Some Advice on Web Authoring Style

Each page must stand alone.

Have you ever followed a hyperlink to find yourself in the middle of some web site that made no sense? Likely, the author presumed that you'd seen some preceding pages in a sequence that provided context... or so he or she thought. Avoid this error by providing hyperlinks (with meaningful labels) to related and contextual pages (navigation aids).

How are your readers finding you?

Finding out which pages have pointers to yours is a challenge. There is no way to get an exhaustive list, but some search engines do capture this information and can be queried. Alta Vista is one such. For example, to find links to mypage.html on www.mysite.com, enter your search string as:

+link:www.mysite.com/mypage

Sign your work.

Here's a strong case for signing your documents by Bruno Gerschweiler, March 12, 1995.

Read Tim Berners-Lee's style guide.

Etiquette for webmasters.

Think about your information structure; plan your navigation paths.

Test your pages with live users.

Don't use Click Here as a hyperlink; use the subject.

Use spacing, indentation, and comments in your markup.

Keep pages short. Link to other pages for detail.

Test your pages with several browsers.

Use plenty of white space.

Test all of your links periodically.

Use a spelling checker.

Provide the sizes of images, audio and video clips.

Use thumbnails.