I quickly learned (as I bet you have!) that a great many web page authors blithely ignore generally held 'good practice' HTML design principles - to say the very least! For instance: simple, obvious issues such as ...

• 'Easy to read' syntax, correct spelling and grammar, and dare I say it, good ol' fashioned accurate English! (Remember that? :-)

  We all occasionally make spelling mistakes, of course, but ... my goodness! I've seen web sites written by adults that would be bettered by pre-primary school doodling! Illiteracy on the Web (not to mention in Society in general, of course) is downright embarrassing for all concerned, or ought to be, and it's getting worse every year.

  I reckon that there is little or no excuse for widespread errors of this nature in computer-generated documents intended for public consumption, such as web pages, with all the easy-to-use spell and grammar checking programs to which we all have access these days.

  In any case, as a last resort, everybody has at least one literate friend who can help with a bit of proof-reading! I have completely lost patience with the hip 1980's self-expression over good grammar argument, I'm afraid :-)

• Commonsense acceptance of the present 'real world' technological limitations of the Internet, especially its lack of speed for the vast majority of people using it!

  A huge percentage of web page authors seem to assume we all have ultra-fast Cable, ISDN or T1 access to the Net, and incorporate huge, unnecessary, slow-loading graphics which force themselves upon unwary visitors! As general internet connection speeds increase, things may change; but for now, in every respect, Less Is Almost Always More when it comes to graphics.

• Appropriate and restrained use of the newer, more advanced, and often troublesome HTML features, such as Frames, JavaScript, third-party plug-in content, etc.

  We all hates web pages with Frames when they are badly written and behaved, which they all too often are! Is there anything more irritating than being trapped in somebody else's Frame and not being able to navigate properly, or even escape? Perhaps there is ... what about those ghastly, unwanted, hard-to-close JavaScript advertising screens that rudely pop up every time one clicks on a link that seems innocuous enough at the time! Grrrr ...

• Simple, basic consideration of 'end-user' preferences!

  Web pages that cannot be practically navigated except in 800 x 600 resolution suck, and yet one comes across them everywhere! Just because you and I may have high-end graphics cards and big fancy monitors doesn't mean everybody else does. In any case, many people run in 640 x 480 as a personal choice.

  Excessive use of obscure techno-jargon (which assumes casual visitors are all computer geeks) is just as bad, and does anybody really need yet another link to the Microsoft or Yahoo! home pages, or enjoy being told boring things like "This page must be viewed with Browser or Plug-In such-and-such"?
  
  There are many other such examples, and there is a link below to the "Best Viewed With Any Browser" campaign which addresses some of these issues.

• Likewise, MIDI music on a web page can be great; it's a very low-bandwidth way to enhance a page's presentation, but including un-prompted, loud, autoplaying background MIDI music which can't be turned down or off is usually considered a damn nuisance by visitors browsing from their Place of Work, for instance!

  The best solution, in my opinion, is to avoid use of the obsolete <BGSOUND> tag (which never worked for Netscape anyway), and use <EMBED> instead, preferably with an accessible control console. This can be made to work very well for all modern browsers, particularly those with the popular Crescendo MIDI Plug-In. (Which I recommend.)

• Sometimes it's hard or even impossible to do, but demonstrating at least some respect of ownership (or crediting authorship) of other people's graphics and web page content would be nice... plagiarism and outright stealing is completely out of hand, and looks set to get worse.

... and many other, related issues which I reckon are all too often overlooked when constructing even simple web pages. Jeffrey Glover's excellent web site "From Sucky to Savvy" is an entertaining overview of much of this stuff, and I heartily recommend it.

Like most people, it took me quite a while to fully grasp the fact that the Web, after all, was originally deliberately designed so it could be used by absolutely anybody, and what that actually means.

For instance, within reason, surely the Web should continue to be usable by:

• The Blind using 'speaking-text' or tactile Braille technology.
• People with text-only browsers like Lynx.
• People who routinely surf the Web with graphics deliberately turned off - no less than 30% of all users, the Web statiticians tell us!
• The rest of us with the latest, fancy, full-featured graphical browsers with every audio and video Plug-In under the sun.

In particular, it worries me a bit to see so many otherwise terrific, creative and interesting school web sites popping up everywhere, written with serious HTML errors. Yikes! Given the near-ubiquitous acceptance of the Web by kids these days, I can't see the long-term benefits for Society in our schools teaching them to write invalid HTML with coding errors.

Good advice on how to write valid HTML that works for everybody (whilst still making use of nifty sound and visuals, if desired) is available at many web sites. One of the first, and still an excellent place to start, is The Ten Commandments of HTML - and let's face it: if you're anything like me, and interested in Jewish theology, you've gotta love that title!

NOTE: This site is a (pirated?) mirror of the original, and some of the details are out of date, particularly the reference to the <CENTER> tag, which is actually now "okay to use" again, since the advent of HTML 4.0. But the spirit of the text is still very helpful!

---

Columbus finally finds some authoritative help

Here are four (of many) useful web sites addressing these not inconsiderable problems.

These sites, and the sites linked to them, provide tips on "browser accessibility" and HTML error-correction, in particular for those web page designers who have a weakness for overdoing graphics, and for non-experts like myself. I wish somebody had told me about these sites ages ago!

"So, You Want to Make a Web Page!" An excellent, downloadable beginner's tutorial.

A very worthy campaign to keep the Web truly universal.

Web page designers: will you take the Pledge?

The World Wide Web Consortium's official HTML Validator.

---

The next Big Thing in HTML, of course, is going to be CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS will in theory make stylistic layout much easier, universal, and more 'reproducible' for anybody using any modern Browser. Or at least they should, once Microsoft and Netscape agree to stop implementing CSS differently! Personally, I am gonna wait for the dust to settle a bit before tackling that one!