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Stephanie Leary

Writer, WordPress consultant, recent MLIS grad

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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

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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.

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I’m a front end developer at Equinox OLI, working on open source library software. I was previously a freelance WordPress developer in higher education. You can get in touch here or on LinkedIn.

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