern from other sections of content, such as placing them in a colored table cell or a colored sidebar, then we recommend you do this.

Graphic images - navigation buttons

Graphic images add uniqueness, color, and personality to a web site. Most web sites we see use web graphics (buttons) as a navigation scheme.

Advantages:

Graphic images have visual appeal. Peoples’ eyes are naturally drawn to a splash of color and a change in dimension. The biggest advantage to using navigation buttons is that they give your visitors a visual representation of how to navigate your site right away, especially if the navigation buttons are visible on the top part of a computer screen.

Another advantage of using graphic images/navigation buttons is that as long as the navigation buttons have alternative text in the HTML code, your web site can still be navigated even if your visitors turn off the graphic images. (For tips on writing the HTML for graphic images, click here.)

If navigation buttons are used in conjunction with text links, you have multiple places to put keywords: both within the text link and the alternative text of the navigation buttons. Many search engine optimization specialists recommend this combination for good search engine indexing.

Disadvantages:

Download time is a big consideration in determining whether or not you should use navigation buttons. In general, you should keep the navigation buttons’ file size to between 1K-5K in file size and dimensions between 60-165 pixels in width and 25-60 pixels in height. You don’t want the main message of your site to be the navigation buttons, and you don’t want people clicking off of your site waiting for all of your navigation buttons to download.

Many sites are getting away from using a beveled effect on navigation buttons to show variety in web site design. The disadvantage of this idea is that many visitors might not understand that the graphic image is a hyperlink. One of the main reasons beveled buttons are so popular is that people believe that a “buttony” image is “clickable.” The following shows two sets of navigation buttons - the beveled buttons appear to be more “clickable.”

Graphic images - image maps

An image map is a single graphic image that allow users to access different web pages by clicking on different areas of that image. Read more details on how to use image maps.

Advantages:

Sometimes a single image map is quicker to download than multiple navigation buttons, as is the case with our web site. Another advantage for using image maps for site navigation is that graphic designers can show a bit more creativity in designing an image map compared to designing a set of navigation buttons.

Alternative text can also be placed inside the HTML of an image map.

Disadvantages:

Many graphic designers who specialize in print design like to show off their design talent by creating beautiful image maps that are slow to download. Having a beautiful image map can increase sales and show creativity and uniqueness, but there is a good chance of having potential customers click off your web site before a page has time to download.

Also, many search engines will not follow the links inside of an image map, so it is very important an alternative means of navigation for the search engines on your web pages.

Drop-down Menus - Javascript, CGI, etc.

JavaScript is a scripting language supported in Netscape Navigator since version 2.0, and in Microsoft Internet Explorer since version 3.01. You can program with JavaScript directly into your HTML pages, making it a very popular means to navigate a web site. A navigation scheme can also be coded using a CGI script.

Here is what a drop-down menu looks like (JavaScript not coded here):

Grantastic Designs home page About Us Design Tips –Getting Listed in Search Engines –Tips for Getting Your web site Listed in Yahoo –Banner Design Tips –Fonts and Typefaces in Web Site Design

Advantages:

The main advantage of drop-down menus is web page real estate. Drop-down menus don’t take up as much screen space as multiple graphic images.

As long as you know that the majority of your site visitors use browsers that support JavaScript, this is a very useful navigation tool.

Disadvantages:

The main disadvantage of this type of navigation scheme is that many early browsers do not support JavaScript. If you know that many of your site visitors and customers use browsers that don’t support JavaScript, then it would be best to use alternative forms of site navigation.

If your site navigation uses a CGI script, you must have a web server support your type of script.

Dynamically generated URLs

A dynamically generated navigation scheme, such as pages generated in a search function, is best used for web sites that have databases. For example, online stores with a large inventory can create a search function for their users to find the products they are looking for.

Advantages:

Dynamically generated URLs, particularly for online stores, help potential customers find the product or services very quickly. Site visitors can type in a search term and find what they are looking for within three clicks.

Search functions also don’t take up much screen space.

Disadvantages:

The main disadvantage with this navigation scheme is that many search engines will not index dynamically generated URLs. Thus, in order to get your web site indexed, it is best to submit non-dynamically generated web pages to the search engines.

Maintaining both a database that generates web pages (i.e. dynamically generated) and static (HTML) pages can be both expensive and time consuming.

Tool(s) Required:

HTML Editor: Any
Recommended: Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
This article deals with how to use bullets in HTML or Macromedia Dreamweaver. To summarize, bullets can be displayed in the following ways:

1. Using the <ul> and <ol> tags with or without the type attribute set.
2. Using CSS styles by specifying a class attribute to the <ul> or <ol> tags. The bullet type can be either the regular HTML types or bullet images.
3. Using Tables and image bullets, lists can be created within small areas. For example take a look at the related links in the left menu. Notice how image bullets are used for listing out the Fireworks Tips.

1. Using <ul> and <ol> tags with or without the type attribute

2. Using CSS styles by specifying a class attribute to the <ul> or <ol> tag

Create a CSS style called bullet by using the HTML code below or by using Dreamweaver.

Change the list-style-type property to get the different bullets and the image property to give an image as the bullet.

3. Using Tables and image bullets, list can be created within small areas

For this create an image bullet and do the following:

1. Create a Table with each row having the same height. Now place the list items into their respective rows.
2. Now in front of the first item place the bullet image.
3. For the selected bullet image give the align property as absolute middle.
4. Now copy-paste the bullet in front of all the other list items and your table bullet list is ready.

This page is part of the SmartWebby’s Free Web Design Guide, a collection of articles, tips, guidelines and tutorials on effective web site design. From web design tips and ideas to HTML, CSS Styles, Fireworks and Dreamweaver you’ll find all you need to know about web design right here!

SmartWebby.com offers top-quality professional web design and web programming services at affordable prices. We have successfully built more than 200 websites for global clients and specialize in ASP/ASP.net/PHP programming and web designing using Macromedia Tools. Check out our popular Web Design Packages today!

There are two easy ways to do this, the first is a invalid hack, the second uses style sheets. First the hack: embed the form in a table, placing the open and close form between the table elements:
<table>
<form>
<tr>...</tr>
</form>

The second can be done by reducing the forms margins to zero. Most browsers support something like this:
<form style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;">

If, however, there elements on either side of the form have margins (like a p), you may need to do this:
<form style="margin-top: -1em; margin-bottom: -1em;">
(you’ll probably have to adjust the margin value to suit your pages).

Netscape 4.x doesn’s support the bottom margin, so you have to reduce the top margin of the element following the form. Given this mark-up:
<p>...</p>
<form>
...
</form>
<p class="second">...</p>
the style rules would look like:
form, p.second { margin-top: -1em; }

Issues with drop down menus:

• long text can make the menu unreasonably wide;
• difficult to access the options in a text-only/speech browser or through keyboard navigation;
• hard to quickly scan the list for a particular option;
• some users may not be aware there are more choices;
• drop-downs can be tricky for some users to use (“I didn’t know you had to press ‘Submit’”);
• display differs depending on platform/browser;
• an, though minor, they rely on some programming (either back-end or client-side) to work.