The Spiffy Philosophy

Websites exist primarily to serve a common function - to convey information to the user. Information of all kinds abound across the hastily growing world wide web. Videos, images, social media, products, news, you name it. If there's information about a specific topic, chances are that there's some way of finding it on the web.

Creating a website is focused on conveying a certain kind of information to the user first and foremost. Any web designer worth their weight in salt will tell you that. But what differentiates one web designer from another? Well, beyond the usual stuff like how they interact with their clients and how much they charge, it seems to boil down to the way they go about designing a website.

Spiffy = Smart

Websites need to be fast. In the digital age nothing stands still. If a website takes too long to load, the user becomes annoyed and moves onto the next search engine result in hopes of faster results. Smart web design is key to avoiding this scenario.

Just to give you a quick example, consider this - big image files slow down websites. Depending on their size, they can make a website drag to a halt if they're not used properly. If images must be used, they're best to be kept small and used sparingly.

Now look at this website. Can you guess how many images are used in the creation of the header? The answer: one tiny 204-byte sized image. No, seriously - here's that image file that I'm talking about (). It's coded so that it just repeats this single image file to fill the header area, which saves a lot of processing and downloading time for the end user. Heck, even the footer is generated using a small 196-byte image that looks like this (). These are the only two image files used to create this web page. Pretty neat, huh?

So how did I make that header look so cool? I layered the image in front of a radial gradient that I coded in CSS. This saves time because your browser generates the gradients itself. It sure beats waiting for some big ol' header image to download first. Now that's smart! Click on the box below to see an animated representation of how this graphic effect is created.

Spiffy = Unique

It's the web designer's job to make a website unique so that it stands out in the ever-growing crowd of other related websites. Using the client's input regarding what makes their company so special, the web designer generates a website that not only expresses to the world why the client's company is so awesome, he/she shows it. Through the strategic & tasteful use of sleek graphic and user interface design techniques, the web designer creates a masterpiece that serves as the client's online business front.

Take, for example, the spinning logo cube at the top of this page. You see that logo? Here, let me make it easier to look at by planting one of the faces here for you...

I'm sure you're marveling at the little blue-colored dots that I have zipping about the red lettering. Would you believe me that this logo and the animations going on are all done in CSS code? That's right. No image files. No video files. No Adobe Flash files. Just simple Cascading Style Sheets. And then I took this animated logo and put it on a spinning 3D cube, just because I felt like showing off. Pretty spiffy, eh?

Oh, in case it wasn't clear to you yet - I am that web designer. Feel free to check out some of my website design examples in the drop-down menu at the top of this page.

Spiffy = Amusing

So what makes a website stand out from the rest beyond what was already mentioned above? I feel that it's the little things that the user can interact with as they peruse a website. Small, subtle things like when something changes color when the user's cursor passes over an important bit of information. Or when all of the parts of the web page slide smoothly into place like the page is assembling itself right before the user's eyes. You know, little things that make the user feel like they're actively interacting with your web site.

I don't know if you've noticed, but this website is riddled with little things hidden here and there for you to play with. I don't use all of these techniques on every site I design - there's a time and place for everything when used appropriately. I just did it here for fun. I wanted this experience to stick with you a little bit. You'll later recall this website as "the one with all the neat little doodads going on," or something to that effect.