What’s good?

So what makes a Web site “good?” Here’s what I think.

A good site helps people meet their goals. It helps the people who use it, the people who own it, and the people who build it.

Sometimes you can tell a Web page is bad, just by looking at it. Here’s an example:

Figure 1. Bad page

But “goodness” isn’t just a matter of look. You need to think about what a site is for before you can decide whether it’s good.

Look at Google:

Figure 2. Google

This is so plain. Nothing fancy at all.

Is it good? I would argue that, yes, it’s good. Because it helps you search.

Learning about goodness

What does this view of goodness mean for you, as you learn about the Web’s core?

It might lead to you think about things that are not “tech” at all.

For example, a page has to be readable to be useful. Figure 1 shows that part of readability is about fonts and colors.

But readability is also about the writing. No spelling errors. Short sentences. Simple words. All of these things affect how easy text is to read.

Good writing isn’t about tech. But it affects site goodness. So, CoreDogs talks about writing for the Web.

The rest of this book

This book – Foundations – has three more chapters.

• Clients and servers. How Web browsers and Web servers work together.
• Basic Web sites. How simple sites work.
• Interactive sites. How Web pages change based on what users do.

Onward!