The following outlines my personal views on good WWW page principles.
Most of the guidelines follow directly from the principle that pages
should be designed to work well on whatever hardware/software the user
is running. HTML was after all designed specifically so as not to
make assumptions of the end users hardware or software, a page
designed in HTML should be viewable anywhere!
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Frames
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Far too often frames are used "because they are there" rather than
because they are the best presentation solution. There are a number of
problems with frames, the two main ones are the additional screen
realestate they consume and their weakness when it comes to bookmarking.
If you decide frames are the best way to organise your site then make
sure you provide a frameless version as supported by the HTML frame
tags.
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Graphic load
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Don't overload your pages with graphics which cause it to download
slowly. "Front pages" in particular which you expect users to view
frequently should be as lean as possible. Given that modems are
generally the slowest part of the connection and if you use the rule of
thumb that 5 seconds is a reasonable load time, this gives you a total
of only about 30K (assuming a 56K modem).
Don't fall into the trap of viewing/testing your pages from the hard
disk of the machine you are working on. Always test your pages (or have them
shown to you) using modems as this is how most of your users will view
them.
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Java Script
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While some parts of a site might require Java for a functional
purpose don't make it manditory if it is only being used for asthetic
purposes. As of the time of writing it is still very common for users
to turn Java off in their browsers.
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Window size
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Far too many sites design their pages for particular screen sizes,
a width of 800 pixels is often assumed on the basis that most people
will have that size monitor. This is false reasoning, why should people
set their browser to occupy the whole screen, the browser is just another
application that shares screen realestate with other applications.
A WWW page should work well with any browser window width.
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Banner Advertising
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Don't! Well, at least don't if you developing a business site. Why should
you advertise other peoples WWW sites or products when you're trying to
promote your own.
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Consistency
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Try to make your whole site consistent, use the same background for
related areas, the same colour scheme, table arrangement etc.
A particularly nice way to achieve this is with server side includes
offered by the better WWW servers.
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Plugins
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Requiring plugins is the fastest way to lose viewers. If you do require
a plugin to deliver some content then don't use it on the "front page"
and try to offer some alternative for those who are unable or unwilling
to acquire that particular plugin. Don't listen to advise that suggests
that some plugins are "standard". Plugins are very rarely available for
all the hardware platforms being used by your potential views, eg:
MSWindows, Macintosh, and the myriad of UNIX platforms.
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Browser Specifics
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Keep away from those HTML tags that are browser specific unless you
plan to automatically detect which browser the user has and redirect to
an appropriate page.
Related to this is the testing of your site on as many browsers as possible
including previous versions of popular browsers as well as browsers
with a minority market share. Making your site as compatable as possible
is not only user friendly but often gives you insights on the most compatable
layout methods.
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Text Colours
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Try to resist the temptation of using coloured text on coloured backgrounds.
Not only is this likely to be hard to read unless you have a good grounding
in colour theory but the results are generally unpredictable on systems with
variable gamma distributions.
Similarly, avoid changing the colour of links, this is a standard
recognised by people browsing the web.
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Site Map
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Site maps are very valuable tools enabling users to jump to key points of
your site without backtracking as well as giving an overall view of where
material is located.
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Image size specification
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Use the "width' and "height" options with the "img" tag. It helps browsers
format the page quickly otherwise the image has to be downloaded before the
page can be laid out. This is particularly important for images within
table cells and enables pages to format correctly even if the user has
images turned off.
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Font typefaces
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Don't use font typeface tags, there is no way you should assume users
have the same fonts you have on your system. This is one of the greatest
crimes HTML graphical user interfaces and converters make. MSWindows
users fail to realise for example that most other computer brands don't
have the Arial typeface.
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Correct links
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It should go without saying the links should always work, surprisingly
many don't. Linking to sites outside your control is the normal cause,
if the offsite link disappears or changes the bad link reflects badly on
you pages. Regarding linking to page within your site you should regularly
check the error logs generated by all WWW servers to identify accidental
errors or URL spelling mistakes.
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