Hi Everyone,
A lot of Gerbil carers on this list have web pages about their favourite
pets and so we thought that you might appreciate this listing about things
to avoid on web pages. We are not saying that Gerbil web sites have bad
design, on the contrary, many have great design - but we can all learn from
the advice of experts.
The expert in question here is John Tollett who has written a book called
:"The Non-Designer's Web Book". John Tollett has been involved a large
amount of web site designs over the years, so he is greatly qualified to
provide a listing like this. It is full of very good ideas and we certainly
learnt a lot from this list of "web-dite-no-nos" (reproduced here as it
appears in the publication):
***Backgrounds***
1 Default gray color
2 Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read
3 Busy, distracting backgrounds that make the text hard to read
***Text***
1 Text that is too small to read
2 Text crowding against the left edge
3 Text that stretches all the way across the page
4 Centered type over flush left body copy
5 Paragraphs of type in all caps
6 Paragraphs of type in bold
7 Paragraphs of type in italic
8 Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once
9 Underlined text that is not a link
***Links***
1 Default blue links
2 Blue link borders around graphics
3 Links that are not clear about where they will take you
4 Links in body copy that distract readers and lead them off to remote,
useless pages
5 Text links that are not underlined so you don't know they are links
6 Dead links (links that don't work anymore)
***Graphics***
1 Large graphic files that take forever to load
2 Meaningless or useless graphics
3 Thumbnail images that are nearly as large as the full-sized images they
link to
Graphics with no alt labels
4 Missing graphics, especially missing graphics with no alt labels
5 Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460
pixels)
***Tables***
1 Borders turned on in tables
2 Tables used as design elements, especially with extra large (dorky)
borders
3 Blinking and animations
4 Anything that blinks, especially text
5 Multiple things that blink
6 Rainbow rules (lines)
7 Rainbow rules that blink or animate
8 "Under construction" signs, especially of little men working
9 Animated "under construction" signs
10 Animated pictures for e-mail
11 Animations that never stop
12 Multiple animations that never stop
***Junk***
1 Counters on pages--who cares
2 Junky advertising
3 Having to scroll sideways (640 x 460 pixels)
4 Too many little pictures of meaningless awards on the first page
5 Frame scroll bars in the middle of a page
6 Multiple frame scroll bars in the middle of a page
***Navigation***
1 Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
2 Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames
3 Orphan pages (no links back to where they came from, no identification)
4 Useless page titles that don't explain what the page is about
***General Design***
1 Entry page or home page that does not fit within standard browser window
(640 x 460 pixels)
2 Frames that make you scroll sideways
3 No focal point on the page
4 Too many focal points on the page
5 Navigation buttons as the only visual interest, especially when they're
large (and dorky)
6 Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements
7 Lack of contrast (in color, text, to create hierarchy of information,
etc.)
8 Pages that look okay in one browser but not in another
We are very sorry that this email is off topic, but thought that sending it
to the list would be of benefit to the many with regard to web design. All
the very best,
David Hinsley,
www.gerbils.org
Remember - Avoid Locust Beans!
