.com Live: Web Site Design

Washington Post columnist Leslie Walker was online with Doug Addison , author of "Web Site Cookbook," to discuss Web site design.

A transcript follows .

Read Leslie's .com archive .

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Leslie Walker: Hello and welcome to Doug Addison, a Web designer in Austin, TX. His new book, "Web Site Cookbook" is a how-to manual for building visitor-friendly sites.

Doug is here to talk about trends in Web design, especially the buzz around the "Web 2.0" technologies that are making sites more interactive.

Let's start with how content is being mixed and remixed on the Web. Early in your book, you give an example of how anyone can pull data from various sites (Flickr, Blogger, Google, del.icio.us) and use it to set up a basic Web site.

Do most sites do this kind of re-mixing? Tell us some advantages and disadvantages.

Doug Addison: No, most sites on the web these days don't do that kind of remixing. But the ones that do tend to get a lot more attention. I'll come back to that in a minute.

The recipe in Web Site Cookbook that you mentioned actually describes how to leverage those third party services as "storage surrogates" for your own site content. Doing so gives you access to web 2.0 functionality that you wouldn't necessarily get if you built your site out of static HTML pages. For example, web-based image manipulation, such as resizing, with flickr; web-based editing tools and content syndication with a Blogger account; tagging and categorization with del.icio.us, and so forth.

The remixing you asked about occurs when two independent sets of data are merged into a new and compelling way to look at something. Examples of these so-called "mash-ups" include merging Google maps with crime data or apartment vacancies. The tools are out there to allow more and more of these kinds of hybrids to come to life on the web. Disadvantages? I can't think of any.

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Leslie Walker: What interesting trends are you seeing in Web design today?

Doug Addison: Web 2.0 is certainly the trend that everyone is talking about. But it seems to mean different things to different people.

Sites like flickr and del.icio.us fit in because they are leading the way in opening the web to new ways of managing web content. The tagging features of both services--dubbed "folksonomy" for their grass-roots inversion of traditional top-down categorization, or "taxonomy," of online resources--enable novel and inspiring ways of communal publishing and sharing with the web.

Web 2.0 also includes sites that use new technology to build true web-based applications--such as Writely's web-based word processor or Basecamp's online project management software. They do it with a coding technique dubbed AJAX, which basically allows webpages to be updated dynamically, instead of in the slower page request and response model that has defined the web for the last 10 years.

Doug Addison: As for other trends, I think bloggin will continue to grow, as more businesses see it as a way to keep their sites fresh and vibrant with new content.

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Poomona, CA: I'm a wanna-be webmaster. Where's a good (free) place on the web to learn (ie tutorials)?

Doug Addison: The great thing about the web is that every site can be a tutorial in how build a great site. By that, I mean you can find good sites (such as the Webby awards winners every year) and view source on their code. When you encounter a problem or a question about how to do something, I recommend visitng the online forums at evolt.org or webmasterworld.com to find the answer.

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bethesda,md: What's Google's secret in parsing a website?

Doug Addison: Wouldn't we all like to know that! Though I'm no more privy to Google's methods than the next person, I can tell you that Google likes sites that use proper markup to convey their authenticity. That means things like using heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) and alt and title attributes in your images and links to enhance the searchable content density on your site.

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Bethesda,md: 508 rules -- How does one deal with the fact of flashing presentation and still address acessibility guidelines?

Doug Addison: If the presentation is written in Flash, then you should review the Flash accesibility guidelines to find out what you need to do to make it conform with 508 rules. Check out WebAIM's Creating Accessible Macromedia Flash Content (http://www.webaim.org/techniques/flash/) as well as the W3C's Understanding WCAG 2.0 at http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/for more information. Flash can be made accessible!

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Leslie Walker: Back on Web 2.0: I hear developers getting psyched about "rich Internet applications" which blend desktop software and traditional Web pages. The result gives users more interactivity, like being able to drag and drop an image around an online map or move a slider to change content.

But I find these techniques often cause confusion. It's hard to tell what buttons and menus do anymore. You click a link thinking you're going to another page --and it turns out not to be a link might not even notice it. Yahoo's new home page does this with the feature box at the top. Instead of links, the tabs change the content.

I guess some of this falls under the Web 2.0 umbrella, though I'm no fan of that catch-all phrase. But I'm curious--do you think these techniques are experimental or are here to stay? It feels transitional and awkward to me.

Doug Addison: This was an overarching theme of the South by Southwest interactive conference that I attended in Austin last weekend. There is definitely work to be done.

The confusion crops up because web-based applications that use AJAX (which stands for asynchronous javascript and XML) break the traditional request-and-response model of the web as most people know it. AJAX technology allows page content to be changed without the page itself being refreshed. And that creaetes problem for things like using the back button to go back to a previous view or bookmarking a page in its current state. In most cases with these AJAx sites, those familiar actions do not work as expected.

The techniques are expertimental AND they are here to stay. But there is still work to be done to make the transition to these new kinds of sites.

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New York, NY: I have a small business Web site I'd like to make available on cell phones. Is there a good place online I can learn how to do this? Are there web designers that specialize in this kind of repurposing? Any advice appreciated.

Doug Addison: The world of the mobile web is really a harrowing place to be for a web designer. There are something like 200 devices is use in the U.S. alone and upwards of 40 different web browsers installed on them. Add to that the fact that the carriers may optimize or change your webpages as they pass from your server to the end user. So testing can be a challenge, to say the least.

That said, I offer a basic tutorial in Web Site Cookbook for doing this. If your site already makes use of a CSS-based stylesheet for layout on large-screen compputers, then you can use a second "handheld" stylesheet to format the same page for a mobile device. In a nutshell, the strategy is to strip down the page as seen via the mobile device. A good place to start for testing what you create this way is with the Opera Mini browser simular at http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/operamini/demo.dml

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washington, dc: What's the best web programming language out there?

Doug Addison: It's hard to say which is best. Javascript had it's day in the sun a few years back when everyone learned to use it to create pop-up windows. Then we got fed up with those. Now, Javascript is back and driving a lot of what's behind these new web 2.0 style sites.

For site maintenance routines, you can't beat perl. And for server-side scripting and database integration, I'm partial to PHP.

The new kid on the block is called Ruby. If I were going to learn one new web programming language today, that would be it.

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Silver Spring, MD: When redesigning a website, do you think it's better to keep some of the current color/formatting so it's familiar to users or is it better to create a completely new look-and-feel?

Doug Addison: I think only knowing your users can help you answer that question. In general, though, you have to keep in mind that any change to your site is going to ellicit complaints and confusion. People just don't like to be surprised. But people are also incredibly adaptable, so they can get used to changes on your site if the core functionality and usabily remains the same, or gets better.

My recommendation: talk to a 3-5 typical users of your site one on one. Show them want you to change and incorporate their feedback (where possible) before you make the switch.

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Arlington VA: I have a Website for professional papers related to electronic records management that is totally HTML-based that I manage using FrontPage. I'm told that this is not a good long-term approach and that it is better to have an XML-based system that uses a database for the documents and other content and that allows one to render the pages in whatever way is needed by the site visitor, whether using a PC, tablet, mobile phone/pda or whatever. What is your view and what database/web-publishing software is available to do this? Thank you.

Doug Addison: You're right -- a database-driven site, in which the content is stored independent of how it's displayed, is much more flexible and scalable than a site made up of static HTML pages. Once you get past about 100 pages of content, then it's time to start considering a database solution.

These systems fall under the term Content Management Systems, or CMS. A site called CMS Matrix (http://cmsmatrix.org/) can help you find the right one. With it, you can compare features side by side from a list of several hundred CMS programs. If you know what your site's needs are (such as needing to import a large amount of existing content), CMS Matrix can help you find the right one.

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Leslie Walker: How easy is it for sites to protect themelves--and visitors--from phishing schemes and identity theft? What precautions do you recommend?

Doug Addison: While we're all aware of the need to be vigilant while doing business as a consumer online, it's the online merchants who actually have a lot more to lose. That's because a consumer whose credit card falls into the wrong hands is liable only for the first $50 worth of fraudulent charges. But the merchant who ships goods to an imposter might be out every cent of an illegitimate transaction when the card holder contacts her bank to contest the charge.

If you're selling stuff online, here are some things you must do to protect yourself:

- Validate credit cards in real-time

- Use all the security measures available to you from your bank or credit card processor, such as address verification and card verification number (CVN or CVV) checking

- Always report suspicious ordering activity to you rbank immediately. And, if necessary, work with your ISP or web-hosting company to block visitors who appear to be attempting to de-fraud you

- Refuse to do business with customers in countries known to harbor fraudsters. Transparency International's list of the most corrupt countries is a good place to find out more about this.

- And finally, don't ship merchandise until payment is confirmed

Regardless of what you sell online, your best defense is to keep tabs on your e-commerce activity, trust your instincts, and listen to your inner pessimist--if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

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Munich, Germany: About Web 2.0 and AJAX, I assume that a certain computer performance will be neccessary to run these applications on home computers.

Also, won't these new applications present hackers with a multitude of new opportunities to download viruses and trojan horses onto PCs?

Doug Addison: Actually, the processing requirements for the home PC user are higher at all for AJAX-enabled sites. These sites just appear to be more responsive because they are communicating with the server in the background (and changing the current page as result) instead of making the user wait while a new page gets downloaded and displayed in the browser.

For those reasons, I don't believe they increase the spyware or virus threat either.

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Leslie Walker: How should people go about selecting a Web designer? Also, for folks who don't want to hire anyone, are there any quick-and-easy Web site creation services-for-dummies you can recommend? (I reviewed Homestead a year ago and liked it, but there must be a ton of others.)

Doug Addison: I think a good web designer has be able to do three things: communicate, educate and stimulate. You want to hire someone who can explain what he's going to do, teach you how to maintain the site after he's gone, and really get you excited about the prospects of having a great online presence.

Checking references is always a good idea, too. You can tell a lot about how a web designer will approach your project from looking at what he's done before and talking to who he's worked for.

For quick-and-easy Web site creation, the choices are really almost unlimited. You can find them at Yahoo and Google, included with better web-hosting accounts, and built in to site management apps like Dreamweaver. And there are tons of template generating tools online.

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Leslie Walker: Any tips for designing a site you can update yourself (as opposed to hiring someone!)?

Doug Addison: Whether you do it yourself or hire someone to do it, I think the end result has to be a site you can update yourself. A program like Dreamweaver offers a word processor-like interface for editing pages. I'm also a fan of using blogging tools (such as Blogger) for making it easy to put fresh content on a site -- even if you don't consider yourself a blogger!

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Washington, DC: What is a "tag"? Description, classification, what?

Doug Addison: A tag in the web 2.0 world of flickr and del.icio.us is just that -- a description or classification. (Amazon also lets visitors add their own tags to items they find for sale.) Tagging is a way of organizing the web for yourself. But seen in aggregate, tags provide a way to organize the entire web, done so by the people who use it.

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Leslie Walker: We are running out of time for today, folks.

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Doug Addison: Thanks for having me on this chat. You can find out more about building websites that people will visit, use, bookmark, and revisit in Web Site Cookbook. It's the book I wished I'd had when I started building my first website almost ten years ago-a one-stop source of answers to the questions that come up when building a website.

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Leslie Walker: Many thanks to Doug for joining us. And thanks to everyone who participated. Sorry we couldn't get to all your questions, but many are answered in "Web Site Cookbook." I read the book last week and heartily recommend it to anyone trying to stay on top of this fast-moving industry!

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