Bad Web Design: Looong Pages

Written by Richard Lowe


One ofrepparttar sins committed by many inexperienced webmasters isrepparttar 134664 creation of very long pages. I've seen this most often on sites created at universities, although it can happen anywhere.

It's very annoying to run into these amateur sites (although sometimes they look very professional). On one occasion I found a site with a 15 megabyte page! No graphics at all either - just one long, long, long page. I remember surfing torepparttar 134665 site (it was a list of jokes) and I just waited and waited. I could see from my internet throughput meter that massive amounts of data was being received so I waited ... but it was ridiculous! I'm very glad that I have a 1.7mb connection - otherwise I would hitrepparttar 134666 top button long before this page was done loading.

Another place that I've seen this is when someone simply posts some large text files torepparttar 134667 internet. They don't even bother to convertrepparttar 134668 file to HTML - just link torepparttar 134669 text file directly. While this is a fast way to get something ontorepparttar 134670 web, it is a sign of a true internet amateur.

Okay, here'srepparttar 134671 problems with this practice.

- The majority of people onrepparttar 134672 internet use normal 28.8 or slower modem connections. If you have a page which requires over a minute to download on this kind of connection you've almost guaranteed that your visitors will go somewhere else.

- Search engine spiders do not like long documents. Many of them will stop after 100kb or so - it's anyone's guess ifrepparttar 134673 spider actually looks at a page that is a megabyte in length.

- Many usability studies have proven over and over that it is very uncommon for visitors to scroll downrepparttar 134674 screen much (and often not at all). They will scroll if they read something of interest, but they will not scroll very far. Most people tend to prefer clicking on links to scrolling downrepparttar 134675 page.

HOW FRAMES AFFECT YOUR PROMOTION AND MARKETING EFFORTS ?S ?

Written by Richard Igoe


The following article outlinesrepparttar Pros and Cons of using frames with a deeper look at how they might affect your promotion and marketing efforts.

When designing a new website, one of your first decisions is whether or not to use frames. Frames technology allows you to have more than one web page on your screen atrepparttar 134663 same time.

Typically a frames site will include a navigation menu downrepparttar 134664 side or acrossrepparttar 134665 top, withrepparttar 134666 main or contents page fillingrepparttar 134667 rest ofrepparttar 134668 screen, however you can use 3, 4, 5, or more frames if there is any advantage to your site from doing so.

ADVANTAGES OF FRAMES

1) Frames can make your site easier to navigate because you can have a constantly visible navigation menu - and as you should know, easy navigation is one ofrepparttar 134669 most important aspects of website design.

2) Frames can make your site faster because you can includerepparttar 134670 site theme (images, logo, etc..), andrepparttar 134671 navigation menu, in frames that do not have to download each time a visitor looks at a new page. Onlyrepparttar 134672 contents page changes.

3) Using frames can make it easier to design and maintain your site, especially if you have a large site. If for example you want to add a new page that is linked fromrepparttar 134673 other pages on your site, you simply add a link on your navigation menu; you do not have to add links on each and every page.

(Howeverrepparttar 134674 top web design software allows you to create templates which can give similar results. You create a template and then createrepparttar 134675 pages for your site based on this template. Then whenever you make a change onrepparttar 134676 template,repparttar 134677 web pages based on this template can be automatically updated. This is essential if you have a large site and don't use frames.)

4) Frames can make your site more interesting and can also allow you to have permanently visible advertising banners. Take a look atrepparttar 134678 Word magazine site www.word.com - well worth a visit and one ofrepparttar 134679 most innovative sites we have found from a design point of view.

DISADVANTAGES

1) The original argument was that not all browsers support frames, but this must be a very small percentage now. You can get around this by including a area below your frameset. In this noframes area you can include includerepparttar 134680 normal area and in this you can place information such as a simple navigation menu and a "Sorry your browser does not support frames" statement, - OR you can design a complete page for browsers that do not support frames.

2) Some search engines only indexrepparttar 134681 home.htm or index.htm page without spideringrepparttar 134682 rest ofrepparttar 134683 site, so unless you have good tags your site might not rank very well, especially since many search engines also take into accountrepparttar 134684 contents of your pages and frames are treated as hyperlinks to other pages. You can however get around this by creating "doorway" pages which redirect visitors to your index.htm page.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
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