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	<title>W3C QA - Quality Tips for Webmasters</title>
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	<meta name="DC.Title" lang="en" content="Quality Tips for Webmasters" />
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	Tips for Webmasters
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<h2>About these Tips</h2>
<p><strong>Short, simple bits of knowledge for better Web design, authoring, and use,
	on quality issues related to W3C
	technologies such as HTML, CSS, HTTP</strong>.</p>


<h3>Writing and Translating Tips</h3>
<p>New tips can easily be added, and <em>you</em> can write and submit yours &mdash; <a href="#process">learn how</a>.</p>

	<p>Some of these tips have been translated in Spanish and are served in language negotiation with the English versions; more <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/,translations">translations are available</a>, and more are welcome</p>

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<h2 id="quality">List of Quality Tips</h2>
<ul>
  <li class="tip"><a href="good-titles"><strong>&lt;title&gt;</strong>: the most important element of a quality Web page</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="noClickHere">Donʼt use “click here” as link text</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="reback">Use standard redirects: don't break the back button!</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="Use_h1_for_Title">Use <code>h1</code> for top-level heading</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="altAttribute">Use the <code>alt</code> attribute to describe the function of each visual</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="Doctype">Donʼt forget to add a doctype</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="use-links">Use <code>&lt;link&gt;s</code> in your document</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="color">If You Pick One Color, Pick Them All</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="font-size">Care With Font Size</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="iso-date">Use international date format</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="png-gif">GIF or PNG?</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="headings">Use headings to structure your document</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="uri-choose">Choose URIs wisely</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="uri-manage">Managing URIs</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="beyond-validation">Beyond Validation</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="goodclassnames">Use class with semantics in mind</a></li>
  <li class="tip"><a href="unordered-lists">Unordered lists: more than just bullets</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Tips under review or discussion</h3>
<ul>
  <li class="draft"><a href="color_bgfg">Be careful with colours</a></li>
  <li class="draft"><a href="readable-uri">Make readable URIs</a> (<strong><a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/2004/08/readable-uri">New proposed draft</a></strong>
	tries to incorporate the <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa/2003Sep/thread.html#48">feedback received</a>)</li>
</ul>


<h2 id="process">How to write and submit Quality Tips</h2>

<p>All people are welcome to submit new tips for the quality tips for webmaster. </p>

<ol>
	<li><p><strong>Read the quality tips already submitted</strong>. If you think that a tip is unclear and you want to change it, verify first the references in the tip itself, it could occur that this tip has been already discussed on the <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-evangelist/">public-evangelist@w3.org mailing-list</a>.</p></li>
	<li><p>Write a draft of your quality tips using the <a href="http://www.w3.org/new-doc-from-template?location=%2FQA%2FTips%2F&amp;template=%2Fafs%2Fw3.org%2Fpub%2FWWW%2FQA%2FTips%2FTemplates%2FTipTemplate.html&amp;submit=Continue...">Quality Tips Template</a>.</p></li>
	<li><p>When you have written a quality tip, send a mail to the <a href="mailto:public-evangelist@w3.org">public-evangelist@w3.org</a> mailing list with the file you have created in attachment.</p></li>
        <li><p>During the review period, a <strong>W3C QA Team member</strong> adds the tip to the list of tipss in the page <a href="/QA/Tips/">Quality Tips for Webmasters</a> as draft. The quality tip goes then through a 2 weeks review period on the mailing-list.</p></li>
	<li><p>After the review period, the author incorporates the feedback received and sends an updated version to <a href="mailto:public-evangelist@w3.org">public-evangelist@w3.org</a> ; the QA Team checks that the feedback was indeed incorporated and adds it the production validator</p></li>
</ol>
<h3 id="writingatip">Tips on writing Tips</h3>

<ul>
  <li><p>Start with a catchy, simple title. Whether people will read the full tip will depend on whether the
title of the tip is interesting.</p></li>
  <li><p>What's the goal of the tip? State that early. You'll need a short introduction,
  use it to make your point and make people want to read more.</p></li>
  <li><p>... Before you start the bulk of the tip, remember: be short. There is a
  difficult balance to achieve, because you don't know which context your readers
  will come from, still you have to make the whole very short</p></li>
  <li><p>The tips are supposed to be helpful bits of information, not
  authoritative, dry specifications. The tips should therefore suggest
  and justify, not slam "must"s at the reader.</p>
  <p>"Must" can be used in a tip when quoting a normative
specification. If you do, make that clear by using proper quoting
markup (<code>&lt;blockquote&gt;, &lt;q&gt;</code>). Rewording the normative verbiage may also
be a good idea if it helps explain the concept.</p></li>
<li><p>Making references to other documents is a good idea, if they develop
the ideas of the tip, or give techniques, etc.</p>
<p>Put (not too many) references at the end of the tip, with a small explanation
of why people should go on and read further.</p>
<p>If making reference to a normative specification, try to explain its
acronym(s) or give its full name, with the appropriate markup if
possible.</p>
</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="todo">Todo</h2>

<h3 id="done">Done:</h3>

<ul>
  <li>enhance the validator's <a
    href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/validator/httpd/cgi-bin/"><tt>check</tt>
    code</a> to select the slug from one of these tips and display it</li>
  <li>move the tip(s) from <a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2001/tips/">the
    other CVS repository</a>, since the full text won't be processed by
    <tt>check</tt>; only a link to it will.</li>
</ul>

<h3 id="someday">someday:</h3>

<ul>
  <li>context-sensitive tips: show the click-here tip if the checked content
    contains "click here".</li>
  <li>immediate feedback: rather than just a one-line blurb and a link for
    more, show the one-line blurb and let them choose: (a) I knew that (b) I
    disagree (c) tell me more...</li>
  <li>specific tips todo:
    <ul>
      <li>various WAI quick-tips</li>
      <li>how to use SVG instead of GIFs-of-text</li>
      <li><a href="http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#TIPS">Tips for Building a Cache-Aware Site</a></li>
      <li><a        href="http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2001-July/009086.html">GET vs POST</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa/2001Sep/0013.html">tips ideas sent to www-qa</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/">Tips from the Style Guide for online hypertext</a></li>
      <li><a href="http://www.maccaws.org/kit/primer/">general tips from Maccaws Web Standards Primer</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>extract a list of slug-links from the list of tips. (probably more
    fun-with-XSLT. whee!)</li>
</ul>

<h2 id="ref">References</h2>
<ul>
  <li><a
    href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa/2001Sep/0025.html">Quality
    tips: ready for release?</a> Dan Connolly (Fri, Sep 28 2001)</li>
  <li>&amp;sysreq chat 4Jun2001</li>
  <li>webmaster/validator tip-of-the-day Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 12:16:31-0500 From: Dan Connolly</li>
</ul>


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	<address>
	Created by Dan Connolly. Maintained by the <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/">W3C QA Team</a><br />
	Last modified $Date: 2009/10/16 16:03:03 $ by $Author: dom $
	</address>


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