You don’t have to be very long on the net before you
come across advice on web design. You will find that
before you even think about committing anything to
electrons, you will be subject to exhortations from all
kinds of quarters, a lot of it contradictory, and all
of it prescriptive.
The following is an example of the sort
of response you might get if you foolishly offer up
your site for criticism. The complete passage is not
genuine, but every single criticism it contains, apart
from the advice at the end, is
one that I have come across on the net or in magazines:-
"I thought your site was not bad for a first attempt, but there are some observations I would like to make about it. For instance, did you really need that exploding squirrel on the home page? It took a long time to load, it was just fussy, and it didn’t do anything to help put over the information you were trying to impart. And I must say, I didn’t like the colour of your headline. Did you honestly want that horrible orange colour? I thought it very vulgar.
And with regard to your music, I must say that normally I never visit sites that have music playing in the background. I think it is very irresponsible to do this sort of thing. Don’t you realise that there will be people looking at your page in their office? They don’t want music blaring out unexpectedly, alerting their boss to what they are doing. Very inconsiderate.
I felt your design was a bit fussy anyway. Why did you decide to have those backgrounds? They detract from the impact of the printed word. After all, the purpose of your site is to convey information, and anything that detracts from that is not a good idea. I would suggest white backgrounds throughout.
And did you really need all those graphics? After all, if your information is clear enough, you surely don’t need anything to complement it.
I wonder in fact whether this is actually the right medium for you. There is a medium you could try which uses a unique form of non-degradable hard-storage. It is fairly slow, but memory is virtually unlimited. Unfortunately you will need to upgrade your system by buying a special piece of hardware called a Personal Escritoirial Nib unit, but it is cheap, and it will be a long time before it becomes obsolete.
If your bandwidth requirements are higher, you can send your material to a special agency called a printer, who will produce the hard copy and distribute it through a special network which can extend globally if necessary.
Best of all, the system is guaranteed spam- and virus-proof!"
This is a slight exaggeration, but it is very similar
to things I have come across on some of the Compuserve
forums. There seems to be a new Puritanism about -
perhaps it is the freedom offered by the web
which makes some people react against it and become
more authoritarian. But the thing to remember is that
the world-wide web is not a library, and web sites are
not books.
Another thing to bear in mind if you are discouraged
by this sort of thing is that on the web anybody can
be an expert if they wish. The essential thing about
the web is that people can be what they want to be,
and if they want to set themselves up as an authority
in web design, and make themselves feel superior by
slagging off other people’s efforts, there is nothing
to stop them.
The essential thing about web design is that your
design should be right for you. If you see
yourself as becoming a professional web designer, and
producing a web page for a commercial company, then
certainly you will be doing it to promote that
company, and you need to get their message over as
clearly and as unfussily as possible. But if you are
doing a web page for your own pleasure, there is no
reason at all why you should take any notice at all of
what people tell you. There are different criteria for
commercial sites and others, and there is no reason at
all why they should be designed to the same specifications.
If you want an exploding squirrel, have one. Who is
to say you should not? And why should you consider
removing sounds from your site to protect the
sensibilities of those who are cheating their
employer? That particular bit of advice I have seen
several times on the net, and it strikes me as the
pinnacle of hypocrisy.
The great thing about the web is that there are
no rules! If you want to put your information
in red type against a red background, that’s up to
you. No one will be able to read it - but so what?
It’s your site.
Having said all that, I am conscious of the title of
this article. Let’s see if I can think of some useful
precepts to follow when designing web pages. Ok.
That is not to say that the following are invariably
right:-
The first, and most important of the Rules is this one:-
Don't try to satisfy everyone, because you can't. No matter
what you do, someone will find fault with
your site. Everybody has different ideas about web
design.
If you have large graphics on your page, it
will take a long time to load. I have found that it
helps to keep individual graphics to less than 20k.
And even at that size, if you have too many on the
page it will take a long time to load. None of the
graphics on this site, apart from animations, is more
than 20k, but if you
go to my Bracknell page, which consists of a series
of photographs, you will find it takes a very long time to
load. This is reasonable on a page which is
specifically designed for graphics, but imagine how
frustrated people would become if your home page
loaded at that rate. Very few people would have the
patience to hang around to see the final result.
If you use backgrounds, it helps to try to make the
combination of background and
text a readable one. Mind you, I have tried to do that with this
site, but I have nevertheless received complaints
about the backgrounds I have used.
People are more likely to spend more time on your site
if it's easy for them to get around. You can achieve this
by providing plenty of escape routes on your pages,
and using a fairly logical layout for your site.
And finally the one thing I am going to suggest so
strongly that perhaps you might consider it a rule.
Always use a spellchecker.
But rules are meant to be broken, and I have to say
that I haven’t used one on this site. However (a) I
can spell fairly well, (b) there could well be
spelling mistakes I haven’t noticed and (c) had I used
one, I would have picked up some typing errors sooner.
Anyway, there you have them - the Lang Jones rules of
web design. Follow them and I can guarantee you
will get people telling you that you went wrong when
you did this, and that you shouldn’t have done that,
and that you were betraying the unutterably vulgar
nature of your soul when you did the other.
Tell them that you were following the Lang Jones
rules. If they ask you who Lang Jones is, tell them
that you are shocked by their ignorance, and that
Lang Jones is universally recognised on the world-wide
web as the supreme authority in web design.
They might even believe you.
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