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Press Release by ENGINEERING ADVENTURES LTD in Consumer
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The Rapidly Changing Face of Website Design
View all releases by ENGINEERING ADVENTURES LTD
This press release is about: website, straight2web, content, design, information, wysiwyg, websites, completely, template, important, people
2004-12-01, ENGINEERING ADVENTURES LTD - Recent changes to the international website design and accessibility standards have forced the development of new breed of website creation tools that could one day replace the traditional WYSIWYG editors.(PRWEB) December 1, 2004 -- Straight2web is the first of a new generation of software that is dramatically improving the way people create and maintain their websites. This approach is much faster and more effective than any WYSIWYG editor or online database driven solution.
There are in fact growing signs that the traditional WYSIWYG editors could soon lose their dominance as the main way that people create websites. Firstly the new international design standards make it virtually impossible for a beginner to create an acceptable website using a WYSIWYG editor, while most experienced designers are suffering with interfaces that have become far too cluttered and slow to compete with the powerful new breed of automated site generators like Straight2web.
This software has a powerful front end that allows anyone to very quickly enter and manipulate as much content as want. The content is kept completely separate from the design but by using a pre-designed template or simply adding a few custom tags into an existing template, it is instantly built into a complete website in any way you desire. Moreover, many complicated tasks such as adding menus, accessibility or search engine scripts can be fully automated thus saving huge amounts of time and guaranteeing an up to date and reliable site.
The following topics identify several key areas of website design and discuss why this new approach is proving so effective. A free trial is available at http://www.straight2web.net
Accessibility is now a legal requirement
It is now a legal requirement that websites are accessible to people with disabilities. Many new features have been included within html to assist people with visual and physical handicaps and they need this standardisation to allow their specialist programs to read the information within each website. Adding this hidden information is usually completely ignored by people who only write the occasional website and unless time has been included in the budget, even many experienced designers leave it out.
Straight2web overcomes these problems by automating the inclusion of all the necessary codes. Even web virgins can type their content into Straight2web’s front end and the software will automatically extract the key headings and adapt them for use in the hidden data for screen readers. Web designers are free to modify the master template to control the exact way this information is displayed but automating the procedure will save huge amounts of time when creating a full site. And just as importantly, any changes made later will also be instantly reflected in the hidden tags of the site.
W3C validation ensures cross browser compatibility
Another key reason why WYSIWYG editors will no longer be so widely used is the strong shift by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to move away from using tables for layout and instead to concentrate on controlling the format and style of each website with CSS2 standard stylesheets. New types of editor such as Straight2web take full advantage of this powerful approach by completely separating the page content, layout and design. It is now possible to simply select a typical page layout (e.g. menu positions and text block positions) and then apply new backgrounds, colours or text fonts via the separate stylesheet. Done properly, very little information is provided within the html template itself and therefore very little time is spent designing it in a WYSIWYG editor. The primary design tool becomes Straight2web’s more effective stylesheet editor, with which even a beginner can quickly master how to change their background colours or company logo.
This provides 100% separation between content and design which means there is little point using a WYSIWYG editor.
Reduce the time taken to maintain a website by up to 90%
Anyone who maintains a website for more than six months will know that maintainability and upgradeability are two of the most important factors in the basic website design. However, in many ways WYSIWYG editors are just like really bad word processors and will never provide a quick way of building a website. Straight2web completely separates the content and design and was specifically developed to provide a very fast and simple way of entering or updating each website’s content. The interface is very effective and as a result both beginners and experts will find that they can reduce the time to create a website by up to 90%. This is also greatly helped by the fact that the software is PC based and does need the user to be online and therefore restricted by the speed of connection.
Significantly reducing the time to upgrade your website
With the ever changing standards it is important to upgrade a website every couple of years e.g. keeping the content the same but reworking the code. And while the many online content management systems (CMS) happily solve the maintenance problem, they often complicate the work required for such an upgrade.
Using a WYSIWYG template makes upgrading a little easier but the text is never fully separated from the design and will still therefore require significant work.
Straight2web completely separates the content from the design which means that upgrading is a 30 second job and only requires the user to call up the latest template to completely transform the look of the whole site.
Generating extra search engine traffic
The most important feature all search engines looks for is lots of good quality content. Therefore the most important factor in generating worthwhile search engine traffic is providing a well structured, text rich website. This is what Straight2web does best. It guides even the most inexperienced user into creating a well structured page layout and automatically creates all of the hidden tags that search engines require. It makes it easy to add hundreds of pages for perhaps support or help information site that should catch and then direct new visitors to your main website.
Buy one, get as many as you like for free
A nice feature about Straight2web is that because it builds the site on your local PC, you can create and check any modifications before you release it to the world. Taking this further you can actually build as many sites as you wish using a single design template. This greatly extends the use of the Internet from simply showing a company’s contact details to providing a website that pays for itself by providing a worthwhile and constantly changing information source.
Keeping the costs low
Costs are always important but considering most websites only consist of text and pictures on a computer screen, it is amazing that some cost as much as they do. Of course websites should maintain a consistent company image but to ensure that people know how to find their way around, it also makes sense to keep the layout very similar to other websites. And once a good standard website has been designed the software costs nothing extra to be used for as many websites as you want.
Straight2web takes this concept one step further because as a starting point it gives people a website based on the best design we can provide. Several professional quality designs are provided for free and these generally need only a few small stylesheet changes to provide a unique company image.
A further cost saving comes because like all WYSIWYG editors Straight2web is PC based and does not require the user to set up their own web server or use a particular type of hosting. Consequently users can purchase a full website content management solution from under £100.
Alternating designs to reflect the changing content of each section
Virtually all websites contain a range of information, typically including the company offices, its products and support provided. The website’s appearance, however, generally looks the same on each page of the site. Using an automated CMS system like Straight2web, we can easily include a series of tags that identify each menu group, page or text paragraph. This allows the designer to automatically change the graphics in each section or provide visual keys to show where the user is within the website.
Revolutionary new software trainer
Straight2web also comes with the revolutionary new active software trainer (www.e4training.com) that guides the user around the screen and shows them exactly what to do next.
Source: PR Web™
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