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- When you publish a book or pamphlet in hardcopy, you have complete control over what the reader will see: paper texture, typeface, size, color, placement on the page, etc.
When you publish on the Web, you have only the most limited control over what the reader will see. You don't know whether they have a 21-inch high resolution color monitor or are using a monochrome terminal with 24 rows of 80 characters each. You don't know whether they are using Netscape with the standard settings, or whether they have configured it to ignore your suggestions about background color, and so on.
What you do have with HTML is the ability to markup your text, indicating the structure of the document. For example, use the paired header tags (<H1> . . . </H1>) to enclose the highest level section-header, instead of enclosing it with tags that some browsers would interpret as calling for a larger and boldface font. All browsers understand header tags, and will do the best job that they can with the resources available to them to display your document in way that is consistent with their display of other properly marked documents.
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- As you wander through the web, take note of pages that you think work particularly well, and of pages that you think work particularly poorly. If you are in any doubt about the tags that produce those effects, choose "Document Source" from the View menu, or "Save As..." from the File menu, and examine those tags.
The content of Web pages can be, and usually is (implicitly if not explicitly) copyright. The HTML tags that control the display of that content are not copyright. The tags and their effects are part of the international HTML standard.
It is obvious why you should take note of pages that work well, and the tags that were used. Why should you pay attention to the pages that work poorly? It is much easier to recognize shortcomings in other people's work. Once you have figured out why you don't like a particular Web page, you may well have a flash of insight and realize that some of your own work suffers from the same problem.
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- When you first are building your department home page, the question that must be answered is, "Is this draft better than having nothing?" Bear in mind that initially the correct answer to that question will be "NO!" As soon as the answer is "Yes!" you should upload the current version to the server and let people know that it is ready to be listed on the University Home Page.
- As you continue to work on your page, the question to ask is, "Is this version better than the version on the server?" Again, often the answer to that question will be "No." Whenever it is "Yes," you should upload the improved version to the server.
When you are working on an official page, be very certain that you know who has the authority to answer these questions! You and your supervisor should develop a clear understanding as to the nature of modifications you should make and upload immediately without seeking approval (to correct spelling and punctuation errors, for example) and what kinds of modifications require formal approval in advance.
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- Two sub-teams should be created to maximize the likelihood of making your
web page top-notch. One team should be responsible for assembling or writing the content,
and one should be responsible for the HTML to format that content. By dividing the workload
this way, the team that is in charge of gathering the content can focus
on doing just that, and the other can focus on learning HTML and writing the
actual web page source. Both teams share responsibility for design.
The team responsible for writing the HTML should make it very clear to
the other team what is, and is not possible for them to do. Start simple,
things can always be enhanced later on. You will see many pages that have
"under construction" on them. I believe all web pages are
always under construction, so this statement is both trite and unnecessary, and should be avoided.
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- Your team will not be able to do its best work in isolation. It is important that the members of the team seek advice from each other frequently, and that they seek advice from others nearly as often. There are few things so frustrating as realizing that you have just spent fifteen hours of your life polishing the details of a Web page whose basic design is not acceptable to your boss's boss!
As you receive feedback from others, their comments will fall naturally into three categories:
- Ideas whose brilliance is immediately evident. No debate is needed in order to decide how to respond to these suggestions.
- Ideas that you find immediately and compellingly repulsive. Be sure to ask why that suggestion was made. Often you will discover that your critic has correctly identified a shortcoming with your pages, even though you do not agree with his or her suggested solution.
- Ideas that seem to you to be about as good as your own. If that is the way they seem, they are probably better than your own ideas. You may choose to go with your original design, particularly to remain consistent with other work, but in general, you should take as many of the suggestions in this category as possible. You want to positively reinforce the time and effort expended by your critic in thoughtful examination of your page, because you will have other pages in the future that will benefit from such attention.
