July 1, 2010
First, it should have a slick and minimalist design. The simpler - the better.
The widespread practice of a hidden complexity, - page is not simple, but it looks it is!, - must not be too excessive. Design should be really simple to work fast.
Ideally, the page works well on both PC and mobile! So, it's a text-oriented content. Or, at least, the balance for a type of used content (text, images, video) is certainly shifted towards text. Minimum graphics. And absolutely no Flash!
You may love or hate the Steve Job's war against using Flash in iPads, but that technology is slow indeed. While Flash works perfectly on perfect PCs, the Adobe seems doesn't care about testing it on even relatively outdated machines. My old PC practically stops during visiting most Flash-enhanced webpages. So, like Apple, Mini-WWW takes a radical approach and cuts the Flash from Web completely.
Usage of multimedia, if any, should be minimal. Number of images, and their size, is small (thumbnails with links to full-size versions are the best option). The Ideal Page is definetely not a photo-blog. The same about audio and video. Simple links are preferred, - no automatic launch on loading the page.
It also may be better if you develop your page in XHTML rather than HTML. No .pdf or .exe, please.
In short, what is absolutely not:
No Flash. No PDF. No video.
Obviously, an Ideal Minimal Page is small. And sum of sizes for ALL its supporting files (like scripts, css, images) should also be small, - the current limit is 100K.
However, while oversized pages are one extreme, the other is over-simplified pages. It would be nice if content has a simplest form, e.g., plain text, right? No, it's not. It's a bad-looking format. Although rank for size may be good, design of such pages is simply NOT PLEASANT for eyes. It would be unwise to underestimate the diversity that has made the Internet what it is now. A Web should not be format-free. The too simple Web, where all pages look the same, would be deadly boring world!
So, text weights a lot in the Mini-WWW universe, but not too much. Correspondingly, the rank of design in MR formula for a page is significantly lower if it's text-only. The Mini-WWW prefers an optimal middle.
Use minimum scripts, if any. It concerns both client side (e.g., JavaScript), and server side (e.g., PHP) scripts. Former ones consume a lot of power from user's computer. And the latter ones slow down loading process. In most cases they are simply not required.
Alas, all blogs are cluttered by definition. They run complicated CMS at entry pages. Support for comments requires additional script, which is bad thing by itself. Much worse is that even a tiny script may bring in thousands(!) comments at load time.
The safe rule of thumb in the Mini-WWW universe: If there are comments at bottom of webpage - it's cluttered! It's not to say blogs are forbidden. But their MiniRank is usually lower.
THIS blog, for example, attempts to avoid the problem simply by moving its commenting process to external site (Google's blogspot.com).
There are many methods for minimizing elements of HTML design. And they are not a big secret: Just google for "Minify JavaScript", "Minify HTML", "Minify CSS", "Optimize images", etc.
Also, pages should be table-less nowadays. There are legitimate ways for implementing that (see, for example, design for THIS blog).