Recurring Problems With Web Design
Over a decade in the past one of the most prolific researchers into Human-Computer Interaction, Jacob Nielsen, listed 10 pinnacle mistakes that have been not unusual to websites. Unfortunately, despite a wealth of studies and documentation, many of these top ten mistakes keep going on when you consider that. Here we look at Jacob’s unique listing and touch upon what’s taking place in web design in 2009.
1. Using Frames
Splitting a page into frames is very puzzling for users in view that frames wreck the fundamental consumer version of the net page. Suddenly you can not bookmark the modern page and go back to it because the bookmark will point to the containing frameset now, not the simple frames that have been loaded, URLs stop working, and printouts become hard. To make subjects even worse, the predictability of user interaction with the website disappears hastily. Today framed web pages nonetheless abound, even though now not to this sort of high-quality an extent as earlier than. One prior use of this type of record was social networking, in which an element of a page changed into refreshed frequently to pick out if there had been any new messages for users. Nowadays, identical functionality may be carried out using Ajax technology without the want for frames.
2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology
There changed into a time that many so-known as professional net developers included the modern-day gizmos into their website online, possibly because the idea it becomes cool and also due to the fact they may. However, touchdown on a site wherein you have to download more plug-in and so forth is one sure way of having users click their ‘back button.’ If anything, customers are actually more suspicious of downloading greater software to interact with a website due to the fear of viruses or other exploits.
3. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations
Do you actually need to distract your customers by lively banners, little spangly bits that go with the flow throughout the screen, or having an overly lengthy mouse path? OK, it’s miles a laugh, however, for only about 0.02ms. If you need your internet site users to genuinely study the textual content on your web page, provide them some peace and pass over the animation.
4. Complicated URLs
Appearing at the pinnacle in the address bar of every net browser is the URL of the present-day web page. Some human beings have said that this shouldn’t be the case as its very presence causes users to try to deduce the website’s structure online from this unmarried line of textual content. Until this deal with bar is ditched (it can show up!), the URL should be human-readable and mirror the web page’s perspectives and the facts space wherein the page is placed.
Good web designers will take note of the layout of URLs so that customers could also make a knowledgeable guess for a document or can effortlessly don’t forget the URL of the web page they’re on. But, how frequently nowadays do web designers pay attention to the design of URLs?
5. Orphan Pages
This, thankfully, does no longer occur as often as before. Maybe it’s introducing extra template-driven websites that make certain that every page has a navigation bar on it that is making the difference. However, the times of arriving at a web page which has no onward links appear to be passing.
6. Long Scrolling Pages
Back in the mid-’90s, the most effective 10% of users scroll beyond the data. This is visible on the display screen while a web page comes up, which demanded that all essential content and navigation alternatives be at the top of the web page. However, internet website customers are getting extra used to utilizing the scroll bar on the right-hand side of the display, and the discern nowadays is not as terrible as then. However, it is nonetheless first-rate to vicinity the crucial stuff at the pinnacle of the web page that’s available and visible without delay the web page has completed rendering.
Many net designers (not simply restrained to Brighton) get so acquainted with a way to discover matters on the website they created. They don’t think about the person’s capacity to discover things. This is an attitude that is very difficult to get over. The quality place to begin is to provoke the design with excellent information of the shape of the facts area and be conscious of communicating this structure explicitly to the consumer. Providing a domain map and breadcrumbs will allow users to recognize where they’re, wherein they have been, and wherein they can cross. Finally, get your grandmother to check the website to see if she will locate things – it works!
8. Non-Standard Link Colours on a website
We ought to all realize the default shades of visited and unvisited links; however, many web designers hate them and change them to something unfamiliar. Remember Unfamiliar Bad, Familiar Good. By default, links to pages that have not been seen via the person are blue; hyperlinks to formerly visible pages are colored red or crimson. If you are a clever web dressmaker, then don’t mess with these colorings. Understanding what hyperlinks had been observed is one of the few navigational aids this is standard in most net browsers. The key phrases on this, as with other web design troubles, are consistency and familiarity. Don’t oppose the conference (you would not force on the other aspect of the street after all, would you just be distinct).
