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HTML introduction
general web design
Because Web pages are to be read off a computer screen, over a network, there are several general design principles that should be kept in mind, and used.
- white or empty space
- Make use of a lot of empty space on your page, particularly where text is concerned. Because a Web page does not have the physical edges of paper there is no penalty of using empty space (you can't run off the page) and using a lot of space around your work simply makes it easier to read.
This includes breaking your writing into smaller textual units than is ordinarily the case, which simply means you should make your paragraphs smaller. It also means that whenever you want to write a series of things, then instead of punctuating them with commas, simply make it an unordered list.
- break larger pages into smaller units
- If you have a 2000 word essay that you'd like to put on the web, then don't just place it as a single large web page for downloading. Rewrite the page so that it consists of, for example, 4 500 word essays, each interlinked and each navigable by a text or graphics navigation bar at the top or bottom (or both) of the pages. (There are some good examples of this in the student project work that has been done.)
- keep file sizes small
- The total file size for a Web page should not exceed 30kilobytes (30,000 bytes). This rather ad hoc measurement is based on the premise that a modem can reasonably download approximately 1K per scond, which means that your pages are designed to take no longer than 30 seconds to download. This is important, particularly as many people pay up to $10 per hour for their Internet access.
This size limit is the total of your web page (the html file) plus any graphics it may contain. You can get a rough idea of the file size by selecting each file (a graphic or the HTML page) in the folder window (so that it is highlighted) and choosing
Get Info from under the File menu. This will tell you how much space the file actually takes up.
Careful use of graphics can let you extend this limit, as once an image has been downloaded it is cached on the local machine (the computer that the reader is actually using), so it does not need to be downloaded again. This means it is very fast and efficient to reuse graphics across pages, and you can add one or two small new ones on additional pages if you like.
html primers and style guides
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