ddhr.org - Website rules

ddhr.org

Website rules (4)	Jul 20, 2005
I spend a lot of time on the internet. The person reading this can probably say the same thing. In my internet travels, I've come across a lot of junk that makes my life difficult. So I've compiled a list of things not to do when designing a website. Don't make things scroll. That was cool when it first came out, but it's not cool anymore. This includes stuff like news tickers and marquees that scroll across your screen. Don't make things blink. Not only is this annoying, it's not compliant with HTML standards, meaning it works in some browsers but not in others. Note to users: you can stop things that blink by pressing the "Stop" button or escape. Don't use Flash. Flash is a great tool. I have no idea what it's capable of, but it seems to be a pretty cool thing. Just don't clutter up your website with stupid annoying Flash animations that take forever to load. The best way to drive users away from your website is to make it take long to load. Don't use ads. I know this is a big thing for some people, but I think you'll find that the most useful websites in the world are ad-free. I think even Google used to be ad-free. If you have to use ads to support your site, use Google AdSense or something like that. A few little text-based non-obtrusive ads are much better than a bunch of big banners that take up time and space. Don't use popups. This is an obvious one. The great thing about this is that it's an almost non-existent problem these days with all the popup blockers out there. Don't use animated gifs. They attract unnecessary attention. Don't change the status bar. It always causes problems. Don't change the title bar dynamically. In other words, don't do those little DHTML and JavaScript tricks that have things moving around in the title bar. Don't use embedded videos or sounds. They're just stupid. Nobody likes to hear some stupid little MIDI song when they visit your site. #technology
Linked: User-hated website design, Mobile internet usability

Comments

#1	Kyle Stemen	Jul 20, 2005
	Could you make your webpage resize without a horizontal scroll bar? My resolution is at 1024x768, and in IE your page only removes the horizontal scroll bar when the window is maximized. In firefox, even when the window is fullsized, there's still a horizontal scroll bar (my fonts are probably different for Firefox). At least in Firefox I can scroll over to the body of your article and it fits in on one screen. The problem is that I use Thunderbird to read your RSS feed. It shows up in a pane inside Thunderbird. My folders pane takes up a little bit of screen space, so I can't even see all of the article text in one screen. I know this request is a little picky, but now seemed like the best time to bring it up. Since you're complaining about bad styling on webpages and all.

#2	Dave	Jul 21, 2005
	I've been thinking about making a little change, so let me know if it worked. I changed the width to a percentage instead of a pixel value.

#3	Mike	Jul 22, 2005
	Yep, whatever you did fixed it. At least with Firefox.

#4	Kyle Stemen	Jul 23, 2005
	It's an improvement here, but not perfect. Now if Firefox is fullscreened, there's no horizontal scrollbar. There's still a scrollbar when it's not maximized. That mean's there is a scroll bar in Thunderbird. At least I can now see the whole article text in Thunderbird though.