Cross-browser layout in modern conditions - a general understanding of the necessary principle. Why not one? Maestro – AJAX template for presenting your best work

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Layout is an indispensable tool that will allow you to save yourself from unnecessary work on writing code and developing the design of your future website. When choosing a layout, you get completely ready-made HTML template, which can be adapted to your favorite platform. Do you want to know what a real modern website layout looks like and how to find a good option layouts? Then this review is for you.

Layout has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages over mockups are that you will not need to write the code for the future site. The layout designers have already taken care of this. However, the advantage of being able to choose any platform for development is also a slight disadvantage. At least for beginners. The fact is that when using layout, you still have to have some knowledge in the field of web development in order to pull the template onto the right platform, and for the site to work well. Do without a specialist in this case quite problematic. Therefore, if you need something simpler, it is better to turn to full-fledged templates for professional CMS. For example, or.

Have you decided to create a website with layout? Especially for you today is my collection of the top and most modern layouts for corporate or personal use, creativity and online trading. Here you will find any option for your tasks!

Modern website layout with stylish premium design

Modern layout for various types of websites

Verso is a unique HTML template based on Bootstrap 4

A very cool layout that includes 19 demo sites with a special design. It is easy to customize and adapt to sites in various fields of activity.

LeoHunt - adapted layout for any purpose on HTML5

The theme is designed to be adapted to work on mobile devices. It has a clean design in 12 main page options, 3 one-page types and two layouts. Identical templates are available on Joomla and WordPress.

RaiseApp is a responsive theme for a variety of uses.

This is a layout with a whole set of UI components (2000+), which will allow you to build an excellent landing page or a classic multi-page website for a startup, a blog, as well as a personal or corporate website. Beginners will love the WordPress version.

Matex – a set of ready-made pages for a cool website in the style of material design

A creatively designed website concept, designed in HTML5 format, will allow you to create a website for any business and application: architectural office, bakery, university, construction company and portfolio.

Honshi – Creative Multi-Tasking Website Template

A stylish and simple template with a clean design will provide you with a fresh solution for developing any website. It has built-in contact forms, google maps, portfolio section, blog pages and various color schemes registration

Modern website layout for business

SaaSera – layout for developers and startups

Along with the theme you get a whole set of solutions for various fields: IT, web development, software product creation and so on. The design is very beautiful, colorful and creative.

It will be much easier for developers to create a website in .

TechLine – template for corporations, companies and startups

An elegant and simple business template in any field is built on the basis of a modular Y frame with a set of 1000 options for flexible settings. Hundreds of pages, dozens of portfolio concepts and thousands of icons included. WordPress version for beginners.

TeraHoster – professional hosting company theme

4 design concepts added to the theme home page, as well as variations of other pages. Integrated WHMCS support.

We also have cool ones available for the WordPress system.

Industrial – template for an excellent website for an industrial company

This design concept is intended for websites of companies operating in the field of technology, industry and manufacturing. Fully responsive layout and 11 design options.

ConstructZilla – website layout for a construction company with a clean design

This aesthetically clean and mobile-optimized HTML template allows you to tailor its design to suit your individual business needs. More than 100 HTML files with Parallax effect and AJAX forms.

InBenefit offers a wide selection of WordPress themes for businesses, industries and companies.

Travel Tour – template for a travel agency or online booking service

This is an ideal option for the tourism sector, which hides stylish concepts created on the basis of modern technologies. There are beautiful galleries and a rating system.

Universal – business theme for consulting services

Universal is ideal for various firms in the field of consulting and other related financial areas. Strict emphasis on mobile optimization and premium slider plugin at no additional cost. Beginners will be delighted with the WordPress template.

You can also find a huge variety of reviews and companies here.

TaxiPark – HTML5 layout for a taxi service or taxi fleet

A stunning HTML template that is specifically designed for the needs of taxi companies will be an excellent solution for rapid development. Three options included home page, Google fonts and the Parallax effect.

Last year, I already selected cool and stylish ones for WordPress. Rate them now!

Modern website layout for IT and freelancers

Maestro – AJAX template for presenting your best work

The template has unique website design options creative studios and freelancers working various types activities: graphic design, translations, photography and copywriting. Additionally there is a version on WordPress.

Berk – a cool and stylish portfolio template in the spirit of minimalism

Clean and professional template for graphic designers and creative studios. Works confidently on any mobile and desktop device. The set includes several types of design and a Premium class slider.

Inshot – Responsive Photographer Portfolio Theme

This is a separate topic that did not fit into any category in our review. Nevertheless, it is cool, because it will allow you to create a video site with the possibility of views and advertising. High speed downloads and user-friendly interface.

Artyom is the author of numerous reviews and articles on the project website “Web Laboratory for Success”, dedicated to templates, plugins, courses and other topics of the site. Expert in selecting templates and plugins for the WordPress platform, etc. Hobbies: reading interesting literature and active recreation.

Layout of illustrations can be divided into seven different types:

  1. open layout,
  2. closed,
  3. deaf,
  4. strip,
  5. with access to the fields,
  6. layout in the fields,
  7. layout to spare.

All these types of layout are shown schematically in the figure.

With open layout, the drawing is placed to edge of the strip-to two or three page fields. With a closed layout, the drawing is placed among the text, with two or one of its sides facing the side margins. In blind typesetting, the drawing is placed among the text. According to Hessen, the layout is called “blank” even in the case when the drawing is closed on three sides, and one side touches the upper or lower margin.

With an open layout, the cliche is trimmed or given without frill; when closed - also frilled or given without frill; with a blind layout, the cliché is necessarily erased.

In addition to the listed types of layout, there is another option: the text is placed inside the picture.

In some cases (for example, when laying out color books for young children), the main object of construction is a drawing, which occupies a significant part of the page. The text only complements the drawing and is arranged depending on it. This type of layout is also found in old printed books.

From the visual side, open layout is beneficial. Here, thanks to the contrast with the white color of the fields, the drawings acquire greater expressiveness. In addition, the text is not divided into passages above and below the picture or between two or three pictures.

With an open layout, the design should, as a rule, have a clear rectangular shape, otherwise it will violate the rectangularity of the strip, creating potholes in it. Therefore, tone cliches are more suitable for open layout. Some way out of the situation with open layout of line cliches is to use frames made of rulers. However, this technique greatly complicates the work of both the layout designer and the printer. At the same time, when framing, in most cases it is not possible to achieve an exact, gap-free junction of the rulers. It is more advisable to make a frame directly on the drawing before printing.

The absolute rectangularity of the strip is not, of course, mandatory rule. Sometimes it makes sense to break the rectangle of the strip depending on the subject of the image. There may be cases when the deliberate destruction of the rectangle of the strip is a special design technique. And sometimes breaking the squareness of the strip improves the readability of the text.

Open layout poses some difficulties technical order. You have to extend the bevel beyond the strip not only in width, but also in height. If the header or footer is slightly separated from the text, then the bevel has to be cut off. During printing, this can lead to the zinc plate being torn off from the pad. When lining a form, a bevel that extends beyond the strip also creates some inconvenience. However, this cannot in any way be the decisive consideration when choosing the type of layout.

Closed layout is the most common. With it, you don’t have to worry too much about the specific scale of the design (as with open layout) or about its outlines: all the indentations in the outline are hidden by frill lines.

With a closed layout, the design can be placed anywhere on the strip, while with an open layout, it can be placed only at the top or bottom.

Blank layout is convenient if you want to isolate the drawing from the text. This isolation is created by the fact that the drawing is located, as it were, on a rectangle highlighted among the text, especially if there is a sufficiently large padding around the drawing. Blank layout is only allowed when typing in two columns. With one column, the perception of the text is extremely difficult both when reading through a picture and column by column.

Layout with access to margins is not suitable for every type of literature. It won't always make sense in a scientific or educational book. Its scope of application is magazines and fiction. From the visual side, this type of layout has a number of advantages. It makes it possible to obtain a larger image scale, i.e., to better identify the pattern. The output of the picture on one field is suitable only with an asymmetrical design scheme as a whole.

Entering the fields should be quite noticeable. It is impossible, for example, to release a cliche at 10-12 points.

The use of layout with access to the fields always requires careful preliminary layout of the spreads. The graphic material must also be carefully calculated when layout is to spare. Very often, the expressiveness of drawings with bleeds is reduced because they do not reach the edge of the strip, forming a white border.

From a technical point of view, layout with an exit to the margins and to the edge creates great difficulties when lining in a machine.

Layout of drawings in the margins is possible only with large sizes fields. This type of layout is used in fiction, especially in literature for children, where it provides ample opportunities in the sense of incidentally illustrating the text. Drawings must be given in sufficient quantity and distributed evenly throughout the book, otherwise this layout option is uneconomical.

With strip layout, the drawing is usually equal to the format of the strip. For drawings with a massive color load, it is better to give a little smaller format, otherwise they will appear larger than the adjacent strip. With large fields, there may be cases when the strip illustration will be larger than the strip format. With strip illustrations, you should strictly calculate the space required for captions to the drawing.

Drawings that are actually equal to the width of the strip may seem to go beyond the format, especially if they are massive in color or dynamic in the nature of the image. Therefore, when clichéd, they are often given somewhat smaller than the actual format.

Sometimes the drawing is placed on a separate strip even if it is significantly smaller full format. This is not economical, but can increase the expressiveness of the drawing, freeing it from the influence of text and other elements of the book and allowing it to be used the best way interaction of white and black colors (paper and drawing).

The choice of one type of layout or another is prompted by the entire book design system. The design, as we have repeatedly emphasized, is determined by the content of the book and its type. They should be the basis for choosing a compositional layout scheme.

Why not one?

A fair question is why it was impossible to come up with one single way and develop it? But people are different creatures, so they came up with different ways. In fact, there are not many of them, and some are outdated today. Let's look at the basic layout methods.

Table

Creating a framework using tables. In the past, the most basic and popular method. Today it becomes outdated every year, although there are sites that are made this way. The entire method is tied to the table tag and its child elements, such as rows and cells. The entire site structure is marked as big table.

Advantages. This approach makes it quite easy to create many columns and columns. Layouts with a complex structure can be easily laid out using a table. Also, the table tag and all associated elements are supported exactly the same in all browsers.

Flaws. Very cumbersome code - the main disadvantage tabular layout. It should be noted that you can insert another table into one table, that is, a nested one. This leads to a lot of nesting and a bunch of tags. And there is no escape from this, because all these tags are needed for the functionality of our table. Understanding such code is not very easy.

Tabular data is very difficult to adapt for viewing on various devices. It is much easier to do this with blocks (block layout, which we will definitely consider too).

Alternative. Recently, CSS introduced special display property values ​​that allow you to simulate a table using actual blocks. For example, display: table, display: table-row, display: table-cell. Elements to which these properties are applied will begin to behave like a table, table row, and cell, respectively. You need to remember that this method is also imperfect, because it is not supported equally in all browsers. If you use these properties, you need to test carefully for cross-browser compatibility.

Frames

Once upon a time there was another typesetting method, but today it is almost forgotten. The essence of layout using frames is that the browser window is divided into a certain number of independent blocks (frames), which are formed by the frameset tag. It indicates the path to the html page that will be loaded into the frame.

Each frame is an independent element. That is, scroll bars appear separately for each block. It must be said that frames were never officially adopted, so today they are practically not used and are generally considered a bad way of layout.

Rice. 1. I found this example of a site on frames on the Internet. As you understand, no aesthetics.

Blocks

Here we come to the most popular website layout technology today. It has a number of advantages and is generally recognized as the most convenient. Each block is an independent element into which you can nest an unlimited number of elements. The block can be positioned, resized, and stylized. All this is done with using CSS.

Advantages. Extremely compact code that is perfectly readable, even if you didn’t do the layout. It is easier to attach different styles to blocks than to tables. Such a site loads faster and is better indexed.

Block Elements can be layered on top of each other, like layers in Photoshop. Given the support for transparency, you can achieve many interesting effects, highlight a certain area, or use a script to load different content in the same place.

Flaws. There are practically none. Blocks are easy to adapt, easy to hide and change. The div and span containers display correctly even in older browsers. If we talk about new semantic blocks, then they do not have full support. However, this problem will probably be solved soon. Today there are files whose inclusion solves the problem of supporting new elements in older browsers. Method block layout will exist for a long time due to its exceptional convenience and simplicity.

Flexbox (flex)

Most new method layouts. It received normal support in browsers for the first time since 2014. Now many developers adhere to this method. Its essence is that display: flex is assigned to structural elements. These are also a kind of blocks, only more flexible and functional.

Many people still consider flexboxes to be not a very good solution for building a website grid. For example, it has long been recommended to use flexbox for small elements on a page, but many still use float for the page frame.

Most likely, in the future, flexbox will finally establish itself as a new website layout technique, so it’s worth studying the properties of this element now.

Rice. 2. The properties of flex elements make them more flexible than blocks.

The advantages of Flexbox include new CSS properties that allow you to build a variety of grids and columns without special effort. It also supports vertical alignment, which a conventional unit does not support.

Conclusion

The simplest and most popular layout method today continues to be the block approach. In some places tables will also be useful to you, because tabular data is completely inconvenient to type out in blocks.

Frames have long been discarded as an unsuccessful way to create structure, but the iframe tag may well come in handy if you suddenly need to insert another site into an article.

Finally, today we have absolutely new way layout - the flex element and its properties that make it more flexible and modern than the usual block. That's all for today. Don't forget to read new articles on the blog to know everything about website building.

Creating modern websites involves using the latest IT developments in the layout of an Internet resource. For this purpose, the most modern technologies in the field of HTML and CSS layout are used. The main thing is to comply with cross-browser compatibility and ensure correct display in older browsers.

The abbreviation CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is translated as cascading style sheets.

Cascading style sheets are modern technology management of the appearance of a website, it expands the possibilities for describing the appearance of web pages and at the same time facilitates the process of editing the CSS of the site and formatting its content.

Created using CSS appearance document, while HTML describes the content.
As CSS3 develops, layout capabilities also increase significantly, which means that every day more functionality can be created using “pure” CSS.

This gives developers of this area a certain standard to base on. When creating modern sites, you no longer have to worry that some browser will soon stop using one of its prefix non-standard properties - now it will be represented by a standard one and can replace it.

Website layout: why is CSS preferable to JavaScript?

When creating a layout using CSS, you can decide a large number of tasks, here is just a small part of them:

  • interactive galleries;
  • several-level pop-up menus;
  • creation of three-dimensional diagrams;
  • chart animation.

But why is it necessary to use CSS when creating a layout, if JS can do the same, and with many already created developments?

Here are some arguments in favor of CSS:

  • CSS effects almost always work faster, since only browser engines are responsible for their work. This is more visible on mobile devices.
  • No need to know JS or any other programming languages. An ordinary ordinary user will be able to work with CSS.
  • Do critical errors CSS is much more complex than JS.
  • Without knowing any programming languages ​​or having specialized libraries, today you can carry out complex and interesting tasks in CSS 3.0.
  • The site created in this way will have adaptive markup. And its presence is increasingly required by customers.

If you haven’t decided where to order a website yet, read the following articles:

  • Layout rules: adaptive, block, css layout
  • High-quality website layout - guarantees from the web studio "AVANZET"
  • Website development - design features and layout principles
  • Creating business websites - principles and features of design and layout
  • Creating an effective website. Easy navigation is an important part of usability

Page layout using CSS frameworks

An undoubted advantage of page layout with using CSS frameworks is the absence of the need to think through some of the nuances of layout, for example: cross-browser compatibility, work on screens with different resolutions.

All this has already been done and frameworks have been created. The user only specifies what to show, when and how to do it. The framework does everything else for it. This approach allows you to speed up page layout, which makes the framework an excellent tool for creating website prototypes, as well as final sites for which design is of secondary importance.

The most popular and worthwhile framework for creating modern websites, cross-browser and standardized interfaces is Bootstrap. One of the advantages of Bootstrap is its popularity, which allows another code developer to maintain your code. The thoughtful structure of the CSS code gives you great opportunities to create many different elements of the site interface and its grid

Number of sections and headings, speaking professional language, - the composition of the issue is the foundation that underlies the formation of a corporate identity and guarantees the publication recognition among the broad masses. Layout of newspapers and magazines is an integral part of the production process. She is responsible for optimization specific page and for the overall design of the issue, that is, for the competent combination of text and graphic elements, for the ease of perception of fonts, for ease of navigation...

Advantages of a stable composition

Systematic circulation sooner or later leads to the fact that a newspaper or magazine develops its own unique composition. From issue to issue, all significant pages, basic sections and thematic headings are retained certain type and structure. This is not done by chance: a product made according to a template is easier to perceive by the reader, and subsequently develops a certain model of expectation among the target audience.

However, the layout of newspapers according to pre-established standards does not at all imply the inviolability of the schemes. On the contrary, compositions that can easily be transformed are a sign of high-quality implementation of creative ideas.

In other words, the stylistic bias and format of the newspaper/magazine should not depend on spot corrections and adjustments. If the executive editor falls into a stupor every time, a few hours before the issue goes to press, the need arises to retype individual pages or even pages, then the basic composition does not justify itself, and it needs to be changed.

What is the fundamental difference between layout and layout?

Compositional preparation and layout of a newspaper are two interrelated processes with similar algorithms of actions. However, the tasks facing designers and layout designers cannot be called the same type - the differences lie in the plane of subject development (optimization) of already edited materials. Priority direction layout is a detailed study of the content structure: the order of stripes, the configuration of publications, the “embeddedness” of images, and the like. The goal of competent layout is to make sure that the arrangement of material on the pages not only does not cause difficulties for the reader, but also in the most natural way focuses his attention on the most significant information messages.

The material that has been assembled has a common thematic core. However, this is not enough to form a full issue of the publication. A kind of finishing line is the layout, which organizes the content and organizes individual elements (publications) into a single whole.

Newspaper layout: norms and patterns

The main guideline for choosing a standard layout structure is the content of the issue. All techniques and options technical design to one degree or another dictated by the content. The term “material for the front page” perfectly reflects the essence of the above: it is used when they want to emphasize the importance of the article (that is, it is the information load of such a note that plays the role of a “stencil” for the entire issue).

However, you need to understand that the so-called general layout standards are quite conditional. Each publication has its own, specific one. Therefore, if all newspapers look the same, demanding readers will not be able to find the product they are interested in, which will certainly lead to a drop in sales with the ensuing consequences.

And most importantly: the specifics of the layout are largely predetermined by the history of periodicals, the stages of its development, the traditions of the working team, national preferences and other factors that are not directly related to

A3 format: computer prototyping

A layout designer is a specialist who operates with ready-made text and already selected graphics. His professional responsibilities include posting material based on approved templates. At the dawn of “typographic evolution,” the work of a specialized worker was difficult, and the time spent on completing the assigned tasks was colossal. Modern computer prototyping is a completely different matter...

Typographic formats used today are derivatives of the DIN A0 standard. The most popular in printing are A5, A4 and A3.

Standard layout of an A3-format newspaper is carried out using the template wizard ( shell may be different, but the functional set of utilities is comparable). Among the undoubted advantages of computer prototyping is the availability of adjustments to the contents of the issue at any stage of its preparation, as well as minimizing the number of errors.

Software Brief: PageMaker and QuarkXPress

Prepress preparation of an issue on a PC involves the installation of a certain software product. Initially, there were few proposals worthy of the attention of professional layout designers. In fact, there were only two of them - PageMaker from the world-famous company Adobe (a reincarnation of the assembly of the same name from Aldus) and a functional analogue called QuarkXPress from the modest organization Quark Ink.

For a long period of time, the developers of both programs walked, so to speak, side by side, so the computer layout of newspapers - meaning its final result - was practically independent of the batch script being implemented. The release of updates disrupted the established balance, but did not determine the leader. Thus, QuarkXPress demonstrated a phenomenal architecture of auxiliary modules (extensions), but was unable to get rid of the clumsiness in the area table editing. And PageMaker relied on universalization, but lost several positions in the functionality ranking (the arsenal of special effects suffered especially).

To help layout designers: introduction to Adobe InDesign

Adobe had no intention of losing in the area of ​​creating software development products. The appearance of a fundamentally new package was only a matter of time...

The InDesign application is a much more serious competitor to QuarkXPress than the outdated PageMaker. More precisely, the question of rivalry is no longer an issue - it all comes down to how many users the utility will “steal” from Quark.

So, how does newspaper layout in InDesign differ from the previously described scenarios?

The completely redesigned one, which is “tailored” for the average user, is intriguing. Here, in order to annoy competitors, there is even an option to activate hotkeys used by default in similar programs - layout designers who worked on Quark will not have to rebuild! The functionality is also impressive. In this regard, InDesign is a viable hybrid that allows you to solve complex tasks pre-press by simply pressing 5 - 6 key combinations. And finally, layout in InDesign is justified from the point of view of the natural development of printed publications: the updates released to the package simplify the process of arranging material as much as possible, reduce the time for preparing publications, and offer options ready-made templates and layouts depending on the stylistic reference of the number...

Competent layout of newspapers: three rules of paramount importance

Modern layout is computer based. But this does not mean that programs automatically fulfill all the requirements regarding proper layout. Much still depends on the specialist master.

So, what does a classic newspaper layout look like?

Example correct algorithm action is as follows:

  • When preparing an issue for printing, uniformity of pages must be ensured. If typical structure is broken (headings and page impositions differ from each other, or there is non-compliance with font design, graphic imbalances, etc.), then, consequently, the composition of the collected material is chosen incorrectly.
  • The layout of the output (title) sheet excludes the use of headers, footers and signatures; full information about the publication is provided in the front page.
  • Based on the results of the layout, there must be a mandatory coincidence of the lines of the main text located on the front page of the newspaper with the lines on the back (even if a variable font size scenario was implemented, and the basic content of the publication was diluted with materials of secondary importance: footnotes, comments, clarifications, etc. .).

Magazine layout: some nuances

The rules for newspaper layout are somewhat different from those requirements that are imposed on specialists responsible for submitting magazine products to print.

Multi-page publications often consist of columns different formats, while the number of illustrations in them is measured in dozens. It is much more difficult to ensure consistency between the “face” and “back” lines in such conditions. Therefore, magazine designers, as a rule, operate with functional additions (applications) to the main ones. software packages, and the compiled numbers are printed on higher-class printing equipment.

Types of layout: basics of classification

Attempts to create unified classification Many types of layout have been undertaken. However, almost all of them were unsuccessful because they ignored the geometry of placing the finished material on the strip.

For this reason, it was decided to separate the types of newspaper layout not by style, but on the basis three groups characteristics: the first included those identified by the configuration of text and graphics, the criterion for the second was the direction of layout (vertical / horizontal), for the third - the degree of symmetry on the strip.

In newspapers, regardless of the topic, simple block layout is used more often than others (information is presented in structured horizontal rectangles - “blocks”). Much less often they resort to a “broken” layout - when columns with ledges are formed by rectangles of variable height.

Type of layout and target audience. Is there a connection?

It is a well-known fact in professional circles that newspaper layout is not just a search for optimal forms for content. The final compositions must first of all meet the requests target audiences. If you look at printed publications, aimed at young people, you can find examples of lively and bright design, implemented through the use of “broken” layout. The bar scheme dominates in newspapers, whose readers are mainly mature people. But purely informational publications are distinguished by an original (usually complicated) form of presentation of material: many columns of different geometries, plus a “dynamic” font.