CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) are used for the look and feel of your web page/site and can offer a great and simple way to make your website/page stand out from the rest in your field. Many years ago, well before CSS was invented, old style websites used tables to layout the different sections of a page. There were so many problems people must have been literally pulling their hair out – I know I was! One of the main problems with tables is the amount of excessive code that’s required from having large tables and tables within tables etc. These dramatically increased the size of your website and slowed down the time that each web page takes to load. Another problem is that when you create the table it then decides to resize itself when live! So you go back to the table and input numbers in all the rows and columns…and it still went wonky – drove me crazy for years until CSS became the standard.

CSS uses external style sheets containing ALL of your style and layout code which is far more effective and easier to manage. By using CSS you can keep your site clean, tidy, and place objects wherever you want them to sit on your web page.

As mentioned above CSS uses separate files which contain all of your styling code. These files link directly to your web pages meaning that you don’t need to place pages of extra code on them.

CSS files can be made using notepad, there are specific programs out there that lay out the code in a special way to ease reading. We use Dreamweaver, mainly because we use Dreamweaver to edit the majority of our website files. We would advise you to read up on CSS – this is a good book – Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design by Christopher Schmitt, Mark Trammell, Ethan Marcotte and Todd Dominey.

We would also advise you to goto http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Overview.en.html. They offer some excellent resources and advice to all beginners and professionals alike.

CSS should conform to w3 compatibility guidelines. There is a great validator on the W3 website that will check through your code and let you know of any issues that may have or will arise. Web standards are important so try and understand why and how to stay within the guidelines on the W3 website.

Once you get your head around using CSS you will find a whole new world open and an almost unlimited way to align/design your website. Enjoy.

You can also view the article here – CSS – Cascading Style Sheets

Do you go for cheap web design?

As a company based in Manchester we have found there are hundreds of web design agency. So which one do you choose? Like so many people deciding on price tends to be at the forefront of any purchase of services or goods. Price is a problem when buying a website, with so many cheap web design companies in Manchester you wonder why they are so cheap and whether they have the quality to go with it. This brings me to the point of ‘You pay for what you get’. Paying for what you get seems to be the case with lower end and newer web design agencies; cheap tends to be rushed and not clearly thought about. Our advice is to shop around and especially take a closer look at their portfolio and ring those listed in there.

On occasions cheap can mean that the cost is spread out, this is a good approach – especially in light of the current climate – and can help your budget by stopping you from spending a vast amount of money up front. This can perhaps leave you with money to spend on marketing. We offer this kind of service and have found more and more businesses are choosing this route and why not – it’s a great way of testing the water with an online presence and it’s not going to make the business bankrupt! You can be up and running within say a week and while the sites being built you can do some homework on SEO techniques and learn how to use Google Adwords. Google Adwords can get you a spot on the advertisers section of google on a particular keyword – bear in mind that this can be expensive so choose your keywords wisely. Our advice would be to use niche keywords, they have a lower cost per click and are better targeted.

Cheap web design is a good option if you are careful and choose a reputable company who’s been around and takes their sector seriously. It’s a great way to get your business noticed when paired with a good marketing strategy. In fact this is the key point – it’s all very well having a pretty website with all the bells and whistles but if no one can see it what’s the point? So, if you go for a cheap web design company make sure you check their background, ring a few of their clients and asses how you will market the site. A good reputable web design agency will always help and direct you with online marketing strategies.

LVMedia are now offering incentives to all our existing and future clients. If you successfully introduce a business to us we will give you £50 in hard cash yes great british pounds!!

LVMedia are a manchester web design business. We also cover all the areas in and around the greater Manchester area. Based primarily in Cheadle where there is access to all motorway networks and Manchester airport. For directions to LVmedia Manchester web design cannot be easier; follow Manchester web design to read more.

Sharing these days is a big thing on the web. Goolgles new + project seems to be mix up of many other social tools out there. People are saying this service will overtake Facebook as the king of social networking and that 2012 will see the change in social media dynamics.

Google Safe Browsing is a place to check if a website is hosting malware…..Type in this URL http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site= followed by the site you want to check, such as google.com or an IP address. It will let you know if it has hosted malware in the past 90 days.

Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic

There are rumours that Facebook will launch a music service next month. Spotify, MOG and Rdio are also rumoured to be involved. The idea is that Face book will not directly host the music but rather use a platform for media content – similar to the applications and games platforms they presently use.

We have also heard that Facebook intend to stream movies, this is unlikely but the f8 developer conference on the 22nd Sept will enlighten us.

Amazon are set to unveil the launch of their newly designed website. The design has been especially adapted to appeal to tablet and PC owners. Not hugely exciting news but will be interesting to see what they’ve done – I imagine it was a daunting task.

Adobe have introduced the beta version of Adobe Muse – a way to build websites easily. You can design and publish your site – all to the latest web standards – with little effort.

We are going to give this a go, at least to see how it works. Personally I think this software works best for smaller portfolio type sites and maybe a bit too simple for the professional designer and a little difficult for the amateur wanting to get more features out of the box without having to learn too much.