Layout
Over the years, book designers have come up with principles for such things as page size, line length, and text alignment. Most of these principles apply to designing for the web. There are special considerations, though, because web browsers and computers are individual, and are not set up alike. Where a book publisher can decide exactly what size and shape the book is going to be, a web publisher has to allow for the wide variety of web surfers in the world.
Tables
Far too many websites use the HTML <table> tag to position the elements on a page. This is not what the tag was intended for, and using it in that way can cause problems for people using different browsing technology. For example, a person accessing a website using speech synthesis technology can have difficulty if the site has too many nested tables.
Despite this, web development instructors teach their students to use tables. Reference books recommend using tables. Most sites around the world use tables. This is unnecessary, and causes a number of other problems.
Current web technology offers different (and better) ways of creating layout. This site, for example, does not use tables for its layout. Instead, it uses the positioning capabilities of Cascading Style Sheets level 2 (CSS2) to place boxes on the page. This is easier for the web developer to create, easier for browsers to render, and easier for speech synthesized or text only browsers to process.
Any current browser will support this type of layout, and most older browsers in use today will support it to a certain extent.
Line length
A single line of text should be long enough to allow a reader to develop a flow while reading it, but it should not be so long that the reader can't find the beginning of the next line. Lines of text that span an entire computer screen are generally too long. Reading them leads to fatigue and poor comprehension because the brain has to concentrate too hard on the mechanics of reading instead of the underlying message.
Font
Most browsers let their users set default font sizes. Some websites ignore what the user has defined, and try to control the font size. This can lead to sites that are unreadable on the user's computer, because the website defines a font size that is either too large or too small.
This site accepts the browser's values, and scales larger sizes by a percentage of the default value.
Images
There are very few images used on this site. This was a conscious decision. Images make the pages slower to load. This may be especially important for people using dial-up connections, but it also has an effect on people using faster connections. Every image requires a separate request to the Web server, followed by the browser loading the image on the page. Complex sites requiring a lot of images are noticably slower to load than streamlined sites.
However, there is nothing wrong with images on the Web, when used properly. The Web is a visual medium. The only problems occur when the images take precedence over the content. If a particular site looks beautiful, but takes a long time to load or does not offer much useful information, then the site does not succeed.
Consistency
People don't like surprises, especially when they are just trying to read or find information. A consistent layout means that visitors don't have to readjust themselves with every new page. Once they figure out how a site is organized they can devote their attention to the task at hand.
Various conventions for web pages have evolved slowly since the birth of the World Wide Web. Some of these are used in this site. Navigation areas are located at the top and the left of every page. Major links are repeated at the bottom of the page. Links are clearly identified by their position on the page, their appearance, or both.
