Link to a good rant on WWW site design

[Ed Richards]

http://www.linesandcolors.com/2007/05/31/how-not-to-display-your-artwork-on-the-web/

[MenacingTourist]

Lovely sarcasm and wonderful advice. The guy sounds like an all-important prick but he's pretty much dead on. He even made me rethink a thing or two...

Alan.

[Rob Champagne]

funny thing is that he says a very good site is a flash site. This means a real world user likes flash which is in opposition to what a lot of the web geek types say people should be using. So who is right? Who knows best?

[SamReeves]

Sorta reminds me of somebody who concerned about the icing but not about the cake. :rolleyes:

[Photomax]

funny thing is that he says a very good site is a flash site. This means a real world user likes flash which is in opposition to what a lot of the web geek types say people should be using. So who is right? Who knows best?

Hmmm,

I read this and think he makes great points. But I did not get that he thinks "Flash sites are the best sites..."

I think his main points point to avoiding "misplaced cleverness and highbrow concepts" etc.

Some points he makes on Flash:

* "Use an Intro Page, especially with a long, clever animated Flash intro that that can’t be bypassed, to make sure they’re in the right mood when they arrive at your fabulous Splash Page..."

* "While you’ve got the JavaScript book out, pull out the Flash book too. See if you can find some ways to make your galleries hard to scroll, keep the text from being read by search engines and make the images take forever to display, either by long fades, dramatic transitions or resizing display areas. (Ignore the fact that Flash can be used responsibly and effectively if you learn how; that stuff’s for sissies!)"

* "Be sure to put your site in frames! You wouldn’t want someone to be able to conveniently bookmark a page, or send a link to an individual page to, say, another art director. You want them to go through the entire navigation process everytime. Putting your entire site in a single Flash file is good for this too."


One thing I noticed on this site though: That tiny low contrast brown text against the gray background was a pain to read!

Max

[MenacingTourist]

Right. He's not saying Flash sites are best, rather to use Flash in a way that makes sense. Too mush Flasherbation or Flash for the sake of Flash is bad. No one is saying to even use Flash at all.

David Olgilvy (great ad man) said that, "the customer isn't an idiot, the customer is your wife." Let's relate this to our websites with: The user isn't an idiot, the user is your wife.
I had an illustration professor constantly remind us to "always consider the background". Designers or anyone making a website should always consider the user.

I should also repent for calling that guy an all-important prick. I don't really know hime and he's probably just trying to pound some of these points home to people who are slow to learn :)

Alan.

[David_Senesac]

Thanks for the entertaining link. Agreed with most of his sarcasm then added to the Comment section on his page. I thought there was very little with issues he mentioned that would ding my own hand coded no frills website. However I'm sure some would complain my site requires too much bandwidth for dial-up users. To that I'd state, those still with dial-up are also not likely to be well off enough to purchase my prints. ...David