What characterizes a modern website?

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1

This is a research and placed on various forums on the Internet. The purpose is to gather information to improve N.nu.

I begin with what I already have found:

  • Modern design is used.
  • For HTML what is used is HTML5 or XHTML.
  • Systems for blogging on the website with built-in RSS
  • Instead of a guestbook modern comment systems are used such as Facebook comments or Disqus.
  • A nice header image with possibly a slider
  • For functions with javascript a modern library is used such as jQuery
  • For images there is a lightbox feature to easily enlarge the images in a nice way
  • Systems are in place to easily log into and easily modify and build the website without knowledge of HTML.
  • On-page optimization for SEO already built with for example: clean URLs, headings, HTML navigation, XML sitemap, no dup content, etc.
  • Use of CSS3, for example shadows in a good way.
  • Instead of a visible counter on the page invisible advanced statistics such as Google Analytics or similar is used.
  • A function for collecting subscribers and send out newsletters are in place
  • The site is built in a way so that it loads quickly
  • Flash is not used for content and preferably not at all
  • The site works well with mobile devices (responsive CSS)
  • The site uses social media to interact with the reader, for example like buttons for Facebook.

What else is there?

2

Add: Careful attention is paid to accessibility, including the use of ems rather than pixel based font sizes and use of HTML elements as they are intended, such as headers.

3

Yes, accessibility and usability is important.

But a question. Isn’t it really old browsers that can’t handle resize of text in px? I thought there was no problem with that anymore.

4

There is a discussion here that you might find interesting about that: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?775925-Jonathan-Snook-pixel-based-layouts

5

A modern web site would use HTML 4 strict. HTML 5 is still in draft and therefore only really available for testing as everything in it could be completely different tomorrow. Also with XHTML there are still to many people using IE8 and earlier which don’t support XHTML to be able to use that yet - although it should be usable long before HTML 5 becomes a standard.

A bloated library for those who are trying to take the easy way out by not learning enough JavaScript to do it properly for themselves. Therefore not necessarily an indicator of a modern site since if someone associated with the site does have a moderate knowledge of JavaScript they would be able to use JavaScript that is just as modern as that in JQuery but with about 40k less code.

Or better yet use a server site stats program with the server log so as to count all visitors and not just those with javaScript enabled.

6

If we want to characterize the modern web it can be classified in following areas -
It should be unbiased, i.e it is operable to all of platforms. (One web for all)
Flexibility
Simplicity and intuitive
Perceptible
Be preventative
Tolerable
Effortless
Accommodating
Consistent
Ability to Handle real world challenge

7

That’s right. It’s only ie6 that struggles to resize px fonts. There’s nothing wrong with using pixels for font-size these days.

You’re list isn’t too bad, I would put these at the top of the list as the most obvious ways to tell a modern site.

The site is built in a way so that it loads quickly, lean HTML, Minified & compressed assets.
The site works well with mobile devices (responsive CSS)
CSS3 is used in preference to images
clean URLs
Use of appropriate libraries to simplify the code.

8

[FONT=Verdana]I’m not sure there’s much point in reviving this thread after ten months.

Thread closed.[/FONT]