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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?"
Too often, people get too gadgety when they design software. Keep it as simple and as direct as the functionality and purpose of the site allows you to. Gimmicks are worthless. The best web designs get out of the way and promote the presentation of their content. Once you've taken into account the structure of your content, half the battle is over.
Keep it simple
To the point
Searchable
Flash-non flash versions
no unnecessary plugins
no popups/unders, etc.
two versions of the same website is cool.
Not everyone has a blazing net connection, so remember the little guy sucking on a 33.6 dialup connection.
that's it.
Sent from your iPad.
There is no such thing as good web design. There is only good user design. Who are you users? What do they want to accomplish by visiting your site? What do you want them to accomplish on your site? Once you answer those questions you'll be in a position to make some decisions about a design that compliments your goals.
;)
Or, you could just put all the important stuff in flashing text
There's a huge split. If you ask the "Slashdot Community" what makes good web design, you'll hear... a lot of noise.
There's the progress camp:
www.webstandards.org, that wants everyone to upgrade their browsers and live on the bleeding edge of style sheets (how ironic is it that their bleeding edge stance has been replaced with an "under construction" sign).
Then there's the compatibility camp:
anybrowser.org that wants every web page to work in the old browsers.
There are probably a few things everyone can agree on, like Flash being worthless at best and extremely annoying most of the time.
Personally, I say: look at the successful dynamic sites. Google, Yahoo, Slashdot. Light HTML, very light images, strong dynamic backend. Don't get too caught up in the format details; it's the power of what's driving the web page, and the content, that matters.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
It seems that web design has changed over the years in order to better accommodate database-driven websites. Text graphics, for example, are pretty much out.
Check out the big boys and see what they've been doing with their sites in order to compensate for massive quantities of content.
I'm biased, but I've got to say that the LDS Church website has done a remarkable job of integrating content and design in an attractive and useful way.
Got Rhinos?
Whats more important?
The "look" of the website, or the "content"?
Glammer up garbage, and its still garbage. Glammer up content and you've got a blockbuster site.
Just a tidbit to think about when redesigning.
BTW - Cliff, you realize that this is a "need hits on my website" article dressed in "AskSlashdot" clothes, right?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I'm in the process of reading the book "Don't make me think!" by Steve Krug. It's a very easy read, very short, big pictures etc. One of the main points he brings up which I think you should keep in mind is exactly what his title suggests.. don't make the user think. If the user has to think about using your page, "Gee, where's that search button? Is that the product I want?" etc, well, who knows how long they'll stick around. Don't make the user think.
Another thing he brings up is usability tests. I admit, I haven't started doing this yet, but I agree with him. Grab a user that isn't a web programmer. Go to their machine and have them load your page. Then ask them to perform some function and watch what they do. Do they struggle when they try to add a user to the list of names? Do they search around for a help button? In some cases, have the user actually speak out loud about what they are doing. Usability tests can really help you learn where your app works well and where it just plain sucks. Hell, I forgot to add a 'save' button to one of mine because I knew how to get it to save without the button (there was a trick to it). I almost put it in to production, but we do quality checks with other people and they caught it (I believe my thoughts were, "Doh!").
Anyway, I'd suggest the book. It's something you could read while sitting in a Barnes and Nobel sipping tea or whatnot.
-Frijoles-
Good web design is like good music or good writing. It's only good insofar as it meets the desires and expectations of the audience. My wife and I think Son Seals and Koko Taylor are The S**t. The 18 year old young women in our WSD are bored with them. They like (boring, rhytmless, tuneless :-) techno.
Some people LIKE lots of Flash, animated buttons and dancing bologna on the screen. I like clean and simple. Each is appropriate for different tasks.
The question is, as always, "What problem are you trying to solve?"
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Web Pages That Suck
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
I'm surfing the web looking for content.
...
What is your content? That is why I came to your site.
Can I find and understand it easily?
If I can't figure out the content, the rest is useless.
Focus on your content. Why is your website there? Why am I looking at it?
Flashy == distracting == frustrating == waste of time
... unless your whole purpose is strictly to entertain
O=='=++
Everything you want to now is here. Enjoy!
...to think about. Or rather, they are, but they should be on the list below usability. That is, if your web site is there to store some actual content or information, as opposed to being primarily a work of art in its own right (in which case you should go nuts and ignore the rest of my message).
For instance, just that front wowwebdesigns.com site you point already makes me grouchy. Why? They shrink the font size below the default font size. With my default setup, the page is completely unreadable. Fortunately, with Mozilla I can bump up the fonts for that page, but good web design would mean the user shouldn't have to do that.
The site is also too busy. Too many sites out there clutter the screen up with packed sidebars on both sides and advertisements and flashing animated images and Flash animations and oh my word.
The pages they list as "good" at may be pretty and eye candy, but unless you're trying to make a gallery piece which is supposed to be thrilling in its own right, they are what I would think of as *bad* web design. To my mind, good web design is a design that doesn't get in the way of your reading and getting to the information you want to find on that web site.
My idea of good web design? www.google.org is near the top. Very clean, simple, straightforward, does its job and is readable.
Clean, readable, not sensory-overload inducing, well-organized: all of these things are far more important for 80-90% of the web sites out there than anything having to do with being visually appealing or using creative and fancy new touches.
-Rob
You really can't go wrong if your website follows those three principles. There are hardware concerns, too (make sure your servers and your connection is up to the expected task).
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
useit.com. It's a great resource for usability information, including a lot of stuff on web usability and design.
Personally, I like Slash. What's that? You say your website isn't an interactive forum? Oh, dear.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
It really depends on who you're targeting, and on what your content is. A personal homepage with a bunch of family pictures is going to have different requirements than a site where you're trying to show off your Flash skills in hopes of landing a new job.
Jakob Nielsen's useit.com is a highly regarded source of information on what makes people's browsing experiences enjoyable and worthwhile. Generally speaking, Jakob advocates designing sites so as to make the user's experience as painless and "friction-free" as possible; some specific recommendations would be to try and design your site so that it doesn't require specific browsers, resolutions, or plug-ins to operate properly. If you want to keep people's interest, page loading times should be under 10 seconds, which places limits on how big your graphics will be and how many of them you'll have on a page (somebody has already mentioned remembering people on 33.6 dialup connections).
On the other hand, I've seen some amazing sites that were pure eye-candy. In that case, having a specific browser and/or plugin (usually some version of Flash) was an absolute prerequisite, and nobody minds because the animations on such sites push the envelope of what can be done with current technology, so it's understood that the "latest-and-greatest" stuff is required to view them. Few if any of them are practical; they're just fun, so it's OK to break the rules.
Good luck!
I'd suggest reading Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox on web design, not only the current columns but past ones, too. Some columns like The Top Ten New Mistakes of Web Design are definitely worth reading. It's a couple years old, but people still make those same mistakes.
Besides not falling into the trap of flash without substance (pun intended; Flash is frequently useless for most web sites), keep in mind that people have come to expect certain things from how web pages work. It's nice to have an inovative design, but if it's so far outside the norm that no one can figure it out, people aren't going to use it.
For example, for web commerce, you may not like Amazon, but their site has become the standard for how people expect to shop on the web.
1) Do not attempt to control every aspect of the display of the site in the browser of your visitors. This is not the purpose of HTML.
2) Create a site that is standards compliant. Please note that doing this requires adherence to 1.
3) Hypertext is an excellent manner of displaying and linking information. Keep that in mind. Information.
4) Proprietary inclusions such as Flash should be segregated from the main of your site, and identifiable as what they are.
5) There's not much that Javascript does that you really need. Honest.
6) Newspapers use narrow columns for a reason.
7) Sarif fonts are easier to read in column-form than sansarif fonts.
l
I browsed a handful of sites featured on the mentioned 'wowwebdesign' site, and frankly, I think the criteria is in question.
When I go to a website, there are a few things that will immediately piss me off:
If I have to resize my windows to view the page properly... I ration out space on my desktop right down to the pixel... if I have to resize the window to view some big page layout, I usually decide not to look at the page at all
If there is a pop-up anything... pop up ads are infinitely more annoying than banner ads. Why can't people take a lesson from Google, and their text-only ad policy? Also, if I click a link on your page, and you force my browser to launch a new window, I'm outta there. (I've always wondered why my browser can't disable this feature and just replace the current page with the new one ALWAYS)
Sacrifice of useability for artistic masturbation... if you find yourself thinking that you've just GOT to use that flash animation, or animated GIF, or whiz bang javascript, first do everybody a favor and ask yourself if it adds to the useability factor of your site. chances are your visitors are a lot less impressed with those gadjets than your are.
Not only do these things annoy, if you keep things simple you will have more time for content, which is all most of us are really concerned with anyway. Now that I've opened my fat mouth, I'm sure everyone will go visit my site and proceed to rip me a new one about how it could be better *grin* (feel free, btw)
The only design that works contains the following:
.Gif icons (a must: apply a drop-shadow filter with Gimp or Photoshop!) .sig to advertise their business/website
/.!
[] A teal color scheme
[] Black text on a white background
[]
[] A plethora of spelling and grammatical errors; otherwise, it will look like some type of machine is running the site rather than a genuine dumb human being
[] The ability to add users
[] At least 40% of all users must troll
[] Allow them to have a
[] Commenting capabilities
[] Comments must be rated as an integer value with 5 being the highest and -1 being the lowest. In special cases, incessantly naughty trolls can be bitchslapped into a -2 blackhole.
[] First post is life, the rest is just details
[] Moderating capabilites
[] Posts may be moderated an infinite number of times. Even if every rating is used a handful of times on the same comment, it should be rated as whatever adjective the last moderator thought it deserved.
[] Ultimate goal: build a large enough user base so that you can post links to sites you yourself hate on the front page and watch those sites' servers go up in smoke in a little under five minutes
This is meant as a joke. I love
:-)
1) Are you selling a product or yourself?
If you are selling a product, keep it simple. Flashy shit, while nice as eyecandy, inevitably will cause problems with SOMEONE's browser out there if they don't have installed/activated the plugin that you require and then you've alienated a potential customer.
Also, make good use of the title tags. Put the page name AND COMPANY OR PRODUCT NAME in it, and not "Home" or, worse, "Untitled Document". Think of how you want your bookmark in their list to look.
As a web developer, the primary difference for me between designing for the web and designing for any other publishing medium is liquidity. You never really know the size of the browser the user's going to be viewing you in, so you better make damn sure your page flows correctly to fit.
Nothing makes me madder than having to scroll back and forth across a web page because some idiot figured that since the site looked fine in his maximized browser on his 1024x768 display, he could hardcode the tables to be 1000 pixels wide and no one with have any trouble with it. Other than people using too much superfluous flair for its own sake, I think this is probably highest on the list of big problems designers make.
Take steps in the beginning of your design process to avoid the problem. Start using the percentages for widths in your table tags. Start using the ALIGN and VALIGN attributes correctly. Don't rely on FrontPage to position things for you with style properties, instead put them into properly formed table tags with the alignments set right so that the page flows when it's resized.
It really does make a huge difference.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
1. World Wide Web Consortium is thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods.
2. Flash is evil, and of the devil. Flash is blaspemy.
3. Javascript can be useful for on-page functions that don't necessarily require a server call, but remember your page still still fundamentally work with no javascript enabled.
4. Images should be used for illustrative purposes, not to show you found a neat image and *never* as a background.
5. Images should be small and reduced to webpage resolutions.
6. Content shouldn't be laborous to read. Black on white text is the best, but at least always make sure to use contrasting colors.
7. Style sheets should always be used (see number 1) but make sure that necessary style pairings (such as colored tables and the text within) are defined in the same scope. A page-declared table color and text/css file declared table text color could cause problems if your style sheet file doesn't load.
8. Design for non-compliant brower protocols *only* if your business depends on it. Private sites should *always* be written to the HTML specs (see #1) all browsers be damned.
9. Do not covet they neighbors hyperlinks. Links should be used in *context* and not in a random listing. Don't say "you can find a link about greyhound adoption *here*." Instead, write either "There is a lot of information about *greyhound adoption*" or "*Greyhound Puppies Inc* has a lot of information about greyhound adoption." All of this results in a page more useable by non-traditional browsers. (see number 1)
10. If you change the color of links, you should make sure that the default colors (blue, purple, red) will show up on your site. Another reason not to use picture backgrounds. Also, don't ever *ever* reverse the color scheme... cool (blue-like) colors for unvisited links, purple or red-like (hot) colors for visited links.
Frankly, I think you're asking the wrong crowd.
Of all computer users, the Linux crowd is the least qualified to comment about design. Oh sure, there are exceptions, both among Linux users and among Slashdot readers, but just read the comments that have already been posted. The common thread is that people wouldn't want to sacrifice content for a flashy web site, and that just shows their ignorance. These people don't realize that good design does not involve compromizes. Good design is about presenting the content in such a manner that the appearance enhances the content presentation, not distracts from it.
Besides, look at the state of 99% of Linux software, especially the open source stuff. User interfaces are the last concern of the developers. It's obvious to me that the majority of Linux developers and users really don't care, or just don't know anything about, good design. But, I guess I should cut them some slack, since it's very hard to be a good programmer and a good designer. Yet I'm disappointed that most developers don't try to get good design ideas from others.
So yes, Virginia, you can have your cake and eat it too, provided that the web site is designed by a real graphic designer. Such an individual has both training and experience in creating designs that work.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Making your page look good on every browser and platform is impossible. It will take too much work and you probably don't have all the systems
Bullshit!
Making a page that looks good on every browser is as simple as using standard W3C approved HTML. Once you start using advanced CSS you'll run into a few problems, but they're managable. But once you start using scripts, animations, frames and proprietary plugins, you'll never get it to look decent on any browser but they one you're coding for.
We've got a new guy at work who used to be a web developer. I had a long discussion with him about why websites were designed for specific browsers. Why use all these proprietary plugins and scripts redirecting browsers to appropriate versions, instead of just using the standards that are out there. The answer was surprising to me. "The requirement and specifications that come from marketing demand that the website look *identical* to every viewer."
He was serious. His former company was paying testers to measure stuff on the screen, to verify that a box in NS wasn't two pixels taller than it was under IE. They even had some pages on the site that were 100% Flash. If more browsers could handle embedded PDF, they'd use that instead. Ridiculous.
Use FRAMES and Images maps if you need it.
Good idea. Especially since you NEVER need to use frames, and should ALWAYS accompany image maps with standard text navigation.
Sheesh, I bet you're one of these guys that doesn't even use alt tags.
Flash and Shockwave when necessary
And just when are Flash and Shockwave ever necessary?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I see a few complaints on how not to make a site. What people need is more of a structured method to make a usable site.
1) Start with your users. Who are they? Can they be categorized? i.e. Business Men, Students, Computer geeks. Rank them in order of importance.
2) Figure out what each group wants from your site and what characteristics about them make them that way.
3) Organize the hierarchy of the site based on what each group wants, giving priority to the category of users declared most important. Organize your content based on user goals and not the other way around.
4) Design the pretty web pages to fit the hierarchy, choose the interface tools that fit the data best.
Of course, content is king. But one of the tradeoffs is always nice graphics vs. load time.
To some extent, you can have your cake and eat it too- a fair number of graphics, as well as a page that displays quickly if you always use the "height" and "width" attributes in your IMG tags to manually specifiy the dimensions of your graphic. This way, the user's browser can go ahead and render the rest of the page quickly before the graphics are downloaded since you've alreay told it how big that image will be.
This is potentially a HUGE gain in the perceived load time for your site. I hate waiting for a bunch of graphics to load, but if I can start reading the page while the graphics load in the background I don't really mind.
The "alt" attribute for your IMG tags is important, too. This "alt" description is what gets displayed before the image has loaded, or if the user has graphics turned off or is using a non-graphical browser (maybe they're visually impaired!).
Additionally, descriptive "alt" tags help your images get ranked higher in image search engines, such as Google's. This is an increasingly popular way for people to find your site.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
There are so many backend hotshots and content delivery gurus on Slashdot. Clean, streamlined design and multimedia are not mutually exclusive, regardless of what the current crop of webmasters push on people.
Part of the dip in web popularity and content, content, content push right now has something to do with how BORING most sites are visually. Information and communication can be highly visual, multimedia experiences without the techno soundtrack and popup windows. "Content-freaks" tend to forget that photos, infographics, video, audio (used sparingly), even motion graphics are often ESSENTIAL components of successful communication.
I think good web design goes beyond presenting viewers with long articles and extensive commenting/forum features.
It's the attention to detail.
Sites like k10k, pixelsurgeon, presstube, and others, succeed in providing visual stimulation, while google, slash-anything, etc. succeed in providing content. There are very few sites that succeed at both. None that I've ever done. Probably because the number one feature people ask for is SPEED.
Well used flash, with a nice php/sql powered backend, can really deliver speedy content to slow modems and fast modems alike.
That said, I'm still leery of using flash on front doors and on high traffic / wide user-base sites.
Oh and one other thing that drives me crazy. Forms that don't allow auto-fill for states b/c of pull down menus, and forms with excessive validation or required fill boxes...
Been thinking about this a lot myself.
Especially since you NEVER need to use frames
I dispute that: there's a certain very well-defined set of circumstances in which using a frameset is beneficial. Although I agree that 99% of the frameset usage on the web is inappropriate, in certain circumstances framesets can be used for efficient navigation and still look good - the main advantage of frames is that they only need loading once - it's a frivolous waste of bandwidth to put the same graphical navigation bar on each page, for example (not that I'm a huge fan of graphical navbars).
Still, the rule for frames is: If in doubt, don't use them.
Actually, not. There's the normal page that 99% of users will use but through effective use of SSI it doesn't have to be duplication of effort at all.
" />
If your default design requires Javascript, include a
<noscript>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;http://server.domain.com/texthome.html
</noscript>
in the HEAD.
This will send all of the folks with no scripting to the page that has none.
The very first thing that should appear on the default page is a link to the text-only version. This is for the benefit of non-sighted users who are using a browser that processes the scripting. This should appear first because you don't want them to have to wait while their screen reader recites the entire page before they get to the one piece they really need to function.
Yes, by all means "know your audience." But, remember that unless you are going to authenticate your entire audience there will be other people coming to your site.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Actually Eric Binna and Lou Montoulli invented the Blink tag at Netscape. It was an easter egg, it was never documented by Netscape, they just used it a couple of times on their Web site. It was actually meant as a joke.
To answer the original question, Web designers should be taught to use as little active code as is necessary. I am fed up with sites that collapse in a mess of poorly debugged Javascript. At least these days Javascript rarely causes the browser to crash, but you can still go to a major site and hit a Jscript bug with a major browser release.
The main design point I think Web Designers need to be taught is allowing the user to decide how to view the site. I really get fed up with sites where the main purpose is to satisfy the Web Designer's ego.
My absolute hate is sites that start to mess arround with the controls on my browser. Especially those that try to disable the back button or fix the window size. At home I have a large LCD display, only i spend a lot of time looking at sites that insist on folding themselves up to a postage stamp size in one corner with 6pt fonts.
Don't ever put 'best viewed in 640x480 on your site, or anything like it. The whole design of HTML was to make that type of thing unnecessary.
IE now allows you to enable javascript on a per site basis. since turning off Jscript by default and only enabling it when necessary the quality of my browsing has improved greatly. A major side benefit is that popup ads no longer work. Now if we can only persuade MSFT to allow Macromedia to be disabled on a site by site basis or provide a button that says 'Never download this application it is a crappy piece of crap whose sole purpose is to bombard me with crappy adverts i don't want to see'.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Let me say one thing first, the Wow Web Designs site is NOT a good example of web site design. Look at it in Opera and see for yourself how nice the dark blue links look on the dark brown background. Yuck. Try turning the images off. Almost none of them have alt tags.
Good web site design is subjective. What one person considers good to look at, another won't. Some people actually like those huge flashing animated gifs they put on web sites. Do what you like if its a personal site. If its commercial and you're doing it for a client, then of course do whatever the clients like.
That aside, I know I might be rehashing a lot of other people's comments, but here are a few of the things I keep in mind when designing sites:
- Conforms to the W3C accessibility guidelines and validates (HTML, CSS, etc.) If your site does this, it will cover a lot of the other bases and cut down on problems. Also try running your site through Bobby at http://www.cast.org/Bobby/
- Doesn't use unnecessary graphics or flash. When you have a site about art, movies, or other topics that lend themselves to heavy graphics or when you want to show off something, like a product or your campus - use the images and make sure they're nice ones. In most cases tons of graphics and fancy flash things aren't necessary and just contribute to download time.
- Looks acceptable on as many browsers as possible. It might not look identical on all, but there isn't anything that's illegible on an older or non-traditional version. Try a site like Any Browser's Site Viewerthat will show you what your site looks like on using other browsers, or older versions of HTML support.
- Dynamic Content is important if you want to bring visitors back. They come to your site once, find what they want and never come back again unless your content changes. On the same note, when they get there the content must be up to date on things that are timely, like events information
- Make sure the site downloads fast - most importantly the front page. I now have a 24kbps connection at home and realize just how important this one is.
I guess those are my main ones. I won't get into all the others because so many people have covered them on here already.
This site - Any Browser and this site Software QA Test have testing tools that may be of some use to you.
I'd give you some examples of my work, but I really can't afford for for any of my sites to be slashdotted right now.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
The difference is that you can make links open in a new windows by control-clicking (or whatever) on them. But if the developer forces all links to open in a new window, how do I (who doesn't want a new window) make it not open in a new window? I can't -- the developer has overridden that option.
To provide the user with choice (which is one of the most important things that a website developer can do), it's important to not force particular UI styles on users. Give them choices. In this case, the only way to do that is by not opening links in a new window.
-Waldo Jaquith
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Content
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Animations
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Valid HTML
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HTML is not a typesetting language
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<NOSCRIPT> tags
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Remember about other browsers than yours
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Remember about people with disabilities
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Colors
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Fonts
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User defaults
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Accept-Language
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See good websites and learn from them
- debian.org
- gnu.org
- google.com
- dmoz.org
- w3.org
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Try to learn from the good old books
-
Hire an expert, like
me
This is everything what I can think about right now. I'm sure many of you have already said the same things (I do hope so!) because I started writing this comment when there were only few other comments posted. Those are, in my opinion, the most important things about a good web design, so it's worth being a little redundant. Forgive me any typos, it's quite a long comment and I'm very tired (and very lazy).If you don't have anything interesting to say, don't even bother.
Do not use any animations or blinking text on a page, when there's any text to read, especially if they can't be turned off by simply pressing Escape or clicking Stop. I don't mind ads, as long as they don't interfere with reading, and animations do interfere.
Don't publish invalid HTML. Always use W3C HTML Validator and CSS Validator on your pages online. Always use HTML Tidy before your new pages are online. If you don't write HTML but you use a WYSIWYG Web authoring tool instead, and its output gives any errors or warnings when tested with HTML Validator, complain to the vendor of this tool you use asking to remove the bugs.
HTML or XHTML are for the logical informations about your document. CSS is for defining the look and feel.
The <NOSCRIPT> tag is not for writing "Your browser is bad, come back when you install better" but for providing the same functionality for browser without JavaScript or with JavaScript turned off.
(By the way, texts like "If you can see this text, that means you have no JavaScript" are as stupid as "If you can see this text, that means you have a kernel panic")
If your website is unusable without JavaScript, it needs a redesign. Don't use <a href="javascript:..."> links if you don't have equivalent <a href="http:..."> links inside a <NOSCRIPT>.
If your website is best viewed with any specific browser, or in any specific resolution, you're not a good web designer and worst of all, you don't understand what the Web is all about. See the Any Browser Campaign. Install Lynx (a text-mode browser) and see how your website looks like. If it's unusable, it's poorly designed. Remember to always use ALT property in IMG tags, aspecially in navigation buttons.
See the Web Accessibility Initiative and always try to meet the Triple-A, Double-A or at least Level A Conformance. Use Web Accessibility Initiative logos on your website, or just a text information about your level of conformance.
"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." - Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
People may access your website using Braille terminals or voice synthesis. Testing your website with Lynx is always a good idea.
Remember that 10% of your visitors are color-blind in some degree. Remember that black text on white background is the best combination for any text longer than few lines. Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.
Remember that the best font for text longer than few lines is a serif, variable width font, like Times. Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.
You should always use the default font face and default font size for the normal text content on your website. Just don't define the face and size, and it'll be ok. Remember that when you use size "-2" for the whole text on your page it means: "For the text on this page, use the font two levels smaller than what the user has chosen as his/her default and favorite size of font".
Use your own font faces, sizes and colors other than black on white, only for logos, headers etc., but not for the main text to read, longer than few lines and especially longer than a paragraph. Soemone has set a bigger size as a default for a reason - maybe he/she has a small screen, maybe he/she has problems with eyes, maybe he/she just likes big fonts - respect this decision.
If your site is multilingual, use the Accept-Language HTTP header. My browser sends Accept-Language in every single request and it's stupid that I have to click English version links, after I've already told it in my HTTP request. See the RFC 1945 - HTTP/1.0 (May 1996)
It's nearly 6 years old feature, still most of people don't use it. RFC 2616 - HTTP/1.1 (June 1999) defines much richer Accept-Language header (See section 14.4), but please, use HTTP/1.0 functionality at least. See www.debian.org which is a great example of this feature functionality.Try to learn from the good old books, not from the magazines about the latest celebrity gossips.
Contact me and I'll fix your broken website or supervise your webmasters for very affordable prices.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
This is one of the funniest and most ironic things I have read on Slashdot in a long, long time. Sehryan does a perfect job of playing the comic "straight man" who just doesn't get it, in one of the best performances of the year. Thumbs up!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I do web programming for a living, and we get into some very interesting conversations when we're designing a site. Occasionally, I get some very wierd requests for new and novel interfaces. This is a bad idea.
Although the web is fairly new. almost everybody is expecting to see a few things.
- A navigation bar on the left
- A breadcrumb, like on Yahoo!
- Navigation at the very top
You do anything different, and you risk confusing the hell out of your users.You can argue all you want about why your interface is better,but unless you can hard data from usability testing, don't break tradition without a very good reason.I may be heavily biased, since that is what I do all day, but make absolutely sure your code is valid HTML, and leave out all the kruft. Pretty much all WYSIWYG design interfaces by default don't put out valid html, so don't use them. [Emacs |VI] will perform admirably, produce clean code, and if you use a server side scripting language and hide most of your code in templates, will be as fast or faster than Dreamweaver or Frontpage. (You are using PHP/Coldfusion/CGI/ASP, Right?)
For the Love of (insert your choice of deity here), don't make a site all flash unless you have an extremely good reason to. As of yet, I have never heard of a good reason to do so, but they might, in theory, exist. Anything that you put into a web page, be it Javascript, Flash, Shockwave, audio, video, and massive, massive graphics, slows down the site, makes it harder to load, and will turn people away. I'm not saying to use NO graphics. I use quite a few at work, but keep them small, and realise that users very well may have images, stylesheets, or browser-supplied fonts turned off.
Finally, remember what HTML is designed to do. HTML is a markup language designed to format text. All the nifty graphics and such are good, and they have their place, but they weren't invisioned when HTML was designed, and in a sense, they are foriegn to the medium. Use them with caution.
Whoever mentioned the book Don't Make Me Think has a very good point. That one sentence tells you more about User Interfaces than many books ever will.
all these are of course simple usability thoughts. you still need to consider file sizes/image optimisation, cross-browser issues, etc. key to all of these though is knowing your target market. if I'm making a site for other designers it's doubtful it would need to support anything less than 32bit colour 1024x768, a higher than usual bandwidth and slightly more patience to see some eyecandy. however cross-browser compatibility becomes a key issue.
thats all for now, i may follow this up a little more if people want it at a later date.
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
I like websites where the content is readable and easy to find. I don't want to look at lots of images or listen to music (or wait for those files to download). I shouldn't have to click through a bunch of pages to find what I'm looking for.
Make the content easy to read, and make it easy for me to navigate to the content I want.
And don't put anything important up in the top inch or so, where banner ads usually are on many sites. I've developed a blind spot there, so I won't see it.
Cara Hart chart@eNOSPAMfurn.com Systems Administrator eFurn.com, LLC. and ARITEK Systems, Inc.
The root problem is that the tag was bodged. We spent several months working through the issues raised by embedded images and the right way to do it. Then an undergrad decided he would bodge them in and gave 18 hours notice before he released his new code.
That is why IMG sizes are measured in pixels rather than something useful like Knuth's em and ex measures which scale with the font sizes. As it is someone with a 300dpi LCD display (yes they do exist) would see a 'full screen' 640x480 gif in a 2 by 1.5 inch rectangle.
Afterwards the undergrad spent his time telling reporters that everyone else opposed images altogether and did not understand their importance. And he wonders why we helped Microsoft wreck his start up.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/html-hell.html
Listen to the clever people. Not me, but Joel Spolsky.
From his book, User Interface Design for Programmers:
Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.
(he also said that on his site in Nov 2000.)
Joel's a far more clever guy than I, and is always much more eloquent in expressing ideas. You should listen to him, too.
J.J.