Designing Effective ESL/EFL Web Pages
Some Guidelines to Consider When Putting Together Pages

This page is designed for people who already have a web page or are in the process of developing a web site. If you have never made a web page before, then perhaps you'd like to read How to Make a Successful ESL/EFL Teacher's Web Page first.

You may not agree with all of these guidelines, but you should at least take them into consideration when writing web pages. If you would like to suggest other considerations to be included on this page, then please send them in.

Make your page as fast as possible.

Consider your audience.

Be careful with font colors & backgrounds.

Be careful with using Java, animated GIFs, image maps, etc. Avoid them if possible.

Be careful with table formatting. Avoid it if possible.

Don't use full-page, multi-column table formatting.

Be careful with frames.

Include your e-mail address at the bottom of the page.

Don't use a lot of images or large images.

Sample Small GIFs

Aichi Institute of
Technology
Only 1,136 bytes, 2 colors, 383 x 34 pixels

My Photo
Only 2,585 bytes, 32 colors, 76 x 76 pixels

Avoid Banner Exchanges
Only 2,884 bytes, 8 colors (different shades of red), 440 x 40 pixels

Don't use images of text for sub-titles on your page.

Be careful with using CGI & SSI. Avoid it if possible.

Various Views on the Use of Advertising

  1. Don't Include Any Advertising.
    • Some (maybe most) teachers think that educational sites should be free of advertising.
    • However, even those people would probably find the following acceptable.

  2. Don't Include "Non-Paid-For" Advertising
    • (If you didn't agree with the previous suggestion, then read on......)
    • These are all forms of "non-paid-for" advertising.
      • "This page best viewed using ..."
      • "This site was chosen as site of the day by ..."
      • "This site was voted to be in the top 10% by ..."
      • "Member of ...."
      • Many think that "The Internet Link Exchange" and other banner exchanges are as bad as regular advertising. I doubt if very many people actually visit your site through this method. How many of those ads have you actually clicked? If you do decide to use their service or a similar service, put the ad at the bottom of your page. (Why should the ad be more important than what you are offering?)
    • These only slow down and clutter up your page (especially if you include an image, too) and don't really serve any purpose. If your site has a sponsor, then advertising is serving a purpose.

  3. If You Need to Include Advertising, then...
    • Don't put the ad at the very top of your page.
      • It's your page. Your title should be at the top.
      • I would personally recommend putting the ad at the bottom of the page.
        • Your advertisers may not agree, though. However, if they are only paying per click-through, then it should be your choice.
        • Common sense would seem to dictate that a visitor is more likely to click to another site after he/she has read the page he/she came to read.
        • By putting the ad near the top of the page, you give your visitors a chance to click to another site. This means that there is a chance they will never make it back to your site.
        • By putting the ad at the bottom of the page, you will appear less like a "money-grabber" out to make money with your web site, and more like a teacher who needs advertising to help make ends meet.
    • Only accept non-animated GIF ads.
      • Animations will often distract from what you are trying to teach.
    • Never have more than one ad per page.

Choose a good page name.

Don't ever change URLs within your directory.

Don't force experimentation on your visitors.

Make your page user-friendly for the frequent user.

If you have created the kind of page which is likely to be revisited, then ...

TESL Specific Things to Consider

Don't forget to do these things before you upload your page(s).


From Other Web Pages That I Have Written


How Does Your Page Rate?

Optimize Your Web Page for Speed


1. Eliminate everything that doesn't show on the surface of the page.

This is the easiest thing to do to get your page to download more quickly. Eliminating this "white space" in the HTML will in no way affect the way your page looks to the visitor, but will result in a smaller filesize.

How to Do It

With your text editor (or word processor) use the "FIND & REPLACE ALL" function.


2. Eliminate junk put in by HTML editors

If you use an HTML editor (Netscape Communicator, PageMaker, etc.), you should learn enough about HTML to remove the excessive code produced by HTML editors.

This excessive code is put in to make programming the HTML editor easier. I have yet to see one where the programmer has taken the time to fine-tune the HTML.

Here are some things which are often seen in code produced by HTML editors which can be eliminated.

Eliminating this "junk" in the HTML will in no way affect the way your page looks to the visitor, but will result in a smaller filesize.


3. Use minimal HTML code

Avoid overusing text font changes and color changes.
Set the "text font color" in the <BODY> code instead of as a <FONT> code command.
Use <BASE FONT= > instead of setting the font for each line.


4. Use short HTML code

If any of the following only occur once on your page, it won't make much difference, but if you use it a few hundred times, it could make a difference.

Here are some things which can be substituted in order to get a faster-loading small filesize.

Doing this "conversion" in the HTML may slightly affect the way your page looks to some visitors, but not for many of your visitors.


5. Don't use any images or use only a few small ones.

For the fastest loading pages, don't use images.

It's probably not too bad to use one image for the title of the page, but with every image you add, your page will get slower.

If you do use images, cut the filesize to the smallest possible size. For GIF files, cutting the number of colors will cut the size of the file.


6. Especially don't use images for these.

Dividing Lines
There is perfectly good HTML code to produce lines. It displays on the page quickly and takes very little code.
For example:
  • No image: <HR> is 4 characters.
  • Image: <IMG SCR="gif/line.gif" HEIGHT="4" WIDTH="440"> is 45 characters (remember to count the spaces), plus you need to download the GIF image itself. More realistically, most people probably would also add <CENTER></CENTER> on either side of the code adding another 16 characters.

Dots
Using the Unordered list code <UL><LI></UL> is fairly concise and attractive.
See the difference:
  • No image: <LI>
  • Image: <BR><IMG SCR="gif/dot.gif" HEIGHT="12" WIDTH="12">

Sub-titles and other text on the page
Using an image to display text is slower than just displaying the text. An added negative point is that your visitor cannot use the browser's find function to find the sub-titles. Another added negative point is that it probably won't look good when printed on paper. Even with a 1200 dpi printer, web images print at 72 dpi. And yet another negative point is that visitors who don't load images will be totally lost unless you are sure that you add in the ALT code, which adds even more to your filesize.


7. Don't use tables

Table formatting adds a lot of HTML code to your page, making the filesize larger.
If you can get by without the table formatting, your page will be faster.

The table won't be seen on the visitor's screen until the whole table is loaded into the visitor's computer.
This can make your page appear to download more slowly than it actually does, since the visitor won't see anything, until the final </TABLE> is loaded.


8. Don't use multiple-column page layout

The primary problem with this type of layout is the same as the second problem mentioned immediately above.


9. Don't use JavaScript

Putting in a "cosmetic" JavaScript into your page doesn't accomplish much other than slowing down your page.
Some people clutter up their pages with things that don't really add to the content of their pages; clocks, scrolling messages, etc.

Using JavaScript to get "cool-looking" navigation is slower than simple links.
Not only will your filesize be larger, thus slower to download, some people will not be able to use your navigation since they may have a JavaScript incompatible browser or may have intentionally disabled JavaScript.

There are good uses of JavaScript.
If you are doing a game or a computer-scored quiz, then the JavaScript on the page has a useful purpose.


10. Don't use CGI or SSI

Using CGI or SSI for things that can be done with simple HTML code, just wastes the visitor's time.
Things like using pull-down menus and a CGI to get to the next page should be avoided, since simple HTML links would be more efficient.

Obviously, there are some uses of CGI which are useful.
Some things can only be done using CGI.

Commonly Seen Things Which Are Best Avoided

Other Things to Avoid


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