By Matt Millross
- Webmaster @ designplace
Here is a list of 10 web design/development articles that anybody that has and develops their own website should read. (List compiled January 11th 2003)
They cover all manner of topics within the "Internet/web design & development" area. They are in no particular order.
Some of these articles are very technical, some are very wordy, but they are all very well written and very informative. I guess you need to be at an intermediate level in terms of knowledge with the subject in hand to fully understand the articles, for the most part.
This is my opinion - it doesn't mean it's the best 10 ever and others that exist aren't as good. I dont claim to have read everything there is to read about web development and design that is on the web. I am however an experienced webmaster and developer with experience of a vast amount of areas, so what I perceive as useful should be useful.
Lets get this party started:
Number 1.) "Top 10 guidelines for homepage usability"
Simple. If people can't use your website, your website has lost opportunities.
Read about how to correct this
URL: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020512.html
Number 2.) "The basics of navigation"
Understanding how navigation of a website should be and how to implement it properly
Number 3.) "On interpreting access statistics"
Website stats are discussed and indicated over the Internet a fair amount and most people regard them as useful and informative for showing them who's using their website, when and where they came from. (Amongst other things)
This is an article which argues that webstats are worse then meaningless, because they give you a false sense of knowledge, which, can be worse than having no knowledge at all.
Read on, all will be revealed!
URL: http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/webstats/
Number 4.) "Pagerank explained: Google's ranking system"
Google is the single most important search engine, maybe even website, that exists in the world today.
If you are a webmaster with a reasonable range of content and decent google pagerank then you will vouch for this fact.
This articles goes into reasonable depth about how google ranks webpages and explains a few methods of how you could increase your ranking and this, gain more traffic from search results.
Number 5.) "Better living through XHTML"
Another ALA article, this time on XHTML and converting to XHTML.
XHTML, if you didn't know it, is the well formed markup language that websites of the future will (probably) use, across the board.
It is well formed, because it employs XML-like syntax which is a lot stricter than traditional HTML.
Through the use of XHTML, websites should all be efficient and look the same, regardless of browser or platform.
URL: http://www.alistapart.com/stories/betterliving/
Number 6.) "Server side scripting shootout"
Choosing which server side scripting language to write your applications in can be a tricky process. There are lots out there and they all perform pretty well and provide a similar level of functionality, so which is the best!
Well, its all down to opinion and preference at the end of the day, but this article does a good job of concisely rounding them up into a comparison-style scenario.
URL: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/46/index1a.html?tw=programming
Number 7.) "CSS Positioning", from BrainJar.
An Advanced article I guess and something which a lot of people are say "ok, but its not necessary" to, but positioning with CSS and removing visual formatting from your pages into a stylesheet is an ultra-efficient, tidy and standards compliant task which will make your site the talk of the town!
URL: http://www.brainjar.com/css/positioning/default.asp
Number 8.) "To hell with bad browsers" - From A list apart.
A tale about how ALA re-designed their site so that it fulfilled web standards. If they can, why can't you?
Number 9.) "Practical web design: Fundamentals of web design part 1:"
OK, this is a very recent article that i've read that kinda joins a variety or areas that have been covered by others along with a lot of sound advice. Focuses in on topics such as compatibility, accessibility, usability, technology choices and a lot more besides. A very good read covering a broad range of areas.
URL: http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/990
Number 10.) "Top ten mistakes in web design"
This, as you would imagine, is a list of the top 10 web design mistakes that exist, in the eyes of renowned usability guru and expert, Jakob Nielsen.
Some might say "that article is years old, how can we take it seriously" - fundamental problems identified here have changed but only in very small amounts - its worth remembering the piftalls of the past as well!
URL: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
(*Revisited 3 years later: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990502.html)
That concludes the list.
Copyright © Matt Millross 2001 - 2003