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Designing a Web Site: About ten years ago, the first desk-top publishing programs became available for the home computer. Suddenly, the ordinary computer user had the tools to produce leaflets, newsletters and so on. The result was a flood of the most excruciatingly awful material the publishing business had ever seen. The programs gave users the tools but didn't address the need to have some knowledge of graphic design. * The exact same thing is now happening with the world wide web. There are a lot of whizzy things you can do on a web page. Different colored backgrounds, background pictures, colored text at different sizes in different fonts, graphics, frames, animations, music, and let's not even get onto the things you can do with java applets... But before you start throwing everything except the kitchen sink onto your page, stop and remember why you wanted to have a web site in the first place. You want people to read it. Words on the screen, that impart information to your visitors. Anything that gets in the way of people being able to read the information you are providing is not a good thing. Making the pages look attractive is important, but infinitely less so than making your information accessible. Showing off your knowledge of bleeding-edge technology shouldn't even enter into it. If you're putting a feature on a page just because it's nifty, stop and think about what it adds to the experience of the visitor to your site. Think about color schemes. Years of research has proved that the easiest color scheme for people to read is black text on a white background. If you use different colors you will make your pages harder to read. That doesn't mean you can't ever use colored text or backgrounds, but if you do it will be a trade-off between making your page look more attractive, and making the text less clear and readable. And whatever you do, avoid weird combinations like dark blue writing on a purple background. Think about download times. Not everyone has a T1. Most people don't even have a modem faster than 28.8. Sitting waiting for a web page to download is as boring as watching paint dry. If it takes too long, most people won't bother, no matter how interesting or useful they thought your site would be. So don't load up with huge graphics, and make sure what graphics you do use are optimized to be as small as possible. If you're going to use animations, be aware of the effect they have. Anything on the screen that moves will draw the eye. If the animation is the main purpose of the page, that's fine, but if the winking, blinking thing is just a bit of decoration on a page filled with other information, it will distract from the main purpose of the page. Keep it simple, clean and accessible. A fast-loading, easy to read page is better than any technical wizardy, any day. * Footnote: It was a bit like giving everyone the ability to release their own records, without insisting they learn to play their instruments first. Hmmm, isn't that what happened with punk music? |
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