IS YOUR WEB SITE UNFRIENDLY? Part 2 of 9Written by Laraine Anne Barker
Part 2: IMAGES: make every one countDon't load your page with graphics, especially those "under construction" things. If graphic has nothing to do with content of your page it is best left out. "Why," I hear you ask, "shouldn't I have as many pictures as I want?" Well: 1 Visitors who still have very slow modems will simply get tired of waiting for your page to download and go somewhere else. 2 About 30% of Internet users with browsers that support images disable this feature, and some older browsers are text-only, so your page can look messy if, for instance, it's full of empty boxes. 3 Unless your home page is devoted to, say, your artwork or your prize-winning photographs, graphics can distract from content of your site. 4 A large number of graphics, especially animated and other gimmicky ones, often indicate a site lacking in real substance. By all means use graphics on your home page as links to other pages, but make sure you supply words as well. A line or row of little empty boxes means text-only visitors have to wave their mouse pointers over each box to see if link contains something of interest--and URLs can sometimes be so long and complicated that this information might be hard to extract. The first time I was put in this position was on home page of a supposedly professional site (a publisher's site in fact) where I found nothing BUT empty boxes--no welcome, not even publisher's name. My thoughts were NOT kind ones! I recently visited a page where, because webmaster had used JavaScript for navigation, waving my mouse over link did nothing but tell me that there WAS a link there!
| | Learn from the Masters (of Web Design)Written by Stefene Russell
If you've ever been to Louvre, you know it's chock full of art students, who spend hours in museum with their sketchpads, copying works of Masters. Poets do it too; that's why English majors spend hours doing "close readings" of Shakespeare before they begin to write their own stuff.The "Learn from Masters" philosophy is what's behind Project Cool's "Sightings" section, and I think it's a sound one. Every day, one of their Dev-X editors chooses a site with outstanding design to inspire you to new web-mastering heights. If you really want to improve your web-building skills quickly, sign up to receive their daily "Sightings" newsletter, and spend ten minutes a day studying a great website. If you hate having your mailbox stuffed to capacity, you can also just browse their archives for ideas. Here are some recent examples: KG Worldwide http://www.kgworldwide.com/index1.htm Says Sightings, "Here's an example of how well a simple design can work. This site presents a clear navigation path for user, but still maintains a professional designer's flair. Go to "The History" page to see a cool horizontal scroll interface."
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