Web Design Dos
Do...
...remember that Web surfers are lazy.
Lazy lazy lazy. Lazy as logs. Lazy as bumps on logs. Lazy as frogs
on bumps on logs. Surfers are used to a continual stream of stimulation
poured directly through their glazed eyes and into their pr0n-addled
brains. Anything that interrupts that stream is an irritation. Too many
clicks to get through the navigation system to the page they want? It's
frustrating; time to move on. Too long a wait until the page finishes
loading? Hell with it, maybe the next page is faster. Got to fiddle
with the resolution so they can see the whole page? Forget that,
let's go find some more Photoshopped Orlando Bloom pictures. There are
hundreds or thousands of web pages on exactly the same topic, so why
suffer through one poorly-designed page when some other page has the
exact same thing?
Therefore, when you're designing your page, take out anything that
means extra work for the viewer. No Javascript popups asking for their
name. No high-contrast multicolored backgrounds that strain their eyes.
No huge images that force them to wait. No multilayered navigation systems
that take more than a couple of clicks to get to the page they want.
Mollycoddle your readers. Spoon-feed them. They'll thank you for it.
Sounds stupid? Watch your own surfing habits someday.
...proofread and spellcheck all of your pages before you post them.
Poorly-written text is hard to read. It doesn't matter that the reader
"knows what you mean." The important thing is that the reader
had to stop to figure out what you mean, and that pause interrupts the
flow of the sentence and distracts the reader from what you really want
her to pay attention to: your meaning.
Even more importantly, poorly-written text makes you look stupid. Every
typo, every misspelling, and every grammatical error drops your IQ a
few points in the reader's estimation.
...write solid, clean HTML.
That means keeping all your tags nested properly and closing everything
you open. Sure, your table will still work if you write <table><tr><td><td><tr><td><td></table>.
...At least, it'll work for now, on your own browser. Will it work for
other browsers? Will it continue to work in the future as browsers upgrade
and change their sensitivity to bad HTML? Are you willing to risk finding
out? Keep everything clean, and you won't have to worry about it.
...read your pages repeatedly in a browser to pick up messy code.
It's disconcerting to read a sentence like, "She cracked her whip,
reveling in the satisfying sound which echoed through the dungeon.</pThe
tip fell across Pikachu's back, leaving a faint pink line and making
him shiver." Well, actually, it's disconcerting on several levels.
But that </p in the middle is the easiest part to fix.
...set the height and width of all your images.
If the browser knows how large your images are, it'll leave a blank
space for them and put the page's text up on the screen, then
download the images. The reader has something to look at while your
images load. If you don't specify size for your images, the browser
stops everything while it downloads your 50K page header, and the reader
is left staring at an empty screen and hoping that your page justifies
a long, boring wait. Never make your readers wait. It makes them cranky.
And a cranky reader is a hard-to-please reader.
...make certain that your text doesn't cover part of a background image.
If your background image includes a band of decoration along one edge,
make certain that your text doesn't cover the decoration. Not only does
it look messy, it also makes the text hard to read. To avoid covering
the decoration, set the text in a two-column table which covers the
whole page, and set the column which covers the decoration to at least
the width of the decoration. Place the rest of the page content in the
other cell. (Specify the width of the column over the decoration in
pixels, not as a percentage! If you set the column width as a percentage,
the column will shrink too much if the viewer shrinks the browser window,
and the page text will overlap the decoration.)
...kill all popups.
They're painfully annoying. If you can keep the image/story/link on
the same screen, do so. Readers don't mind using the back button to
get back to your original page.
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