Webdesign Guidelines

Web development can respect quality guidelines and get grades from 1 to 5 stars. To reach a higher grade, the lower grades guidelines have to be met:

1 star

• (nothing special)

2 stars

• No pixelized photos
• No legacy or proprietary HTML tags
• Text should always have contrast to be readable properly
• Include link inside text instead of creating a "Click here" link
• No need to click Flash content twice
• Contact information with email address

3 stars

• Use style sheet
• Style sheet and Javascript are external if more than one HTML/XHTML page
• No Javascript errors
• Works in stable version of the the main browsers¹
• Paragraph text font larger or equal to 11px
• Pop-up windows open in the center of the screen
• Links other than for advertising don't open in a new window
• No visible counter
• No background sound unless the user decides to

4 stars

• Standard-compliant and valid code (HTML, XHTML, CSS)
• Tableless layout
• Works with and without "www" subdomain
• Correct use of image formats: JPEG for photos; PNG or GIF for low-color graphics
• No more than 3 different fonts used
• Differenciate visually the text when it is clickable
• Use HTML/XHTML tags properly as much as possible instead of using <div>
• Both client-side and server-side form validation
• Use UTF-8 character set

5 stars

• Works in the previous version of the main browsers¹
• Hide file extensions
• Meta keywords & description
• Meaningful meta tags and title
• Favicon
• Not using transitional doctypes
• Preload images used for rollovers and screencasts
• Custom 404 error message
• CSS image concatenation

¹ Internet Explorer; Opera; Firefox/Seamonkey; Konqueror/Safari

Charles • landemaine@gmail.com