A Sample Style Guide

Abstract: This document provides the general guidelines I used when creating the web for the course Designing and Building Course Webs. It is intended to serve as a simple model of how one might write such a set of guidelines.

• Summary
• General Design Issues
• Providing Context
• Other Issues

Summary

• One column
• Strict hierarchy of sections
• Large pages, since it's going to be printed
• No hierarchy of pages
• Horizontal rule before each level-2 section
• Both site name and page name appear in page title
• Site name appears at the top of every page
• List of key pages appears at the top and bottom of every page.
  • The current page is highlighted in that list
• No next and previous links are used (the list of key pages should suffice).
• All sections are named.
• Few images.
• Every page begins with an abstract describing the contents of the page.
• Most pages also begin with a table of contents.
• Modification date appears at the bottom of every page.

General Design Issues

Pages for this tutorial are primarily single-column documents. I had considered using a two-column style (notes or contents in a small left column, body text in a large right column), but after reading some guidelines for visually-impaired users determined that a single column format was more useful, if less visually stimulating.

Unless there was a good reason not to, I employed a strictly hierarchical design for my pages (never jumping to an H3 without and intervening H2, for example). This makes it easier for some people to navigate, and certainly makes it easier for a program to automatically generate a table of contents.

Providing Context

Other Issues

This page created Mon Jun 9 14:35:11 1997 by SamR's Site Suite.