[evulish]

If I were a judge for the webpages, I would most definitly see how small the content could go. So many sites break when you make them smaller. The content goes all over the place because it wasn't made correctly. Even though not many people run their web browsers at 50px x 50px, it can show if you made some mistakes. Personally, I criticize a whole bunch of websites a day because I hang around an HTML channel on IRC where alot of web designers ask for advice. The ABSOLUTE FIRST thing you need to work on is CONTENT. I don't think that can be stressed enough! Content first, pretty fun stuff second. I think the best thing (design-wise) is the flexibility of a site. I have access to: IE, Netscape (win/lin), Mozilla(win/lin/osx), Konqueror, Galeon, Safari, IE 5.2 for Mac, and Opera. I know it's near impossible to make a complex site work in all those (especially IE 5.2 for Mac *shakes head*) but it should be some-what close. You should never make a website browser-specific. Also, in my humble opinion, sites fully-designed in flash are bad. Even if you have an HTML 'back-up' site, it's usually missing content or isn't taken care of. Another warning is that a lot of people have javascript disabled. A few people also have cookies disabled and don't have Java installed.

Some of the best sites are the simplest. You don't need lots of fancy graphics, animations, or sound when you have a nice design.

(Also, Kudos in advance to the teams that made their pages w3c compliant! )