in this web development tutorial

8/6/2019 In This Web Development Tutorial

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In this web development tutorial, you will learn, step-by-step, how to create a

beautiful dark and sleek web layout using standards-based HTML and CSS. Along the

way, you will witness how to use CSS Sprites and CSS Text Image Replacement.

This is the second part of a tutorial series that shows you how to create the web

layout in Photoshop and then how to code the Photoshop design. If you havent

already, please check out the first part of the series called: "Create a Dark and Sleek

Web Layout Using Photoshop".

Final Result

Click on the following image to preview the working demo of the design we will be

creating together.


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Download

You can download the source file archive of this tutorial which contains the

Photoshop file well be using for our web graphics, and working examples of the web

design.

y dark_and_sleek_layout.zip (0.83MB)Setting up the File Structure

1 Create a new folder in your computer called dark_sleek. This will contain all of

our working files. In thiss folder, create a folder called images which will contain our

web graphics. Also, create index.html, which will be our HTML template,

and styles.css, which is our stylesheet.


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Preparing the PSD File

2 Open the PSD file called dark_and_sleek_psd.psd that inside the source files

you downloaded in Photoshop.

3 Make sure to turn on Guides to help make selection of items in the PSD easier by

going to View > Show > Guides and making sure that there is a check mark beside

Guides. To toggle the Guides on and off easily while workin, press Ctrl + ;.

Creating the Body Background

4 In Photoshop, use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to select a 20px x

121pxselection starting from the top-left of the canvas. Make sure that you are on

the highest layer, then use Edit > Copy Merged (Shift + Ctrl + C) to copy the

selection.


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5 Place the copied selection in a new document using File > New (Ctrl + N). Save

this as a JPG file by using File > Save for Web (Alt + Shift + Ctrl + S) as body-

bg.jpginside the images folder.

Note: From now on, we will be saving all objects as JPG files for consistency. You

may choose a different file format such as PNG or GIF to optimize your images for

page response times, but for the purpose of simplicity, we will be saving all of our

web layout graphics in the same format: JPG with the Preset set to JPEG High.


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Creating the Logo

6 Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to select a 269px by 121px selection

around the logo. View the following figure to see how this selection should be made.

Its important that your selection is accurate.

7 Making sure that you are on the highest layer, Edit > Copy Merged (Shift + Ctrl +

C), and then place the copied selection in a new document, File > New (Ctrl + N).Save this for the web as logo.jpg inside the images folder.

Creating the Navigation CSSSprite

For the navigation, we will use a CSS background Sprite. Tyler Denis, who taught

you how to make the web layout in Photoshop in the first part of the series, provided

us with several options for the Mouse over colors. We will use the Orange


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Highlightfor this tutorial, but feel free to use any of the other colors such as

the White HighlightorBlue Highlight(this will make sense in just a bit).

8 Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to make a 565px by 121px selection

exactly like the following figure.

9 Making sure you are on the highest layer, Edit > Copy Merged, create a new

document, File > New (Ctrl + N), and paste the copied selection on the new

document.

10 Switch over to the new document that you pasted the navigation to (in step 9).

We will make the canvas bigger, doubling its height, so that we can accommodate

the Orange Highlight version of the navigation. To expand the canvas, go to Image

> Canvas Size (Alt + Ctrl + C) to open up the Canvas Size dialog box. In the

Canvas Size dialog box, enter 242px for the Height value and click on the top

middle anchor so that the canvas expands at the bottom.


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Your new document should now look like the following figure with a space at the

bottom for the Orange Highlight version of the navigation:

11 Switch back to our web layout mockup document, dark_sleek_psd. Turn on

theOrange Highlight layer which is inside the Navigation layer folder > Nav

Instances folder. To turn on the visibility of this layer, click on the left-side of the

layer to toggle its layer visibility which should change into an icon of an eye. If you

did this correctly, the navigation menu should now have an orange background.


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12 The selection that you did in step 9 should still be active, but if you accidentally

deselected your selection, dont worry, use Edit > Reselect (Shift + Ctrl + D) to get

it back. Edit > Copy Merged with the highest layer active, and paste the copied

selection in the document that we created in Step 10.

13 Move the Orange highlight to the bottom of the canvas using the Move Tool (V)

and your arrow keys.


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14 Save the document for the web (File > Save for the web) inside the images

folder and name it nav-sprite.jpg.

Creating the "Featured Area" Section

15 To start, toggle the visibility of the tagline text layer, learnmore text layer,andBox Image layer inside the Box folder.

16 Make a 950px by 304px selection using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M)

exactly like the following figure.


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17 With the highest layer active, Edit > Copy Merged (Shift + Ctrl + C), create a

new document: File > New (Ctrl + N), and paste the copied selection onto the new

document. Save this as bg-featured.jpg.

Creating the Content Heading Text

Now we will slice the text for the contents headings (i.e. "About us" and "Featured

Work").

18 Make a selection around the "About Us" text using the Rectangular Marquee Tool

(M); the size of this selection should be 122px by 45px. Refer to the following

figure to see how to make the selection.


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19 Edit > Copy Merged (Ctrl + Shift + C) the selection, File > New (Ctrl + N), and

paste the selection inside the document. Save the document as text-

about.jpginside the images folder.

20 Do a similar selection around "Featured Works", with a selection dimension

of200px by 45px; refer to the following figure for as a reference.

21 Edit > Copy Merged (Ctrl + Shift + C) the selection, File > New (Ctrl + N) to

create a new document and paste the copied selection inside the new document.

Save the document as text-featured.jpg inside the images folder.

Creating the Featured Works Background

Now were going to create the background for Featured works images.


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22 To start, turn off the visibility of the Featured Image layer inside the

FeaturedWork > Featured Work and FeaturedWork > Featured Work 2 folders in the

Layer palette so that were left with just the background only.

23 Make a selection around one of the Featured Works boxes using the Rectangular

Marquee Tool (M); it should be 475px by 166px in dimension (use the following

figure as a reference).


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24 Edit > Copy Merged (Ctrl + Shift + C), create a new document using File > New

(Ctrl + N), and paste the copied selection in the new document. Save this document

as featured-work-bg.jpg.

Were now done with Photoshop, so its time to move onto HTML and CSS!

The Web Page Structure

Lets envision the structure of our web layout so that you can gain a clear

understanding of how everything will work. In the following figure, you can see our

web layout structure:

Some Basic Preparation and a Note on CSS Reset

25 Open up index.html in your favorite text editor or IDE. Link to styles.css, our

web page stylesheet.

26 First, we should reset all of our styles. There are many methods available for CSSReset and you should find one that is robust and fully-featured. Six Revisions uses

a modified hybrid of Eric Meyers CSS Reset and YUI Reset CSS. You can read more

about CSS Reset in an article I wrote called "Resetting Your Styles with CSS Reset".

The following technique we will use for CSS Reset is the universal selector

margin/padding reset: a method that does the job, but isnt the ideal method of

resetting your styles. For the purpose of brevity, I chose to use this for this tutorial


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but I encourage you to explore proper means of resetting your styles (again

check the article I wrote above to learn more about the topic). In styles.css, use the

following style rule.

* { margin:0; padding:0; }

27 With that out of the way, lets lay out our HTML. Our HTML is as follows:

Portfolio Web Design

Home

Portfolio

Services

Contact

This is a catchy tagline for your website and your services.

About Us

Featured Work


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2009 Portfolio Web Design. All Rights Reserved.

We will talk about each part in more detail in the following section.

The Body Background

28 Next we deal with tiling the masthead background horizontally. We the body

background to body-bg.jpg and repeat it horizontally starting from the top left

corner. We also give our web page a light gray background color. We also give

paragraphs in the page some styles to change it from the browser default.

body {

background:#ccc url(images/body-bg.jpg) repeat-x 0 0;

}

p {

font:normal 13px/20px Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;

color:#333;

padding:0;

margin:10px 0 10px 0px;

}

Centering the Design

29 The width of our layout will be fixed at 950px. We place all of our content except

for #footer inside a div called #container. We center the design using the marginCSS property.

#container {

width:950px;

margin:0 auto;


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}

Implementing the Logo in the DesignThe #masthead contains two sections: the logo and the navigation. For the

navigation, were going to use CSS sprites for the mouse hover change. Since we

will be using CSS sprites for the rollover and because the menu items have different

widths, we need to give each list item IDs so that we can reference them.

The structure of our masthead section is:


Home

Portfolio

Services

Contact

30 The logo will contain our sites title, "Portfolio Web Design". We will make

this element a block element, float it to the left so it displays besides the main

navigation, give it the proper size dimensions, and then indent the text to the very

far left where you cant see it, effectively hiding the text.


#masthead h1 {

display:block;

float:left;

width:269px;

height:121px;

text-indent:-9999px;

}

31 Next, we style its child element which will contain the logo as its background.

We give it the same width and height as its parent so that the entire area is

clickable, convert it to a block element, and also give it an outline property of none

so that when you click on the logo, you dont see gray borders around it that

extends to the left of the page.


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#masthead h1 a {

display:block;

width:100%;

height:100%;

background:url(images/logo.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;

outline:none;

}

Putting in the Navigation Menu

32 Now were moving into the navigation menu thats on the right of the logo. The

HTML structure is an unordered list of links with list items having IDs so that we can

reference them later to set the appropriate width and appropriate CSS backgrounds.

First we display the unordered list as a block element, float it to the left to display it

right beside the logo, give it the appropriate width and height, remove the default

bullets by setting the list-style property to "none", and finally placing our navigation

sprite (nav-sprite.jpg) as its background.

#masthead ul {

display:block;

float:left;

height:121px;

list-style:none;

background:url(images/nav-sprite.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;

}

33 Now we style the list items: we float the list items to the left so they display side

by side, make them into block elements, and since we already know that their

heights are the same, we declare this here. Since their widths are different, we need

to give them their own IDs so that we can specify their widths (as well as their

background for the mouse over effect).

#masthead ulli {

display:block;

height:121px;

float:left;

}

34 Since the navigation menus widths are different, we declare style rules for each

of them with the correct dimensions.


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#home {

width:115px;

}

#portfolio {

width:160px;

}

#services {

width:144px;

}

#contact {

width:147px;

}

35 For the child elements inside the list items, we display them as block

elements with the same height and width as their parents so that the entire area is

clickable. Then we also hide the text way to the left using the text-indent property

and remove the gray outline that appears when they are clicked by setting

the outlineproperty to "none".

#masthead ulli a {

display:block;

width:100%;

height:100%;


outline:none;

}

36 Time to deal with the mouse over effect. We set the appropriate background

position for the a:hover style of each link. When done correctly, hovering over a

menu item will change the background color to orange.

li#home a:hover {

background:url(images/nav-sprite.jpg) no-repeat 0 -121px;

}

li#portfolio a:hover {

background:url(images/nav-sprite.jpg) no-repeat -115px-121px;

}

li#services a:hover {


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}

li#contact a:hover {


}

Coding the Featured Area SectionThe Featured Area section is contained in a div called #featured-area.

Inside#featured-area there are two divs that are displayed side-by-

side: #description#, which contains the tagline of our site or any other text content

youd like to say, and#preview, which can contain an image of your choosing.

37 Since the masthead is floated to the left, its best to clear the float of#featured-

area. We give it a fixed height so that it extends the full height of the background

regardless of how short the content is, and then set the background of#featured-area to bg-featured.jpg.

#featured-area {

clear:both;

height:304px;

background:url(images/bg-featured.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;

}

38 Next we give #preview and #description margins to give them the proper

layout alignment, and set their widths, as well as float them so that they display side

by side.

#description {

width:455px;

margin:55px 0 55px 20px;

float:left;

}

#preview {

width:445px;

margin:55px 20px 55px 0;

float:right;

}


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39 We style the paragraph inside #description so that its large and displays as

white color.

#description p {

font:bold 30px/32px "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;

color:#fff;

}

Coding the Main Content Area40 The main content area section consists of a left and right column: #left-

columncontains the mockups "About Us" content and the #right-column contains

the "Featured Work" content; these two guys are inside a div called #main-content.

The styles are basic, floats to display the two columns side-by-side and some basic

styling for the paragraph elements.

#main-content {

width:100%;

float:left;

}

#left-column {

width:430px;

margin-left:20px;

float:left;

}

#right-column {

width:475px;

float:right;

}

CSS Text Image Replacement41 For the "About Us" and "Featured Work" text we use CSS Text Image

Replacement technique similar to the logo where we intent the text to the left where

they cant be seen and use the appropriate images as backgrounds (text-

about.jpgand text-featured.jpg).

h2#about-us {

display:block;

width:100%;

height:45px;


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background:url(images/text-about.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;

}

h2#featured-work {

display:block;

width:100%;

height:45px;


background: url(images/text-featured.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;

clear:both;

}

Featured Work Boxes

42 The Featured Work boxes can contain images or text. The HTML structure is:

43 We set featured-work-bg.jpg as the background of.featured divs and we

place the content of these boxes inside the div with a class of.content. We alsogive.featured some padding so that the div.content will not have content run to

the edge of the featured-work-bg.jpg border.

div.featured {

width:100%;

height:166px;

padding:10px 0 0 10px;

background: url(images/featured-work-bg.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;

}

div.featured div.content {

width:455px;

height:146px;

}

The Footer


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44 The footer section is very simple, it has a width of 100% so that its background

spans the entire width of the page. Inside #footer div, we use a block-

displayed

element that is the same width as #container, and use its margin

property to center it on the design.

#footer {

clear:both;

background-color:#333;

}

#footer p {

margin:0 auto;

padding:0;

width:950px;

color:#ccc;

height:50px;

line-height:50px;

}

Finished!

If you followed through the tutorial, you should have something that looks like the

following preview (click on the image below to go to the live demo page).


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"Dark and Sleek Web Layout" Series

This is the second part of a two-part series that teaches you how to create a dark

and sleek web design mockup in Photoshop and then you how to code it into a

functional web page template.

To make sure you dont miss any of these types of tutorials, please subscribe to

theRSS feed which will notify you right away as soon as tutorials and Six Revisions

articles are published.

y Part 1: Create a Dark and Sleek Web Layout Using Photoshopy Part 2:How to Code a Dark and Sleek Web Design from PhotoshopQuestions?

If you find anything on this tutorial confusing, please leave a comment and well help

you to the best of our abilities. If you spot any mistakes or places where instructions

could be better, please do leave us a note as well.

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