The 10 (or so) Commandments of Web Design
SUNNYVALE, CA (REUTERS) -- A recently located
makeshift 'instruction manual', has been located under the
backseat of Tim Berners-Lee's car. The 'manual', a short treatise
on web design principles, was scrawled on a series of old
Denny's napkins and has revealed the lost 10 Commandments
of Web Design.
credit to CoolHomepages.com
Commandment 1: Thou shalt
be clear about what the heck thou art presenting to the user.
Unless your user is the Amazing Kreskin.
Commandment 2: Thou shalt
design the site so that it's appropriate for your audience.
Don't use a dark Tomb-Raider theme if you're an online shoe
store or a financial service.
Commandment 3: Thou shalt
not use java applets unless Moses himself appears in a burning
pile of copier paper in your office and insists that you should.
Commandment 4: Thou shalt
not force a user to wait for a megabyte or more of Flash file
downloading as the first thing they experience at your site.
Commandment 5: Thou shalt
make the more important parts of any given page layout more
prominent than the less important parts of your page.
Look at the newspaper. The front page headline
is the biggest. There's a good-sized page 1 photo keeps the
page from becoming a visual wasteland of black type. There
are headlines above each story. There are subheads within
some stories. The body copy is legible, but not too big or
too small. The author bylines are small. There is a menu somewhere
on the page telling you how to find movies, sports, etc. The
page is organized in easy to understand columns. There's a
reason why every major newspaper in the world adheres to these
basic design principles.
But don't make your web designs look like newspapers.
That's not the point! If you don't get the point yet, wash,
rinse, and repeat the preceding paragraph.
Commandment 6: Thou shalt
not use too many colors.
Thou shalt attempt to learn something about color harmony.
Commandment 7: Thou shalt
kern thy bitmapped type unless thou wantest to be known simply
as "Shmendrick, the Village Design Idiot"
Commandment 8: Thou shalt
look at thy site on a variety of browsers. Just because you're
on a PC using IE 6 doesn't mean your users are. You can't
accommodate every browser config for sure, but it's horrifying
how many site submissions we get that ONLY look good on a
PC on IE 6.
Commandment 9: Thou shalt
make sure your images are clear, and free of those dreaded
Mad-Cow disease causing jaggies. On somebody else's site,
jaggies are hilarious -- but not on your site.
Commandment 10: Thou shalt
not be accused of Flash-love. It's habit forming and causes
hairy palms and blindness. Everything in moderation grasshopper.
Use Flash when it's appropriate.
Commandment 11: Thou shalt
learn as much as possible about typography, layout, and color
as soon as possible.
Commandment 12: Thou shalt
achieve BALANCE in thine page layouts. Look at the elements
on the page as if they all possess weight and gravity. The
larger items possessing more weight than the smaller ones.
Imagine a seesaw underneath all the page elements, supporting
the entire page layout. The seesaw should seem as though it
would balance itself due to the weight of the elements being
evenly distributed. Not too much weight on either side so
as to 'tip' the seesaw.
Commandment 13: Thou shalt
proofread, proofread, proofread. Then do it again.
Contributed by: CJackson www.junkology.org
Commandment 14: Thou shalt
have clear and easy to use navigation which does not change
with each new page.
Contributed by: Ely Cannon
Commandment 15: Thou shalt
not use the HTML tag <BLINK>
contributed by: Mike Hagan
Commandment 16: Thou shalt
not loop a sound over and over without a 'Sound Off' button.
No matter how cool you think the sound loop is.
Contributed by: Anthony Keenan www.custombike.org
Commandment 17: Thou shalt
not apply for web-design jobs after a single community college
class on using FrontPage.
Commandment 18: Thou shalt
not using Comic Sans as a header font unless thou wants to
induce vomiting for someone that has ingested poison. (Ed.
Note: This is my favorite Commandment!)
Commandment 19: Thou shalt
not use horizontal rules that are rainbow animations unless
you are a Hawaiian.
Commandment 20: Thou shalt
not sneak in links to their sponsors as ways to increase click-throughs.
We will hunt you down and kill you for this!
Commandment 21: Thou shalt
realize that 42 fonts is not better than two on a page.
Commandments 17-21 contributed by:
Josh Spivey www.jlswebsource.com
Commandment 22: Thou shalt
look up the word 'consistency' in Webster's Dictionary before
layout out all your site pages. The user should not be confused
with a different page design every time they click to a new
page.
Contributed by: Chris Irwin
Commandment 23: Thou shalt
use thy Spell Checker.
Contributed by: Danna Griego www.pinkflamingodesign.com
Commandment 24: Thou shalt
see a doctor and get rid of it if thou sufferest from "Pop-Up
Window Madness". Pop-ups are not meant to be used as
a way to get to the next page.
Contributed by: Rich Rodecker www.testa.com
Commandment 25: Thou shalt
optimize thine images
contributed by: Ann Schwartz
Commandment 26: Thou shalt
not use the same Photodisc photos that everyone else uses.
Contributed by: Mark Priestap
Commandment 27: Thou shalt
attempt to design pages that look great on low-end or high-end
systems. To achieve this is truly a sign of divinity.
Contributed by: Mark Kathmann www.kathmann.com
Commandment 28: Thou shalt
not use frames unless there is a need.
credit to CoolHomepages.com
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