Tips for Your Website
If you're going to have a website, there are some things that I've discovered/heard/decided over time that would be useful for all to know. Please, read them and remember them. Even some web veterans do things that irritate people like me.
For text: use
web-safe fonts. (Personally, I suggest using Times, Georgia, Arial, Courier, or Verdana. This guarrantees that everyone on any browser or computer (virtually) will be able to view and read your layout as you made it. Also, pick a color that is readable against your background. It's so simple, yet I am blinded by countless web pages every day... Also, make your text a reasonable size. If it's too difficult to read, it's no good and people won't want to read it. Interestingly enough, a combination of these things only makes it worse, as does any one of them. So please, avoid those things. Additionally, proof-reading something you've written helps, too. I find a new error in my pages every day. It only looks bad on you if you have bad grammar or a sentence that makes no sense.
For links: these are pretty basic. I don't have much to say about these, other than too much fancy stuff on the mouse-over
is too much. Most links just change color, if anything, and they look fine. People won't judge you if your mouse doesn't emit purple sparkles. [Oh: a pet peeve: I strongly dislike trailing mouse thingies. You know what I mean. They're lame. 'Nuff said.]
For images: once again, beware the blinding colors in large amounts. Small amounts are in good taste; fan art is often more interesting with it. Just don't forget how the viewer's eyes might feel if you bombard them with electric green on your whole background. It's not cool. Besides that, images can be pretty free form. And fun.
For your final product: this is a good rule of thumb for EVERYTHING: never be satisfied with your layout/etc. until you've clicked on everything to make sure it goes through to the correct place, tried every form, or made sure every layer checked out. I can't tell you how many websites can't be viewed in certain browsers because the creator didn't bother to check them out, or how many links opened INSIDE THE IFRAME (quite pitiful) when they were obviously intended for a new window (if this happens to you, please change your link so it looks like this:
<a href="link.html"
target="_blank">click here</a>
see the difference now?). What I mean is, don't assume that everything is working properly. Chances are they aren't.
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