Web design isn’t what it used to be, and thank heaven for that. You don’t have to be an HTML expert to design great websites today. There are technologies like Ajax, Flash, and PHP that make website development go easier. But you have to be careful when using Flash, however, because the search engine bots have a hard time knowing what to make of sites that heavily use Flash.

Ajax is a great tool for keeping your site speedy, because it lets interactive features operate independently of the page as a whole. What that means is that the user can make a choice by ticking a box on the page and only the part of the page that is applicable to the choice will reload. You might remember the bad old days when a visitor interacting with a page required the entire page to reload. So use Ajax and make your visitors happy.

PHP is an open-source scripting language that outputs HTML. Because it is open source, people are always extending it and adding functionality, and you can do so too if you’re of a mind to. While you don’t have to become an expert on HTML, it’s not a bad idea to have some minor chops with these techniques. If nothing else, it will help you communicate your needs with your web designer more effectively.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 7:52 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.