1. Learning Aim B

2.  In this section, you will consider the resources necessary for designing your website.  You will also think about any constraints that may limit your design, you will devise a suitable test plan and you will consider alternative design ideas.

3.  As part of the design process, you will need to consider the hardware and software that will be required to create the website.  You can create simple web pages by entering the HTML codes in a text editor like Microsoft® Notepad®.  However, professional web developers use more sophisticated tools like Dreamweaver® to create pages.  You will also need additional software to edit image files and may need software to create and edit animations, sound and video files.  To create images and video, you will need a digital camera.  If you want to digitise existing artwork, you will need a scanner.

4.  Designing and developing websites might seem a little like creating a brochure or booklet in a word-processing program.  However, these documents are designed to be printed on paper, a process which will probably be controlled by you.

5.  A website is fundamentally different in that it needs to be designed so it can be viewed by people anywhere in the world, using quite a wide range of different hardware and software over which you have no control.  For instance, you don't know what screen size people viewing your website have (it can be anything from a very small screen on a mobile phone to a large monitor), you don't know what operating system they are using (it might be an Apple® Mac®, a Windows® PC or a PC running Linux®) and you don't know what web browser they are using.

6.  All of these issues make developing a website more complex than you might first imagine.

7.  Some features you might want to include in your website may require plug-ins to be loaded in the viewer's browser.  For example, to play an animation created in Adobe® Flash ®, the viewer must have the Flash ® plug-in loaded.  This may not be the case for every user as not all platforms support Flash ® (Apple ™ software, for example, doesn't).  Some users might consider certain plug-ins (such as Active-X) as a security risk and might not load them.  Because all users will have different hardware and software constraints, it's a good idea not to over- complicate your web pages and to work to the assumption that all users' systems are quite basic.

8.  Towards the end of the design process, you will need to create a test plan for your website.  Your test plan will define how you judge your website to be functional- or fully working- and should test each of the features of the site.  At this stage, your test plan will just list the tests you plan to carry out and what you expect to happen for each test.  When you have created the website, you will do the actual testing and record the results on the test plan.

9.  The sort of things you should test for on every page on your site include:  the page loads without any errors in a variety of different browsers  each graphic on the page displays correctly  text on the page is formatted and positioned correctly  text is formatted in a consistent manner  any tables on the page are formatted correctly  all the links on the page (internal and external) work correctly  any scripts you have on the page work correctly.

10.  Rather than just adopting the first design that you think of, it is helpful to create a storyboard or even make a prototype page using a couple of different designs.  You can then consider which one looks the best and provides the best user experience.  You might find it helpful to ask other people what they think of your different design idea before making your final choice.