Website design criteria

W3C compliance

In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together. Tim Berners-Lee and others created The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an industry consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web Standards and Guidelines. You can read more about W3C on this page of the W3C website.

W3C publishes specifications and recommendations for web technologies. Web designers can choose to implement all, or part, of the most appropriate specifications and recommendations on their websites.

I have chosen to design and test my websites for 100% compliance with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS level 2.1 (or level 3 in some cases) standards. Fully compliant pages generally display the "Valid XHTML" logo somewhere - at the bottom of the right-hand menu list on this page - and one page of the website will display the "Valid CSS" logo. Some of my earlier websites do not yet comply with these standards but will be brought up-to-date over time.

Browsers

The W3C specifications and recommendations, see above, are interpreted in subtly different ways by different web browsers. In particular, early versions of Microsoft's market-dominant Internet Explorer software were less strict in their interpretation of the W3C standards than Firefox, Opera, and Safari, the three main competitors. This caused web designers considerable difficulty in trying to make their sites look the same in the different browsers.

The situation has now (Summer 2008) improved as Microsoft's IE7 is much more "standards compliant" than earlier versions, and Mozilla's Firefox 2 browser now has a significant market share. Statistics gathered recently (June 2008) from two of my websites show:

  • Architectural site ("early adopters", mainly corporate users) :
    IE7 and Firefox 2 - 75%, IE6 - 15%, Others - 10%.
  • Motorsport site (more mainstream, mainly home users) :
    IE7 and Firefox 2 - 60%, IE6 - 35%, Others - 5%.

I therefore design and test my websites to look best in the
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2 browsers. Some sites may not display at their best if viewed using IE6 or earlier versions of the other browsers.

18 June 2008 : I will, obviously, keep the newly-released Firefox 3 under review. But, based on previous experience and unlike the different versions of Internet Explorer, there are unlikely to be any significant differences in the way in which this version displays standards-compliant websites.

Screen resolution

Have you ever opened a web page and found that it does not fit comfortably on your screen, even when "maximised"? Of course you have, and there's only one reason - the web designer chose to ignore the fundamentals of designing for a variety of screen resolutions.

In July 2006, web design guru Jakob Nielsen published one of his Alertbox columns on Screen Resolution and Page Layout and, as far as I am concerned, his advice stills holds good nearly two years later. Although there has been a general increase in the size of flat panel monitors (used with desktop computers) since 2006, Nielsen found that users generally utilised this extra space for multiple windows rather than for stretching the browser windows to the full screen size. Also, a screen resolution of 1280x800, currently the standard offering on most 13"/14"/15" laptops, may provide extra width but provides virtually no extra depth over 1024x768.

Statistics gathered recently (June 2008) from two of my websites show:

  • Architectural website ("early adopters", mainly corporate users) :
    1024x768 - 30%, Larger - 45%, Unknown - 25%.
  • Motorsport website (more mainstream, mainly home users) :
    1024x768 - 45%, Larger - 45%, Smaller and Unknown - 10%.

I therefore design and test my websites to look best at a screen resolution of
1024x768. The only area where I disagree with Nielsen is that I do not, generally, design for a "liquid layout". This is because most of my current sites are "text heavy" and I believe strongly that there is an optimum "reading width" - which is generally the "liquid" part of a liquid layout.

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