Mr. M.'s rules of web design.

1. Animated gifs and dynamic effects. Keep animated gifs and dynamic effects to a minimum. Sometimes even one is too many. The content may determine if an animated gif is acceptable.

2. The Audience. Remember who you are making the page for. A business will want their site to look professional while a kindergarten teacher may want their site to be more fun.

3. Backgrounds. Background images or colors should never be a distraction. Keep the background simple. A busy, gaudy background looks unprofessional.

4. Organization. Organize, organize, organize. You want your audience to be able to find what they are looking for. Make good use of menus and tables.

5. Limit load time. Viewers will leave a site that takes too long to load. Keep the size and resolution of your images as low as possible. Divide up pages with a lot of images.

6. Consistency. Keep the look and feel of the pages consistent with the other pages for the site. Each page should look like it belongs with the other pages.

7. Content. A web page with little or no content is worthless. We use the internet for information. Make sure that you have enough content to keep the viewer at your site.

8. Use Tables. A table should be used to divide and organize elements on the page. Every element should be contained in one table. Tables should be configured to work for all screen resolutions.