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Web Services College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences

Best Practices

Why reinvent the wheel and duplicate effort? Below are tried and true methods for delivering usable, accessible web sites.

Design tips

  • Design for your audience, not for what you think is cool. In other words, make your site functional first, then add the decoration.
  • When creating a visual layout, keep in mind how it will be built in XHTML and CSS.

Coding tips

  • HTML
    • Use XHTML 1.0 Transitional or Strict, not HTML 4.01 or older. This allows simpler future extensibility and interconnectivity when delivering your content via other methods, such as RSS feeds.
    • Structure your site tags cleanly and efficiently. If necessary, draw out the layout on paper before a single line of code is typed.
    • DON'T use HTML for style or layout, CSS is to be used for separating content from presentation. The most typical old-school application of HTML for layout is the use of tables for positioning of elements on the page.
  • CSS
    • NEVER use inline CSS; CSS should be in a separately referenced file, or in a pinch can be placed in the <head> tag if it's to be applied only on a single page sitelet.
    • Code semantically:
      • For instance, make proper use of h1-6 tags—don't just bold or style text meant to be headings.
      • Another example: don't use the <blockquote> tag to indent some text if you're not actually quoting a block of text. Use CSS styling to do that.
    • Avoid overspecific class tags, which limit their flexibility for application on various page and content elements.
    • Try to keep coding for browser quirks to a minimum. For instance, one of the only quirks we allow for is nested <ul> and <li> tags for navigation: nested list items must be coded inline or else IE6/Windows will treat each <li> as having separate line breaks.

Usability tips

  • Put yourself in your audience's shoes when creating your design and information layout.
  • Audience testing is essential to honing your site for optimal usability.

Accessibility tips

  • Creating sites that are accessible by the impaired is mandatory, not an option.
  • Making accessible sites means reaching more users worldwide. Designing with more text for navigation means your site can be translated for audiences who read other languages.
  • Medium-specific stylesheets make tasks like printing pages or viewing on PDAs or cellphones even more accessible.