Other "unfriendly" things often found on web sites are:
1 "Blinking" textfortunately not so common these days.
2 Words marching across the page.
3 Words marching across the status bar at the bottom of
the browser. That's where I want to see the URL of the link
at which my mouse is pointing, for goodness' sake!
These gimmicks, along with animated graphics, are extremely
distracting, especially to the eyes of visitors who are much
more interested in what the owner of the web site has to
say.
SUMMING UP:
Well, this series of articles deals with some of my personal
prejudices. However, things that irritate me might not be
important to someone else, and you don't have to take notice
of them if you don't want to. Nevertheless, most of these
faults ARE considered by genuine professional web designers
to be serious ones. While some people insist a web page is
nothing like a printed page, and web designers are therefore
free to break all the rules of good page layout and design,
the fact remains that if it looks ugly on paper it looks
just as ugly on a monitor. Do you really fancy reading a
book or newspaper with black pages and white, blue or bright
green print, for instance? Well, then, why would anyone want
to read something like this on a monitor? However, I'm
amazed at the number of web site creators who expect me to
do just this!
Certainly visitors who can't navigate your site are going to
think you're less than courteous. They will probably think
you're an idiot if they can't read your site's content
because you haven't specified a suitable background colour
and your type is the same colour as their default background
colour. Also, if you don't specify the height and width of
your images these will take ages to download and your
visitors will give up and go elsewhere. I do. Likewise, if
you don't use the ALT tag so that text-only visitors can
read what your picture is about, they won't be tempted to
ask for it to load. That's just common sense, surely!
Some of the unfriendliest web sites I've visited,
incidentally, have been done with various versions of
Microsoft FrontPage. When I mentioned this to a friend who
knows more about web design than most professional
designers, he made me laugh by replying with unrestrained
vehemence that FrontPage is "evil". But statistics can
always be twisted to say what you want them to say. The
truth in this instance is probably that this program is
simply more popular than others. And I have visited some
very attractive sites made with FrontPage.
If you want to use web-creation software, then by all means
do so. But first learn the basics of writing HTML, if only
so you can get rid of all the redundant code (not to mention
some necessary code that FrontPage leaves out, just because
Explorer for Windows can do without it!) There are many
tutorials you can use. You might like to try Alan Levine's
excellent one, which can be downloaded at
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu ut/. It works exactly
like a web site and you learn by creating a web site all
about volcanoes.
I must confess that if you've explored my site thoroughly
you will have noticed I've broken several of my own rules:
my home page background is different from all the other
pages; there are a few pages with purely decorative graphics
in place of dividing lines; and elsewhere I used all
capitals for my heading. But I'm not telling you which pages
these latter are on!
About the Author
Laraine Anne Barker writes fantasy for young people. Visit
her web site at http://lbarker.orcon.net.nz for FREE stories
and novel excerpts. Sign up for the NOVELLA OF THE MONTH
CLUB, absolutely FREE!