World Wide Web Tips

Suggestions

• Content, content, content
  All the graphics and design gimics in the world can't hide the fact that nothing's there, or that what is there is a mess.

• Develop consistant graphics and navigation
  And while we're at it: Let links look like links

• Don't overconstrain column widths in a table
  Microsoft FrontPage is especially bad at this. When specifying column widths in pixels, at least one column should be free to "float".

• Preview your work on different browsers at different screen resolutions
  Everybody else will. Why wait for them to find something that doesn't look right.

• Avoid frames
  Consider using server side includes, or a similar server-side scripting language to build the page on the fly instead.

• Specify width, height, and alt tags for images
  The pages will load faster with width and height tags. alt tags help users with text-based browsers and those with accessibility issues.

• Know when to use GIFs and when to use JPEGs

Things not to have on your web site

• "click here"
  Links should appear at logical places in the text. A good example of this can be found in the old AOL sucks site where key words and phrases are highlighted as links to pages containing more information about that topic. Alternatively, URLs can be included in the link like this:

  ...the AOL Sucks site (http://www.aolsucks.org/)

• best viewed at ___ by ___ resolution.
  Translation: I only know how to code web sites for one screen resolution, so you'd better hope that your screen resolution is the same as mine!

• best viewed with _________ browser
  Why would anyone include features that users of other browsers can't see? What about site vistors using other devices such as palm-top computers to visit the site?
  

© 2000 Thomas Brightbill

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