(Please note: Some of my very favorite sites on the Internet incorporate the very same design techniques that I recommend never using. It then becomes a matter of "grinning and bearing it" because the content and material of a site is sometimes worth the effort of putting up with less than user friendly design.)Very few (if any) people are naturally gifted in creative writing, visual artistry, the engineering of complex schematic systems and technical programming of software applications. Unfortunately, all four skills (and more) are needed when building a good, solid “knock your socks off” web site.
My strongest forte is the creative writing part (or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it... ). Everything else I’ve learned about building web sites, I’ve learned the hard way while using the tried and true techniques of:
- beg, steal and borrow (while keeping the stealing to a bare minimum)….
- lots of trial and error….
- and plenty of blood, sweat and tears….
Following The Golden Rule"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Yep! The Golden Rule works well in real life, and it also works when designing a web site. Like real life, all the rules of user friendly web site design can be summed up in this one concept. When designing your site, just try to keep in mind all the stuff at other sites that drives you crazy -- and then don't do it at your own site.
Simple, eh?
But in all the excitement of learning how to do all this stuff, it's really, really easy to include all the very same stuff that you dislike so much when visiting other sites....
Size MattersIn web site building, the rule of thumb is think small when it comes to graphics. This means small file size and small in pixel (screen) size. Graphics enhance the written content of your site. They're like a spice that subtly adds flavor to the main course.
Unfortunately, it's really tempting to go wild with graphics. And graphics can end up being a big Mamma Jamma slow down at your site…. Some day, when we all have Internet access via cable or DSL, you won't have to worry so much about file size. But that day is still a long way off.
Biggest graphic offenders: Animated gifs
Animated gifs are great fun to have at your web site! I used to sit and admire my animated gifs for hours on end. But it also took hours on end for my animated gifs to load into your browser.....
Animated gifs can be huge space hogs. I've even seen animated gifs as large as 900k (which can take anywhere from five to ten minutes to load into a browser).
Web surfers have learned through experience to be incredibly patient people, but they're not that patient.... Face it -- only your mother, spouse and a few of your closest friends will be patient enough to wait for monster gifs like that to load into their browsers.
And large pixel sized graphics? What's the point of having huge pixel sized graphics that engulf the entire screen? I know it's pretty, you know it's pretty….
So -- if you have a giant sized graphic that you absolutely feel the need to share its beauty with the entire world, then hide it behind a link that warns visitors regarding how many kilobytes they're about to load into their browser.
Goldilocks and The Three Bears
Papa bear liked his fonts real big.Momma bear liked her fonts real small.
But Baby bear liked his fonts just right.
I once had my fonts too big….because I'd been to a million sites where the fonts were too small.
But most web surfers (like Goldilocks and Baby bear) enjoy having their fonts just right.
Midi Madness
If you have a menu page that you expect visitors to keep coming back and forth to in order to find more links, then please DON'T embed an automatically playing midi (or other sound) on that page.
If you have to install automatically playing midis (and I used to have a web server limitation that required that), then install them either on dead ends or at other intermediate locations where visitors are not as likely to return to.
Techno Madness
I love trying all the newest techno things that only the newest of the new browsers will support! And it continually baffles me why everyone doesn't have the latest browser available. They're free….. So what's the big deal?
But everyone doesn't have the newest browser.
So if there's any content on your site that you absolutely want everyone to have access to – DON'T hide it behind any of the new fancier techno stuff. If you have a zillion dollars to spend on designing your web site or if you're a talented scripting genius – then there are "ways" around the techno/browser limitations.
But for us regular folks, we have to remember not to hide anything vital behind the fancy techno stuff. I try to provide links to a techno version and a funky old browser version.
Example: At the front door entrance of my site, I have a way cool javascript slide show effect. But not all browsers can handle it.In theory, any browsers that can't handle it are supposed to get sent to another page. But the "in theory thing" doesn't always work. And a lot of folks just end up getting stuck in the dark.
So I have an entrance link for most users and an entrance link for browsers that can't handle it.
The Never Ending Story
This refers to two different techniques to avoid:
First, it refers to web page articles that appear to have little or no formatting. Seems like a lot of folks just paste text documents onto their html documents. The browser screen is then endlessly filled with nothing but row after row after row after row of text.
Now, unless an article of this sort happens to be written by someone I already know I really, really want to read – I’m not going to take the time and extra eye strain necessary to read the article.
How about you?
The article might be pure spun gold and a literary masterpiece of the 21st century…. But it won’t get read! Use spacing, indents and paragraphs! Use anything you can to break up the monotony and make the text more inviting to read.
Secondly, it refers to web sites that primarily consist of one main page that seems to load and load and load forever and ever. It’s the never ending web page. When the page has finally finished loading into your browser, it feels like you could scroll down the page a mile or two before hitting bottom.
Examples: Don't do this / Do This Instead
Theoretically you can create web pages that will scroll down forever and forever. Although I’m not sure anyone’s ever achieved it. The person who has designed this page wants to insure every visitor sees (and gets a taste of) everything the web site has to offer.
More times than not – the site has also been designed using large, slow loading graphics (see Size Matters) and an automatically playing midi file (see Midi Madness).
Each time I follow a link that leads off from the main page, I inwardly cringe because I know I’ll eventually have to go back to that Never Ending Page and wait for it to load one more time. (One of my very favorites sites on the Internet is designed this way -- but (as I said earlier) the content of the site is worth the pain.
Blinded by the LightBackgrounds. Backgrounds can be a great addition and really liven up a web site.
Rule of Thumb: If you can’t read the text – then don’t use the background. This seems simple enough to understand – but I continue to come across web sites sporting backgrounds which render the text totally unreadable.
Becoming More Centered
Yow! This is something I was guilty of in a big way!
I used to center all sorts of text.
I thought it looked cool.
Practically everything I did was centered.
I finally figured out
that centering everything made it more
difficult for visitors to read. and
so I decided it wasn’t as cool as I thought it was.
Actually, it still looks sorta cool to me, but if it makes
text more difficult to read – then why would one
use it?
I am currently a recovering centerer, and I try to take it one day at a time.