Links

Text Links

In the past, it was rather easy to recognize hyperlinks on a webpage because they were traditionally blue and underlined. Today, hyperlinks can be any color, and they may not be underlined at all. With a little advanced scripting, today’s hyperlinks can move, jump, swirl around, and do a little bit of everything short of inserting a coin into a jukebox and selecting a song to dance to. While that’s pretty fancy, they can be hard to locate on a content-dense page.

We recommend that you stick to the traditional format so that visitors can readily distinguish a link from other text, and so that navigation doesn’t require them chase anything around the screen.

Image Links

At times, images make better links than text links — especially when they help visitors who speak a different language navigate around a website. As an example, consider a small image of the envelope. Anyone from any country can easily identify the envelope as a representation of email. A small image of a shopping cart indicates a check-out center, and a small image of a telephone indicates contact information in any part of the world.

Use image links with discretion and make sure that they indicate the kind of content it presents.

Color

Color Schemes

The color scheme of a website sets its tone even before visitors begin to read what the website is about. In general, light, muted colors are appropriate for business or conservative websites, and pastels accented with earth tones are just fine. The further that a color scheme deviates from this combination, the more risky it is in terms of making conservative, professional impression.

Color Meaning

It isn’t practical to apply the meaning of every color to a website because color meanings change from culture to culture and country to country. In the U.S., blue is often interpreted as “trusting,” while in Korea, “trust” is pink. But a pink website that appeals to an American military audience is entirely inappropriate!  So, to make color meaning work, you’ll need to determine where the bulk of your visitors come from, and then use a color theme that reflects the taste and preferences of that audience.

Web Safe Colors

Even still, some web browsers can only display a small number of the 16 million color combinations that we’ve been blessed with thus far.  Problems occur when a webpage is designed with a specific color, but a web browser can’t reproduce that color on a visitor’s computer. To avoid this common problem, design a website with web safe colors. Web safe colors are hues that will display in any web browser on any computer.

TIP:  Most color palettes in WYSIWYG HTML editors offer web safe colors!

Text

At first thought, one would think that applying text to a website would be a pretty straightforward task. But experience has shown that visitors prefer text that follows specific formats.

Preferred Format

Visitors tend to scan online text rather than actually sit and read it verbatim. Blame it on the fleeting and swift nature of the Internet if you will. The fact is that most online users will run away from a website that resembles the content of college-grade philosophy text.

Online readers want to view text in a column that’s broken up into easy to read chunks and separated by plenty of white space (wide margins), bullets, and big, summarizing headlines. They also want text that gets straight to the point. Long essay-like prose just doesn’t jive with the high-speed pace of the Internet, nor does it work well for today’s demanding and speed-conscious consumer.

Common Fonts

Be aware that not everyone has the same fonts installed on their computer. A web browser can only display the fonts that are installed in a visitor’s font folder, so when it encounters a request for a missing font, it will make a substitution. The most common fonts are Arial, Verdana, Comic Sans MS, and Times New Roman.

Varying the appearance of these fonts with different sizes, colors, and bold or italic attributes should be enough to offer sufficient visual variety.

TIP:  Try not to underline text since visitors will interpret it as a hyperlink and will try to click it. Reserve this formatting for actual links.

Images and Multimedia

Images

We talked about images and multimedia earlier; however, here we want to introduce the two most common types and how to properly use them.

To improve the time it takes to load a webpage, you should design a site with small, compressed image files. Both the GIF image and JPEG image formats are compressed, and although they both display imagery just fine, each has their own purpose.

GIF images are unique in that they can be animated and they can have transparent backgrounds. JPEG images are unique in that they compress photographs better than GIF files and they retain a photograph’s original qualities better than GIF files.

Still, no matter what you do sometimes, a large image just doesn’t seem to compress as small as you’d like it to. Optimizing images is one way to reduce large images even more and there are numerous software programs that can help.

TIP:  This link points to a large number of GIF optimizers via our favorite search engine: Yahoo.

Another way to reduce the time it takes to load a webpage is to display thumbnail images the way that catalogs display small products pictures. Thumbnail images are smaller versions of larger images which are linked to their bigger forms. To see the full form of an image, visitors can click on its small and quick-loading thumbnail version.

Multimedia

Like images, sounds can increase the time that it takes to load a webpage and playing them in the background should generally be avoided. Visitors should always have the choice to listen to audio recordings, midi music files, and streaming audio through a link that plays them, rather than being forced to download and then hear these files in the background.

Video files can present the same loading problems as large image files and sound files so again, visitors should always have the choice to view them rather than being forced to download and then watch them. Even though the technology behind video is improving in both speed and compression, they’re still a burden on those with slow Internet connections.

Frames

Frames divide the visible area of a web browser into sections and then load different pages into each area. They’re an extremely useful way to organize and present multiple sections of a website, however overkill tends to overwhelm visitors (and their browsers) by presenting too much information at once. They also don’t index well in search engines or easily archive into a visitor’s bookmark or favorites folder. As a result, they’re pretty much avoided by all.

We don’t particularly have anything against frames other than the few minor problems that they cause because when used correctly, they really can make interacting with a website easy. If you find frames an irresistible lure, seek the help of a website frame professional so that they avoid the problems described above.

Forms

Form elements are what make websites come alive with interactivity in its truest sense. Without them, visitors can do little more than read text, click on a few links or watch a video or two. When a website employs form technology, it can ask visitors for information and then react to that information.

Visitors supply information through text-input boxes, drop-down lists, option buttons, and more. Form-enabled websites in turn take that information and send it to their databases for storing, or they send it to the websites’ headquarters for processing.

There are many reasons to use forms on a website, but some of the most common reasons are to obtain feedback, register new users, or process orders.

All WYSIWYG HTML editors should provide the tools needed to build an interactive web form.

Accessibility

One part of web design that’s largely ignored is its accessibility — that is, it’s ignored until it becomes a big legal issue exploited in the media. Essentially, accessibility makes the same content available to non-handicapped persons equally available to those with a disability of some sort. Equal access is just as important online as it is offline, and disability watchdogs are adamant about enforcing their rights to appreciate the Internet just as much as anyone else.

From any webpage that’s coded properly, a disabled person can use special software to translate what’s on each page into speech, hard-printed Braille, or some other usable form of content. Although the intricacies of designing an accessible website are beyond the scope of this book, you are well advised to learn how to make your site an equal access site, because certain legalities may require it. At best, an accessible website should accommodate visitors who may be:

• blind
• partially blind
• color blind
• unable to use the hands
• deaf
• partially deaf
• prone to flash-induced seizures
• learning disabled

TIP:  Visit The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 to learn “…how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. The guidelines are intended for all Web content developers (page authors and site designers) and for developers of authoring tools.” www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT

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