By: Philip L. Hayes
Chief Internet Officer
Vertical Villages, Inc.
Want a great-looking background for your Web pages? Try this one:
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Here is the tag for my favorite background: <BODY
bgcolor=white>
;-)
Yes, there is nothing but white in the square above
There are a few (and I do mean a few) exceptions where you might conceivably get away with something other than a black or white background. Just make sure the background colors you choose fit your site's image and don’t get carried away.
Avoid using background images. Think about it… do books and magazines have background images? Do you want people to read the material on your site or be distracted (and slowed down) by a graphic intensive site?
If you still insist on using a background image, be sure to make it very, very light, so that it doesn't obscure the text in front. Test it on every page in your site to make sure it doesn't interfere with the text. Remember… not all visitors will see the text in the same place in relation to the image. This is not your fault. Browsers allow people to customize their default font size and more.
Whatever you do, please don’t use a repeating star of life, ambulance or organizational logo as a background image.
Use graphics only when they really add something necessary to the site. Keep them simple, and keep their file sizes small. Resist your temptation to use a graphic instead of plain HTML text for things like headings and navigation bars. True, HTML text will not look exactly the same in all browsers, but if you use Cascading Style Sheets, you can get a full range of attractive effects with some consistency. Text has MANY advantages including: It loads faster, is visible to people who surf with images off (and to disabled surfers), and is far easier to change and update.
Make sure your graphics are properly prepared for the Web. There are a number of little tricks you need to know, such as optimizing your graphic files, and using the right attributes in your image tags. Programs such as Fireworks and Photoshop can help you optimize them. Never insert a graphic and resize it using the handlebars within the HTML editor. Although you may get the desired display size, the image will no longer be clean and non-pixelated. Even worse, the entire original graphic still needs to load, taking up precious download time.
Poor navigational menus are an instant turn off. Even worse are inconsistent ones. Navigation menus should be clean and consistent throughout the site.
Many sites try use frames to improve navigation, usually by creating a side or top navigational section that stays fixed while the main body text scrolls. There are so many drawbacks to using frames, that you should avoid doing so if at all possible. In certain circumstances frames can be useful, but they can also get you in a lot of trouble if used carelessly. Nothing looks more amateurish than a page that opens in the wrong frame.
In the early days of the Web, pages were laid out in a straight line down a page. Images, paragraphs of text, headings - all came one after another in a vertical line down the page. Long pages were common, and you often had to scroll down a screen or two just to see what the heck was on a page. It wasn't that early designers had no imagination - they had no choice, as early versions of HTML provided no way to create the side-by-side columns that are the basis of page layouts in newspapers and magazines. Fortunately, today’s HTML standard allows a family TABLE tags.
Tables are one of the most important design elements in HTML. In fact, ALL my sites use them. Columns make pages easier to read, and allow much more information to be presented at one time. Although tables are not a perfect way to create columns, they are the only way at the moment, so take your time and learn them thoroughly. A great Web design book is Creating Killer Web Sites, which explains how to avoid the linear look of "first generation" Web sites.
CHEESY!! Monitoring and analyzing your web site's traffic is very important. Professional sites analyze their server logs with tools such as Web Trends to glean a wealth of information about who's visiting. There are plenty of fine tools for doing this available free, so there is never any need to rely on such a crude and imprecise measurement as the so-called "hit counter." The term “hits” in itself is one of the biggest misnomers on the internet. A hit counter is just another piece of visual clutter that serves no purpose, and is considered one of the classic signs of an amateurs site.
EECK! Who came up with that idea? Some “webmasters” spend enough time creating elaborate “Under Construction” animated GIFS and holding pages that they probably could have finished the page in the first place. This is the ultimate sign of an…amateur!
Have you ever seen a magazine, or a TV show, with an "under construction" segment? Web surfers have short attention spans, and very few have the slightest interest in anything that's "coming soon." The number of Web surfers who have ever returned to a link where they found a "coming soon" blurb is probably on the order of one in ten trillion. It's okay to mention upcoming site features in body copy, but not to have a link to a section that doesn't yet exist.
Tip: Some search engines will refuse to list sites that contain "under construction" links.
Professional Web sites should be designed to look acceptable in all major browsers. If you are not testing your site in the various browsers and platforms, you are CRAZY!
Some sites have a tiny blurb at the bottom of the page saying, "This site is designed for such-and-such a browser, such-and-such a screen resolution, etc. etc." Do you really think anyone is going to read this little blurb and then open a different browser and change his or her screen resolution? Then why clutter your pages with this sort of nonsense?
Amateurs' sites always seem to have a bunch of junk cluttering up the pages - banners for this, buttons for that, little icons, blurbs and whatnot. Remember that everything you include on your page increases your visitors' load time, and that a clean, streamlined design looks best.
Sure, some of these doodads may make you a small amount of cash (Amazon), and some are useful for building traffic (LinkExchange and other similar programs). But what's the point of the little Netscape and Explorer icons? Or the banners for obscure search engines that they make you put up in exchange for getting listed? Space on your pages (and on your server) is valuable. If a link, or especially a graphic, isn't earning you real, measurable money or traffic, show the freeloaders the door.
Of course, links are what make the web go round, and some links are well worth having, especially links to business associates and other related sites, awards you've won, and so forth. But arrange them neatly in appropriate places, perhaps on a separate links page. Don't just strew them randomly around the bottom of your home page.
Research, research, research! Although most service providers nowadays are reputable, you need to look closely at the services they provided. The most important things to evaluate when setting up a web hosting account are:
For most organizations, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 bucks a month should get you plenty of Web space for a small site, and unlimited access to your Web server. One of the great things about the Web is the ability to update content quickly and easily, so learn how to make simple changes to your site yourself, and you'll get a lot more out of your Web presence, as well as saving some money.
What do you do when you access a web page that takes a long time to download? Unless it is essential for you to get information off that page, you probably do what most others do in such a situation: you click the STOP button.
Most web users do not have the time or patience to wait a long time for a page to download. 15 to 20 seconds is tops. To have to wait for 1 or more minutes is unacceptable
One of the biggest mistakes that many designers make in designing their web sites is to try to give them so much eye-appeal and to provide so many of the latest Web effects that the site takes forever to download.
Many of today’s web development tools such as Dreamweaver, GoLive and FrontPage will allow you to determine the download time of a page for users with different speed connections. USE IT!
In presenting information on a web page, you usually would like the viewer to read the material. This is true whether the purpose of your site is to promote your business, to provide academic information, or simply to show some personal interests. Unfortunately, with all the web-authoring tools available, some web designers go overboard with their design and actually make the page difficult to read.
Material on your Web pages should be readable on any sized monitor. They also should be printable, unless you have some reason not to want that.