HTML Style Bloopers
26-Jul-16
What is good style?
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Good style, like good taste, is partly--but only partly--a
matter of opinion
Bad style is frequently easier to define
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A web page has bad style if
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You can’t load the page
You can’t use the page for its intended purpose
You can’t read the page
You can’t adjust the page to your needs
You can’t get rid of the page
You can’t navigate the site containing the page
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Cannot load the page
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Macromedia Flash is the worst offender
Pages containing Flash animations often cannot even
be loaded by browsers without Flash
If you are going to use Flash, or other fancy features,
make sure your intended audience has the ability to
see your pages
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Cannot use the page
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Many users turn off automatic image loading
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They may have a slow connection
They may be visually disabled
If your only hyperlink to another page is through an
image, users without images cannot get there
Always provide text hyperlinks in addition to your
images
To submit a form via HTML, you usually must
have JavaScript turned on
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The JavaScript does client-side input checking
This is probably useful enough to justify requiring
JavaScript, but be sure your users are aware of the
requirement
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Cannot read the page
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Here are two otherwise very nice backgrounds:
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Both of these backgrounds have text--can you see it?
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Still cannot read the page
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Have you seen pages that tell you what browser to use
and what to set your screen size to?
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Did you ever do it?
What do you think about that person’s sense of selfimportance?
This page was created by someone with perfect eyesight using a 21-inch monitor set to 1600 by 1200 resolution, using an 8-point
serif font, and as a result nobody but the original author has a clue what it actually says.
Some people just like to use weird fonts
There are lots of places you can use absolute
measurements in HTML, and very little reason ever to
do so
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Contrast is important
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Contrast is important
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If it has good contrast on your monitor, that doesn’t mean it
will have good contrast on everyone else’s
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Use either very dark text against a very light background or very light
text against a very dark background
Avoid contrast in the background itself
Always use more contrast than you think necessary
The ability to read depends on edge detection
Human edge detection relies on contrast--differences between
light and dark--not on color differences
This is a difference in color, not in contrast
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You can’t adjust the page
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Pages that use absolute sizes--for example, to
adjust the size of a table to just fit on a 17-inch
screen--are a serious nuisance
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Scrolling vertically is acceptable, because we don’t
need to scroll often to read a column of text
If we need to scroll sideways, we need to scroll back
and forth for every single line
Relative sizes don’t always work, either; I’ve run
across pages containing tables that are 110% of the
page width
Even if your monitor is large and your eyesight is
good, there may be other things on the screen that
you want to see
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You can’t leave the page
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Sometimes this occurs through malice--the page
includes JavaScript to pop up a new window each time
you close the current one
Usually it’s an accident: a page gives you an automatic
transfer to a new page, but with the time set to zero:
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"
CONTENT="0; URL=newURL">
This takes you to the new page but effectively disables
the “Back” button
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You can’t navigate the site
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EPSON has long been my favorite example
Suppose you want to download a printer driver; you go
to www.epson.com, and here are your choices:
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Printers & Imaging products
Electronic devices
Point of Sale Products
This represents their corporate organization
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What do I care how they are organized?
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Workarounds
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Poor contrast:
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Bad size:
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Increase or decrease screen resolution
Can’t leave the page with the Back button
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Hit control-A, to select all the text on the page
Otherwise, in Preferences, select “Use my chosen colors”
and/or turn of image loading, then reload page
Use the pull-down list of pages you’ve been to
Can’t navigate the site
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Use Google
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The End
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