> -----Original Message----- > From: Prabhath Sirisena [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, 4 October 2005 6:59 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [WSG] Top Ten Web Design Mistakes - yeah, right! > > On 10/4/05, Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > Perhaps it'd make sense to mention what website usability > issues that > > > bug these users, rather than going by your gut feeling - > atleast Jakob > > > asked his subscribers. It'd be interesting to note how > many people you > > > asked about it before coming to the conclusion that he was wrong. > > > > Sounds like a challenge. I should start a poll of my own, then. :) > > Sorry if I sounded like an ass - but seriously, I do think Jakob's got > a few good points in his article.
Oh, I do agree that he has got some good points in his article: all 10 points are valid issues, but nothing we haven't really heard before. The problem I have is that he creates a list of the "Top Ten Web Design Mistakes" based on statistics provided by a very particular group of people. It's as if Paul Mc Cartney created a list of the "Top 10 Best Songs Ever" and only asked subscribers of the Beatles' website to give their oppinion. Guess what that list will look like? > > My conclusion was based on the fact that in all the > Usability Tests I have > > conducted so far I have hardly ever heard anybody mention > "fixed font sizes" > > as their #1 mistake for a website. In fact, the only time I > ever heard it > > mention was during accessibility tests with visually > disabled users. Other > > than that users might mention font-size at some point, but > according to my > > observations people focus on much more obvious things. > > Interesting observation. I'm on a rather big resolution here, and even > with quite ok eyesight, I need to enlarge the text size to keep from > going blind. And at the uni, I often come across browser windows that > have font size increased, especially on small monitors. > > It may not be the most bugging issue, but it does bug nonetheless. Yeah, completely agree. I guess what causes my anger is that there are some people who see Jakob Nielsen's website as the ultimate guide to usability and many might get the impression that fixed font sizes are the biggest usability problem with websites (and there are a lot of sites out there that make that mistake). This is plain wrong. There are much more pressing issues than that. Let's assume we went and converted all of the fixed font sizes into relative font sizes. On every website that exists. Would that make a huge difference to our web experience? Maybe a little, but not much. Now imagine we went and fixed the information architecture of all websites that exist. Content would be in the sections where we immediately expect it to be. Or we ensured there is a consistent navigation on all websites. Would that make a difference to our experience with the Internet? Most definitely. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
