National Library of Medicine Web Application/Site Development Guidelines

This Style Guide for the National Library of Medicine (NLM) explains the markup and design requirements for all NLM Web projects, along with various standards and best practices. NLM Web pages must be authored in valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and styled with valid Cascading Style Sheets and be coded in order to ensure accessibility.

Accessibility

NLM is committed to serving the entire public, and that means striving to ensure that all pages of our site are accessible to the greatest possible number of people and Assistive Technology devices.

Browsers and Scripts

NLM uses JavaScript 1.1 and DOM Level 1.

The use of HTML markup aimed at a specific browser (e.g., Netscape, Microsoft Explorer) should be avoided. But as of February 2004, NLM supports the following browsers: IE 5.5/6.0, Safari 1.0, Netscape 6.2/7.0, Opera 7, and Mozilla 1.6.

Charset

NLM recommends the use of the utf-8 character set for Web pages so that non-English languages and diacritics are more effectively displayed. The coding to be placed in the HEAD tag of all Web pages is:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets

Web pages must use valid Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control typography, color, and other layout elements. Style sheets must be linked in a way that accommodates the capabilities of new and old browsers.

Design Policies

NLM's Web design policies.

Header and Footer

Guidelines for appropriately branding a Web site or application in development for NLM, and when to use the official NLM header and footer.

Style Sheets

NLM's official Cascading Style Sheets. If you wish to create your own style sheets, please discuss your requirements with your NLM project coordinator.

Trademarks

Referring to an NLM product in print.

Web Applications

Quality assurance checklist for Web applications.

XHTML: Guidelines

NLM Web pages must be authored in XHTML 1.0 Transitional. All XHTML must validate.