optimal web design

November 16, 2002 6:38 AM

criteria for optimal web design. i found this site very useful, if you're into web design and development; although it seems focused to the beginner (because of the Q&A layout), it has very useful information
posted by trismegisto (12 comments total)

Maybe I'm difficult, but I don't like that... maybe it's cos it's written as a psychology paper.

Things like "The third annoyance, slow downloads, are a very common complaint" bug me when it was 4th and only scored 26% - a figure I find impossibly low by the way.

Still, that's just my tuppeneth...
posted by twine42 at 6:45 AM on November 16, 2002

According to this, Japanese users might associate Metafilter's blue background with "villainy" and the white text with "death." Maybe a new color scheme is in order.
posted by Ljubljana at 6:54 AM on November 16, 2002

Does optimal web design include leaving jagged white pixels around a transparent GIF title?
posted by dogwelder at 7:21 AM on November 16, 2002

After spending the last few months researching optimal web design in a flash environment, I still find Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines one of the most essential and comprehensive publications to date.
posted by randomblondeboy at 7:52 AM on November 16, 2002

not to mention a broken image on the front page.
posted by angry modem at 8:04 AM on November 16, 2002

Try Usable Web if you're ambitious or stricken with bouts of perfectionism :-)
posted by taratan at 8:13 AM on November 16, 2002

Talk about "the blind leading the blind."
posted by crunchland at 9:11 AM on November 16, 2002

"the blind leading the blind."

It's always especially rich when sites preaching usability don't offer it. Take this site, which claims to be designed to comply with UK usability regs for those with difficulty viewing printed information - but has no ALT tags, and blue inactive text and black links in the menus.
posted by raygirvan at 11:48 AM on November 16, 2002

Besides obvious visual problems such as the jagged white pixellation around the graphics, the site is completely non-standards-compliant. It uses tables for layout and deprecated tags for style-- no CSS to be seen anywhere.

As expected, it's not even close to validating. I'm amused.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 3:10 PM on November 16, 2002

For instance, in Chinese, Coca-Cola means "bite the wax tadpole." Wisely, the Coca-Cola company changed their name in China to the phonetic equivalent of "happiness in the mouth"
Cool ...
posted by Sirius at 7:19 PM on November 16, 2002

In Chinese many ideograms have similar sounds (it is a tonal language, which means that pitch can be the difference between one sound and another, a concept which often confuses Westerners) so there are many ways to approximate a borrowed word like "Coca-Cola." It may be true that one set of symbols that approximates the sound of "Coca-Cola" means "bite the wax tadpole" but that doesn't mean "Coca-Cola" itself means that. As I recall, the "happiness in the mouth" version still sounds more or less like "Coca-Cola" when pronounced.
posted by kindall at 8:02 PM on November 16, 2002

As expected, it's not even close to validating.

And even if you provide it with a DOCTYPE and character set, it still has numerous problems. I am also amused.
posted by blm at 2:27 PM on November 17, 2002