Thursday, March 10, 2011

Web UI Considerations

Following are some Guidelines, Suggestions and recommendation for designing web applications please do consider these for site performance and SEO as they are really helpful. This is the first version of guidelines I will try to draft more in coming days.

· Do your layout with divs

· Please don’t use tables even though they work fine

· Describe the DOCTYPE so the browser can relate

· Check in all browsers

· Title everything including links and images

· Don’t use <b(old)>, please use <strong> ’cause if you use <b(old)> then it’s all then wrong. All other obsolete tags should be avoided and use tags for HTML 4.0.

· Do not use GIF format of images because it does not support enrich graphics

· Use Resolution of 1024X768 as 56~65% internet users has this resolution

· Use common fonts like serif, sans-serif, Arial. because if you use special fonts which are not installed on client machine it will cause the site to be displayed in browser default font.

· do consider Accessibilities option because almost 40% of overall internet user suffer due to some disabilities

· do not use bgcolor

· do mention the width of li Items as they treated differently within each browsers

· use Breadcrumbs in navigation so the user could understand where he/she is

· Navigations should not be in JavaScript because it makes complicated for the crawlers

· for better CSS understanding use ASP.NET control Adapters to apply perfect CSS

· do not Use server side includes as they poses many issues for the UI designs use Master pages instead

· use User Controls only when required because 1. you don’t know who it will look like until you reach the browser,2. state management is really difficult and it cases more server load than normal, 3) reusability causes more control flows which ultimately effects the performance.

· When working master page do use content templates in header to customize meta elements for each content page

· to transfer data between master class and content classes use public properties or user mastertype or property master

· if only 1 master page is enough then mention this in web.config instead of mentioning on each page

· use nested master pages only when requires

· Utilize Master pages for Header and footer.

· Utilize ASP.Net content pages to design inside pages.

· Use server side asp.net controls for everything, instead of html.

· Create XML Sitemaps.

· Create custom error page (404). Showing error to the user not only frustrates but it also cause server vulnerable to oracle attack

· Always use character code when it’s available like for trademark, registered, copyright sign, etc.

· Avoid Inline CSS

· All design tags are supposed to be in external CSS file, no inline style tags.

· Do not use spaces (&nbsp;) for layout purposes; use CSS instead.

· Use of 301 and 302 redirects.

· to make controls consistent use themes instead of native attributes specially with container controls like, panel, gridview and data repeaters

· since themes apply after the CSS you can StyleSheetThems where you want to override the theme with CSS

· make sure that your page size and JavaScript code are not heavy since JavaScript is interpreted so a large page volume will affect the page performance.

· Use Viewstate objects only when they are required because they are heavy and encrypted causing more data flow back and forth wither the server.

· Encrypt information in web.config because an attacker can download the web.config

· Use regular expression instead of loops in JavaScript to Optimize page performance.

· When a page is getting larger enough do consider information splitting options. Never try to make web application as windows form.

For someone who don’t want to read whole guidelines can listen to this

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