Comments on: optimal web design

optimal web design

trismegisto — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 06:38:47 -0800

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

By: twine42

twine42 — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 06:45:53 -0800

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...

By: Ljubljana

Ljubljana — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 06:54:28 -0800

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.

By: dogwelder

dogwelder — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 07:21:15 -0800

Does optimal web design include leaving jagged white pixels around a transparent GIF title?

By: randomblondeboy

randomblondeboy — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 07:52:30 -0800

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.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 08:04:04 -0800

not to mention a broken image on the front page.

By: taratan

taratan — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 08:13:22 -0800

Try Usable Web if you're ambitious or stricken with bouts of perfectionism :-)

By: crunchland

crunchland — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 09:11:19 -0800

Talk about "the blind leading the blind."

By: raygirvan

raygirvan — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 11:48:33 -0800

"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.

By: DrJohnEvans

DrJohnEvans — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 15:10:43 -0800

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.

By: Sirius

Sirius — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 19:19:51 -0800

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 ...

By: kindall

kindall — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 20:02:07 -0800

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.

By: blm

blm — Sun, 17 Nov 2002 14:27:21 -0800

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.