Even more free tips to remember when creating a website.

1. Don’t center everything on your webpage
Centered text on pages not only looks extremely unprofessional, but it’s also just plain hard to read; just think about having to read a book where all the text was centered! Print rules have been refined for well over a hundred years now, and they work well. When in doubt about layout, think about how they do it in print.

2. Don’t create automatic pop-up windows
Pop ups are generally used for ads and such these days. Thus, most people have the “pop up blocker” on with their browser. Thus, anything in that pop up will not be seen by most people. Learn how to integrate those elements into your main pages and forget about pop-up windows.

3. Don’t use Internet Explorer’s scrolling ‘marquee’ tag
Just for the plain fact that it will ONLY work in Internet Explorer and no other browser is enough to avoid this one. A ton of people (especially people on Macs) do not use Internet Explorer, hence will not see what you are trying to tell them.

4. Do make you web pages viewable at 800 x 600 resolution
Many web designers have computers that can display higher resolutions like 1024×768 and 1280 x 1024. They design there pages to fit in that resolution, when someone hits those pages with a computer that can display only a maximum of 800 x 600, the visitor has to scroll to see the page properly.

Scrolling web pages vertically (top to bottom) is ok, as long as it’s not more than two and half pages or so. But scrolling horizontally (side to side) is really bad and annoying to visitors.

In a nutshell, you want to design all your pages these days for 800 x 600; they (still) make up about 40% of the web audience.

5.  Don’t set your type to all capital letters in your body text
Using ALL CAPS in text is good for emphasize and title elements, but don’t create long sentences or paragraph in all caps … it’s just hard to read.

Just compare this paragraph in all caps:

USING ALL CAPS IN TEXT IS GOOD FOR EMPHASIZE AND TITLE ELEMENTS BUT DON’T CREATE LONG SENTENCES OR PARAGRAPH IN ALL CAPS; IT’S JUST HARD TO READ.

That’s all for today.