Routes

To design the page

HTML language supplies directions about how text and images are placed and how they should appear. Anyhow these directions are very general, as the same page will have to adapt to different computers, different monitors and browsers. We list here below the main factors to keep into account to have your site visualized at the best in most cases and the main faults to avoid.

To keep into account the platform

Size of the fonts
If you are employing Windows, remember that with this operative system texts appear 25% bigger than with Unix or Linux (I don't know the exact proportion for Mac, but it's something similar). So if you choose to employ very small characters for your page they could prove illigible for some of your visitors.

To choose fonts
On the page you write there is only an indication of the font you have chosen, but not the font itself: in case the font wasn't installed on your visitor's computer the whole site will be visualized in Times New Roman.
Therefor it's a good rule to employ quite current fonts. If you are an expert our advice is to employ cascading style sheets (file *.css), which consent specificating one or more alternative fonts.

Keeping into account monitor size

To dimension the page
Lucky owners of a beautiful monitor with a 1024 x 768 pixels resolution often make the mistake of thinking that everybody is equally fortuned. The truth is that most of the monitors are of 800 x 600 pixels, a fact that you should keep in your mind. So, control that in any case the page appears well visible, chiefly when you are employing frames, tables or big pictures.
How that? It's sufficient to reduce the size of the window of your browser (see the picture here below) and control that all is adapted and equally well visible.

To limit Frames
What we said above becomes particularly relevant when we employ frames (it's to say when you divide the page in several portions): frames are very useful, but if they are too many they may clutter up a small monitor and make the page nearly illigible.

Keeping into account the different browsers

"Optimisation"
Many are Internet's browsers, of each of them there are many versions, and everyone reads HTML a little by it's way; how to manage? we give three advices:

• Write a good page in the simplest and pure HTML, which all the browsers read also if with some slight difference, you will so be sure your site works for everybody; then, if you like, you can enrich it with other things and special effects meant for the most modern browsers.
• Just avoid this sort of things: "This site is optimised for Explorer 5.0, and for a monitor with a resolution of 1024x768 dpi". It's common opinion that Internet is for everybody, let's try to keep it so :-)
• Test your page both with Explorer and Netscape (and maybe with Opera).

Be careful
Here are some of the things you should avoid if you want to increase the "compatibility;" of our pages:

• The IFRAMES (or the nested frames) They don't work on Netscape and consequently should be avoided, becareful mostly if you work with Frontpage, that won't point out this problem.
• Put by side of the clickable maps a menu of sole text: some of the old browser can't read maps.
• Some of the programs creating HTML pages do not close some of the tags (chiefly the tables). Explorer forgives this error, other browsers don't: be careful.

Look out tables!

Tables are a very useful but delicate tool: here you've some suggestions to avoid problems.

Determining width
The table accepts the order width="" which determines the width. This maybe expressed in pixels (Es. width="200") or in percentage (Es. width="70%"). In case the table is a big one the best thing is to employ the percentage adapting to visitor's monitor, whilst the full dimension would make it get out of the page.

Absolute positioning

Some programs may employ the "position absolute" consented by "cascading style sheets" to paginate the text; this option should be absolutely avoided if you are not more than experienced webmasters: the possibilities this technique offers are a big lot (see for instance the small butterflies in our page about us), but if you are not well up to employ them you risk results like the one here below:

How can I understand if my program is inserting the "position absolute" without my knowing it?
Visualize the HTML code and control that "P" tag hasn't an attribute of this kind: <P style="position: absolute;...   ">
What should I do in this case?
Among the options of the program there will surely be one that consents to disable "CSS", you've only to find it.

Last advice

A last advice and, I think, a good one. Go and visit your site by the computers of all your friends and see what's changing from one to another: you'll surely find some surprise.
If you usually surf with Explorer, it's absolutely essential to test your site also with Netscape: the first one is a very good-natured browser, which forgives (but also make you skip over them) many faults in the code which would prevent visualizing portions of the page with the second one.

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