Archive for the ‘Website Designing’ Category

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Who knew there were so many … what a waste!

Looking for a new flavor for your website? On this page at nuff-respec.com is an organized list of favorite sites that display moat all of the latest web designers and their web designs. Included in this list is: CSS Mcss, Zen Gardenania, The FWA: Favourite Website Awards, Design Snack, CSS Vault, and Style Crunch of which display several if not hundreds of website designs for 2007 and beyond.

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Wendy Boswell @ Lifehacker writes:”I have kind of a secret fetish for good free fonts, so Fonts 500, a site that has collected the top 500 popular fonts used on the Web, is definitely on my good list.”

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people have quite a bad reaction to Flash, in general. Sure, it can be used well, but the reaction of most visitors to something starting to load will be oh no, Flash! , followed by a hasty dash for the back button. Why is this? Well, there are a number of reasons that come together to cause it - each one, on its own, seems relatively minor, but together they make up a pretty comprehensive case against Flash.

* Flash is a Plugin.

Flash isn’t integrated with any web browser - instead, it’s available as an installable plugin. This has a lot of downsides. The first time someone views something that users Flash, they’re asked to install the Flash plugin - this takes time and is annoying, especially considering that Flash plugin isn’t available for all browsers. After that, every time some Flash content appears, the Flash plugin has to be loaded into the browser before the content can even begin to be loaded, losing a vital few seconds.

* Flash is Slow to Load.

Once the plugin itself has loaded, the next step is for it to load the Flash movie in question. Because Flash movies are typically so heavy in images and animation (that is, after all, the point of them), visitors will often end up spending a considerable amount of time being forced to stare at a ‘loading’ graphic. This is supposed to be the web, not a PlayStation - no-one wants to watch your site load.

* Flash Makes Sound.

Flash upsets users because they generally have no way of knowing that it’s going to make sound - many users disable all their browser’s sound functions, not wanting random websites to be able to make sounds at them, but Flash sound still gets through, since it’s a plugin and doesn’t obey these settings. Flash is part of the reason why users end up browsing the web with their speakers turned off altogether - people just hate having unexpected sound forced on them, and they have no way of knowing whether your Flash website might suddenly start making some.

* Flash is Often Unnecessary.

Because Flash lets you make little animations, many websites use it for things that are completely unnecessary and un-interactive, but that they think look ‘cool’. The classic example of this is the web crime of the Flash intro: a useless piece of Flash that visitors have to sit through before they get to a website, usually saying and doing nothing useful whatsoever. Using Flash for unnecessary things is actively user-hostile, and many users have come to associate its use with that mentality.

* Flash Breaks URLs.

If you let visitors navigate around within a Flash movie, that navigation isn’t saved at all. If they go to another site and come back, or even just press the ‘Refresh’ button, they’ll lose their place entirely, and have to start from the beginning again. This isn’t good if they found a particular piece of information or picture - they’ll be annoyed at having lost it.

* Flash Breaks Right-Click.

Users like to be able to right-click, to print what they’re looking at, or save it, or copy it to the clipboard - not to mention all the extra functions that they might have installed on that menu. Right-clicking on a Flash-based website, though, gives a right-click menu of things related to Flash, like whether the movie should display in high or low quality.

Users just aren’t interested in this menu, and are upset that they can’t get their normal one back. This is an especially large problem for users that like to have more than one window open at once by using right-click followed by the ‘Open in New Window’ function.

* Search Engines Can’t Read Flash.

Finally, perhaps the most convincing argument against Flash: it’s entirely invisible to search engines. Text you put in a Flash movie doesn’t exist, as far as search engines are concerned. It’s closed off from the rest of the web and unfindable by most of your potential visitors. That surely can’t be good.

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This article was brought to you by SiteHelpCenter.com. SHC provides users with free tips, tools and resources to create a website as well as free website design tips.

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A mistake often made by people who are new to web design is thinking that they shouldn’t pay any attention to what has come before: they’re going to design a website the way they think one should work. You have to realise, though, that there’s a difference between being innovative and being arrogant. In almost all cases, you should be sticking to the conventions that have gradually developed during the life of the web so far.

* There are Millions of Websites.

Why would you need to do that? Well, if there were only a few hundred websites in the world, you wouldn’t - it’d be fine for people to have to learn a slightly different way of working to use yours. Unfortunately for you, though, there are literally millions of other websites. Even your most loyal visitor is overwhelmingly likely to be spending the majority of their time looking at other websites, not yours - and if your website doesn’t work similarly to the others, then they’re going to find your website hard to use.

* The Learning Curve.

When people come to your website, do you really want them to have to figure out how to use it before they can get started? Do you want to write big help files and FAQs just to explain it to them? Of course not. Part of the power of the web (as opposed to desktop programs, for example) is that it gives a consistent interface to all sorts of things. If you break this, then you’re making your site require some learning to be usable.

The web is competitive enough that, in most cases, your visitors will just desert you for your easier to use competitor - even if there isn’t one now, one can easily enough spring up and take advantage of the niche you created with your bad design.

* What are the Conventions?

The web’s design conventions are simple, but effective, to the point that you probably don’t realise they’re there most of the time. Here are some examples:

Your logo should be a link to your homepage.
The links on your navigation bar should all be internal links.
Clicking a small picture will display a bigger version.
Links go to HTML documents unless they’re clearly marked as a movie, PDF, etc.
Things are bought by adding them to a ‘cart’ and then going through a ‘checkout’.
Identity checks are done with a username and password system.

There are many, many more.

* What Happens When You Break Them?

People get annoyed. It’s immensely frustrating to want to see a bigger version of a picture on an e-commerce website and click it, only to get the same size picture in a new window or something equally stupid - annoying enough that I, at least, would go and look for a site that had a better picture.

Not only do people get annoyed, though, but they also get confused. If you put an external link on your navigation bar, for example, then people could think it’s part of your website - that creates all sorts of issues, since you have no control over external content.

* Exceptional Circumstances.

The only time you should break the web’s conventions is when your website is different enough to others that it will be worth people learning a better way to use it. For example, when Google launched Gmail, the world’s first webmail service with a gigabyte of storage space, they introduced an interface that used Javascript to change entire pages without reloading. That broke the web’s conventions, but worked well enough that the technique caught on, and is now starting to develop new conventions all of its own.

Don’t get carried away, though, and start thinking you’re more important than you really are. Your great new product is very unlikely to justify you adding streaming video to your homepage - it’s more likely to just annoy people (far better to add a large picture of the video and a ‘click here to see our new product’ headline). Know your website’s limits - for the most part, you should try to make it work as much like other websites as you possibly can.

The ultimate test is this: if you sit an experienced web user in front of your site, can they use it without getting confused? If they can’t, then it’s back to the drawing board.

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This article was brought to you by SiteHelpCenter.com. SHC provides users with free tips, tools and resources to create a website as well as free website design tips.

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There are a lot of different kinds of websites - and there are a lot of people who know they want a website, but aren’t even sure why. If you don’t already know, you need to figure out exactly what it is that you want your website to do. What kind of thing do you want to put on it? Who are you trying to get to visit? Here’s a quick guide to some of the most popular website types.

* The Business Card Website.

For many people, having a website is something they feel the need to do as a duty, not because they really want to do it. In this case, it’s perfectly justified to put up a website with nothing more than your name, your business name (if any), and your email address.

You could also include your real-world address and your phone number, if you’re comfortable with that. The key here is to at least put up something for someone who happens to be looking for you with a search engine.

You have to understand, though, that these kinds of sites can be as frustrating as they are helpful. Friends and co-workers may be excited to find your site, only to say “oh… is that all it does?” Customers, especially, have a tendency to get upset, especially if they just wanted to know something about your products or pricing. Not having a complete website makes work for them when they have to ask you about these things, and for you when you have to answer.

* The CV/Portfolio Website.

An extension of the business card format is to make your website brief, and directed at getting people to call you if they’re interested in you. It could just be a listing of the jobs you’ve had, or it could be an archive of the articles you’ve written for various publications - whatever, it’s there to get you work. These kinds of websites can be effective, although you should realise that you’re more likely to get some work because of a site that people find useful than because of one that’s just about you.

* The Brochure Website.

They’re often-mocked in web design, but they’re not really that bad: brochure-style websites simply reproduce the kind of material you would send out in a brochure to an interested customer, complete with pictures and technical details. Instead of actually doing any business online, you give the customer your contact information.

In many industries, really, this is the only way to work. There are things you just can’t do with shopping carts and credit card processing, after all, especially when it comes to services. These kinds of websites are especially prevalent among businesses with a more local focus.

* The E-Commerce Website.

There are two situations where e-commerce works really well: if you’re selling a service that can be provided over the web, or if you’re selling a small product that you can handle shipping for. In these situations, e-commerce websites are very powerful. You can sell your product direct online, cutting out whatever middlemen there might be.

* The Content Website.

Ever more popular, content websites work by providing useful writing and then putting ads around it. That’s the whole business model in a nutshell, but it works surprisingly well. The more writing you can do (or get), the better it works for you. If you want, you can even leave off the ads and put up a small button asking people to donate to your site if they found your information helpful - people can be nicer than you’d expect.

* The Community Website.

Finally, an often-ignored kind of website is one that exists to serve a community. The community might be geographical (people who live in the same town), or it could an interest or hobby community (a forum for people who really like a certain genre of TV show, for example).

Community websites can be fun to participate in, and they can make a lot of money if you can find advertisers who are interested in the very specific audience your site has got. If your site gets popular, you might even be able to charge people for membership!

Even if it stays free and small, though, it’s nice to have a web community to call your own, and you’re likely to benefit in all sorts of ways that you wouldn’t expect

About this Article
This article was brought to you by SiteHelpCenter.com. SHC provides users with free tips, tools and resources to create a website as well as free website design tips.

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