But I can show them how NOT to do it.... and I'll add more rules as I see fit... And I'm probably guilty of a few of these... *Sigh* No one's perfect.... and I suppose these are a little long to be Rules... But suggestions just sounds wimpy
Rule 1, and this one cannot be stressed enough : If you're going to reduce a picture's size, DO IT ON THE ACTUAL PICTURE!!! Don't take that 400x600 image and just tell the HTML to reduce it, REDUCE IT YERSELF TO THE SIZE YOU WANT... and, for the sake of whatever deity you believe in, DON'T use those massive pictures for tiny little pictures...
Rule 2 : Don't use an image for a link when text will do
Rule 5 (3 sir) Right : Image maps are right out.
Rule 4 : If you're going to make a page with something that should obviously be updated (Such as Band News or What's Happening in My Life) then Make Sure You Actually Update It every once in a while... At least once a month... Try to do it once a week... and, don't ever go from updating it every day to updating it once a month, at least without Saying in an update "This is getting to be too much work, I'm going to only update once a month"
Rule 5 : Only use Java WHEN ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! Nothing is more annoying that seeing "Java loading" at the bottom, only to have scrolling text appear saying something useless like "Hi! I'm Nick Roberts! Welcome to my Page! Sign my Guest book! Have a Nice Day!" over and over.. which brings me to
Rule 6 : Avoid excessive punctuation. I admit, I'm guilty of the ... thing, but at least I don't sound like a chipmunk on crack... Hi! I'm Eric Guess! I like my Web page! I love the internet and everything on it! I snort crank daily!! Can you tell?!!! (And yes, that was a bloody joke you humourless bastards)
Rule 7 : Please.. Please... No more Giant Long Single Page things... Split the bloody thing up... Unless providing the text to, say, War and Peace, try to do no more than two pages worth. Yes, I realize that is relative to how people have their screens set, and that two pages on 2048x1536 see a lot more than people on 640x480, but still.. It's a good rule of thumb...
Rule 8 : Unless the point of a page is Animated Gifs, don't use them... And please don't put 30 of them on one long page...
Rule 9 : If you're going to have a page, at least make it useful to either yourself or others. Band pages are useful. Pages that only carry sparse information about yourself are trash hogging bandwidth. My page? I do movie reviews no one sees, and slap up stuff that makes me happy. Therefor, it is useful. To myself only, yes, but useful. I fail to see the use in a page that says "Hi, I'm John. I'm 17, male, and live in Backwater Montana. I like good music. Sign my guest book" and with the five obligatory links, of course.. worthless
Rule 10 : Don't ever have a page of 100 pictures without warning on the link what is going to happen. Always have your links to massive picture pages labeled "Lots of Pictures of Ty Cobb. Warning, Very Large" or something similar...Nothing's worse than clicking on a link, and waiting half an hour for a page to load... And, of course, try not to do that in the first place.. Nothing's wrong with making separate HTML pages for images if you like black backgrounds or whatever.