10 Common Mistakes

My list of ten things I see most often that I avoid when building a website:
(in no particular order)


A homepage (or any page) with a redirect, especially one that breaks the
user's back button.

JPEG files saved at 100% quality. These files will be huge. Most people
can't tell the difference at 30-50%, depending on the image.

Images saved as GIF when JPEG should be used. JPEG images are best for
full-colour images. GIF images have limited colours and are best for
clipart-style images.

URLS that are hard to read. I like to be able to reference any page on my
site without having to use TinyURL.com

Fixed font size. The font should be scalable and should increase or
decrease with your browser's increase/decrease font feature.

Flash or Java used for navigation, or worse, Flash-only sites. Search
engines won't index these, and anyone without a Flash or Java plugin won't
be able to view your site. I love Flash and use it all the time. It should
be used for what it was created for though, which is vector animation.

Horizontal scrolling. 'Nuff said.

Under construction pages. People get frustrated browsing to lots of them,
and they take away from time they could spend on pages with actual content.
I prefer to take pages I'm working on out of the menu completely.

Use of <br> or <p> or &nbsp; for positioning.

Use of non-standard fonts in a design that looks silly without them.

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:38:44 -0400, Charles Sweeney
<me@charlessweeney.com> wrote:

> I use &nbsp;&nbsp; between navigation links, does that count? If so,
> how would you seperate text navigation links?

Ach lad! Use a list. That's what they're meant for!

<style type="text/css">

ul#navigation {
list-style-type:none;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}
ul#navigation li {
display:inline;
margin-right:1em;
}

</style>

<ul id="navigation">
<li><a href="[URL1]">Link 1</a></li>
<li><a href="[URL2]">Link 2</a></li>
<li><a href="[URL3]">Link 3</a></li>
<li><a href="[URL4]">Link 4</a></li>
</ul>

They can be styled in hundreds of different ways.

The one above looks the same in all visual browsers, makes contextual
sense, and shows up as a nice already-formatted list in text-browsers.
Norman "OMG! Lynx just ate your website!" DeForest would be proud

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/webslavent?msg=149 - Presto the Puffin!

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 2348 GMT, "HC" <e01@removethis.toao.net>
wrote:

>My list of ten things I see most often that I avoid when building a website:
>(in no particular order)
>...

I agree wiht all the rest, but am not sure what is wrong with

>Use of <br> or <p> or &nbsp; for positioning.

On 7 Apr 2005 23:50:08 GMT, Blinky the Shark <no.spam@box.invalid>
wrote:

>HC wrote:
>
>> My list of ten things I see most often that I avoid when building a website:
>> (in no particular order)
>
>> A homepage (or any page) with a redirect, especially one that breaks the
>> user's back button.
>
>"Enter Here" pages that serve no purpose but delay. (A beer company
>home page that has an "Enter Here" page that requires user to attest to
>being X years old, or similar liability requirments does not fall into
>this category, if there's real reason for the qualifying of users.)

How about pages with a box that says "click here to close this page"?!

MGW

GreyWyvern wrote

> On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:38:44 -0400, Charles Sweeney
> <me@charlessweeney.com> wrote:
>
>> I use &nbsp;&nbsp; between navigation links, does that count? If so,
>> how would you seperate text navigation links?
>
> Ach lad! Use a list. That's what they're meant for!
>
> <style type="text/css">
>
> ul#navigation {
> list-style-type:none;
> margin:0px;
> padding:0px;
> }
> ul#navigation li {
> display:inline;
> margin-right:1em;
> }
>
> </style>
>
> <ul id="navigation">
> <li><a href="[URL1]">Link 1</a></li>
> <li><a href="[URL2]">Link 2</a></li>
> <li><a href="[URL3]">Link 3</a></li>
> <li><a href="[URL4]">Link 4</a></li>
> </ul>
>
> They can be styled in hundreds of different ways.
>
> The one above looks the same in all visual browsers, makes contextual
> sense, and shows up as a nice already-formatted list in text-browsers.
> Norman "OMG! Lynx just ate your website!" DeForest would be proud

Quite so. My navigation here http://sellyourhouseforfree.com/ is
horizontal.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Charles Sweeney wrote

> Quite so. My navigation here http://sellyourhouseforfree.com/ is
> horizontal.

Woops. Just noticed this bit:

display:inline;

Does that make it horizontal?

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 20:39:56 -0400, Charles Sweeney
<me@charlessweeney.com> wrote:

> GreyWyvern wrote
>
>> On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:38:44 -0400, Charles Sweeney
>> <me@charlessweeney.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I use &nbsp;&nbsp; between navigation links, does that count? If so,
>>> how would you seperate text navigation links?
>>
>> Ach lad! Use a list. That's what they're meant for!
>>
>> <style type="text/css">
>>
>> ul#navigation {
>> list-style-type:none;
>> margin:0px;
>> padding:0px;
>> }
>> ul#navigation li {
>> display:inline;
>> margin-right:1em;
>> }
>>
>> </style>
>>
>> <ul id="navigation">
>> <li><a href="[URL1]">Link 1</a></li>
>> <li><a href="[URL2]">Link 2</a></li>
>> <li><a href="[URL3]">Link 3</a></li>
>> <li><a href="[URL4]">Link 4</a></li>
>> </ul>
>>
>> They can be styled in hundreds of different ways.
>>
>> The one above looks the same in all visual browsers, makes contextual
>> sense, and shows up as a nice already-formatted list in text-browsers.
>> Norman "OMG! Lynx just ate your website!" DeForest would be proud
>
> Quite so. My navigation here http://sellyourhouseforfree.com/ is
> horizontal.

Great! So you'll use the code I posted above then It's horizontal too.

Grey

--
The technical axiom that nothing is impossible sinisterly implies the
pitfall corollary that nothing is ridiculous.
- http://www.greywyvern.com/webslavent?msg=149 - Presto the Puffin!