Good Design - Aligning Your Elements
For another in our series of posts on good design tips, I have my own favorite tool that you can use to make your site look a little more professional. Best of all, it’s easy to use!
A favorite feature of mine in SiteBuilder is the easy alignment tool. I look at a LOT of web pages as part of my job, and one of the things I see that can make a website look especially unprofessional is when the elements on a page don’t quite match up with each other. You may not even be able to pinpoint why it looks bad when the alignment is off by only a few pixels, but even that small amount can make a big difference in the way you feel about a web page. The reason may not be obvious, but sometimes you just feel when there’s something not quite right about a web page. Fortunately, those problems are easy to fix on your own site with SiteBuilder. Whenever you have elements you want to align, just select them and in the Properties Editor you’ll see where you can align them either vertically or horizontally.
Figure 1. Before aligning:
Figure 2: Elements aligned!
You can also use this tool to center elements! It’s a short and simple fix, but one that will make your pages look sharper and more professional. Give it a try!
December 4, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Wow! You guys never cease to amaze me!! I look forward to your tools every month! I would never have found that tool without this email! Thanks so much!!! You guys are great!
Merry Christmas!
Monica Boyer
Indiana Voice for the Family
December 4, 2007 at 7:00 pm
thanks the tips are very helpful.
December 4, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I’m very un-professional but your alignment tip really did help A LOT! Thanks. I have only aligned a few pages and will work on the other pages later…It’s T.V. and wine time right now!
Have a great hair day! Becci
December 4, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Thanks for that great tip. You are so right–it makes a lot of difference and I would never have thought of that on my own.
Tricia
December 5, 2007 at 7:01 am
Great! Now I do not need to use Snap To Grid which worked okay for aligning text and graphics. And now I do not need to turn on the gridlines and count the boxes on the left and right to center my text and graphics, then turn off the gridlines.
Also, never underestimate the power of Undo. If you make an adjustment and you do not like it you can always use Edit, Undo to put things back the way you had it, and try again.
Thanks for reminding us about the Alignment feature,
Randy Long
Zombie Joes & LimeCat Family Theater Web Designer
December 5, 2007 at 4:48 pm
As a pro, I have always used something similar with Joomla! and SharePoint
December 21, 2007 at 9:48 am
I can’t find the align feature. I see the position and size but align is not above it. Have I missed an update? Help!
January 1, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I love you guys. You’re almost always there for me. The “almost” comes from being unable, despite all the help you’ve given, to add music to my site. My Bro-in-law (a psychologist) couldn’t figure it out from your directions either. Finally he found a different way to do it and I have my music on both of my sites. Other than that I am 7th heaven. Namaste’ Sonny
April 5, 2008 at 11:57 pm
[...] your elements – I’ve already blogged once before about how to align elements. Aligning is a must with forms; they really benefit from having items within them aligned, making [...]
May 11, 2008 at 2:07 am
Great thread! , i like these tips, its looks that i knew just small part of it.