IS YOUR WEB SITE UNFRIENDLY? Part 9 of 9

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things often found on web sites are:1 ... ...
not so common these days.2 Words marching across the page.3 Words marching across the status bar at the bottom oft Other "unfriendly" things often found on web sites are:1 "Blinking" text--fortunately not so common these days.2 Words marching across the page.3 Words marching across the status bar at the bottom ofthe browser. That's where I want to see the URL of the linkat which my mouse is pointing, for goodness' sake!These gimmicks, along with animated graphics, are extremelydistracting, especially to the eyes of visitors who are muchmore interested in what the owner of the web site has tosay.SUMMING UP:Well, this series of articles deals with some of my personalprejudices.
However, things that irritate me might not beimportant to someone else, and you don't have to take noticeof them if you don't want to. Nevertheless, most of thesefaults ARE considered by genuine professional web designersto be serious ones.
While some people insist a web page isnothing like a printed page, and web designers are thereforefree to break all the rules of good page layout and design,the fact remains that if it looks ugly on paper it looksjust as ugly on a monitor. Do you really fancy reading abook or newspaper with black pages and white, blue or brightgreen print, for instance? Well, then, why would anyone wantto read something like this on a monitor? However, I'mamazed at the number of web site creators who expect me todo just this!Certainly visitors who can't navigate your site are going tothink you're less than courteous.
They will probably thinkyou're an idiot if they can't read your site's contentbecause you haven't specified a suitable background colourand your type is the same colour as their default backgroundcolour. Also, if you don't specify the height and width ofyour images these will take ages to download and yourvisitors will give up and go elsewhere.
I do. Likewise, ifyou don't use the ALT tag so that text-only visitors canread what your picture is about, they won't be tempted toask for it to load.
That's just common sense, surely!Some of the unfriendliest web sites I've visited,incidentally, have been done with various versions ofMicrosoft FrontPage. When I mentioned this to a friend whoknows more about web design than most professionaldesigners, he made me laugh by replying with unrestrainedvehemence that FrontPage is "evil".
But statistics canalways be twisted to say what you want them to say. Thetruth in this instance is probably that this program issimply more popular than others.
And I have visited somevery attractive sites made with FrontPage.If you want to use web-creation software, then by all meansdo so. But first learn the basics of writing HTML, if onlyso you can get rid of all the redundant code (not to mentionsome necessary code that FrontPage leaves out, just becauseExplorer for Windows can do without it!) There are manytutorials you can use.
You might like to try Alan Levine'sexcellent one, which can be downloaded athttp://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu ut/. It works exactlylike a web site and you learn by creating a web site allabout volcanoes.I must confess that if you've explored my site thoroughlyyou will have noticed I've broken several of my own rules:my home page background is different from all the otherpages; there are a few pages with purely decorative graphicsin place of dividing lines; and elsewhere I used allcapitals for my heading.
But I'm not telling you which pagesthese latter are on! Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .