FaeDubh

Seeing as I’ve been on the writing staff here for some time, and I’ve been racking my brain for some kind of a cohesive topic to talk about, I thought I’d do a canonball right into the middle of the pond. That being said, this topic is somewhat repetitive (I’ve a feeling I read a similar entry on here … eep? I think Angel was talking about layouts a few entries ago), but I figured I’d write about it anyway (and it may seem a little trivial …). Why? It’s 3:30 AM, I haven’t slept yet, and I’m staring unproductively at the screen. So! Let’s see now …

Note: I don’t want to turn this into a multiple-lots-of-ten-comment conversation, but I do want to express my own opinion on this matter, and I want to give a chance for beginning (and seasoned, and everything in between) web designers to voice their thoughts too - mostly this will be about the epidemic of annoying things on websites that we all love to hate, but that a surprising amount of the web designer population still see fit to use. Although this is quite biased of me, since I like web standards, but each to their own.
Me, I have quite the list.

Changing Cursors - I’m astonished at the number of webpages I come across that have changing cursors. Yes, I know you might think it looks cute to give someone the lovely resize instead of the pointer or default, but I’m betting at least a sizeable chunk of your visitors find it irritating and problem-causing. Half the cursors aren’t as accurate as the standard, and because budding web designers tend to do this the wrong way two-thirds of the time, they don’t change when you hover over an active image or a bit of text, so you never know if you’re looking at a straight image or a link.

Customised Coloured Scrollbars - Times like these, I feel glad that I primarily use Firefox; I ventured to a site in IE the other day, and the scrollbar was invisible. Literally. The scrollbar is there for a reason, and it’s a little nasty not to let the cursor have its fun. Many adults have their browser settings designed to stop this from happening, and with the already present mainstream skinnable browser in consideration, it just isn’t pretty. OS skins and browser skins are designed to give applications a cohesive look and yes, I know you’re trying to make that scrollbar blend in with your website, but the scrollbar isn’t part of your website - it’s part of a person’s computer. Leave it alone.

Buried Links With Alternate Names - For some reason I find this to be the case with a lot of fandom websites. I love a cutesy-poo name as much as the next kid. Heck, the “general” area of my old (old old old …) website was called “Le Sludge” because I had so much broad content and had no idea where to stuff it. Because this seems to be an acute case largely within fandoms, the urge to use cute names may be upon you. Instead of “Contact The Webmaster(s)/mistress(es)”, we have “The Owlery”. This is cute, I know, but it honestly does not take too much to get out of hand. If you’re going to give things a cute (ambiguous?) name, please at least use the title= detail when coding, give a general description of it, or provide a standard linkset somewhere on the page so that people who aren’t so deeply immersed can navigate properly. (If I see one more site with “Umbridge’s Office” I may kill the entire cast of Harry Potter.)

Javascript and DHTML - Don’t misunderstand me here, I like a roll-over menu as much as the next person, and Javascript can run forms and do all sorts of very fun things (just a note, a roll-over menu is likely to keep me entertained in the pursuit of procrastination from study). Just try not to over-do it. Most people don’t like websites that seem to have a life of their own, and do things under their fingertips. People do go overboard (although I’m the complete opposite - the thought of learning Javascript scares me :P). Simple animations and subtle movements are fine on a page by my standards, but when you have a page change or something popping out every time you move the mouse, you’re liable for a heart attack.

Changing Font Sizes on Hover - Changing the font size on hover is a bad idea. A very bad idea. I like a link to attain some kind of discreet text-decoration or change colour when I hover over it, because there’s something distinctly nice and not frustrating about being able to differentiate between plain text and URLs, but don’t get carried away. Having some kind of element that distorts other things on your webpage or cause text to shift around in some way isn’t a good idea - people tend to not like it when things move on their own.

Graphic-Heavy Sites - Don’t get me wrong. I like a lovely large Alias-themed layout as much as any other ardent fan of the show. In the days of broadband, it’s hard to believe that a little website could cause people so much distres, but it does. Yes, aesthetical appeal is an important factor in web development, but when it begins to tip on the scale and takes away from the readability or substance of your content, you’ve got a problem. The most appealing layout I ever created (old old site, just before it died …) had a white background and an infinitesimally small amount of graphics. Many of the more appealing websites out there are able to balance between aesthetics and content (I’ll just use Jem of Jemjabella as an example at this point, since, I’ve been rambling for forty-eight minutes and she’s the only one I can think of).

Tables For Layouts - Personally, I’m a stickler for standards. Especially Web standards, and our lovely W3C God says that tables are for data and not for complete layouts. I tend to agree with this; I was a heinous user of tables back in early 2006, but then I found DIV layers and fell in love. Tables for data, elsewhat for layouts. *thumbs up* It’s each to their own, I suppose, and whilst standards aren’t precisely restricting, omnipotent commandments, they’re nice to follow once in a while (at least have a line-height above 125%?).

Optimise, People, Optimise! - Australian spelling for the win, of course. S-galore! Optimise your websites. I like pretty websites (I could sit here all night listing them), and hell, I can even go for ones with flexible div-layer width. But here’s the problem, ladies and gents - many designers don’t optimise for multiple resolutions. *waves little problem flag* Whether you left-, centre- or right-align your pages, make sure it’s going to work.  When making a header, don’t make it 875 pixels wide. If you haven’t already (and it makes me happy that a great deal of people have in this field), accept the fact that some people use naughty high resolutions that either involve: 1) gargantuan monitors, or 2) abuse of high resolutions on smaller monitors that make things look exceedingly small; OR 800×600. Basically, everything has to fit on a screen of 800×600, but also realise that it’s one size fits all and that means you can’t go around leaving obese resolutions to wait in the wind. Give us some credit, and for the love of Pete, please don’t forget us 1280×1024/1600×1200 people!

I should stop raving now, but my point is this: we all love pretty things, but more important than something pretty is something functional; don’t lose sight of that if you’re ever spending too much time in Photoshop (I am guilty of that myself, but I have learned my lesson).

Right. What a lovely introductory topic. I’m going to … crawl upstairs into bed with hot chocolate and my teddy bear.