design

Common (but Serious) Page Design Flaws

Somehow, I have a knack for finding the ups and downs of the design and architecture of Web sites. Some sites (like Gmail, a true G-dsend for nerds like me) really work well and look nice, but others (like Boost Mobile’s site) are horrible. How is it possible to ruin a design? Keep reading.

Light Text On Dark Backgrounds

This just may be the killer. After reading a particular blog that follows this practice, I was seeing white lines in my eyes after getting up from the computer (a rare occurance, but I gotta use eventuallyventually). Sure this might be good for some who need high contrast, but for the rest of us, it’s just plain ol’ bad.

Disgusting URLs

Although this doesn’t really make or break anything, it’s nice to show a user addresses that make sense. And for some (err, many, especially those using Mambo/Joomla with one of several SEF extensions, or WordPress) people, it’s a piece of cake to set up your site with this in mind. Hint: look for mod_rewrite when buying your hosting.

Stupid HTML Errors

Now for the killer. There are so many sites that have bad HTML clogging up our precious bandwidth, yet their admins refuse to clean up after their act. I have experience with this, in the form of at least two sites of my own, and one forum (whose name is withheld for the admin’s well-being), that suffer from some simple HTML invalidation. What’s even worse is that the admin of the forum refuses to clean up after himself :

I don’t care about these things. Please stop pestering me with this nonsense.

If you take a look at his code Continue reading »