Design is a purely
creative endeavor, and is difficult to give exact guidelines in reference
to the process. The more creative you become, the easier it is to work
within the template criteria. During the design process, you may find
the need to experiment with different layouts and other combinations in
order to achieve the exact look and feel that you desire. It is not uncommon
to redesign templates several times before finalizing the end result.
There are some technical
requirements that you must adhere to in order to work within the Soholaunch
Soholaunch Pro Edition platform.
Within any site deployed
with the Soholaunch Soholaunch Pro Edition, the width of the content area
is “liquid”, meaning that it will expand and contract as necessary
to fulfill the parameters set by the template. A good habit to get into
here is designing all of your templates within Photoshop starting with
a new image that is 740(w)x500(h). This will give you the most accurate
depiction of your final site, as the desired outcome is to have all visitors
see the site with an 800x600 screen resolution.
The auto-generated
menu system uses buttons that are 128(W)x20(H) pixels. If your intention
is to use a custom navigation system, this does not factor as heavily
in your design process. However, keep in mind that if you’re designing
this type of template for a client, they will not be able to add pages
or other items to the navigation system automatically via the “Menu Display”
system.
You can set
your templates so that it allows all new pages added to the Menu Display
system to be used in conjunction with your custom navigation system. If
you intend to utilize this function, you may still want to design around
the Menu Display button requirements.
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