Do's and Don'ts in Web Design - part 1 (design)
Do use a consistent look and
feel Your site should stand out as a whole. Use
the same look and feel for all the pages at your site. This way
your visitors have a sense of recognition when they visit
various pages. Using stylesheets makes it much easier to
maintain the look and feel of numerous pages.
Don't use dark
backgrounds Dark backgrounds tend to make text
less readable. So avoid dark colors or dark backgroundimages. If
you do need them, use a nonserif font for the text (like Arial,
Universe, Helvetica) and be sure to not to use a small fontsize.
Do use recurring visual
elements Repeat visual elements (images, colors,
fonts etc.) on several pages. This will add to a consistent look
and feel.
Don't cram your
pages A page with text pushed aside against the
border of a table - or an image - looks awful. Don't cram your
pages, use colspan and borderspan for tables and vspan and hspan
for applets and images.
Do vertical align the content of
table cells You do you use table cells to get
your info on the right position? Then be sure to align the
content vertically.
Don't push your table out of the
screen Tables are very flexible. They're able to
get almost anything more or less visible on a screen. But by
putting large elements in a table cell you might force the cells
to become too large. Thus making horizontal scrolling necessary.
So limit the number and size of pictures, long words (e.g. long
links), predefined text etc.
Don't overuse
frames Use only a limited number of frames.
Always check if the screen doesn't get crammed if a low
resolution screen is used.
Don't mix horizontal
aligning Mixing centered text and text that's
left aligned makes a mess of your page. If you want to center
text do it consistently. Exceptions are centering text of
headers or centered text placed in a border.
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