For Users of Macromedia 'Contribute'

For in-house users of Macromedia 'Contribute'. Please excuse the style of this quick page, which has taken advantage of features used on my own website for convenience. Here are a few general notes about webpage authoring.

• Decide who does what before there is duplication of effort and argument.
• It is advisable to follow the method and example of the other departments using the 'corporate style'.
  - use the 'breadcrumbs' text links (below the banner) to go up a level or two.

Dos and Don'ts
You might (or not) need a little guidance about writing web pages suitable for our website. The following suggestions are stringent but please look through them anyway. Then do what you think is right.

Text Content

• Be concise but communicate well.
• Use spell-check (set for UK English).
  - To set the spell-checker for the UK - go to Edit > Preferences > General.
  - Apply spell-check with the 'abc' icon.
• Acronyms might need spelling out at first use.
• Avoid marketing-style language or spin.
• Assume your audience to be as bright as you.
• Don't oversell the product.
• Don't assume an extensive vocabulary as English might not be their first language.
• It is better to be informative rather than chatty.

Readability

• Long pages are best split into separate pages.
• Improve readability by breaking text into paragraphs so that the eye can easily locate where it left off.
• Big spaces look bad.
• Ariel font looks best and complies with the 'company style'.
• Double-spaced text is tedious, unnecessary and looks naive.
• Justified text usually is neater but does not always work well with short lines.
• Make headings distinctive with bold text or a header tag (H3 is OK) or by choosing one of the available page styles.
• Be consistent with heading and sub-heading styles and try to use the same as the school pages.
• DO NOT FULLY CAPITALISE TEXT - IT IS CALLED 'SHOUTING' IN THE BUSINESS
• For the same reason of over-emphasis, Bold, italic and heading text styles should be used sparingly and not for whole blocks of text.
• Don't underline any text - it will be assumed to be a link.
• Indented text is effective for quotes, etc. (Eg. 'Blockquote')
• Group related items into bulleted lists but don't bullet everything, like I have done here.

Appearance

• Pictures improve a page, if they are appropriate and not too big or too many. Larger ones can be linked from smaller 'thumbnail' versions if they are important enough - the visitor can then choose to see them or not.
• Resizing a large picture in Contribute to look smaller won't shrink the download time. You should physically resize it to around 200 pixel width in a graphic editor, such as Paintshop Pro.
• A little horizontal space helps appearance and readability with a gap between picture and text (hspace='6' in this example)
• Suitable formats are 'jpg' for photos but diagrams, flowcharts or line drawings should be 'gif' or 'png'.
• If you right-align them, the left text margin will stay tidy and controllable.
• Animations are disliked by the professionals and we discourage their decorative use.
  - If you need to employ an animation, link it from a thumbnailed still image.

Linked Documents

Guidelines and hints about attached documents.

• You can link to your Acrobat 'pdf' or 'Word' documents and Contribute will put them live on to the web server.
• Make it clear that the link goes to a Document rather than another web page,
  - something like this example - "Download courseplan.pdf (Acrobat pdf, 120kB)", then there won't be any guessing what a link might do.
• Virus-scan any downloadable files first.
• Try to keep attached documents compact and aim below perhaps 100k - 200k-ish file sizes but, if it is a very important pdf, no more than about 2Mb.
• A 100k file will take 14 seconds to download using a fast dial-up 56k modem, on a good day.
• Always delete empty pages.
• Word documents carry a lot of rubbish left over from 'undos'. If you have the time and the inclination, you can shrink a file size by highlighting and pasting the entire contents of a heavily edited document into a new document. There is a utility from Microsoft which strips out hidden details in Word documents and shrinks the file.
• Be aware that large documents graphics can bloat Acrobat document sizes, even if they look small on the page.
• It is a good idea to save them in very common formats, like Word '97 or acrobat (pdf). Don't expect your visitors to have powerpoint installed on home computers.

Check download times versus file sizes here: http://www.onlineconversion.com/downloadspeed.htm

Filenames

The following points are standard conventions but, if you get them wrong, links will still work.

• Always use all-lower-case for filenames.
• Try to use descriptive but short filenames to help the visitor locate them, if they trouble to save them locally. If possible, include date or revision number in the filename.
• Never put spaces in filenames, although underlines are acceptable.
  - E.g. '2004rep.doc' or '2004_rep.doc' are OK but not '2004 rep.doc', as this will show with the ASCII character for a space: %20 (it will be saved as 2004%20rep.doc)
• Never use punctuation or symbols in filenames.

Miscellaneous

• The message 'Under Construction' is very amateur. Websites are always under construction if they are being updated.
• Assume that your visitor might use a slow dial-up connection, and keep down file sizes (especially pictures).
  - Test it over a dial-up connection if you can.
• If you make a mess, use the rollback feature.

When all is said and done, if it looks right and you are happy with it, don't worry about what webmasters might think.