When creating your headlines, don't make it too large. Remember that
different browsers work differently.
Have navigation aids in your web site. A simple "Back..." or even
an image map would greatly help your users manuever through the site.
When creating your web site, show a consistency in design. Use the
same navigation aids throughout site. Use the "cache advantage": downloaded
images will reload from the hard drive instead of the web server, giving
you a fast load time.
Don't use the italics too often. Its use should be limited to
highlighting words and phrases not as whole paragraphs and sentences.
Don't over use bolds or underlines. Like italics, they should only
be used for highlighting words that are important. Using bold for
headlines are fine, but using headlines with underlines is not advised.
Don't highlight your words by blinking! Use italics, underlines,
or bold, but never, ever use blinking! Blinking should be limited
on rare occasions where you want to attract attention in things such as a
dynamic opening page, but never use blinking in places where there's
other page elements around it such as images or text. The main point
of web publishing is to attract users, not annoy them to death.
Center! Centering is probably the most useful formatting tool in the
HTML language, so use it without hesistation.
Replace the standard grey backgrounds to give your page more
style. A white or black background is the safest color you can
use for your background. Using textured backgrounds make reading
difficult, and affect other page elements.
Show file sizes. If your offering files in your sites, tell
the visitors the sizes. Don't leave your users hanging on how
long it'll take them to download a file.
Tell your users when you last updated the site. Have a What's New
section, or newsletter, or just a simple "Last Updated: xx/xx/xx" to tell
your users when the page was last updated. They'll appreciate knowing
whether there's new information since they last visited, or how old the
information is.
Your introduction pages should be short and get right to the point.
Don't display heavy graphics, or assume that the user's browser is
anything larger than 640 x 480. Things like scrolling marquees, animated
GIFs, and non-sense applets only chew up bandwidth and processor speed.
Always give a description for your images. Most browsers display
small windows where the images will be laid out before downloaded. Some
web surfers manually load their images. So describe your image's contents,
and size, and it'll give your users something to look at while your
pictures are being downloaded.
Keep graphics as simple and as small as possible. Remember, that
browsers only use 216 colors. When saving images, save it under the
216-color browser palletes. These palletes can be retrieved from the
software developer of your paint program. If you don't have one, we suggest
you use PaintShop Pro for Windows by JASC, Inc. They offer fully operational
shareware demos at their site. They
also offer the browser pallete for free. If you don't have Windows,
feel free to check out Netscape's site,
they offer more information about this subject.
Don't use construction signs. As you may have noticed, everything in
the Web is always under construction on the Web. Don't be afraid to display
what you have. We suggest you finish your web site locally before uploading
them remotely to your web server.
GIF or JPEG? GIFs are great for line-art images, logos, etc. Things
that you would normally create with a paint program, you'll more than likely
want to use GIF. JPEGs are generally used for photographs, and other
images that have continous-tone.
Frames are great, if there's only two or three of them. Too many
frames will confuse the user. On some browsers, frames
are impossible to bookmark, or to print under. So if you don't need
frames, don't use it!
Learn English (or whatever the language your publishing in). Sure,
we're human and we make mistakes, but watch for spelling and grammar
errors!