HTML pages should be clear, consise, and highly functional. Certain details are so important that they are not left up to chance or the whim of the author. This page illustrates some of the best techniques found on the Web today.
Context is always a tricky issue for hypertext documents. External points of reference, such as turning the pages of a book, are not available to keep the reader oriented. One technique for adding context to Web pages is the use of navigation links. This page has navigation links at the top and bottom that integrate it with rest of the tutorial pages. No matter how the reader links to this page, its relationship to the larger work is immediately apparent.
Every page must have a title. The title is used to refer to the page, the name of a bookmark for example. In many documents the title also appears as the page heading. Graphics are often substituted for a textual page header as seen here. Alternate text for non-graphical browsers is essential in this situation.
The table of contents is based on the page's major section headings. It gives readers a quick overview and allows them to jump directly to the section of interest without scrolling.
Section headings divide the page into meaningful "chunks" for the reader. They also serve as the basis for the table of contents discussed above.
The page footer contains administrative information about the page. In this case the footer contains the name of the parent document, the date this page was last modified, a copyright notice, and a contact name. The contact name links to a "mailto:" URL for direct feedback via email.