Hea veebidisaini 6 põhiprintsiipi

Six principles of good Web design

Downloaded from The Art Teacher’s Guide to the Internet Companion Web site (www.artjunction.org/atgi)

Designing a Web site requires an eye for visual design, consideration for your audience, some knowledge of the technical aspects of the Web,
and, of course, worthwhile content to offer. As you set out to design your Web site, keep the following six principles in mind.
1. Consistency
Make it easy for visitors to understand the structure of your site by keeping the design uniform throughout its pages. Using the same lay-
out, fonts, color palettes, and navigational scheme on every page will make your site visually consistent and user-friendly. An easy way to
achieve this consistency is to create, save, and test a page template to begin with and then use it to produce all the pages on the site.
2. Convenience
Make it easy for visitors to find their way around your site. Place a masthead or title at the top of every page that identifies the site and
include consistent navigational links to the main pages of the site such as the homepage. Consider providing a site map or index page that
offers an overview of the site and links to every page.
3. Readibility
Make it easy for visitors to read your pages and to find information. Choose a text color that is easy to read against your chosen background
color, such as a dark text on a light background. Avoid placing text against a patterned background, which makes it difficult to read. Break
the text into meaningful chunks to make it more readable. Give titles, subtitles, and content text a different visual treatment to establish
their hierarchy on a page. Make judicious use of “white space” between sections of text and between text and images to give your pages an
uncluttered look. Avoid making your visitors scroll in two directions to view the contents of a page.
4. Speed
Make it easy for visitors to download your pages. If your pages take longer than 20 seconds or so to download with a 56K modem, you will
likely lose visitors to your site. Reduce the download time of your site by keeping the number of images (especially large ones) on each page
to a minimum. Consider using thumbnail images as links to larger images that appear on their own pop-up pages. Recycle graphics (such
as banners, buttons, and icons) throughout your site to decrease the download time for each page. This in turn will make the site more visu-
ally consistent. Most important, refrain from gratuitous use of graphics (especially animated ones) that add nothing more than “eye candy”
on your pages.  
5. Accessibility
Make your site accessible to a broad audience. Your pages may look great on your computer; but someone visiting your site using a differ-
ent browser, computer, or monitor may see something quite different or may not see the pages at all.  While it is impossible to accommo-
date everyone who might visit your site, there are things you can do that will make your pages compatible with various hardware and soft-
ware configurations. For instance, use a standard font (such as Arial or Times Roman) for the text on your pages rather than a specialty font
(like Broadway or Perpetua) that most visitors are unlikely to have available on their computers. Be considerate of those who access your site
using a standard dial-up connection by keeping your page sizes as small as possible. The size of a Web page includes the size of the HTML
code, plus the size of each image file, and any additional elements (like musical files) added to the page. For example, if you include four
images that are 10K each to a HTML page that is also 10K in size, your overall Web page is 50K in size. Ideally, you should keep your Web
page sizes to less than 40K.
Also, bear in mind that the screen resolution of your visitors’ monitors will vary and that this will influence how your pages  are seen.
Conventional wisdom currently suggests that you should design your Web pages for monitors set at 800 x 600 pixels—the most common
screen resolution among Web users worldwide. However, most computer monitors sold today are set at 1024 x 768 pixels or higher.
Consequently, the industry standard is likely to shift to a higher resolution in the near future.
6. Testing
Before launching your site, test all of its pages with as many different computers and monitors as possible as well as with different versions
of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Although you may not be able to fix all the irregularities that occur with different systems,
finding out how your pages look to others—especially to your target audience—will enable you to troubleshoot the problems visitors may
encounter on your site before you go live.