Originally posted in July, 2000
We’ve all been there. It’s the most interesting link description you’ve seen all day, and you’re eagerly awaiting for the little bar at the bottom of your screen to stop moving so you can get down to the nitty gritty - surfing the site.
But as you wait, and wait, and wait… […]
Written by Raven on October 3rd, 2006 with
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Read more articles on Webmastering.
Originally posted in July, 2000
We’ve all been there. It’s the most interesting link description you’ve seen all day, and you’re eagerly awaiting for the little bar at the bottom of your screen to stop moving so you can get down to the nitty gritty - surfing the site.
But as you wait, and wait, and wait… your anticipation turns to resentment and you start wondering if you should get up and refresh your coffee. Upon returning, you find that not only are you not on a page where you can read anything, you’ve just spent all of that time downloading a really impressive huge “splash” graphic and an annoying midi that’s woken up the baby in the next room.
Grumbling, you look for somewhere to turn the music off - only to find none. The child screams louder and your hopes for having him fall back asleep dwindle away. Having no faith now that clicking on anything in the complex image map of the splash graphic will actually get you to something you were interested in and could possibly bring up even more music you can’t turn off… you close your browser in disgust and disappointment.
I’ve been designing web pages for three years now. I admit, I too get caught up in the latest DHTML and javascript goodies that do incredibly neat things. I can spend days surfing around free CGI script sites and have often been shocked at dawn coming through my window as I was tearing apart a java applet code snippet to make it do what I want. The web, with all of its many languages and challenging cross-browser milestones, is such an exciting place to create something. Where else can you type in the equivalent of hieroglyphics and turn it into a beautiful masterpiece of artwork and information?
But no matter how pretty, or cool, or interesting your page is, you must always follow the golden rule - Be Considerate To Your Surfers.
Sure, in this age of 56k modems, cable or DSL connections, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that many people are still out there surfing around with 21,600 connections trying to enjoy the internet just as much as we are. Too often when you get into making webpages you end up buying the fastest connection you can just so that you can upload and download without turning gray. But that blazing fast connection that suits your needs shouldn’t make you forget the days when you, too, were bumbling along and watching that status meter crawl. You are putting your page up for someone else to read; so be kind to them. After all, they’re doing you a favor by visiting your site.
Splash graphics can be incredibly beautiful and quite impressive. However, unless you’re selling graphics sets and need to show off your talent, or your web site is for a web design business where you want to show what you can do, that splash graphic is only there to feed your ego. Surfers come to your site to find something, not to ooh and ahh over an image they just spent minutes loading and has nothing to do with what they came for.
This is probably the most offensive of all no-no’s when designing web pages. Sure, a midi might perfectly fit the “mood” of your site, but if someone doesn’t want to listen to it and can’t turn it off, they will leave. Be sure to give your surfers a highly visible button where they can stop the music if they want to.
One site I will never return to? I found a page once where I had to hunt for the teeniest control panel for the midi - small enough that the stop button didn’t even show and I had to right-click in order to turn the music off. Once I did, however, I found that a second copy of the midi was playing in the background. Checking the source code, I found that the webmaster had that midi set to load three different ways upon entering the page, ensuring that no matter what the surfer did, they could not escape the barrage of sound. Not only was I a disappointed surfer, I was an angry surfer. Don’t force me to listen to something I don’t want to - and this was obviously force rather than a simple mistake of not knowing how to implement a control panel.
In a word? Slow. Java applets may add some really cool effects to your page, but they are a bear to download. Also, older browsers can’t see them, some browsers freeze up entirely, and that big gray space as its loading simply looks ugly in your page. Leave the news tickers to the news sites, and the lake effect for the postcard sites.
Unlike java applets, javascript loads quickly and still delivers dynamic elements to your page. However, tie down that javascript with multiple mouseover images or put five different scripts on one page and you’ve just blown the whole point of this fast-loading code. Remember that the more text that is in your html file, the larger the code itself is to download before anything else even starts popping up. Keep the javascript to a minimum.
I can’t say enough about hand coding. Have you ever looked at the source code of that editor you’re using? Is there truly any reason you should start each paragraph with bold, center, font, alignment, and size tags only to end them and start a new paragraph with all of that junk again? No. This can triple the file size of your page and slow down its loading. Code your pages by hand - they’ll be slimmer, faster loading, and they’ll do exactly what you want them to do.
Even more annoying than a midi that won’t quit is a pop-up window. Sure, if you have your page on a free site, sometimes you can’t avoid this one. So leave the pop-ups to those who suffer that fate… there really is not anything important enough to tell your visitors to justify raising their ire as they have to close window after window just to see your page. If it’s that important, put it at the top of your page in a different colored text so that it will be noticed rather than ignored.
Who is really making money off of advertising for someone else? Unless your site has over 100 visitors a day and the ad is for something relative to your content, trust me - it’s not you. Don’t get duped into providing free advertising for a huge company over the promise that you might make $25 in a year. The flashy, annoying animated banner is both slow to load and detracts from your page.
Ugh. Need I say more? I want to see the page, not watch a window blind effect slowly reveal what lies underneath.
Have lots of pictures? Be sure to index them in thumbnails so that a surfer can click on what interests them and choose what to spend time downloading. Your surfers will appreciate you for it, and most likely will end up clicking on all of your thumbnails out of mere curiosity. Force them to download ten full-size pictures though, and they’ll be gone before the second one is finished.
Server side includes can be an incredibly useful tool, especially for a webmaster with a large site. But again, everything in moderation. Don’t put more than two SSI tags on one page. Remember, the key words are “server side”… the server has to work to hunt down and serve up that include content, which detracts from the speed of your page.
Probably the most overlooked element of a page is the background graphic. If you use one, pay attention to it. Tiled backgrounds should be no larger than 100×100 pixels, and that is the maximum. Try to keep them to 50×50 at the most. For bordered backgrounds, make sure that surfers with higher display settings won’t get your border repeated in the middle of your page - make the width at least 2050 pixels.
Confused as to what I’m saying? Make a border background that is 800 pixels wide and then set your screen display to 1024×768. You’ll have a border right in the middle of your page’s text. Not good. Keep the larger display size surfers in mind when putting up backgrounds.
Another note on border backgrounds - a border’s purpose is to add to your page, not be your page. Choose a border that is slimmer - your surfer is there to read content, not look at half a screen of graphic. If you do have a wide border, be creative with it - use it for a site menu, or plop graphics right on top of it for an interesting and quite different effect.
This is the smallest of all offenses, but nice if you take the time to acknowledge it. Don’t make your surfers hunt through your entire site trying to find out if anything is new. Either put it right on the front page or vibrantly promote a link to one page where they can see everything that’s been added recently and go straight to it. Besides, it will serve you as well; giving you a timeline on how often you update your site and a pattern of what you tend to do when adding.
An addendum to the golden rule could be “Everything In Moderation”. Having the coolest page on the Net means nothing if your surfers close their browser before they even get your first page loaded. Pick and choose the elements that you’ll add to your site and upload the “new and improved” page somewhere that only you can get to it. Then check it out. How fast does it load? Does it actually say anything? If you were following a link from a search engine or someone else’s page, would you stick around to wait for this to load or just hit Back? Would you be interested enough to go one more page into the site? Two more pages?
Criticize your site with the eye of a stranger rather than a parent proudly beaming over their child’s latest accomplishment. If you can’t do this, have someone else preview the page for you - especially if they have a slow connection and can be honest about what they’re seeing.
You’ll watch your hits go up and your server log will reflect more than just preemptory clicks to your front door, and your surfers will love you.
The unspoken mantra of good webpage designing - imitation from a competitive site might be the sincerest form of flattery, but having a surfer bookmark your page is the ultimate measure of your web design talent.
Written by Raven on October 3rd, 2006 with
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