Mindy's
Comments on first Web sites.
1.
In e-mails, include the complete URL's. To make it foolproof and clickable,
include the URL in brackets. There is a bad first impression
if the address in the e-mail is not clickable. Including brackets allows
the writer to be punctuation correct by putting the period after the
brackets (angles). *Don't apply to a job from an AOL account.
2. E-mail addresses on the sites. Be careful of words chosen on a corporate
site. "Contact" Should include a seperate page with allthe contact information.
Including, address, e-mail, phone, names, fax, etc. Every site must
include a visible, clickable link for e-mail.
3. White Backgrounds Must always define background colors in the body
tag. Always check tags you assume are the same for all users.
In the Non-Designer's book on page 129, the main argument for why one
needs to pay attention to size/fonts and design. Need to worry about
how page degrades,does it degrade gracefully? The Home page is the first
impression, so it is the most important.
4. Home page Titles If the title is too long, it will be cut off. Home
page is two words. Follow AP stylebook for writing in this class.
Jacob Neilson, a famous designer, has made some suggestions. 1. Put
the name of the Corporation in the title EX. "General Motors", not "Welcome
to General Motors"
5. Put the symbol(#) in the color code. EX. Black="#000000" Put quotes
around all attributes. (IE will interpret attributes anyway.)
6. Four attributes must be in the tag. TEXT="color" LINK="color" VLINK="color"
visited link ALINK="color" activated link bgcolor="color"
Background="color" is for image/table backgrounds.
IF you make VLINK a different color - it is easier for users. Feedback
-when user gets aflash of color (ALINK), it lets them know that they
have clicked.
7. Image tags Must use width/height. This helpsthepage load faster.
No image should be bigger than 50KB, 35KB for slower computers. Optimize
for user, so they don't have to wait. 1/10th of a second and the user
considers the site slow. Twenty seconds and the user goes away. (500KB)
or 1/2MB is really big. *Consider the trade-off of the site. Will the
user be happy to wait because the site is fantastic?
8. AlT tags Every image should have alt tags. (Wireless world doesn't
use images.) Buttons must have alt tags.
9. Spacing Don't use several br breaks in a row. This is a cluge, a
sloppy, desparate solution. Use tables
TR TD height="10" /TD /TR Look up in Google- "single pixel gif" To master
tables go to FAQ-Resource pages.