Nice concept, but the slideshow format is terrible to watch - i'm not sure if this is a subliminal demonstration of how not to program websites! Page refreshes are so last year, and as it is a slideshow why not show it as a slideshow e.g. in flash? On my machine each page is so slow to load, so i almost gave up watching.

Just my $0.02

"Click the image to see the list" ... ????

I was sort of looking for a list of 15 bullet points - not a one-at-a-time set of graphic slides that I had to click ... click ... click ... Isn't this a web site rather than a PP show?

Your points are good - and, to give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps you were just trying to illustrate them ...

I did not find the slideshow technology to be annoying. I was dissappointed with the content. Jakob Neilsen among many many other user interface experts have been saying the same thing since 1998. I was hoping for something new - maybe something security related.

One useful article would be something like "top ten form no-no's". I find a lot of annoying forms as a web user and I am asked to build annoying forms by a lot of clients. Form usability is about 5 years behind navigation usability.

It's not always the fault of the Web Developer when the site doesn't work on multiple browsers. You forget that the browser authors all interpret the standards their own way creating many incompatibilities.

Standards only work if everyone interprets and implements them the same way. Maybe you should ask the browser vendors why such latitude with the spec.

Soap Box off....

The bulleted list is not a recommended practice for developers. The bulleted list page generates only one page to feed a doubleclick ad to viewers. But a 15 page slideshow of hackeyed gems generates 15 doubleclick ads (if we continue to the end of the slideshow).

Thus we learn the actual #1 web developer mistake is to ignore our advertisers needs. Multiple clicks is the object of the game and generates income.

Should have made the title, "Top 15 Mistakes Beginners Make" and I would have saved my time reading...

Thanks for taking the time to work up all 15 slides; you sure had my attention at first.

This must work great when people are using 1600x1400 resolutions. Doesn't work so great at 1240x1080.
What is really funny is the "login" button at the top of this page does nothing at all on Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Ubuntu 7.04.

Take your own advice,PLEASE!!!

How am I supposed to print out the great ideas in this article without wasting reams of paper printing each slide individually?

This is true for all your "jazzy", NOT!, slideshows!

Thanks

Someone above made a valid (if somewhat sarcastic) point about why things appear in slideshow formats.
That said, here are all fifteen points in a more text friendly format.

1) Click, Click, Click - This is great, someone is at your site and they're ready to make a purchase. Here they go; one click, two clicks, three clicks, just one more! And.... they're gone. Maybe if they could get to where they wanted to go right away you would have made a sale.

2) Just Click on the Magic Compass - It's great that new web technologies make it possible to add lots of cool new navigation and interaction techniques. But don't put access to important features and content behind a strange graphic or icon. People know how links work on web pages. Some icons might as well be in elvish.

3) Don't be too Graphic - The Following Web Content Contains Massive Image Files and Graphics That May not Be Suitable For Visitors With Anything But the Fastest Possible Internet Connections. Toning Down the Giant Graphics Files Is Advised For Site Developers.

4) Registry of Lost Web Sites - The legend of the Invisible Web Site. Unseen by search engines, web users or anyone who might actually use the services of the website. It uses the magic of enforced site registration to keep its valuable content hidden from all who might want to use it, especially those who want to give the owners of the site some business.

5) Sticking to the Script - Scripting languages are so useful. They make it possible to do lots of cool things in web design. Click this link for an example. Mmm, getting a script error. If only there was some other way to link to content, you know like an HTML link. Don't use scripting where HTML will work just fine.

6) Too Rich - Animation is great, when it comes to Saturday morning cartoons. On the web too many animations, Flashy graphics, spinning graphs and windows popping in your face is sort of like a sign saying, "Stay away".

7) Welcome To Our Site "image placeholder" - Here's a great idea for the budding web site and application developer. There's this technology that makes it possible to display information to visitors and users. It's called Text! And unlike images and animations used where text would work just as well, text will always show up.

8) What's Your Color Scheme? - Whoa, trippy man. I love the way the orange text looks on that purple background. Dude, that financial firm is just going to love this site design. Or probably not. Unless you're designing for a jam band or some other client that likes wild colors, stick to color matchings that are pleasing to everyone.

9) Directionless Navigation - Wow, this site looks like it has lots of great content and products. But where is everything? Can't find related content? Where's that thing I saw the other day? I'm lost! Users of your web site shouldn't need a trail guide. Make navigation clean, simple and easy to find.

10) Can We Table This For Now? - Aren't tables great! They provide so much flexibility when laying out web content. And it looks so nice, at one specific resolution on one specific browser. At other resolutions, yuck! When using tables make good use of percentages and make sure the design looks good on all users screens.

11) Sloppy with Text - Wilcom too my grate neww web apliccatiun. Im a perfessinal web dervelper! The greatest coding skills won't help if your web content is full of misspellings and poor grammar.

12) Click Here for Click Here - This is such a nice web application that you've built. It will really help our business deploy content to the web. And look it automatically creates links that say things like "Click Here", "More" and "Continue Reading." Now how do we change those to something more descriptive? We can't? Don't call us, we'll call you.

13) Putting up a Velvet Rope - This is such as cool web site, can I come in? Oh, you only let in people from the IE click? Us Safari geeks aren't welcome? And I was going to spend so much money. Don't you know that browser-specific web sites and applications are like so five years ago?

14) This is a Web Site, Right? - Now this is what I call a content rich site. Look at the useful information here. Let me click here, wait, this is a PDF document, and this is a Word document. I thought this was a web site, you know, something I could view in a web browser.

15) Over-crowding - You know, when people say that something is like finding a needle in a haystack, they don't mean that in a good way. On the web, too many links and other components can make it hard for a visitor to find the content that they want.

I agree with John, it would have been nice to easily print them out.


As for the ads and clicks, I bet most of us do not design sites for selling ads. We have a single customer with a message to deliver - his own.


This is sort of a know your audience thing. I didn't notice any of the ads, but people have a point. Take a tip from print media - a magazine with one paragraph per page won't get reads unless it's aimed at pre-schoolers.


Most people do test their sites in multiple browsers - or at least with Firefox and IE.

The slides were basic and did not connect in an example. So the concept was there without any variation in explanation or sample. I'll gfo with the text.

I think the biggest mistake that web developers make is designing their sites specific to browsers. And designing multiple pages so that all browsers display the page correctly.

I'm all for a revolution in web development that will force browser developers to comply with the standards.
Anyone care to join me?

If you choose to join my little revolution, follow these three simple rules:

1. Post statement 1 that "This site is designed to comply with the w3c standards".
2. Post statement 2 "If this website does not view correctly, it is due to your browser".
3. Provide a list of browsers that comply with w3c standards.

Currently FireFox 3.0 is the only one that will be in full compliance. But that is yet to be seen.

I recently viewed my site in both IE and Firefox. The difference was drastic. However, when I finally debugged the code to w3c standards using html tidy, both browsers displayed my site the same.

So what would I have done if they didn't? Nothing! In my opinion, it's enough work developing a site to comply with the w3c standards let alone the every browser standard.

Join the revolution.

The Ziff-Davis slide shows all require me to page down to see the whole slide for every individual slide. This is so boring. The pulsating ads are also very distracting - it is enough to make me just stop the whole thing. Our main NIH web site at http://www.nih.gov pulses too now.

yeah - I gotta agree these eWeek slideshows are lame. The content often has value, but the delivery vehicle leaves alot to be desired.

you want a list:

• step one - clean and simple
• step two - clean and simple
• step three - clean and simple

I have to agree with the slideshow format being ugly and cumbersome.

This is what I got at Slide #3 I think it was..

The connection has timed out
The server at etech.eweek.com is taking too long to respond.

Nice huh? - Needless to say, I didn't bother going any further and also just scrolled past the text version above my comment dialog.

Good advice.

Too bad Eweek didn't take their own advice and seemed to be working to break as many of their own guidelines as possible.

I would have been happier with a single page of highlighted information I could print out instead of having to scroll through a 'slide show' on what was supposed to be a 'web site' that obeyed the 'three click' rule instead of being all obsessed with their 'graphics'.

Some of this is SO subjective.

"Design using percentages". Yeah... so your design goes all warpy and weird on someone's huge monitor. Percentages don't work when big gets too big. Oh wait! Lets create three separate stylesheets for different monitor sizes! Right! The client won't mind budget bloat at all!

"Avoid huge graphics". Done well, graphics intensive layouts are appropriate for some sites. Not for others. Text is also good, if written well and for the audience. Intelligent use is the key here, not some simplistic do or don't rule.

Colors are purely a matter of preference and style. What one person thinks is ugly, someone else is sure to think is perfect - and there will be thousands of other people who agree. As long as those thousands of others are their target market, they got it right!

Sites will never be predictable until the technology is predictable. That isn't really likely to happen in such a rapidly changing environment. And W3C compliance is somewhere between a pipe-dream and a joke (the people setting the standards don't even get it right). If the only browser that is 100% compliant is not even released yet, it isn't exactly something you can depend on! As soon as FireFox 3.0 is released, there will be a whole new set of standards for it to be non-compliant with. Besides, if it ever were predictable, half the coding gurus would be out of a job.

The most common web gaffs are the old ones that get repeated by every new generation of developers who learns how to do something for the first time. The top 10 will always be the top 10 - the list will just grow with new technologies. But those same old awful mistakes that we saw 5-10 years ago will continue to be repeated.

Bring on the Flash intros, the obnoxious background patterns, the "under construction" graphics (animated ones, PLEASE!!!), and slap a huge "Welcome" sign on every site!

I disagree with Mr. Hughes. If a web site does not work with multiple browsers then it is the fault of the web developer. If it is a commercial site and the developer does not test it using multiple browsers then IMHO they have not done their job and are hurting their business. Sticking to W3C standards can also help.

You've gone way overboard on the blinky ads. The louder you yell at me the more I tune you out. You have a big banner ad at the top and two very annoying blinky ads on the right. At most you should have either one quiet banner ad at the top or one quiet ad on the right and text links for any others.

So I endured all the "slides" and blinky shit first then when I went to make a comment I was navigationally lost. It's obvious that you don't practice what you preach because you're more intent on ad revenue than actually giving out good information. And this is from a "publishing" company?

You didn't mention anything about font size. As I am recently past the half century mark this is more important than it used to be. That and I have a 1920X1280 resolution laptop with a multi-monitor setup. A LOT of website have very poor font control. I find myself constantly doing [ctrl-+] to shrink/enlarge fonts only to see the entire page distorted to the point of being unusable. I run Linux as the primary O/S with a VMWare session for Windoze. So now I'm looking at Beryl to help make up for duhveloper font stupidity.

D.B.

Couldn't agree more about the slide show - its slow clunky and a very poor way of passing on information.

I got fed up after slide 3 and left it.

The information is often interesting, but please eweek, drop this type of slideshow and find a better way.

The slide show format is horrible. I know you do it so you can show more advertising. This is why I have stopped looking. I was going to read this list but it is not a list, just a bunch of pages I have to wade through. I'll stick to web developer focused sites. I don't mind all the advertising, but really, do you think we have the time to wade through information sparse pages?

Here's what I see, and I don't think it's my browser...

ADS ADS ADS ADS ADS
ADS ADS ADS ADS ADS
ADS ADS CONTENT ADS ADS
ADS ADS ADS ADS ADS
ADS ADS ADS ADS ADS

Notice anything missing?

#13 and 14 are the only ones I see as a real problem on a regular basis. You really have to go out of your way to create content that can only be accessed with IE, yet a small number of designers continue to do so for no reason. As for #14, putting up content in PDF and Word documents is simply due to laziness. If you are going to the trouble of creating a web site, take the extra step to actually format all the content so it can be viewed by a web browser.

You guys are not understanding eWeek's goal. You thought that their goal was to provide us, the readers, with useful information.

You were wrong. Their goal for providing this information is to get us to WATCH ADVERTISEMENTS. As many as possible, in hopes we will click through and bring them revenue. Providing us with information is a technique to reach a goal, not the goal itself.

Putting the information in that absurd slide show format means that we have to look at 10-15 pages of ad banners, not just one, thus increasing their revenue opportunities ten-fold.

:-(

Slide show is time consuming and inefficient; then wasted time to see if there was a printer friendly format so I could print it and move on with my day. This format renders eWeek's unitility to less than nil.

I have to chime in on the slideshow thing...

I know part of the impetus behind presenting info like this in a slideshow format is to display more ads to your users and I don't really have a problem with that. However, it seems eWeek really needs to work on optimizing their web-slideshows.

CNET does a lot of these and they seem to begin caching the next slide while the current one is being viewed. After viewing an image and reading its accompanying text bringing up the next page/image is quick.

In my experience, this is not the case w/the eWeek slideshows. Each new page/slide seems to take an incredibly long time to load. Because of this, I've pretty much quit going to check out eWeek slideshow pages, even when I find the subject of particular interest.

I do appreciate your listing the points in this one in the comments, for those of us who arent' going to flip thru the slideshow.

Don't you guys get it. It allows this author and his company to show 15 times the ads (and get 15 times the ad-revenue) than if they put all 15 points on a single page in an easy to read format.

Yeesh. You guys are following the carrot on a rope.

complainers all... take the lesson in the spirit it is meant. Why does everyone think they have to beat up on a guy for pointing out some of the many things we all tend to forget in the heat of the development cycle.

Good job. Easy to read.

eWeek uses more and moer slideshows, I believe, to generate advertising revenue. The more "clicks" users have to make, the more they can charge their advertisers. It has almost gotten to the point where I shutter when I see an email from eWeek. And to add insult to injury--you all are correct--the content in most of these slideshows (at least the few I've tolerated) is useless and outdated.

At least the rants on the blogs and boards after other sites' articles (that generate clicks for them) are entertaining in an elementary way.

Great and useful information. But the format makes it terrible to read. A real paradox, the article is about Mistakes us Web Designers have, and at the same time the presentation format is one of them. I would have appreciated greatly a list to my email.

They are very useful and I will keep them in mind.

Thank you

Fernando Camacho
fcamacho@engrafito.com

ISA Server blocks ads spectacularly if you tune it right. I guess there must be other things as well like DSL routers with blocking tables, etc. I started doing this years ago when publishers started with the blinkies in the content - so irritating and so OOOOOLLLLDDD fashioned. Have you not heard that permission marketing pays far better dividends. So to all the publishers that bombard us with rubbish adverts at our expense (you don't pay for my bandwidth yet do you?) catch a wake up and drop the ads.

Oh, by the way, sometimes the content is useful and sometimes it gives us a laugh. This one did the latter. Oh, and by the way, I believe PHP and AJAX might enhance the viewers enjoyment of your site!!!

Cheers!! ;-))

I have to agree with Lewis M.

Let's call it "techno-whoredom." Entice people with an alluring com'on and the hope of real content then sell yourself, even if you have to perform degrading and unnatural acts in order get some dough.

Congratulations on turning another trick but now that I know your reputation I'll go elsewhere for some real meaty content.

Everyone saw ads?

I didn't see no blinkin', steenkin' ads. I have Adblock Plus installed on my Firefox.

The content was rather obvious, but it never hurts to restate these things.

I was amused at the obfuscated navigation system which advanced the "slides" (hint, hint...use AJAX).

Having to give my email address just to blather here is suspicious. Now I'll probably end up having to Junk filter anything containing the words "Ziff Davis." Oh, wait, I used my SpamGourmet.com account. (Highly recommended.)

I agree twice:
First, the slide show approach fails me utterly.
Second, all the pointers in the list above are totally valid.

I myself use pure, static HTML only -- not even CSS -- and do my best to create validator.w3c.org-validated pages. The Opera browser makes that real easy -- just right-click in a page you want validated, press "V", press "Enter", and see what's mis-coded. Valid code has the best chance to display the same in all current browsers.

To Pat (and others loathe to divulge their email addresses),

I use my old, defunct MCI Mail address (MCI Mail went the way of the dodo in the post-Ebbers WorldCom reorganization).

Rule #1: Don't use slide shows on the web.

Who needs 15 rules?

Surely there's an irony to the first one click...click...click for 15 screens :-)

Regardless of browser standards, us web developers need to program for the masses. If the masses use IE, then I must make sure the best user experience is presented in IE. I'm not suggesting it should not work on other browsers, that would be ridiculous. But between a rich experience for the masses and bland for the minority vs. bland for everyone, I will always chose the first option.



Regarding graphics, I like them so long as they are useful. That is the key element: Usefulness. A news article with a picture next to it will be read 1,000 times more than one without a picture.

My main point has already been made more than enough: Please use your own rule Number 1, e.g., don't require your reader to Click - Click - Click to see your content or you will lose them.

Second point: This is the first time I have bothered to click on one of your "enticements to see pages and pages of advertising" and it will be my last. From now on email from EWeek will be automatically tossed out as junk mail.

Third point: Since my web connection is so slow I never bothered waiting for all of your fancy slides nor the ads to be loaded on each of the pages, I just read the text below each slide (after I found out that the text there just duplicated your slide info) and clicked on to the next page. So your ad clicks were wasted on me anyway.

Julian Nicholls:
Surely there's an irony to the first one click...click...click for 15 screens :-)

AMEN Julian.

Here's the problem with eWeek Online (not just this article but most of them). The writers and editors provide decent (and sometimes outstanding content) but the the marketing design people make us live through 15 clicks (15 Pages of ADVERTISEMENTS) to see the content.

Here's a simple solution:

1. Discard the slideshow and put all 15 points on a single page or all 15 on a page plus a link to the slideshow.
2. Provide a printer friendly version of the page for somebody who might actually want to study the content offline.

Most of the 15 "not to do" things were part of the slide show :-)

One rule to remember, do NOT design your site so that the bandwidth sucking video ads are popped up covering the slideshow navigation.

I'll just add that e-week online just got themselves a permanent seat in my killfile (aka spamfilter)

If you're gonna profess me 15 rules not to break when designing a site you should refrain from breaking so many of them yourself. Not the least of which should be obliterating rule #1

click, click, click, plonk

"Us Safari geeks aren't ..."? Talk about grammar!

Because of an IE setting to warn of active-x content, I had to click FIVE times to advance - one to proceed to the next slide and FOUR to click NO to active-x content requests. Then be screen did not fit on my display (yeah, I'm old, and have the View - Text Size set pretty high, but I've still got money to spend).

One other common error needs more emphasis - web designers who take a printed document (portrait) and try to shoe-horn it into a web page (landscape), either with PDF or Word or HTML, are making a big mistake. Either the text is too small to read, or you have to continually scroll to read the text.

Use your own medicine!! This all could have been put in ranked text. It would have only taken half of a page and I wouldn't have to have wasted my time replying to this blog.
You would have saved some precious bandwidth both from your ISP's side plus my side.

Anyway..one of my favorites is the design your web site only to work with IE or Firefox.

Bottom line.. use standards and it should work with most browsers. The biggest gripe is with customized java scripting which doesn't work properly with each browser.

I was surprised by this website like everyone else. But at least others' comments validated my use of a very special /etc/hosts which keeps a lot of garbage at bay.
Also, how about a website which consists ENTIRELY of shockwave/flash! I just ran into one this afternoon. It required me to fire up my tired old XP machine to read it, and all that flash was just there for navigation menus. Yes, there is NO flash reader for FreeBSD or kubuntu/amd64 :-(

Heh

So who needed the article with the much more 'in-tune' feedback? Maybe there's a trend.

Too bad you couldn't have taken your own frame one advice, then you wouldn't have validated all the 'negs' here. Wait, Wait, Is this a website, or A PowerPoint Presentation? Oh, its a website developed on PowerPoint huh?

Talk about content being shoehorned. But WAIT! There's More! For the next three hundred clickers, we will get our AD revenue.

Now there's a good point, the problem with almost all the 'rules' (with the exception of the 'no-stupid-webmaster-tricks' ones) is that sites publishers (like Eweek) have objectives that often have NOTHING to do with a good user experience.

I can't tell you how many times people have asked me to do things that are bad ideas, and if that person happens to be a Senior VP or Director of something - what do YOU think is going to be done?

Maybe the CBOD should be asked to use the site once a month? or how about the whole BOD?

'Bob - your task this month is the find the replacement fiddle-donker that goes with the XDF2345 AutoDirectional Baginflator'

'Sue - your job is to schedule our next Grand Soiree AKA BOD meeting using the Corporate Portal's "People and Places - they are fun together" applet'

As for 'The Rules'; Maybe we could sum it all up with two adages that have universal application,

One: K.I.S.S.
Two: I learned everything I needed to know in Web 101.

Oh yeah and NO stupid webmaster tricks.

- OK - enough of that

Here's my CONSTRUCTIVE input, no ding here.

One of the greatest problems with web content delivery is that many people don't see "all this" as an act of authorship. Your site is anything YOU want it to be, It better be a compelling story. A lot of techies wind up with writing tasks, but zero education, training. or experience. So the first thing I do with colloborators is to introduce them to a very fine resource "You Send Me". by Patricia O'Connor & Stuart Kellerman. Its a mini 'Elements of Style' (a Style Guide) for the online world. That one's not a bad idea either, LOL.

I DO have one last question Jim? Since we are on professionalism, and we made a 'tick' on poor spelling and grammar? Where's the pretty "Spell Check Me" button, huh? huh? LOL and the e-acute in 'Soiree' is verboten.

This article reminds me of MS explaining 'user-friendly'. BUT, the click-trace will show I watched it (the slideshow) just to see how bad it was...

And it did make me think. So thanks very much

Anytime I see a web site that is IE only, I contact the company, tell them I could not read their pages because I use Firefox, and perhaps this problem exists for Apple users, Opera, Safari, and any other browser. I then say I will not only NOT be buying any of their products or services, but I will tell all my friends to avoid that company because they are obviously not interested in our business. And I tell them I will not be back. Guess what. They change the web site so Firefox can display it. But I still don't come back. Once burned, etc.

As for the slideshows, they are really annoying.

These are good basic rules - most of which will be known by any interaction design professional. The click, click, click (point #1) is not necessarily a strong argument. Several usability professionals say that users tend not to mind the "clicking" as long as they feel they are making progress which is clearly communicated. I've been faced with large scale information sites that placed a goal of getting to any page in three clicks. We achieved that goal but the result was a larger, more complex navigation system. I suggest that logic and organization prevail over clicks.

Nice points, but some of them are just a matter of taste, such as the color schemes. I always liked red font on dark green background. It has just the right amount of contrast. OK, for those who have the green/red/brown sight deficiency this will not work. But why always use the boring black text on white background?
Also, flipping through the slide show required to click on a link labeled "next". How descriptive is that? And then - as noted by many before - complaining about using images instead of text, but displaying that as an image slide show is really just painfully embarrassing. Now, if eWeek could also make all their pages ADA compliant and validate properly....

Don't throw stones when you sit in a glass house.

You forgot the one cardinal sin of web design that in my mind trumps almost all others: sound.

If I visit your website and the first thing it does is sail music or a voice sales pitch the way of my system's speakers, YOU ARE GONE. I click "back" or "home" in the browser, or if I'm using them, I close the tab.

NEVER use sound without some kind of warning that requires a mouse click.