Two Common Web Design
Myths
By: Christopher S L Heng, thesitewizard.com
If your site has been
around for a while, you'd probably have been visited by the "Web Design
Police" (people who have a lot of time on their hands). In fact, depending
on your site, you might have been visited by different branches of these
people, both advocating opposite policies. I recently received an email from
one of my visitors who had apparently been "helped" by some of these
people, and thought that an article on two of the myths of web design is
appropriate.
1. The Myth of
"Content is King, No Animation/Sound/Java/etc"
The adage that
"Content is King" applies to all websites, and I am not disputing
that. It is also true that when you add sound, animation, Java applets and lots
of graphics, your web page takes a long time to load, and some of your visitors
may not bother to wait for it to load; they'll just go away.
However, putting those two
together does not actually mean that all pages with animation, sound and
applets are necessarily bad. The trick is to know when they're appropriate and
to make the download speed as fast as it is reasonably possible under the
circumstances. I will mention a few ways of reducing your graphics and
animation file sizes later in this article.
When is it appropriate?
Sometimes applets are needed for some sort of processing - for example, the
Sesame Street website has a Java applet that shows Elmo (a Sesame Street
character) dancing, and the child using it can use the mouse pointer to
"tickle" Elmo and he'll respond according to where he is tickled. The
applet takes forever to load on a 56K modem, but you cannot say that it is out of
place: the site caters to young children who are there to play. In this case,
the applet is an appropriate solution. Likewise, animation and sound might be
appropriate for sites that feature online comics, online gaming, etc.
In fact, if yours is a
website that sells website design services, that is, you want people to pay you
to design their website, it is in your interest not to make your site too
plain. Many potential customers see your site as an example of what their site
can become. There's no point claiming "Content is King" at this time
- they won't be around long enough to hear your claim. Such sites need a
certain amount of colour, graphics, etc, although of course making it take too
long to load would also be a deterrent to your potential clients.
Like all things, how you
design your site depends on your topic and your target audience. Keep that
cardinal rule in mind and you'll be fine.
2. The Myth of "Good
Web Design is in the Graphics"
On the other end of the
scale are the people who believe a good website must have much colour,
graphics, animation and sound. You might meet them, for example, in the form of
newcomers or pundits who either do not have much real world web experience or
who only surf on T1 connections.
My first encounter with
such people came in the form of an old friend who exhibited his personal
website proudly to me. At the centre of his home page was a large animated
graphic that was a few hundred kilobytes in size. That graphic had little
function on that page - it did not provide any informative value: it was
neither a logo, nor was it a photo of himself, or an image map, or anything at
all. It was purely decorative. At that time (many years ago), I was using a
14.4K modem and that page took ages to load.
Now don't get me wrong.
Decorative graphics on a page are fine. They make a page more pleasant to look
at, and hence more likely to be read. But you should at least make them as
small as possible. While I'm hesitant to give a hard and fast rule about how
big such graphics should be, a decorative graphic that is a few hundred
kilobytes in size is definitely too big to be tolerated.
3. Some Page Design Tips
If your concern is that
your page should look good without being too slow to load, here are a few
commonly used tricks that you may want to consider:
Do not put too much text
in one big block. Separate them out into paragraph and put white space between
paragraphs. This makes your text look more readable.
Like coloured pages?
That's okay, but in general, if the readability of your text is important to
you, a white background with black text works best.
If you must have a
coloured background, make sure you try out your page by viewing it in
resolutions like 256 colours to see whether the page looks alright. A coloured
page that looks fine on your 32 bit colour resolution system may have dithering
that makes your text difficult to read on lesser settings.
If you check the websites
of big companies (Microsoft, Yahoo, etc), you will find that they still prefer
a white background with black text for their main text. These companies
probably have more resources for testing the usability of their website than
you have, so it may not be wise to scoff at their design too quickly.
Reduce the size of the
individual graphics files on your pages by using the following methods:
Reduce the number of colours in the graphic
Reduce the size of the image, if possible
In animations, reduce the number of frames
In animations, don't duplicate the background in every
frame; make the first frame a background without any objects that will
move, and put all your moving objects in separate frames with transparent
backgrounds.
A note of caution: the
oft-cited cliche that "Content is King" is not to be lightly reckoned
with. Your site may look beautiful, but it's your content that saves the day.
Few people will return to your site just to admire your graphics. But they will
be back to read what you have to say.
Happy designing!
About The Author
Copyright 2000 by Christopher S L Heng. All rights reserved. Get more free tips
and articles like this, on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from http://www.thesitewizard.com
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