The following tricks and tips are just some of the ideas I picked up whilst doing the redesign of this site. I'll post them here, in the hope they'll be useful. Of course, if you think a particular feature on my site is just too damn annoying, then you probably won't want to learn how to do it. Enjoy.
The drop-down menus I used to have at the top of each page (which you may or may not see, depending on your browser) were generated by Macromedia Fireworks, who offer a 30-day free trial. You may find yourself creating a lot of features oin 30 days or less! You can program them yourself, or you can find a site who's already done it, and steal their code. Steal mine if you like, it's easy enough to get working. Make sure there is some text alternative - most people now turn JavaScript off (to disable pop-up adverts) and don't rely on detecting JavaScript support either (this will fail on a browser which supports it, but has support turned off!).
The fashion recently tends to be for simple layouts, and clear, easy-to-read sites. Successful sites such as dilbert, google, yahoo, builder, download, they all have very simple layouts. Granted, most of them depend on content not presentation for their users, but nonetheless, many otherwise great sites have lost visitors who turn up and the front page and just don't know where to start reading. Why use <p> when <p><font face="Verdana, Sans Serife" color="palegoldenrod" size="+2" align="center"> will do?
If you want to know how compatible your site is, use W3C's validator, and they will tell you what's wrong with the page, anything which may stop it displaying in certain browsers. Compiance with their standard is no guarantee it wil display correctly in a browser, so test your site as well. Another useful place is Netscape's web site garage, which displays various reports on your site. Of course, Submit Corner will check your meta tags, which you can generate here.
Easy enough. Just save the icon as www.mysite.com/favicon.ico, it needs to be 16x16x16, I think. IE5 will then display the icon in peoples' bookmark lists next to your site.
It's useful to have feedback forms on pages; people who would never email you are quite happy to comment on your site so long as it takes hardly any time. The form needs to be posted to a php page, which simply appends the comment to a text file, along with details of the page from which the comment was submitted.
If you have links to external sites (especially from the front page) use target
= "_blank" to create a new window.
Not reccommended for new browsers, capable of displaying tabs. Let users decide whether to open a window, and don't surprise them with new windows
The "back to index" link at the bottom of this page either links to the default file in the current directoy, or if it is the default file, it links to the parent directory. Get the JavaScript code for it here.
If you want some people to take a look at your site and tell you how good it is, go to site critique
If you want help designing, programming, or anything else to do with a web page, look in yahoo clubs for groups dedicated to whatever software you are trying to use.
