Design Carving
Webpages are normally arranged using a table structure similar to Microsoft Excel documents. "Carving" is the process of taking a single design file and carving it into manageable table cells. There are several things to consider before starting the carving process:
- Layout size. Some webpages stretch with the width of the user's browser where others, like AK Web Apps, remain a fixed size.
- Content blocks. Since a table structure is used it is important to know which cells will contain changable web content and which will stay static.
- Special fonts. If a special font, not common to everyone's computer, is used on the site it must be carved as an image rather than text.
- Images. Any element on a design that cannot be recreated using code (such as HTML, DHTML, or javascript) must be carved as an image. The more images used to create a webpage the longer it will take to load. Therefore, it is important to have as few images as possible.
Neat Trick: Press Ctrl+A or click and drag your mouse from the top, left to the bottom, right of your screen. All elements that are in the foreground of this page will be highlighted. All graphics appear as blocks where text can be highlighted letter by letter.
Technical Examples
The following is an example of a site that has a fixed width, a text-based navigation bar, and one block of content:
See design
See table layout
See carved images
Let's take a look at a site that stretches with the browser, contains several text elements, and utilizes both forground and background images.
See design
See table layout
See carved images
