Ziked

Some web designers believe that the whole point of web design is to have the most attractive site at all costs. I think they are wrong. The way I see it, Web Design should revolve around speed. Its about providing the user with the best user experience with the least amount of page load time. So here are some tips:

• Avoid Flash: I agree that you can get some of the nicest effects with flash and flash can do things that basic HTML or CSS cannot do. But at the same time, Flash can take along time to load. You have to consider the fact that most of the world’s internet population does not have a broadband internet connection and it therefore takes them even more time to load. For example, when I went to Indonesia last summer, I had to wait about 40 seconds for a two-minute YouTube video to load. Since the web is universal, you have to care about all users. Most users are impatient (like me) and will not wait for something to load if it takes more than 10-15 seconds (max) to load. Unless you need it strictly for video playback or you require a function that cannot by anyother thing, avoid it. Do not use flash for designing your menus. You can get the effects of Flash menus with CSS Menus which load super-fast. Also keep in mind that not everyone has the Flash player installed and you might be using a different version of Flash then the user has installed.
• Minimize your use of Javascripts: Javascripts are slowing down the internet. But at the same time you do need javascipts for necessary things like installing your site analytics tool. So try to use the least amount of javascipts possible.Also position your javascipts just before the end of your “/body” tag - which means that the browser reads the javascript after the page has finished loading. It is useless to have scripts to change your page background color (which is unnecessary).
• Do not take control away from the user: One of the biggest mistakes that Web Designers make is that they try to take control away from the user. For example some sites automatically go full screen when you load the page or some sites will hide the address bar or resize your window size. Whatever your reason might be, most users will feel like they are in some kind of spam/spyware site and in their panic will immediately navigate away and in mostly likelyhood never come back. Do not have links or ads open in new windows. I agree that by doing so you are limitting your pageviews and letting the user navigate away from your site. But if you have links open in new window, chances are that their browser’s pop-up blocker will stop the link from opening in a new window and show a “Pop Up Blocked” message.We all know what kind of sites are know to have the most pop-ups.
• Use style-sheets: If you are still unaware of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), you seriously need to update your knowledge of web design.CSS is used by both the authors and readers of web pages to define colors, fonts, layout, and other aspects of document presentation. It is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation (written in CSS). This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentational characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content. CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, etc.
• Cross-platform: This is really rare but some websites will only work with one browser (most likely to be IE). This is the worst possible thing to do. By doing so you are losing bout 40 % of the web userbase. Test your sites in all browsers to make sure it looks and acts the same in all browsers. Also use universal fonts like Arial that work with all types of OS instead of using a font that only works with Mac OS X or Windows.