This is a working draft of this page and may not be complete or accurate. For the latest official guideline, visit the public Web Development Guide.

Style Guide > >

The Quick Scoop: What You Should Know

Design:

• We're redesigning! Templates and grids are changing, and this site may not be the most current resource —  so check all your designs by your producer and/or contact the design team.
• Two ads on every page: 728x90 "leaderboard" and either 160x600 "skyscraper" or 300x250 "box."
• We're moving to 1024x768 screen sizes. See our new grids.
• Using the National Geographic logo has special requirements.
• We prefer system text to art text. Nothing smaller than 11px.
• If you're cutting up art for an HTML coder, here are time-saving guidelines.
• More Design Topics...

HTML Programming:

• Your code must work on all of our tested browsers. It will be rejected if it doesn't.
• Your code should be clean, commented and easy to edit, including CSS.
• Search engines drive most of our traffic. Optimize your pages for searching.
• We have directory structure and file naming conventions.
• Use descriptive alt tags and metadata.
• No frames, no <font> and <center> tags (use CSS substitutes).
• More Web Programming Topics...

Scripting:

• Javascript, including DOM manipulation, is okay if it works on all tested browsers.
• We use Perl/CGI, but don't accept outside scripts. We have pretested scripts available for postcards, polls, games, and more. Contact your producer.
• We don't support PHP, ASP, CFML. Here is our core technology list.

Multimedia and Video:

• Flash 8. Use our detection script. We don't have a Flash streaming video server.
• We prefer Windows Media — it reaches the most people the most easily. We accept Quicktime and Flash (see caveats). We don't accept RealMedia.
• Audio (including video with audio) should always be initiated by the user. Don't automatically start audio or videos.
• All plug-ins (Flash, Video) should have messages and download links for users without the plug-in.