NWE Help: Web: Authoring: Design: Alignment

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A lot of web sites that are made give little thought to the alignment of their elements. Alas, the result of this is that these sites often feel a little confusing or disorganized. Many times, by carefully considering the way the elements in your site are arranged, you can give the site a unified look that the reader--often unconsciously--will pick up on.

The two guidelines you should use when considering alignment in your site are these:

1. Everything on your page should have some relationship with other things on the page
2. Strong lines give a sense of unity.

Our example below shows one web page with an ill-considered design scheme and the same document with a much more solid one.

Sloppy use of centering	Strong lines created by careful alignment
While the information in the text above is explained pretty clearly, there is a bit of confusion to it. The images are different sizes and centered, which results in a messy page.	By repeating the size of the image, and aligning both text and image (note the alignment of the Title with the images on the right and text on the left), this document is given a much more unified feel.

Images borrowed from: Back to the Future, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and The Bride of Frankenstein