Forum Moderators: not2easy
1.) Do not design static 800 width websites. Or if you do be sure to include some complementry background and center your website. Add opening areas that make the 800 width div (or table if you still use tables or require pixel precision) to give a less static feel.
2.) Do not use static width over 640px. While virtually not even a tenth of a percent of people use 640x480 any more there are some people that do. Furthormore people who use WebTV which is now own by M$ are limited to I believe a 512px wide screen. You should make every possible effort to use dynamic widths and hieghts for large items.
3.) Don't make small images using jpeg compression. Photoshop does a smashing job at preserving awesome colors for the 8bit gif format and up to about 100x100 resolution will be reasonably small then a medium compressed jpeg and have better quality. Even better if your image uses very few colors you can reduce the color depth in Photoshop until you feel you have a reasonable balance between colors and size. Too few colors though will ruin your image.
4.) PNGs are great but IE doesn't support alpha channels (STILL). You will have to use gifs if your image needs to be transparent.
5.) Don't use dreamweavers rollover effects. They are bloated and a waste of time, contains tons of crappy code that few people understand and take you off track from using CSS. Use the following example instead. Also keep in mind that if you are forced to cater to IE this is what you would do since IE6 (IE7 which at the time of this post has not yet been released probally won't support :hover).
<div class="mouseout" onmouseover="this.className='mouseover'" onmouseout="this.className='mouseout'">
6.) Unless you need pixel precision you should use DIVs. To get a row of DIVs to make a horizontal menu then set the CSS to use float: left;. Each DIV will now appear to the right of the DIV above it in the code. BR to break to the next line.
7.) Maximize your usage of CSS and reduce the ususage of graphics in your work. You'll not only learn more by demanding more from yourself but you'll also make those pages load faster for about HALF the people around the world who still use dialup do to it being cheaper and cable isps failing to reduce their rates.
8.) Don't use lots of clutter. When you walk in to a store you're more then likely looking for something. If you see nothing but clutter you'll enjoy being there less. Typically techies like lots of text and non-technies prefer less text. Depending on your site's audience you may or may not want to change your practices.
9.) DO NOT MAKE ALL FLASH WEBSITES! Flash is NOT intended to replace HTML. When you create an all flash web-site you now kill your ranking in search engines who now have no or very little clue what your site is about. Unless your url is super easy to remember or you have thousands of incoming links on msn, yahoo, and google your site won't be getting found on search engines.
10.) Bad navigation will cripple your web-site. If you have friends or cow-workers who are not techically inclined and don't understand your menu or cant even find it then you need to scratch it out and start over or at least put a LOT of work in to the existing menus you have. Non-techy people are who you want to test your work with as if they can understand and get around your site and meet the goals that you want them to while visiting then you can assume everyone in general should be able to do the same.
Oh and as for my "cow-workers" ... I work with some, but I'd never acually SAY IT! Brutal... ;0)
-- Zak
5.) Don't use dreamweavers rollover effects. They are bloated and a waste of time, contains tons of crappy code that few people understand and take you off track from using CSS.
I couldn't agree with you more. Although DW rollover effects are simple to use, the code does get pretty bloated. I'm guilty of using them, but have recently begun the process of moving my navigation into pure CSS. Code is so much slimmer.
7.) Maximize your usage of CSS and reduce the ususage of graphics in your work. You'll not only learn more by demanding more from yourself but you'll also make those pages load faster for about HALF the people around the world who still use dialup do to it being cheaper and cable isps failing to reduce their rates.
Again, great advice. CSS can really slim down your code. And it does some amazing things you never would have thought. When I first started, I had no idea I could make a navigation menu in just css! Page load times are cut in half. There are great CSS tutorials all over the web (including some on this site) that are extremely helpful in getting started.
9.) DO NOT MAKE ALL FLASH WEBSITES! Flash is NOT intended to replace HTML.
I think recently the move has been to all flash sites, unfortunately. It's a great component to a site. But it leaves out a big chunk of the market of people who can't view it due to old browsers or never installing the plugin. It's a peeve of mine. Yes, we all know that you have tons of money to toss to some designer to make an all-flash site. Good for you. But how many people can access that site? Just irks me.
