5 Tips for Avoiding Common Web Design Sins

1. 5 Tips for Avoiding Common Web Design Sins
There are a plethora of best practices and guidelines for web design, and many fall within two
categories, either the do’s or the don’ts. These might change places every now and then, but most
likely these don’ts will end up on someone’s “to-do” list to fix or change. Sorting through the vast
list of what not to do in web design, I’ve come up with my top five, which I’ll explain in some
detail below.
Don’t!
#1 Create a Splash page
With the advent of HTML 5 there is a level of controversy surrounding the use of Flash and since
most splash pages are created in Flash, it is not a surprise that these seem to be on the wane.
Splash pages are particularly overdone in many instances with long load times, several minutes of
artful graphics, and no navigation. The exceptions are few and far between. Many splash pages
can last up to a minute or more and these become tiring quickly when you want to get into the
meat of the content on a web page. Besides that fact, most visitors click through or just leave sites
to avoid splash pages; web browsers also have a hard time indexing them in their ranking systems.
#2 Mix HTTP with HTTPS resources
Security is the point with HTTPS, so why is that you find many web documents that contain a mix
of both resources when the intention is to transmit secure data? One of the issues with mixing the
two together is caching that occurs, and another is the unsecure data that can be picked up along
the way and replaced with counterfeit, spurious content or other exploits. One way around this is
to use JavaScript or other means which can be utilized to call a separate secure “portal” window as
https so that the secure resources are completely separate from the non-secured http.
#3 Link pages to themselves
This offense is still on many lists, and I cannot count how many times I still see this on websites
today. Visitors get confused, cannot remember what page they are on, and forget if they clicked on
that link or not when the same page refreshes. It is just not a good practice to link any page to
within itself.
#4 Resize the browser window
Many frown on this tactic from an end user standpoint since they end up losing all control of the
browser screen size. Most folks have their window size set a certain way and typically will close
out any sites that automatically change the browser window.

2. #5 Use frames
Some websites still use them, especially for badges, widgets, and embedded content on a small
scale, but typically the widespread use of frames has fallen. Here are a few reasons why frames
create weaknesses for websites:
 Search engines have trouble reading content within frames.
 Not all browsers support frames
 Add a favorite or bookmarking a frame generally will not work correctly
 Framed websites often do not close properly when content is viewed through several frames.
 Printing web content within frames becomes problematic, and typically requires a separate
“print friendly” option as a work around.
Recommend Office .NET/Silverlight Component:
Spire.XLS for .NET and Silverlight
Spire.Office for .NET and Silverlight
Spire.Doc for .NET and Silverlight
Spire.PDF for .NET
Spire.DataExport for .NET