So you want to write a web page?

Do

Be clear about the purpose of your site
Concentrate on your site's content
Design your site so that it can be viewed easily with any browser
Include the date of last modification on all pages

Don't

Don't try to dictate exactly how the viewer's screen will look (because you can't)
Don't use a small font for blocks of text
Don't be afraid to keep a page simple

These are some of my thoughts regarding web page design. It's not a complete guide for designing a web site, but it presents what I think are some good principles to follow. I'll add to this as ideas come to me, and when I have the time. (Or when I get pissed off by a badly designed site -- or impressed by a good one.) Eventually, I'll add links to good sites about web design.

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."

-Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996

Chris F.A. Johnson

webdesign.html updated 2002-10-21