Ever heard of the World Wide Web being called the World Wide Wait
This page deals with design philosophy, not HTML coding. For that there's one link down below and that document contains more useful links.
There are 2 types of fault.
After a while you may notice that the web pages that are made by the people who really know stuff are quite simple, and of course have a much higher information content.
The others have a sort of trashy quality like advertisments. This seems to be a definite fashion.
There's a big disadvantage to graphics. Do you actually have a reason to
include lots of graphics? Each one will make the viewer wait for it to
download, and then wait some more for the next one, then the one after
that, ....... and on and on. That is the cause of the World Wide Web being
branded the World Wide Wait
Is
there really a point to scattering graphics around?
One of the main faults of professionaly designed pages is that lots of small graphics are used to display single words! For each word you have to wait another two seconds. And what's the point? These pages come from people who should know better. Those people could use the excuse "Just select your browser option that disables graphics downloading" Oh yeah? This often doesn't work and if it does, you are left looking at a mess of blank boxes because they haven't provided any alternative text. Good design? What would you say to someone who produced a car with 5 reverse gears and one forward gear.
The next fault is over complexity. There are all sorts of complex coding to do all sorts of things - often just gimmicks. Again, these pages take a while to download, and again what is the point? It's all very nice to have things happen that don't with plain HTML, but do you need it. Example, something happens when you move the cursor over some part of the page, before even clicking. Gimmicks.
How does sort of thing get through?
I'm sure the designer, professionals included, test the page on a computer
on a high speed Local Area Network and doesn't have to be downloaded
through a modem. Good design?
If you keep it simple then it doesn't matter what machine the viewer is using.
I do all my coding by hand. Virtually everybody seems to use special web
design software (web authoring tools). One of the first things in the web
authoring FAQ by the Web Design Group is:
Keep in mind that
typically the less HTML the tool requires you to know, the worse the output
of the HTML. In other words, you can always do it better by hand if you
take the time to learn a little HTML.