Kirk's Pet Peeves (i.e. Kirk's Irks)

grade reduction amounts per occurrence shown

Grading

• I start grading at 100% and take points off based on the criteria below
• A minimum of 10% is awarded if the project is completed on time, even if errors take you below that level
• I must be able to see your work using the Assignment & Project Viewer

Amount of Content

• -90%: inappropriate amount of content

Links

• -20%: broken links
• -20%: links to documents (htm, php, or css) that don't exist
• -10%: "Click Here" or "Click On" (etc.), this isn't the 90's anymore
• -10%: email addresses
  • always create a mailto link when displaying an email address - like this: hopkinks@miamioh.edu
  • note that if the user does not have a mail application (like Apple's "Mail" or Outlook), the link will not function as you hope it will; this has become a problem due to increased gmail use
• -10%: links that open improperly
  • if the link takes the user away from your site or menu system you need to use a target="_blank" to open the link in a new tab/window (governed by the user's browser)
• -05%: text that should be linked that isn't
  • references to a specific Facebook page, LinkedIn page, etc. should be linked with a target="_blank" to open the link in a new tab/window (governed by the user's browser)
• -05%: having underlined style links with spaces at the beginning or end of the link (underlining spaces looks silly)
• -05%: missing external stylesheet

Images, Audio, and Video

• -20%: broken images (common problems)
  • using something like file://Users/KirkHopkins/Desktop/FabulousPicture.jpg won't work
  • using something like https://www.netdisk.miamioh.edu/apps/display_file.php ?path=windows%3A%2FMyFiles%2FH%hopkinks%2FPUBLIC.WWW%2FIMS222%2Fimages%2F YouProbablyCantSeeThis.jpg&nocache=0123456789 won't work for anyone but me if I'm logged in
  • using something like /MyFiles/H/hopkinks/PUBLIC.WWW/IMS222/images/AnotherFabulousPicture.jpg probably won't work either
• -20%: stretched photos
• -20%: images that are huge and can take a while for the page to load, images should be smaller than 1024px wide and less than .5MB
  • recommend using jpg's for photos
  • recommend using gif's or png's for "icon-type" images with only a few colors
• -20%: using someone else's image
  • don't use their's, use your own
  • this includes glyphicons
  • don't use "free" ones either, make your own with the exception of facebook, linked in, and twitter type icons
• -20%: images with spaces or apostrophe's in the name
• -10%: animated GIF's
• -10%: automatically playing audio/video on page load
• -10%: images without an "alt" tag
• -10%: videos without closed-captions
• -10%: low quality images
• -10%: poorly used background images
  • be careful, it's easy to mess up a page with them

Aesthetics

• -20%: marquee (sliding text or pictures) - don't use it
• -20%: blink - don't use it
• -20%: seizure causing image/background changes - don't do it
• -20%: designs and/or images that don't scale (i.e. not responsive)
• -20%: designs that change on the website (i.e. different from one page to another)
• -10%: designs that are too busy
• -10%: illegible text (usually on a background that makes it difficult to read)
• -10%: using someone elses graphics, color schemes, and styles (with little to no changes)
• -00%: have a peer/friend review your page on their computer and with multiple devices and browsers, how does it look to them?

More Technical

• -10%: problems with tags/elements (may be reduced to -05% depending on the severity of the issue)
• -10%: bad grammar/spelling
• -20%: font tags - use CSS instead
• -20%: flash (doesn't work on iOS, thankfully)
• -20%: pop-ups - they are annoying and often blocked by the browser
• -20%: underlining - don't use underlines unless it is part of a link
• -20%: pdf's
  • My disdain for the use of pdf's has grown to the point that I no longer allow them to be used on a website
  • saving a resume or other text as a pdf and including it on a web page does NOT count as a web page, build the page as HTML
• -20%: using images in place of a web page
  • saving a resume or other text as an image and including it on a web page does NOT count as a web page, build the page as HTML
• -20%: inconsistency
  • be consistent with your whole web site (menu system, color scheme and styling)
• -20%: poor communication
  • the user doesn't have you there to explain things, your pages need to explain things on their own
• -20%: poorly named
  • title
  • web page
  • external stylesheet
  • URLs (web addresses) should not have spaces in them, use CamelCaseInstead
  • your web page name should match the content so you wouldn't have a page with generic names like this.htm, that.htm, or the_other.htm
• -10%: messy mark-up/code
  • your HTML and CSS should follow a pattern with indenting and be the same throughout your site; random spaces and tags with typo's also drive me crazy
• -10%: unnecessary HTML and CSS
  • including things that are not used just makes your site more difficult to maintain
• -10%: leaving in the brown M&M's
  • using things like Kirk's or kirks something in your code, review all code that you're using and make your own
• -10%: bad semantics
  • don't go from h1 to h2 without an h1 between them

Recommendations

• View your pages with multiple browsers and at different sizes
• Have a peer/friend look at it to see what they think, your pages need to function properly everywhere for everyone