Design Patterns

This week , I have found an interesting album , which display the unique and interesting interface and design flows from across the web

http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/collections/72157600001823120/

http://randaclay.com/how-to/how-to-dress-up-your-404-page/ 

It might a very upset moment when the web visitors browse a broken links with the “404″ text To design a “404″ web page. Some users will close the browser .

“u have about half a second to engage the visitor who has ended up at your 404 page.”

For create a 404 page , it should

“pulls the words in the URL that was entered in error, and brings back related entries on your site that might be of interest”

It is useful to create this page and enhance the web usability .

And beautiful 404 page will give a good impaction for the visitors.

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005

I have read an web site to explain the web design mistakes in 2005 in http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

The article mentioned the ten mistakes as following:

1. Legibility Problems

(small font sizes and low contrast between text and background)
2. Non-Standard Links

3. Flash
4. Content That’s Not Written for the Web
5. Bad Search
6. Browser Incompatibility
7. Cumbersome Forms
8. No Contact Information or Other Company Info
9. Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths
10. Inadequate Photo Enlargement

There are three point I want to talk about:

The writer has mentioned about the disadvantages of using flash navigation,

“Using Flash for navigation is almost as bad. People prefer predictable navigation and static menus.”

But in my point of view, in recent years .Users have been adapted with the animated menus .And the flash have provide a lower file size than past few year. It nearly didn’t have loading time. As a result , I don’t agree this point.

The more I want to mentioned about is the problems of the Browser Incompatibility. As  more people using firefox today. But most of the web function are failed by using firefox . Such as the javascript functions.

Lastly, the article have said “Cumbersome Forms” , which means

“Forms are used too often on the Web and tend to be too big, featuring too many unnecessary questions and options.”

It is a problems that every web user faced to . when you create an account on the forum or emails. You have to filled in a lot of unnecessary questions and fields. But because of those forum are using the template file.So it is hard to fixed as everyone use the template forum , shop .

why tables for layout is stupid

This week, I have read a website which is talking about “why tables for layout is stupid” in http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/everything.html

This article is taking about the advantages and disadvantages of table using in the web.

Here is some advantages that not using the table layout.

• make your pages load faster
• lower your hosting costs
• make your redesigns more efficient and less expensive
• help you maintain visual consistency throughout your sites
• get you better search engine results
• make your sites more accessible to all viewers and user agents
• and give you a competitive edge (that is, job security) as more of the world moves to using Web standards.

And this web page provide some methods instead of table layout , such like using the gif and some simple css style sheet to organize the data in a uniform layout.

In my point of view, table is a very convenient tool to organize the data for the non-web programmer, it is easy to use the table in the html edit program, such like dreamweaver , front page. And some layout design requires the table to make the information more structural. E.g. Currency http://www.hangseng.com/hsb/eng/rate/hkdtt/index.html .

As a result ,we can still use table ,but not using too much.

What users hate most about Web sites?

 

I have read an article on “What users hate most about Web sites” about the websites.

The article posted in infoworld

“It doesn’t matter how cool a Web site looks, if users find it impractical they will head to your competitor’s site, which is only a click away,” Cunnington said.

I totally agree this point , As most of the web design company just focus on how is the layout is , they are tend to forget the most important things that a web should have —The practical content . Most of the visitors will not visit the web site second times if the content of the site is useless and lack of information. As a result, it is more important to find out a competitive group and the audience of the website.

“Flash animations are an obvious, yet stellar, example of what users hate in a Web site; the skip intro button is the most used button on the Internet.

Some clients may think flash animations is important and provide a good image for the company. In fact, the visitors, including me, dislike the flash introduction and just click the skip button wherever how the beautiful content of the flash is. As a result, in recent years, the flash animation almost disappears in the internet. It turns to a new type of flash animation in the web page, which is contained in the header in the top of the web pages. But it comes to another problem

“Users hate flash because it’s a barrier to the site.”

Flash may be a barrier for user to read the content of a page. But in my point of view, some professional flash marker try to make the animation disaffecting to read the content, but keep a good impaction to the visitors.
So it is depending on the point of view to  different users.

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