ServerBeach “Geek of the Week”
ServerBeach selected us as their “Geek of the Week” this week. They are the datacenter that powers our hosted applications including the previous beta release of Barracuda Suite (now Simpli5).
Why Flash is Mostly Bad
Adobe’s animation and multimedia technology, Flash, distracts users from a websites sites core content, and introduces a myriad of design problems. While there are a few occasions where flash is acceptable, and can even add value, typically the use of Flash makes websites harder to use.
One of the largest problems with flash is Search Engine visibility, and accessibility to those with disabilities. While these problems are severe, this article’s focus is on usability, not accessibility.
Typography on the Web
Typography is fundamental to clean design, and paramount to content. Bad typography will drive users away from your content, while good typography will keep things legible and draw your readers eye to important sections. Your content should be easy to skim for those in a rush, and also easy to read more deeply.
Typography on the web should stem from print media. People are used to reading newspapers, paperbacks, and other paper documents. Study these and keep your web pages consistent with these.
Reasons to Validate
Validation is the process of ensuring that your web pages (XHTML, XML and CSS files) meet the standard set aside by the w3c, the organization responsible for these markup languages. Validation is similar to running your documents through a spell checker for errors, ensuring that the data sent to the web browsers is well formed and syntactically correct.
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Latest Comments
- George → “ also make sure that the non www version is always redirected to the www version of the website.…”
- faheem → “ Thanks for the nice tips,…”
- Adobe → “ The problems you are talking about are not Flash issues they are design issues . The problem is not Flash, the problem is that there are very few real designers around anymore. As for the plug in every browser for every platform save iOS has it installed when you download it. I am amazed how…”
- هتل → “ great list of ideas. Without a doubt, you are exactly right. As with all design, there is a time and a place to break every rule.thanks for posting…”
- Randy Cox → “ If you suddenly decided to put stop signs on the side of a barn instead of a metal post on edge of a road, a lot of folks would not stop. If there is a really good reason to change the link color then change it, but there will be a cost to your communication. Henry Ford…”