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DESIGN USABILITY

More Website Knick Knack
By: Chris Heilmann
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  • Rating: 2 stars2 stars2 stars2 stars2 stars / 75
    2004-12-13

    Table of Contents:
  • More Website Knick Knack
  • Why to stick to the tried-and-true
  • The site in the site
  • The Russian doll symptom
  • Changing the cursor
  • Baring it all
  • Forewarned is forearmed

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    More Website Knick Knack


    (Page 1 of 7 )

    In our second article about useless clutter on websites, Chris Heilmann focuses on websites that try to reinvent the wheel, features that offer a quick "wow" and little else, and more. Are you guilty of inflicting website knick knack on your visitors? Take a look at the included check list and find out.

    In the last article we listed some of the seemingly good but superfluous elements with which Web designers clutter their sites. We covered:

    • Counters
    • Close, Bookmark and Print this Window links
    • Flashy menus that don't help the user
    • Right-click protection scripts
    • Animations
    • Tunnel pages
    • Background music

    This time we will wrap up with some more examples and a list of ideas for how to spot cluttering knick knack.

    This time we make the wheel purple

    One common mistake that Web developers make (or are asked to make and don’t feel confident enough to refuse to do) is to reinvent basic behavior of the operating system or the browser. One word: don't.

    A lot of content is a drag

    Many times inexperienced designers, who haven’t grasped that the dimensions of a website are not in their powers but in those of the visitor, will come up with a content area of fixed dimensions. Realizing that there will be too much content to fit in the space, they design a flashy scrolling area using their own scrolling DHTML or flash widgets, discarding the inbuilt browser scroll options.

    More Design Usability Articles
    More By Chris Heilmann


       · how about all the clutter on these pages?
       · I found this article from a developer's blog posting... To quote his/her...
       · http://a.wholelottanothing.org/
       · I thought this article was informative and very helpful. Nice to see the quality of...
       · I made it about a paragraph in before the combination of:a) a spinning elf...
       · Have you noticed the unbelievable amount of clutter on this web site? Jebus!
       · Where's the seven comments?
       · They were comments basically insulting the site rather than constructive comments...
       · Ummmm... I can\'t imagine anything more insulting to the site than the fact that it...
       · Hah! I though this was a spoof when I first read it. Made me chuckle.The article...
       · Mat 7:5 "...first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly...
       · The content may be decent, but the author should consider finding somewhere else to...
       · Is this for real? Is the writer of the article aware of the profound irony? Or was...
       · Is this for real? Is the writer of the article aware of the profound irony? Or was...
       · This article comes in the middle of a whole bunch of clutter itself.Truly, the web...
       · I also thought this was a joke at first. The article must have been republished on...
       · I am the writer of this article, and I am a contributing writer, which is all. I am...
       · Surely you can see how contradictory your article is (on this website), given the...
       · However, I considered it a good enough article and offered it. Secretly I also...
       · by far, the most popular article on the devshed network!
       · This site is ran by retards. COME ON, FIX THIS SITE!!!! They post a well written,...
     

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