VCC Design is the web page design studio for Ventura County Computers.
All web page design is about compromise. When designing web pages, there is a tendency to think of web pages as just electronic printed pages, but it simply isn't so. When you design a printed document, you know the exact size of the paper and you control the precise colors, brightness, fonts and graphics rendering. Web pages can be "printed" on huge monitors, regular monitors, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's), smart phones or even spoken to the vision-disabled. And the page can be any length you care to make it. No two monitors display colors the same and computers will substitute fonts when they don't have the specified font. Web pages are NOT printed pages.
Web pages should be designed primarily to be useful for all browsers and only then to be made picture-perfect for "standard" browsers. The days of writing web pages for standard sized screens is gone. Those who think more people are viewing their website using desktop computers than are using smart phones simply isn't paying attention. For small businesses, a large percentage of viewers are using their smart phones to get the address or phone number to navigate to the site. If they can't find the information, they may well go somewhere else.
Amazingly, the majority of sites being built today will not display useful information on smart phones, PDA's and the like. Why? Two reasons: (1) Many of the design tools available were written years ago for a different age. (2) Inertia. It is easier to keep using what you know than to learn new ways of doing things. But businesses simply cannot afford to blindly roll out websites. It's too crucial to your businges. Even if you just want people to be able to find you, you need a usable website for smart phones. Google and other search engines need the website to flag the business on their maps.
We maintain our own web and mail server where we host about 100 local businesses. We design and maintain sites for other servers as well. See the VCC Site for more information on webhosting.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3) is the standards-setting international body. They maintain a web page validator that will check a page to verify that it is standards-compliant. It shouldn't be that difficult for web page designers to check their work to make sure it complies with international standards. Unfortunately, relatively few sites, even including the sites of major companies, can pass the simple test. This means their design is deliberately (or negligently) cutting off their site from huge numbers of potential viewers. To see the status of this page. Before you sign up with someone, check out their sites with the Validator. Just go to the Validator page and enter the address of a prospective designer. You'll be surprised.