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What a Site! (Part II)
You're a glutton for punishment, aren't you?
The
Big Picture
Big pictures are... well, big. Not just in dimensions, but in file size
too, and, until all visitors have a broadband connection, then large
file sizes are a No-No - unless the visitor chooses to download them.
So if you want a big picture of Joe Bloggs on your site, give us a little
one, possibly even just a thumbnail, which we can click on to take us
to the larger version, if we want to.
I
Can Sing a Rainbow
Bit of a yucky song, I think, but not as yucky as having all the colours
of the rainbow - and a few more - on one page. There are five colours
on this page, and on every page on the BTG: a yellow
(#FFFFCC), a red (#FF0000), black (text), blue (unvisted links)
and purple (visited links). The last three are the default colours you'll
find on every site, unless the webmaster/mistress has changed them or
you've altered your browser to use your own choices. Anyone who's been
on the Net for any length of time doesn't notice these three, just the
first two.
You could probably use an additional two colours and get away with
it, but they'd have to be carefully chosen: using this
and this would be horrible! And just imagine
a site with headlines like this one:
This
is a horrible
headline!
I'm not kidding! I've seen them. I've even seen some like
this!
Fonts
The default font for most browsers is Times New Roman or something so
similar that the differences are minimal. If you don't specify a font,
you get TNR. That's fine: it's a very readable font, easy on the eye,
if a little boring. If you specify another font, it will only show up
in a visitor's browser if (s)he has it on his system. Most systems have
Arial or one of its family (Verdana, Helvetica, Sans Serif, Geneva),
so specifiying Arial will work for the vast majority. If you specify
any other font, it's a lottery whether or not the page will display
as you want it to. If you specify, for example, Comic Sans, and the
visitor hasn't got it, he'll see TNR and you've wasted your time.
The only alternatives are to embed the font in the page
(which many ISPs won't allow and which is also a pain for the user because
of the download time needed) or to create your pages as image files
(usually gifs). They take an age to download and are very frustrating
and annoying and likely to drive visitors away.
Backgrounds
Backgrounds need to be used with sensitivity, creative flair and great
care. The gold rule is: if in doubt, don't! I have seen far to many
sites which are basically unreadable because of heavily textured or
intrusive backgrounds. Textures usually break up the text and tiled
photographic backgrounds (even if greyed down) are usually distracting,
pulling the eye away from the text. People don't stay on these sites
for very long!
Keep
It Consistent!
If you change the colour scheme and/or design on every page of your
site, you're left with an amateurish mess. Look at the most professional
sites and they all have a consistency of design and colour scheme. Separate
sections may be identified by a single colour change (perhaps a background
colour), but the design remain consistent throughout.
Internal
Links Please!
One of my pet hates is sites from which the only escape from an interior
page is back to the main page. That is really annoying! Internal links
are essential if you don't want visitors to become totally frustrated
and leave the site in disgust.
Frames
There are those who love them and couldn't design a site without them,
and there are those who hate them. Frames are useful, but they have
numerous disadvantages. You can't bookmark a page with a site, unless
you first right-click, then click on "Open Frame in New Window",
then wait for it to download - and who wants to go through that? Frames
also make the site less accessible to the visually impaired - and there
are many more of such people using the Net than you would imagine. They
use a program which reads the contents to them, but such programs have
difficulties with frames.
You can simulate frames using tables, which is what the
BTG does, so you get the advantages without the disadvantages. You know
it makes sense!
That's
It?
Rant over?
Not quite, I'm afraid. If you're using tables (and they
are a very useful tool if you don't want to get into cascading style
sheets or DHTML), please specify widths in percentages, not pixels.
If you use pixels, anyone whose browser is set to a different size from
yours will either have the page squashed into part of the screen or
have to do a lot of sideways scrolling. Use percentages and everyone
will see the site as you intend it to be seen.
And
That Is It!
These have been personal comments, things that annoy me, but
I know that I am not alone. people who create Web sites do so to communicate
with others. If you make it hard for them to read what you have created,
you'll drive them away and you'll have failed in what you set out to
do.
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