Web Design Don'ts
Don't...
...decide not to bother to learn HTML because Dreamweaver will do it
all for you.
...create a four-screen-long list of centered text and images.
...try to put too much on a page.
...let your site navigation drop "below the fold."
...reduce your page margins to 0 and let the text shove right against
the very edge of the page.
...decide not to bother to learn HTML because Dreamweaver will do
it all for you.
WYSIWYG programs are becoming more advanced all the time, but they
can't do everything yet. You want a rollover button? Dreamweaver will
oblige. You want a frameset? FrontPage will jump to. You want a complex
nested table like the one you're looking at now? You're never going
to get it unless you understand how HTML works and what you need to
tell the program. The program is limited by HTML, and HTML is a very
limited language indeed. Unless you know how things like tables and
frames work, you are not going to be able to understand the limitations
the program is working with, and you are not going to be able to work
around them.
Also, programs make mistakes—all the time. They get confused,
they misinterpret, they barf. Sometimes they hide the control panel
for some useful bit of code in some bizarre place where you'd never
think to look for it. If any of this happens to you, you want to be
able to pull up the raw HTML and fix the page by hand. If you can't
code, you're at the mercy of the program.
And last, do you plan to get a new program every year? Probably not.
What are you going to do if some cool new feature comes out that your
old program doesn't support? Most programs will let you hand-enter code
which the program itself doesn't understand; the page won't look right
in the program, but it will work perfectly in browsers which support
it. If you can't write the new code yourself, you're going to be stuck
using old HTML until you can scrape together enough money to buy a new
program.
...create a four-screen-long list of centered text and images.
Everyone knows these pages: Six feet of scattered pictures and short,
random comments sprinkled liberally with smileys and bolded so that
they're legible against the screaming Technicolor background. The bottom
foot is reserved for webrings and awards. Sometimes there's even a copyright
statement, because heaven knows someone is going to be desperate
for some good HTML design. If there's any content on the page, it's
lost in the endless pearl necklace of moving GIFs and inane comments.
There are several things wrong with this kind of page. The most germane
problem is that no one has the patience to scroll through it all. With
content coming at the rate of one new comment or image every few inches,
the page feels "thin"; the reader quickly gets tired of it
and goes on to denser pages where she can find what she wants with a
couple of clicks.
The second wrong thing is that the entire page is centered. The human
eye likes to move in straight lines, vertically as well as horizontally.
All-centered text and images have a ragged line which is difficult to
follow. This problem is especially severe in text, where the eye loses
track of where to start the next line.
Fortunately, these problems are easy to solve. Organize images in a
table with comments below them; organize links in a table or in columns,
ideally with topic headings so that the reader doesn't have to scan
through a whole page of disorganized links. Left-justify all text except
for short (SHORT) image captions, which can be centered. Take
out all unnecessary white space between lines—do the links really
need to be doublespaced? If you do all this, the page will feel tighter
and your readers will thank you.
...try to put too much on a page.
If you want to tell readers about you, your dog, your cat, your Slayers
page, your Rurouni Kenshin page, your link list, all the web rings you're
on, and all the web awards you've won, don't put it all on one page!
Break it up into manageable parts and put links to each section on your
front page.
Web rings and awards do logically fit on the front page, especially
when you don't have a separate link page to put your web rings on. However,
you don't need to string all of your ring and award links in a long
chain down the center of the page. Organize them two to four across
in a table. From your reader's point of view, web rings and awards are
empty content unless they're vitally interested in them. Don't take
up more of your front page than you need to with content your readers
don't want to see.
...let your site navigation drop "below the fold."
In newspaper publishing, the most prized spot is on the top half of
the front page, "above the fold." This is what readers see
first; sometimes it's all they ever see. On the web, "above the
fold" is the part of your page which the reader sees without scrolling
down.
...take your page off the web when you decide to renovate it.
So your Kuja shrine is in deep need of a new look. By all means, redo
it! But for god's sake, don't take the old page off the web while you're
renovating. Links and searches are still going to point to your site,
feeding it a steady stream of viewers who see your "down for renovation"
notice and groan. They would rather see your crappy old site than your
spiffy new "down for renovation" notice.
...reduce your page margins to 0 and let the text shove right against
the very edge of the page.
Setting page margins to 0 is useful in making seamless layouts with
graphics which run right to the edge of the screen. However, text which
touches the edge of the screen looks amateur and is slightly harder
to read, especially if the monitor screen is set to cut a few pixels
off of one side of the viewing area. (Don't think that happens? You
haven't been on enough old computers, then.) If your page margins are
set to 0, indent text slightly to either side with CSS or enclose the
text in a table with cellpadding.
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