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10 Deadly Web Site Sins
Keep in mind that if you have a dark background tile and you've specified a light color text, your content might not be readable for visitors who are surfing with image-loading OFF depending on their default browser background color. To get around this, specify a background color in addition to a background image, like so:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#800080" BACKGROUND="deeppurplesilk.gif" TEXT="#FFFFFF>
WEB SITE SIN #3: The Evil "BLINK!"
Oh, this is a big one. Please have some consideration for us and don't use blinking text on your page! Believe me, people just don't like it.
To me, there is nothing more distracting than trying to read and having that incessant blinking going on. It's like standing beside the man in line at McDonald's who is carrying on a heated debate with his imaginary parrot, Pepé - you don't want to look, but your eyes keep getting drawn to the horrible spectacle.
I'll also include those annoying little animated GIFs in this category. A few eons ago, they might have been new and fresh, but if I see one more of those little animated workers laboring inside an "Under Construction" sign, I think I'm going to yak (I used one of those at one time myself, sigh...).
Don't get me wrong, I think it's OK to sprinkle a few good animations here and there throughout your site. You run into problems when you've got 20 or so animated Smurfs doing the Macarena on one page.
These have the same distracting effect as blinking text. Just when you start to concentrate and absorb the reading material, the dancing purple ferret can't stand it anymore and has to bust a move. He stops, you regain your focus, and guess what? "Hey, check me out again" - "Whoa! you didn't think I was through already, did ya?" - "Look at me!!! Love me!! WORSHIP ME!!!".
WEB SITE SIN #4: Frames
Ah yessss....my old nemesis. I detest frames. I think they are the bane of every web surfer's existence.
Please don't e-mail me and try to brainwash me into your twisted way of thinking. I don't like frames. Let me rephrase that: in theory, they sound like a great tool; in practice, they are usually anything but. Yes, frames could provide a very convenient navigation system for a site, but most of the time they don't.
Invariably, the dimensions are just a hair off and you are stuck with that dastardly horizontal scrollbar. Or you have a window approximately 5 pixels high to try to scroll. Sometimes your screen is so hacked up, if you didn't know better, you might think a samurai had taken out his frustration on a lemon meringue pie.
Not to mention the fact that frames can cause a problem for some search engines in indexing your site.
WEB SITE SIN #5: The Endlessly Scrolling Page
You load a page, you watch in horror as the button on the scrollbar gets smaller and smaller - it would make a dust mite feel like a huge, lumbering, oaf. When the page is finally finished loading, you pull out your handy electron microscope and discover that, yes, the scrollbar is still there, all five nanometers of it. This is when it dawns on you: Brother, you've got a long way to go to get to the bottom of this page.
Have you ever stumbled upon a page that seemed to go on and on forever? It's better to break your content up into short to medium length, linked pieces instead of one long page. Granted, it's easier to put everything on one page, but it's really a pain to have to scroll for days while reading.
One of my friends found a site that was filled with great information, but when she decided to print it out she discovered that it would have been several hundred pages long!