How to use HTML

The BBQ Pit
1

Somewhat inspired by the thread from a month or two ago, “How To Drive”

So you just got a geocities page or livejournal, and you’re not sure how to design your page. Here’s a few tips.

[ul]
[li]Use bright colors whenever possible, especially pink and magenta. People love those colors. If you’re typing out the numbers in hex, make sure the value of red, green, and blue is always either FF or 00, because this makes the colors brighter.[/li][li]If you have a colored background, it should match the color of your text, because people like things to match. Blue text on a blue background looks much better than black text on a white background.[/li][li]Of course, colored backgrounds aren’t ideal. You really should use complex images or photographs, especially ones that have a variety of different colors in them, because then the contrast between text and background is different for every word. And that makes visitors to your site happy. If the background image is a 1600x1200 bmp, hosted on another site, it’ll take forever to load, but don’t worry. It’s worth it.[/li][li]Midis, midis, midis. And make sure you use instruments like “violin” and “saxophone” because they sound the best.[/li][li]The <marquee> tag. Instant, simple, animation![/li][li]Animated cursors, and trails of objects following the cursor all over the page.[/li][li]Use the diagonal resizing arrow instead of the pointing finger for rolling over links.[/li][li]Transitions in and out of every page, including a “dissolve” effect, or “circle” effect, etc, plus a sound effect.[/li][/ul]
By the way, a lot of this same advice applies to powerpoint design.

2

Is there a site that combines all those things? It must be really awful.

3

Dude (TJdude825 to be precise) are you ever on the money. Especially that stupid <marquee> tag! All the other crap I can turn off in the browser, but not that one.

4

Check out Web Pages That Suck for some more suggestions.

5

– Code in XHTML so that those who modify your code will have the unmitigated joy of deleting extraneous end tags
– Remember, <BLINK> is your friend!
– Visitors welcome changes to the way the browser works. To keep them on their toes, reverse the colors of the visited and non-visited links!

6
  • FrontPage is the best web authoring tool ever! Who doesn’t like proprietary functions that I have to set up my server to use? And of course, you can never have too many FONT tags! Especially around images!
  • If you like FONT tags so much you can use DreamWeaver as well!
7

Even better, use scripts to change their browser settings. Make their default homepage your own!

Important: Make sure you disable their Back button. Users love to spend forever trying to escape from your website. Watch as your counter goes up and up and up.

8

And remember, visitors to your site won’t want to waste a lot of time clicking around to find things. So be sure to put all your content on your homepage so it’s immediately available.

9

Frames. You can never have too many. And if each frame isn’t scrollable both vertically and horizontally, you’ve still got work to do.

Images. It is not necessary to optimize image size or quality. The browser will do it for you. So go ahead and post those 1600x2500 images. Every image must be saved as a .jpeg too, especially if it has lots of text in it. Artifacts are all the rage.

Everybody has the same monitor resolution as you do, so make sure all your values are fixed. Remember, scrolling back and forth to read paragraph after paragraph of text in 6pt typefont is exactly what they mean by “interactive.”

Navigation. Who needs it? There are two solutions to this dilemma: 1) your entire site need only consist of a single page with everything on it, properly <CENTER>ed, of course and occassionally delineated by cutesy animated bars; or 2) simply add “Back” and “Forward” arrows at the bottom of your pages creating a linear simplicity that even the most brain-dead ‘avid web surfer’ can utilize with ease.

Well, if you feel you must provide navigation, there are two other rules to follow: 1) all navigational links must be images (the more inexplicable, the better) – NEVER, ever provide corresponding navigational text links on any page; and 2) be sure to rearrange the nav links on every page, so your visitors must really pay attention to keep up. Test them occassionally by leaving out links on some pages and adding new ones on others. Consistency is boring.

Do not ever use a table that doesn’t display borders.

Do not ever use gutters for text-based pages. The text should butt right up against the edge of the screen or image.

Keeping up with the Jones. If you don’t have a spinning earth or envelope on your webpage, everyone will know you’re just a poseur. Comet Cursors are Cool. As a matter of fact, throw every plug-in you can find on your site. People should really come better prepared, but that’s okay. You can fix that.

Don’t title your pages. Your site will show up at the top of every search.

That’s it for now. :smiley:

10

FONT tag? That’s used to change the text style, right? Text is like, so last week. Use GIFs instead. No, wait, JPEGs, they’ll make the page load faster, so you can throw more on the page.

Tiled across the screen.

Each image 19 pixels by 23 pixels. But be sure to specify the image size inside the IMG tag, and make it different than 19x23, too. And since consistency is a hobgoblin, throw in the occasional GIF so you can make parts of your page animated.

Hope this helps!

11

And remember, these things are important. Don’t bother trying to add any useful content until you’ve fully customized your font tags…

12

I also love those HUGE flash intros with no Skip Intro button :smiley:

13

Y’know, the first thing that popped into mind upon reading this was the web site for my old high school. cough

They’ve covered all the bases. In a way, it perfectly describes my high school experience…grinding, low budget mediocrity…

14

I’d have to disagree with this one. You want the text and background to be different colors, but of course, not that old boring black and white.
For example, hot pink text on a black background or neon green text on a bright orange background are both really cool. People like seeing lots of bright colors like that. It’s very easy on the eyes, and easy-to-read, too!
It’s even better if you use really fancy script or gothic fonts, especially in all-caps!

15

Keep costs down. Accept as many pop-up ads as you can.

Ask people to register to access your site. Request as much personal information as you can, then provide them with a two-page checklist of “personalized e-mail offers” that can be sent directly to their e-mail. Americans don’t get enough exercise, so you will be doing visitors a public service by getting them to opt out of such offers, instead of opting in.

16

Excellent! And I see they’ve optimized their main frame real estate by making the menu frame as narrow as possible. If visitors want to see what the menu items say, they can use the handy scroll bar at the bottom.

Everyone loves that mouse-following java clock. So what if it’s a resource hogger, it’s a classic.

17

Yeah, what exactly is the point of those flash intro pages? Is there anyone (beside the page designer’s mom) who doesn’t skip them? Amazingly useless…

18

And they’ve also covered the animated gif angles. I highly recommend clicking on some of the links. For our convenience they’ve added redundant navigation bars to a few of the pages.

I’m also fond of the color scheme. Our school colors were orange and white. Evidently, the web page started as that, then they decided to add more to the mix, giving the page that essential and highly coveted “circus vomit” look.

And, for the record, half the pages are just large scanned images. Beautiful work, kids.

19

Your school uses one of my personal favorite web techniques: underlining non-linked text! See, people start to assume that since underlining is a standard indication for a link, that if text is underlined, it’s a link, and if it’s not underlined, it’s normal text. Good for them for encouraging people to throw out their assumptions and think outside the box.

Remember, any web design should challenge viewers to think in new ways. That’s what they want - not simple, predictable, boring ol’ content.

20

I hate that too! Here’s another site that gets on my nerves for that! :mad: