In the world of web design, both novice and experienced designers often have their faults when laying out websites. Don't fall into the trap of making "common" mistakes. In this article Steve opens up his own bag of tricks, and gives us five design tips that may just make your next project that much more successful.
5 Web Design Tips You Can't Live Without - Design with the Little Guy in Mind (Page 6 of 7 )
In this day and age, all we think about are the bells and whistles, especially when it comes to slick new web designs. Not only are these new technologies often misused, it dramatically slows the speed of your site down, especially large animated .gifs and complex Flash programs.
Although there are more broadband users than ever, never design specifically for them. There are still 28.8 users out there, and designing your site so waiting time exceeds 10 seconds will send those users to a competitor's site.
Web designers need to keep their sites simple. Far too many, especially newer web designers, have fixated their eyes upon the gold when they have not yet mastered the silver. Only use graphics where you need them. Never use .gif animations unless absolutely, unavoidably necessary, which is rare. Additionally, do not use large, intricate backgrounds on your pages, as they hinder the readability of your text and increase load time.
Design with the end user in mind. Assume the user is connected through a 28.8 modem with a 15" monitor at 800x600 resolution using Netscape. Trust me, those visitors will love you (and support you) for it.
Development Cycles 
HTML5 Boilerplate Introduction
