The Ultimate Guide To JavaScript in Web Design

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In today’s post, we’re going to take a look at how you can effectively use JavaScript in Web Design. JavaScript has allowed web designers to easily enrich their visual designs with new features and elements that can make using a website a much more interactive, intuitive and enjoyable experience. In recent years, the introduction of JavaScript frameworks such as jQuery, MooTools, Scriptalicious and ExtJS has simplified this process considerably, allowing designers to be innovative with their user interfaces. To begin today’s post, let’s take a look at a generic wireframe to your typical website.

Below you can see a wireframe that consists of a header, a login area, central page elements, a search box, a sidebar, banner adverts, a footer, floating elements and a website toolbar. This could easily be a blog-site, a business’s official website or any number of different projects.

As designers, most of our pages share a few key elements and I believe that the elements in this diagram represent the majority of those we might encounter on a daily basis.

So, let’s imagine for a moment that we’ve just created a basic layout for a site using the above as a guideline. We know that we can style any of the elements in this layout using either CSS or some PSD graphics, but what if we want to add more interactivity to our elements so that they allow our users to *do* more with the site?. This is where JavaScript can come in useful.

JavaScript offers a whole wealth of benefits to web designers and web developers. Let’s go through some of them. If I have a standard search box on my site, that allows my users to search through the content that’s available and if they’re lucky enough, they’ll find what they’re looking for. If however, I have a JavaScript powered Search-Box that offers them auto-complete features, they’ll be able to quickly and easily refine their search queries to get the content they want, without needing to reload the search page lots of times.

diagram1

We’ve just introduced a time-saving feature and that’s going to make life easier for our users. These are the kinds of functional benefits introducing JavaScript powered elements into your design can offer to the people who are going to be using your pages the most.

JavaScript can also offer a lot of benefits to you as a web designer. Let’s say that your site depends on ad-revenue a lot and that to maximize this, you might need to be conservative with your use of space. This can have major impacts on your design if you’re just using a CSS/XHTML layout, but not if you’re using JavaScript to help solve the problem. As an example, if I wanted to include a login-form at the top of my page, but couldn’t because we need that space for adverts, I could easily introduce a JavaScript powered button in it’s place that could slide-down the login area whenever someone needed it. The result? I, the designer, get to include my login area at the top of the page afterall but the site’s advertising needs don’t have to be scarified.

It can be safely said that JavaScript has had a huge impact on the web design landscape. Looking at just one JavaScript framework alone, jQuery itself now powers almost 20% of websites online. With this in mind I would certainly recommend continuous learning about your framework of choice so that you get ideas for what’s possible with your interfaces. Just remember to cover the basic JavaScript fundamentals before hopping onto the framework bandwagon!.

Okay, so let’s get to the really useful content in this post. I wanted to show you guys how you can use JavaScript (in this case jQuery) to enhance all aspects of conventional Web Design, from things you can use JavaScript for to make your Header more interactive, to tutorials you can use to create innovative new menus or search features that your users and clients will be impressed with. We’re going to start from the top of the page (with Login Forms) and end it with website toolbars.

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The Ultimate Guide To JavaScript in Web Design

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59111 Comments2010-03-21+03%3A59%3A16Addy