are there accepted standards for web design?

January 11, 2007 9:45 AM

I was wondering if there are some accepted, current standards or design guidelines for web applications. In particular, I'm wondering about such things as target screen resolution (i.e., don't go wider than 800 pixels), color depth (make everything work at 256 colors), color choices (stick to things like 0xXXYYZZ, where X Y and Z are one of 0, 3, 6, 9, C, and F). specific answers or pointers to resources are much appreciated.
posted by davidvan to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: It used to be important to try and only use the web-safe colour palette, but it's essentially redundant now that everyone has 16-bit or better displays.

As of the middle of last year, Jakob Nielsen recommends that you optimize your layout for 1024x768, but try and create a liquid layout that'll work on 800x600 and scale well to larger monitors. However, experience suggests that the majority of websites these days have abandoned attempting to fit things into an 800-pixel width, and generally design for 1024 and up.

Probably the most important 'accepted standard' is the move towards using web standards when designing your site and writing your HTML and CSS. From a design point of view, this can mean giving up the idea that you have pixel-perfect control over your layout and font, and being willing to put as much as possible of the content of your site in plain text rather than images. This approach improves the accessibility of your site.

Moving out of graphic design and into the overall design of the user experience or the interface, I can recommend The Design of Sites as a cookbook full of practical advice, both for plain web sites and for web applications. Finally, modern web applications usually make use of AJAX, and a design guide that specifically targets this is AjaxPatterns, also available in book form.
posted by chrismear at 10:04 AM on January 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

I think chrismear got it on the nose.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:42 AM on January 11, 2007

The O'Reilly "Web Design in a Nutshell" Guide (I have the third edition) addresses most if not all of these questions.
posted by hazelshade at 10:54 AM on January 11, 2007

Accessibility guidelines from the web accessibility initiative (WAI)
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:26 PM on January 11, 2007

http://designinginterfaces.com/ is worth a look, as is http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/

posted by mrbugsentry at 3:58 PM on January 11, 2007

If you want a reliable yardstick, figure out who your users are. Your audience must determine your standards.

No, I'm not kidding. If you went full-on SEO-friendly, WAI-guidelines, blind-people-love-it, usable by people who have been smacked in the head with a shovel, navigable by people who are clutching a pencil in their teeth, you will have the most boring possible website and your clients will not accept it. It will be about three pages of Very Large Text with one decorative graphic. There, I've said it - total heresy. The W3C fanboys will come to burn me momentarily, so let me type fast ...

Suppose your site is a website about classic Macintosh games - target older Macs. Test on Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac, plus Safari and Firefox.

Suppose your site is for an AARP affiliate. Assume older hardware (both the users and the computer). That means target a lower resolution and avoid CPU-sucking flash. Give your imagemaps a lot of room, as older people tend to have more trouble clicking on small items.

Suppose your site is movie listings for people on handhelds. Grab some handhelds and download a copy of Opera to set for the small screen. You would then design for a very, very small screen, almost no graphics at all, and use handheld stylesheets.

Suppose your site is for Quake 5. Your users will be hip, young, and have really fast machines. Do a liquid layout, something that works with really high resolution. Go 24-bit color.

It's great to fit in some accessibility, and some accessibility fixes will cost you nothing to implement, but others force you to make compromises. I have to serve a lot of audiences so I tend to lean towards the low-end, but that also means that I have to give up glitzy stuff that would be in high-demand if I were serving a narrower audience.
posted by adipocere at 5:24 PM on January 11, 2007