fearntechWebsite Design Principles - Code Size and Efficiency
The filesize of website pages (and the images on the page) are extremely important when designing a website. Broadband accounts for only one third of all internet connections in the UK (Source: Ofcom "The Communications Market: October 2004 Quarterly Update") which of course means the majority of home internet users have non-broadband connections. There is also an increase in the use of handheld devices and phones to access the internet and so to maximise access to your website you need to cater for these 'slow' users.
Therefore your HTML should be designed to be as compact and efficient as possible. Separate styles and javascript from the content (see CSS).
Many people already have packages that can be used to create HTML documents, for example Microsoft Word and Microsoft Powerpoint. The drawbacks are that the HTML produced tends to contain a large amount of metadata which at best is superflous and at worse can cause slow downloads, and even unexpected privacy problems (author, C: drive location of document). See Example 1 then scroll a long way down to find the more compact version created manually in Notepad!
Example 1: Simple HTML document created in Word |
<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" <head> |
Example 2: Simple HTML document created in a basic text editor |
<html> |
The alternative (example 2) created in Notepad is much smaller, the drawback is you need to learn the HTML language, whereas Word has generated the tags for you.
The answer of course is dedicated website design software, for example Macromedia Dreamweaver, although such software can prove expensive when you are only looking to create a single website.
Solutions
Learn HTML and CSS, the specifications are available at w3.org, then you only need a basic text editor such as Microsoft Notepad to design your website.
Move styles and javascript to external files, they only need to be downloaded once instead of adding to the data downloaded with each page.
A professional website designer will have access to the latest website design tools and so can produce your website more efficiently than doing it yourself. Fearntech are licensed Macromedia Dreamweaver developers, and have years of experience in software development. Contact us for a no-obligation quotation.
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