Design Guidelines

You may want to follow a few guidelines that make for better looking web pages.  Remember that there will be many people visiting your page, and if they have trouble with your site they probably won't want to return.

• Don't use too many images

  Images, especially if they are large (meaning they take up a lot of memory), take longer to download than text.  No one wants to sit around for several minutes waiting for an image to load.  Add a couple of small images to make your home page look nice, but don't overload it.

   

• Make your site easy to navigate.

  Try to include a table of contents on your main page to all your other pages.  Make sure each page on your site has a link to your main page.  If you were a person reading your site having never been there before, is it easy to 'get around' and find what you're looking for?

   

• Try to make your pages consistent.

  This means using the same colors, font, navigation, and general "feel." This "feel" is what gives your site it's individuality, and you want it to be present and consistent throughout your whole site.  You don't want to confuse your viewers as to how to move around your site.

   

• Check your Spelling and Grammar.

  Try not to make spelling and grammatical mistakes.  While browsing, many people subconsciously expect web pages to read like books or magazines.  What would you do if you were reading a magazine and you came across spelling errors?

Learning HTML

Now let's go on to creating Your First Home Page in HTML.  There are two tutorials to choose from:

• HTML 3.2 - The old standby, all browsers can read pages created in HTML version 3.2.
• HTML 4.01 (with Style Sheets) - This is a more modern version of HTML which, along with CSS Version 2 is readable by all the latest browsers.

Note: This Section was written in a different version of HTML (Internet Explorer 3.0) no longer popular.  It's use of CSS version 1 style sheets would not look right on Netscape browsers of the time.

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