Website Balance...

[Mike]

I use XHTML Strict, JavaScript, CSS and PHP. Images are very minimal, if they're used they are compressed beyond belief. Like somebody said, keep sites to a maximum of 770 pixels wide and no frames. I don't use flash, as it's too much of a bandwith eater. Tables are also slowly being thrown out, so start using divs people!

You should try to be accessible, always use alt text, don't specify your font in px use em, a percentage or a relative size (small, medium, large) instead. Try to not use graphics to display text, people with screen magnifiers will find it blurry.

[robot180]

I never thought about it, but I use pixels for fonts. I'll have to update myself on this stuff again. I know that and heard several people say that div tags are better and I made the last two versions of our team's website with div tags, but both times, they caused so many problems that I ended up disecting the coding and switching to tables. The tables work perfectly, even though they load slower, it works better. I think that div tags have to be developed more before I will start using them.

The worst is when I put an image in a div tag that is larger then the division. I set the div width to a certain width and the image to 100%. The image, in some browsers, tries to be 100% of the entire page, but is moved to the right, or where ever the div is, and a left/right scroll bar is used. When I use tables, images always work correctly. I can use percents with images in tables and for the tables so the page resizes for different resolutions. If anyone has tips for me on this, PM me or email me or something.

[Mike]

Originally Posted by robot180

The image, in some browsers, tries to be 100% of the entire page, but is moved to the right, or where ever the div is, and a left/right scroll bar is used.

That's why I really wish companies like Microsoft would actually make their browsers W3C standards compliant. This way when your making a major site, you don't have to work extra for their lack of sensibility.

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by MikeWasHere05

That's why I really wish companies like Microsoft would actually make their browsers W3C standards compliant. This way when your making a major site, you don't have to work extra for their lack of sensibility.

IE7.0 will be 100% CSS 1 & 2 compliment and maybe 3 complient.

Its not in that link, but its what I've heard from a couple reliable places.

[Greg Marra]

Originally Posted by DarkJedi613

IE7.0 will be 100% CSS 1 & 2 compliment and maybe 3 complient.

Its not in that link, but its what I've heard from a couple reliable places.

Great. Only three years until the majority of Windows users will have it.

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by Greg Marra

Great. Only three years until the majority of Windows users will have it.

Just in time for us when we join the work force.

Windows Update will actually probably update most people rather quickly...as long as IE7.0 is available for pre-XP operating systems.

[Dan Zollman]

A few things...

Remember to always use the correct DOCTYPE declaration. This is the best way to make sure the browser uses the right DTD and processes code the W3C way, not according to the browser's standards.

I always consider the points in the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (although I don't try to conform to it; it's crazy-strict) when making a web page. WAI sets certain goals to make web pages as accessible as possible to all browsers, people on any computer with any internet connection, and people with disabilities. This includes designing web pages so that they don't need stylesheets to be properly viewed. Information on WAI can be found at http://www.w3.org/WAI .

Flash...
I prefer not to use flash. Not everyone has flash, and loading time can be very long. Visiting flash sites is not worth it to me: I use a slow Mac OS 9.1 with 56k dialup. As said above, flash files are bandwidth eaters, and it doesn't always look good.

Frames... Use of frames in general is not recommended. Not all browsers support frames. Frames can make it hard to navigate a web page if a frame is too small.

<noscript> can be used to deal with browsers that don't support script, but that can be unreliable. Once in a while there are also differences in the way browsers handle javascript. Better to have the server handle script (i.e. with php) where the output is going to be consistent than to have the user's computer handle script.

Dimensioning and resolution: If absolute units must be used, then px and em should be used. pt for font-size is not consistent.
Using percentages can be tricky. Just make sure that all related or nested elements agree with each other in terms of size. Dealing with resolution problems doesn't have an easy solution.