Standards

The basic language used to create web sites is HTML (HyperText Markup Language). There are extensions to this but this is the best place to begin. HTML is a standard language that is defined by an organization called World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Adhering to a standard helps to insure that what you create will have the appearance you expect regardless of the browser a visitor to your site is using.

Unfortunately, most browsers have some peculiarities built in and can show things incorrectly. This is true of Internet Explorer and Firefox, two of the most widely used browsers. Both are coming more closely in line with the standard as new releases become available, but you still have to deal with knowing that older browsers will be out there.

If you write you web site using a text editor and insert the HTML commands yourself, you have the most control over keeping your site in compliance with the standard. You will still need to know about the exceptions and there are several refence books on the subject. One such book is Spring into HTML and CSS by Molly E. Holzschlag.

Generators

There are HTML generation tools that create the HTML code while you type in an application such as Microsoft Word. These tools typically generate a lot more code than necessary to acheive the desired result. These tools can also rely heavily on the specific nature of a particular browser, resulting in web sites that look fine in one browser but are unreadable in another.

Tools are much further behind in the standards curve than the browsers are, and so we recommend against their use for that reason. Another problem, however, is that modifying the site at a later date can be very time consuming depending upon the changes being made. Trying to manually clean the code up using a text editor is next to impossible, and so fixing browser specific inconsistencies can be a frustrating experience.

If you can learn HTML (and CSS) then creating your site with a text editor is the most reliable way to obtain your desired results. If you must use a generator, then you should run it through a validator and check it on several types of browsers before considering it completed.

Layout

Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Many sites have some basic similarities for a reason, visitors expect things to be in certain places. Attempting to deviate from this may only cause visitors to your site to become frustrated and leave.

Have your logo in the upper left. Use the top to indicate to the visitor where they are. Keep you navigation buttons (menu bar) along the left side or at the top. Keep your copyright at the bottom.

The reason for these locations are due to how browsers resize and clip content. The left and top are the starting points and always visible. The page expands toward the left and down and these portions clip content when no space is available.

Colors

Color provides impact and says a lot about your site in many subtle ways. It is, however, very easy to abuse color and create a site that is too busy or impossible to read. The number of colors should be kept low to help insure all visitors will see similar results. If a visitor's computer has insufficient capacity to display all the colors of your site, things will start to change in ways beyond your control.

Contrasting colors should be used for background and foreground to increase the ability to read the text. Similar colors are very hard to read and minor color changes by a visitor's browser can render it impossible to read. Dark colors on white background are best. Background images should be light and of low contrast to prevent interfering with the text. Color combinations that are associatedi with common types of color blindness should be avoided.

Images

Pictures, like color, help to enhance the web site and make the experience a pleasant one for the visitor. But too many pictures, or images that are too large or have too many colors will slow down the loading of you web pages. This will have a very negative impact on the visitor.

Edit you images to reduce the colors used to only that needed to produce the quality required. When a large image is needed try to use a smaller version of it as a link that the visitor can click to get the full size image.

The browser will normally try to load all the information it needs to determine the proper sizes of each element in the page before it begins to draw any of it. When defining your images, be certain to include their size so the browser can draw the page before loading the image. It gives the appearance of a faster loading site.

Navigation

Test all of your links and insure your navigation buttons work on a variety of browsers and window sizes. If you are using buttons that are images instead of text then having alternative text messages defined is helpful as well as a text only navigation bar located at either the top or bottom of the page.

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