Slashdot Mirror
What Makes a Good Web Design?
Grand Master Math asks: "I'm currently redesigning my website and I have checked out tons of various web sites, gone from link to link, etc...to find the best web design techniques, layouts, and features. Wow Web Designs proved to be a pretty useful site, as it showcased virtually 'the best of the web' in design and creativity. I was wondering what the Slashdot community has to say about web design and what the best web design should implement and address. From browser compatibility, to simplicity and complexity, and customization to user interaction, what should a perfect web design incorporate?"
tags. Gotta have those
The Anti-Blog
Personally, about 95% of the pages I load are shit. They load, but they either look like ass or have a very, very pissass poor information layout.
You should prioritize the following:
1. The code needs to be simple, as does the design- your page needs to load on everything. I've stopped bothering with Netscape 4.7 (layers! Gah!) but make an effort to make sure my pages load on Mozilla and Netscape 6, which requires effort for the fact that they both really hate multiple nested dynamic tables.
2. I'll get a "redundant" for that one, but I haven't seen this mentioned yet- The actual Information Design needs to be clearly thought out. What are users coming to your sight for? What do they want? Design your site to make whatever that is easy to find and quick to get to. You should be more concerned with the actual FLOW of your DATA than of your design- the form, naturally, follows function. If I have to run a search to find something that should be on the front page or part of the static navigation, or if running your URL through Google gets me somewhere I couldn't find, you've failed and need to take the class again.
3. Stay away from plugins. All Shockwave and Flash do is eat your bandwidth- not everyone has the latest version of the player, not everyone has the bandwidth to pull a 500k splash page, and most importantly, not everyone actually likes flash. All depends on your audience.
Beyond that, it becomes personal preference. I run at 1024x768, but my browser is a window that's about 700x400 - I hate browsing fullscreen and am not fond of pages that either force my rez or require horizontal scrolling. I also am strongly against audio elements in pages, and useage of flash if I notice it.
So build small- both in graphic file size and minimum physical area of the page. Build simple, so it runs on anything. Design minimally, so the user isn't overwhelmed with a wall of links and options and gets lost. And bottom line, keep in mind that no matter how clever you think your design is, 90% of the people using the web are idiots.
Its impossible to tell you what good webpages are, but its easy to spot bad ones.
Good reference.
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com
Rob
If you design a website, the first thing you should do is find out who your audience is. Once you know who your audience is, then you can start figuring out how the design should work. It's all about the audience.
hallelujah!
Pooty tweet