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A Revealing Interview with A Design & Marketing Expert
This week we asked one of Worldprofit.com's senior designers,Cris Anderson, to comment on some of the key elements ofeffective design. Here is the interview in it's entirety.Q: Why should a business hire a professional designer and marketer?A: A ...
Css In Flash The Return Of Crisp And Legible Fonts.
A typical challenge faced by Flash developers like me is getting fonts to look like you want then to. For any project choosing the right font face and size is a process that requires both you and ultimately the client to see eye to eye.In Flash MX and ...
Web Designers Beware!
As a web designer, I have a personal interest in a new trend which threatens to put me and my kind out of business. That “threat” is Web Design Templates. In short they are ready-made web design products which can be used as a basis for a fast and ...
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1. Too Many Ads. When you're trying to make money from your website, it's all too easy to overwhelm your site with ads. Put yourself in your user's place and take a good hard look at your site and ask yourself if the ads feel intrusive. Does the site look like an information source or does it feel more like a page-holder for the ads?
2. Plugin Overload. You have to keep plugin useage to a maximum of 1 type per page. If you've got Flash, then you can't have a media player, or if you're using Java, then no Flash. It's not as bad to use the same plugin twice, however.
3. Flash Intros. Please, don't use a Flash intro on your website. They have been so overused that they're becoming universally mocked.
4. Unclear Layout and Navigation. Many websites, especially business sites, suffer from some kind of disease where the very simplest task takes 10 steps. If users are asking you how to do things on your site, then you need to improve your layout and navigation. If there are certain tasks people want to do frequently, put them on the front page.
5. No Marking for External Links. There are 2 kinds of links: internal (to other parts of your website) and external (to other websites). For the benefit of your users, it's best if you mark external links, either by making them a different color or using some kind of a symbol (a box with an arrow is the usual one). It's also good to make the external links open in new windows, so people aren't leaving your site altogether when they click them.
6. Unclear Linking. Some web pages are designed to show links only when people put their mouse over them. While this might make the design look nicer, it is not very user friendly. Instead, use a clearly contrasting
color for links, and preferably underline them. This makes them more visible to the user, thus more user friendly.
7. Unlabelled Email Links. Always clearly mark a link that will send email (a mailto link) with the word 'email'. If you turn clicking a name into send email, you'll annoy users who expected to find out more about the person.
8. Broken Links. You should check your links regularly to make sure that they all still work. There's nothing worse than finding a site that looks useful, only to find that it hasn't been updated in years, so most of the links don't work. While a website does mostly run itself after a while, that doesn't mean that you should neglect essential maintenance.
9. Strange Fonts. Stick to the most common web fonts: that's pretty much just Arial, Georgia, Tahoma and Verdana. If you use more obscure fonts, then most users won't have them -- and those that do will find your text hard to read. The only place for non-standard fonts is in your logo or headings, and then only if they are displayed as an image.
10. Badly-sized Text. It's important to keep your text around the standard size. Making text too big or too small makes it hard to read and annoying for many users. The best thing you can do is use relative text sizing (not pixels) that allows the browser to respect the user's preferred text size. You should also consider offering buttons on your site to decrease or increase the font size.
About the author:
Visit Web Design DIY to learn more. Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer, visit his website at Website
Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact and the links live.
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Identify Mystery Fonts With Find My Font ProPCWorldIt's after dinner hour and you're still at work searching for the font your boss requested. You want to strangle the person who suggested the Boss keep a scrapbook of designs they like. How long can it take to match a font to this magazine clip? |
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Monotype Imaging Is A Font Of GrowthForbesIt offers a collection of approximately 14000 typefaces consisting of owned and licensed fonts; monotype, linotype, and ITC typeface libraries; custom font design services for corporate branding and identity purposes; and PCL 6 and PostScript 3 font ...and more » |
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Identify Mystery Fonts With Find My Font ProPC World IndiaIt's after dinner hour and you're still at work searching for the font your boss requested. You want to strangle the person who suggested the Boss keep a scrapbook of designs they like. How long can it take to match a font to this magazine clip?and more » |
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Asus All-in-One PC ET2700INKS user reviewsCNETPros: Big is not Better equally, but if not comparing to Apple 27 inch, then Asus ET27 is good for the money. Cons: Fonts and a lot of smaller finer icons looked slightly blurry. Summary: Every fonts looked awkward or indistinct on this system. |
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