Stephanie Leary

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Five elements of good web design

March 31, 2004 Stephanie Leary

  1. Text never runs against column edges, borders, images, or captions. These items are separated by as much whitespace as possible.
  2. Headings are easily distinguished from paragraphs and list items.
  3. Headings and other emphasized items cannot be mistaken for links. Links are distinguishable from their surrounding text and do not resemble other items on the page.
  4. Contact information, site maps, search, FAQs, and other “help” items are easily located.
  5. Each page contains information about a single topic OR serves as an index to a group of related pages.

I violate #3 fairly often, even here. It’s still a good rule.

Web Design

Comments

  1. Steph says

    April 1, 2004 at 10:26 am

    The underline is your friend.

    Scott, Eric Meyer just posted a little rant about how blogs make no sense at all. Thought you might enjoy it.

  2. Steph says

    April 5, 2004 at 9:54 am

    Posting from work, so just a quick link: This is a website.

Fascism Watch

The Fascism Watch is a daily(ish) news roundup. View all the previous Fascism Watch posts »

Latest WordPress Book

Content Strategy for WordPress

A short book for content strategists and managers on implementing a complete content strategy in WordPress: evaluation, analysis, content modeling, editing and workflows, and long-term planning and maintenance.

Read the sample chapter

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WordPress for Web Developers

WordPress for Web Developers (9781430258667)

This is a book for professional web designers and developers who already know HTML and CSS, and want to learn to build sites with WordPress. The book begins with a detailed tour of the administration screens and settings, then digs into server-side topics like performance and security. The second half of the book is devoted to development: learning to build WordPress themes and plugins.

This is the second, much-revised and updated edition of Beginning WordPress 3, with a more accurate title. Everything’s been updated for WordPress 3.6.

WordPress for Web Developers is out now. See what's inside...

The best WordPress features you’ve never noticed

  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Screen Options
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Bulk Edit
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Private Status
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Dashboard Feed Readers
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Options.php

Content Modeling for WordPress series

  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 1: analyze content
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 2: functional and organizational requirements
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 3: a sample content model

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

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