General Guidelines

Millsaps intends for pages to be attractive and functional and reflect positively on the College, its organizations, and its community.  The Web Style Guide has been established as a set of guidelines and recommendations for sites on the Millsaps web. All pages shall adhere to the standards established in the Web Style Guide according to the Tier System.

• Plan ahead. Before creating your pages determine their purpose, their intended audience, and what materials you are going to include or link to. Make up a logical "map" of your web area.
• Provide continual review and maintenance of your pages. As organizations change, so should the pages about those organizations.
• Use "valid" HTML and avoid browser-specific code as much as possible. You never know what browser your audience may be using. Try to check your page with at least the Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers to assure proper function, formatting and appearance.
• If graphics, audio, JavaScript, or Java Applets are required to convey the meaning of your page, also provide alternative "text-only" material that does not require these items. Some people use browsers without the requisite capabilities or have them turned off for speed in access.
• Try to keep total page size (.shtml file and included images) below 75k to minimize access time. People with slow network connections tend to get tired of waiting for large files and go somewhere else.
• Include a warning if a link on your page will lead to a slow-loading document.
• Avoid long pages - especially for your initial or "home" page. It is better to have several small documents linked from a table of contents than one large document.
• Try to avoid horizontal scrolling. Where possible, use relative widths for tables and frames since people use different size monitors.
• Be careful in the use of backgrounds and colored text. Make sure there is enough contrast to make your text clearly distinguishable. If you use a background graphic or color, make sure you explicitly set the text and link default colors for the page. Conversely, if you set text colors on your page, make sure you explicitly set the background color for the page. Be aware that some users may not be able to print your document if the text color is set to white.
• Don't activate a link on your page until the linked document is available.
• Check links periodically to make sure the pages they refer to are still active and their content is still applicable.
• Maintain visual and editorial consistency across similar web pages.  Creating templates will help you achieve this objective.
• If accessing your information requires a plug-in, please provide sufficient download information.