Website design criteria
W3C compliance
- I choose to design and test my websites for 100% compliance with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS level 2.1 standards.
Why?
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.
Fully compliant pages on my websites generally display the "Valid XHTML" logo somewhere - at the bottom of this page for example - and one page of the website will display the "Valid CSS" logo.
Browsers
- I choose to design and test my websites to look best in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 7/8 and Mozilla Firefox 3/3.5 browsers.
Why?
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 improved as Microsoft's IE7 and IE8 are much more "standards compliant" than earlier versions, and Mozilla's Firefox browser has a significant, and growing, market share. There are a number of websites which track the market share of the different browsers but the results vary significantly. Web designers often install tracking software on their own sites to provide statistics which are more directly relevant to them.
Statistics gathered in October 2009 from three of my websites show ...
| Architectural | Leisure | Motorsport | |
| early adopters, corporate users |
mainstream, mixed users |
non-technical, home users |
|
| IE8 | 5.60% | 23.00% | 22.60% |
| IE7 | 31.60% | 19.40% | 27.80% |
| IE6 | 11.40% | 21.80% | 26.20% |
| IE 6/7/8 | 48.60% | 64.20% | 76.60% |
| Firefox 3/3.5 | 31.00% | 22.00% | 22.40% |
| Safari 3/4 | 15.80% | 7.60% | 0.40% |
| Other | 4.60% | 6.20% | 0.60% |
... and I interpret these statistics to inform the design of my websites as follows:
- A significant number (20+%) of non-technical visitors are still using IE6. There is a general view that a significant number of non-technical users will not upgrade their browser until they buy a new computer and that web designers will need to accommodate the quirks of the semi-compliant IE6 browser for the foreseeable future. I am currently re-visiting several of my sites which had been optimised for IE7/8 (on the basis that the use of IE6 would decline significantly during 2009) to check how they look in IE6, and I will be making adjustments where appropriate.
- For most sites, checking the appearance in IE 7/8 and Firefox 3/3.5 will cover the vast majority of non-IE6 users as it is generally accepted that Firefox and Safari display sites in a very similar way.
- All other browsers still have a very low market share.
Screen resolution
- I choose to design and test my websites to look best at a screen resolution of 1024x768.
Why?
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 (optimize for 1024x768) stills holds good four 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.
Most recent 13"/14"/15" laptops have a screen resolution of 1280x800 or 1366x768 providing extra width, but no extra depth, over 1024x768. Most 10" netbooks have a screen resolution of 1024x600, and the iPad has a screen resolution of 1024x768. Based on these specifications, the desirability of optimising websites for a screen resolution of 1024x768 is self-evident.
Statistics gathered in June 2009 from two of my websites show:
- Architectural website ("early adopters", mainly corporate users) :
1024x768 - 7%, Larger - 51%, Smaller and unknown - 42%. - Motorsport website (more mainstream, mainly home users) :
1024x768 - 40%, Larger - 36%, Smaller and unknown - 23%.
The only area where I disagree with Nielsen (see above) 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.
The mobile web
The gradual rise in the use of smartphones, and other mobile devices, to access the internet provides a specific challenge to web designers, due mainly to the small screen size of these devices. This has been complicated by the widespread adoption of "apps" as a mobile-specific way to access internet content. There are, however, many web design commentators who question whether apps have a long-term future compared with the design of mobile-specific websites.
I have not yet adopted mobile-specific design on any of my websites as the web-tracking software shows that less than 0.5% of the page loads are currently to mobile devices. If this increases to above, say, 2% then I will consider developing mobile-specific versions of the site(s). Meanwhile I list below, as I find them, some of the better internet links that I've discovered on this subject.
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