Tag: ‘web design’ · TangleBones

Top 1 Web Navigation Design Tips: Don’t use Flash for Navigation

People love lists. They never want to read an arti­cle about how to actu­ally do any­thing: They want to read the 10 ways to do it. Or the 5 worst places to be when they’re doing it. Or the 3 most famous people that ever did what­ever it is they want to know about doing. Fine. I’ll play along.

Here’s the Top 1 Web Nav­i­ga­tion Design Tips: Don’t use Flash for navigation.

See what hap­pened here?

I just wanted to open New Balance’s “Where to Buy” link in a new tab. But what do I get instead? The Flash right-​click menu. And it’s not even as though the link does some­thing inside the flash movie: it takes me to an entirely dif­fer­ent page on the site! So why can’t I open it in a new tab? Because - and this is me guess­ing - they really loved moving the words I was trying to click on 5 pixels to the right.

But look: I’m not some anti-Flash curmudgeon! I love Youtube as much as the next guy. Hell, I’ve done my time build­ing Flash sites. Some of the nifty stuff Chad and I were doing 8 years ago still isn’t common prac­tice today. So believe me when I tell you: there’s a time and a place for Flash. This just isn’t it.

So here’s the deal, my designer friends: I’m not buying your shit when you inter­fere with using the browser the way it’s meant to be used. I’m done putting up with your bogus non-​standard nav­i­ga­tion. You’ve lost my busi­ness. How hard can it be to remem­ber one rule?

Cynthia’s great, but a shark would be helpful

I love Cyn­thia, I really do, and yes she’s quite a looker, but some­how there’s a part of me that really wants JAWS.

If you care about acces­si­bil­ity, you should too. And I know what you’re think­ing. Where am I gonna get nine hun­dred bucks to drop on soft­ware that I don’t need?

Good point. You’re not blind. You can see just fine. That’s part of why you’re so good at the visual part of web design. No kid­ding, you’re great! I mean it! And if you could tell how your web sites would be voiced by a screen reader, you’d be even better!

So go sign the petition.

Don’t you pick on my Jakob

Bob Sawyer has started a con­test to redesign Jakob Nielsen’s web page. The con­test now includes prizes, and is being judged by some seri­ous web design luminaries.

Which is all well and good. But so far the dis­cus­sion is mostly unpro­voked attacks on Jakob him­self. His detrac­tors don’t seem to under­stand that Jakob isn’t a visual designer or that his mus­ings are given with the same gadfly sen­si­bil­i­ties that have made other people so popular.

In other words, lay off Jakob. No, he can’t design his way out of a paper bag, but I know I’ve ben­e­fit­ted from his expe­ri­ence. In fact, the one thing I’ve found that people who crit­i­cize Jakob have in common is hard-​to-​use web pages.