If you're designing web pages, whether for your own enjoyment or for profit, your pages have the opportunity to look, smell and feel as good as the very best. Below are some things I always keep in mind when designing, and recommend to you.
You need to present content fast: after only a few seconds with no results, many people will have moved on. Get your viewer's attention quickly. Shove some text up while you're waiting for the graphics to arrive. Within the site, if you know that something's going to take a while, warn the reader before they click the link.
Try to be consistent. Things like layout, background textures, and themed navigation buttons let people know that they're still on your pages. You've probably already noticed my notebook-in-flames and horizontal navigation strips. I also make off-site links open in a new window. People soon know what to expect.
Pick strongly contrasting text and background colours. If you use background textures, they need to be flat and unremarkable - a border image may impact less on your text's readability and look more professional.
A quick statistic: about 10% of male surfers will be colour-blind, and many more will have eye-sight problems. It's in your interest to cater for everyone, keeping font sizes reasonable and colours nice and clear.
If you're going to go for anything other than a serif style font like Times New Roman, use it everywhere. You may find that there are one or two common fonts in that style, such as the sans-serif Arial and Verdana fonts. Just remember that your pages should look acceptable formatted in any font, since different machines, systems and browsers may have different defaults and different fonts.
Most browsers don't show anything inside a table until they have every piece of text and image which makes it up. A reader may left staring at your background texture for what seems like an age. One solution is to split text into at least two tables so that the short first one is already on screen whilst the second is still coming, giving the impression of speed, and delivering content whilst the rest downloads.
If only a few people can see or hear your fancy gizmos, be they Shockwave gadgets, Java applets, or ActiveX programs, is there really any point to them? Slow downloads and incompatibilities aren't friendly, especially to people with little computer experience.
Avoid glaring animations and irritating sounds. Subtle animations with few frames that don't catch the eye as much are good, as well as quicker to download. Sounds get annoying very quickly. It's particularly bad for sounds attached to an index page because you get the noise every time you hit the "back" button.
Frames have consequences. Firstly, they reduce the amount of space on screen for content. Secondly, they render search engines unable to reference pages your pages in most cases; if they do get listed by an engine, they'll appear outside the helpful navigation frames you designed.
Even if you don't use frames yourself, other unhelpful people may. You can use JavaScript to force your pages out of frames (like I do, so feel free to View Source and rip the code), or include a link on each page to reload itself with target="_top" inside the anchor tag.
If you provide the heights and widths of images, the browser can move on and display the rest of the page whilst that graphic downloads, so the viewer gets your pages faster. If you're lazy, like me, consider doing at least those images at the tops of pages.
Use the "alt" tag when possible, because a surprising number of people surf with the graphics turned off. Many people don't have cheap net access yet.
Keep reducing their proportions. Lose 10% of the screen size and you've lost 19% of the file size. Reduce the number of colours in each image, so that if possible they're 8-bit or less, and slash file sizes. Try more aggressive compression settings (but keep the originals safe!) Know when to use GIFs and when to use JPEGs. (GIF for cartoony images, JPEG for photos.)
Re-use your images on as many pages as is possible without them becoming boring. Remember: if it's already in the browser's cache, it doesn't need to be fetched again.
Don't assume that everyone is running Windows, or the same browser as you. This means not using HTML code which doesn't work on at least two popular browsers (basically Netscape and M$ Internet Explorer.) Tags like or only serve to exclude people (and you'll never see those two tags working together.) Browsers may have different defaults on the Mac or under Linux, and these represent growing markets.
If you must specify fonts, use them properly. It is more acceptable to specify a font if you add a font family, because the browser should then sort out an alternative if needed. You can assume that everyone's default font is probably a Serif face. If you want a monospace font, then good mark-up is <FONT FACE="Courier New,monospace">, or if you want a sans-serif font, you should use something like <FONT FACE="Verdana,sans-serif">. The trick is to specify the font family after mentioning the font (e.g. Verdana.) This is harder to achieve if you're using a WSIWYG designer.
A better way to use fonts is not with font tags, but cascading style sheets. These are surprisingly simple, and save you generating massive HTML files full of font tags. They also allow you to change the way all of your titles are displayed by changing one file... less effort for you, less hassle for others. Try a simple guide such as Sizzlin' HTML Jalfrezi, which has a stylesheet section.
Since Macs have different fonts to PC owners, after the font name and before the font family, try to include the name of a Mac font of that type — Helvetica, for instance, is the equivalent of Arial/Verdana, and all Macs should have it (or so I'm reliably informed.)
Different browsers (I refer mainly to MSIE and Navigator) have different defaults of things such as page margins, table cell spacing and padding, frame borders and so on. If in doubt, specify all of the available options for tags. Pure WYSIWYG editors make this difficult — another reason to learn at least some HTML.
When using interface-altering stuff such as JavaScript, Java, Flash etc, try to maintain as transparent backwards compatiblity as possible: if there has to be a marked visual difference, try to use a "selective" display of content, showing the basic unadorned text on the page at the very least.
If using JavaScript specific to a particular browser, note this for the record. For example, you can't have a link to bookmark your site in Netscape 4, but can in Internet Explorer. Make it clear that clicking that link may not work for everyone.
Try to stick to scripts which are cross-browser compatible. Often problems arise simply because of sloppy programming. If in doubt, check popular script repositories for similar scripts certified compatible.
A need, orderly directory structure underlying your site makes for a logical progession between pages. For example, I employ several layers: a general index, a specific subject index, followed by actual content, which may in itself be a sub-index. Make sure that the viewer is aware at each stage what's being made available by the next click.
A familiar interface on each page is comforting to users. This requires consistent use and layout of buttons and "return" links. JavaScript may help here. Facilities such as e-mail and guestbooks are great for generating feedback (however, because of the way browsers handle e-mail clients, people are more likely to write in a guestbook, particularly if they aren't surfing from their own machine.)
Consider having an overall site map, a single page from which all others are directly accessible. This site map could then be linked to from all pages, and the user will then be able to discern the logic in your site layout (there should be some!)
If you insist on using JavaScript events to change the text in the status bar, don't forget to blank it again when the pointer is moved away, otherwise you'll confuse people. Code which scrolls text in the status bar also makes it impossible to see where links lead... and if your visitors don't trust you, they ain't gonna click.
If someone saved one of your pages to disc, would they be able to find it again later on the net? Fix this. Stick your root URL somewhere on every page. I suggest the page title, if your URL is short enough.