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General Guidelines

• Design is secondary to content. Without content you have an art project, not a Web site.
• A good web site is clear and easy to read.
• Create descriptive titles and subtitles for each page.
• Design for different browsers on various platforms.
• Always test your site for errors and bad links.
• Use relative URLs for portability.
• Include a date on all pages.
• Provide a method for feedback.
• Keep your page less than 100K.
• Pages should not be longer than 4-5 screens.
• Warn readers of a file size that is larger than 100K.
• Connect every page at your site to a Menu or Submenu.
• Construct pages with information at the top that will keep the viewer engaged while the bottom of the page loads. It should come up in 10-15 seconds.
• Provide a navigation bar on each page.
• Provide a search option if your site has more than 30 pages.

• Keep the number of graphics to a minimum.
• Reduce the color depth of image.
• Resolution and color depth affect download time.

  Resolution	8-Bit Color Depth	Download at 28.8 Kbps	Download at 128 Kbps	24-Bit Color Depth	Download at 28.8 Kbps	Download at 128 Kbps
  160 x 120	19.2 Kb	5 seconds	1 second	57.6 Kb	16 seconds	4 seconds
  320 x 240	76.9 Kb	21 seconds	5 second	230.4 Kb	64 seconds	14 seconds
  640 x 480	307.2 Kb	85 seconds	19 seconds	921.6 Kb	256 seconds	58 seconds

• Rely on GIF format for simple, flat art or line drawings.
• Save GIF files as "Interlaced" (GIF type 89a).
• Use JPEG format for photographs and other continuous tone images.
• Avoid using large graphic menus.
• Keep graphics and picture less than 400 pixels in width (about 2/3 of the average screen size).
• Limit the size of graphic files to 25-30K.
• Use thumbnails for large images.
• Use Width and Height tags to tell the browsers the size of your graphics.
  <'IMG SRC="demo.gif" WIDTH="150" HEIGHT="100">
• Use the "ALT=" feature to include a one- to four-word description of the graphics.

• Spell check
• Do not use tags to specify the size of the text.
• Use logical rather than physical styles if possible. Use or instead of or
• Use dark text on light background or light text on a dark background.
• Limit the use of blinking text.

Digital Audio and Video

• Use only where appropriate.
• Limit the size of audio and video files.
• Store multimedia elements in standard formats.
• Include file size information in links.

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Developing Web Site Structure

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A Web site in hierarchical structure

A confusing Web structure

A shallow Web site hierarchy

A deep Web site hierarchy

A well-balanced Web site hierarchy

* Source: Lynch, P.J. (1995). Web Style manual. Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media.

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