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You can find guides and tips on good web site design everywhere. In 1998, Vincent
Flanders co-authored a book with a unique twist. It was called "Web Pages
That Suck", and Mr. Flanders followed that with a similar co-authored book
in 2002. In that spirit, we'd like to offer you our top five tips on diabolical
design - how to create web pages that look like h-, well, you know.
1. Use javascript and Flash. Lots and lots of it. Make sure you ignore the
fact that my browser isn't 100% compatible. If you can, try to crash my browser.
It's not always 100% compatible, and I really like the color in that little
Windows error box anyway.
2. I like a lot of gratuitous graphics too. Include lots of large files that
take a while to download, especially over dialup. A long while. It would be
an especially nice touch if you can have some heavy zig-zag and grid backgrounds,
something that blends in with your text for that nice, unified look. And whatever
you do, don't forget the little animated GIF files! They're cute, and especially
distracting, so I'd like a lot of those too, please, all around your page.
3. If I do manage to get to one of your pages, please be certain that you've
fixed the font sizes with CSS. Make them, oh, about 8 or 9 pixels high, bolded.
That should do it - well, except use lots of different colors and font styles,
just to prove to me you can. While you're in the CSS file anyway, try to get
rid of some of that extra white space by adjusting the line height (the space
between lines of text) so that it's only 1/2 it's normal space. There's no use
in my having to scroll down the page - make sure it's all above the fold, OK?
4. Wait a minute - I forgot about the links. Can you use your CSS skills to
turn off the underlines in your links, plus make them the same color as the
rest of your text? They stand out too much if you don't do that. But, when I
hover my mouse over them, I want you to give me a further display of some cool
CSS tricks by making the link text turn to italic and get a LOT bigger. Enough
to make the other text on the page move around a bit. I've never seen anything
like that before.
5. Now to some good stuff - your colors. Be daring here. Forget about the old
dark-on-light and light-on-dark basics. Try something like black text on a dark
green background. Or maybe purple on red? Either way, just be different. And
I don't see any reason to stick with complementary or contrasting colors. Nah,
give the old color wheel a spin & see what turns up. Pick 'em and use 'em
in 1-2-3 order, it won't matter. If you're using tables, it's nice to change
the background color of every single cell. That will prove to me the level of
tireless effort you've put into your site just for me.
Bonus tip: If you will put menus and other navigation elements in different
places on each page, and not be clear on where a click will take me, that will
make me look over each page more thoroughly, and I will want to click on all
those links, just because I want to know where they lead. Really I will.
By the way, we hope you know that these tips were all in good fun, and very
sarcastic. If you didn't know that, please buy Mr. Flanders' book, or any good
book on design. Your visitors' eyes will thank you!
About the Author:
John Calder is the owner/editor of The Ezine Dot Net.
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