Web Site Design Goodies
Authors: Joe Burns
Venue:  (2001)

From the Book:IntroductionSo, you've decided to buy a Web design book, huh? Good for you. I'm glad to see that you're taking an interest in the overall design of your Web project. That's commendable. All too often, people, businesses, students, organizations, or the Weekend Silicon Warrior take to the Web without any manner of code and without once considering the overall plan, what my father calls "The Big Picture." If you've already bought this book for one reason or another, this should be a good introduction regarding what's ahead. If you're standing in a bookstore trying to get a feel as to if you should plunk down a few bucks then hopefully I can sell you right here. What Makes YOU Such an Expert? By "You" I mean "Me," of course. That's a good question. What does make me an expert? This is a big problem any time someone writes anything that sets him or herself up as a base of knowledge. I guess I could list the books I've written and the sites I've designed and all the times I've been brought in to consult for sites and the fact that I write a design newsletter, and blah, blah, blah. Suffice to say, I've been doing Web design since 1995 and over those years, I've done a lot of it. The audience of a book, the readers, often tend to split along popularity lines no matter what the author's background. If a reader likes the author, then the reader most often agrees. If the reader dislikes the author, then the reader most often disagrees. I'm quite familiar with that concept from my last two programming books, HTML Goodies and javaScript Goodies. (See how I snuck those in there?) When the discussion of my writing a Web design book came up, I knew that because design offers no real hard and fast rules, my opinions would stand as simply the opinion of one person. Oh, I may have years and years of background, but I am still one person. That makes my opinions fairly easy to disregard. I needed some support for what I was saying. You can pretty easily wave off a single opinion. It's far more difficult to wave off the opinions of 500 people. We Polled the Web for This Book Well, we didn't poll the whole Web. No one can do that. What EarthWeb and I did do was set up a series of four questionnaires, each covering a different aspect of Web design. They were Overall Web Concerns Image and Color Questions Text and Link Questions New Technology Questions Each of the questionnaires contained between 28 and 35 questions. Each questionnaire was posted for as long as it took to gather 500 responses. Because polling on the Web almost completely disallows for a random choice of participants, we decided to set up the polling so that the respondents would be chosen in a purposive manner, yet randomly given the ability to respond to the questionnaire. The questionnaire was offered on the HTML Goodies Web site, which was, at that time, bringing in close to 500,000 unique visitors per month. We chose to offer the questionnaire on HTML Goodies first because the audience would be a group of people who would not only be interested in Web design, but would have most likely performed some design themselves. HTML Goodies is a site dedicated to teaching Web page construction. We felt there was correlation. Every seventh visitor was given the ability to take the questionnaire. That visitor could simply choose to not take the questionnaire and he or she would not be bothered with it again. The questionnaire remained posted until 500 visitors responded. It normally took just under two days for the 500 visitors to offer their responses. The number of respondents that answered each question is noted in the book's text. Often the number was under 500 because not every respondent answered every question. The response rate usually fell between 480 and 495 respondents per question. Each new questionnaire was offered on the Monday following the completion of the last questionnaire. The four surveys were posted over four weeks during February and March of 2000. I was the author of the questionnaire. Two editors read and commented on my wording. Each question was written to elicit as unbiased a response as possible. I asked questions in as specific a manner as I felt I could in order to use the results as part of the discussions I wanted to undertake in this text. As you read through this book, there are numerous places where I make a point and then back it up with the results from the survey. And before you ask, yes, there were many times that I received poll results that differed from my own thoughts on Web design. You'll also get to read those results as you move through the book. Please understand that this was not a random sample. It was purposive in nature and the results cannot statistically be said to represent the entire Web population. However, as are many purposive samples, the results are transferable to the population that gave the answers. That population was made up of those who not only surf the Web but also write for the Web. I am confident that the result from this series of questionnaires has strong merit and can be used as support for the statements I make regarding Web design. Where I'm Coming From... If you're expecting that by reading this book you'll receive a set of templates that you can quickly alter and post to the Web, you won't. If you expect that within this book there are a set of hard and fast rules you can simply follow and, when finished, have a perfectly designed site, there aren't. There are no such things as design templates that work for all sites. There are no such things as strict rules for design. If you pick up a book offering either of these quick fixes, put it down. In terms of design, the quick fix does not work. Design is performed mainly before the first piece of text is coded. Design is site specific. What works for one site may be death to another site. Design is topic specific and because of that, there are no right or wrong design choices as long as the design goes to helping the site's purpose for being. Now wait, maybe I did just lie to you. There is one hard and fast rule to design. It's the most enjoyable work you'll ever do when building a Web site. I say that because design is wide open. You are limited only by what your brain can imagine. In addition, I'll bet for a lot of you, this is the first time you've ever sat down and, without any other help, created your own place, your own little comer of the Web. You're going to love it. Within the pages of this book, you're going to see a few overriding design concepts coming up again and again. I hit them pretty hard because I feel they're the basis for designing good pages. #1. Your Web Site Is for Your Visitors, Not You In all aspects of design, you must constantly think about the visitor. Just because you feel an element is pretty cool, doesn't mean it's right for the page. Yes, that includes personal pages. Even a personal page wants visitors, right? Then think of them when putting up your personal site. #2. There Are No Incorrect Design Choices As Long As That Choice Goes to Help the Site's Specific Purpose That's part of the design process. What will be your site's specific purpose and how can you design elements on a page to all point to that purpose? #3. Content Is the Single Most Important Part of Your Web Site This book is constructed in such a way that as it goes on, the elements discussed become less and less important to the site. That means that what's written first is most important. That means that if you find yourself agonizing over a ,concern addressed in Chapter 2, "Before You Write a Word," you're probably spending your time wisely. If you're agonizing over something in Chapter 8, "Hello? Anybody Here? How Many?," then maybe you're putting a little too much thought into an element that probably won't add much to your site's purpose anyway. Design is personal. Design is specific. Design is done for your site, for your visitors. At every step of the way, you need to make the decision whether to incorporate an element. I'm sorry to say, I can't offer a specific yes or no at any point of the process. That decision is up to you because you know your site, you know your visitors, and you know what you're trying to accomplish by posting the Web site. I'm telling you the truth when I say you'll enjoy designing a Web site so much more when it's you concerning yourself over a decision rather than relying on a template to make the decision for you. It is a much more gratifying and much more intelligent choice. Why? Well, for one, the template doesn't know you or your site from Santa Claus. You do. You are the person who should make the decisions. My job, and thus this book's job, is to lay out the plan and the steps you need to follow in order to make those decisions. A Word About URLs It is the way of the Web for sites to change and to come and go quickly. Because of this speed, it is impossible to accurately portray a Web site in a static medium such as a printed book (written and printed, mind you, weeks, oftentimes months, before it arrives in your hands). However, this is not to say that even outdated Web sites can't be of use. It is the principles that matter, not the longevity of the actual site presence. Therefore, figures within this book are simply snapshots of Web sites when I first saw them. I am using them to make a point more than to have you visit the site itself as an example. I offer the URLs to the sites for your reference and convenience. Some of these sites still exist but have been tweaked, updated, or completely overhauled. In these cases, study the critiques and determine for yourself if these sites have improved and in what ways. For those sites that may be gone completely, you can only learn from their everlasting images in these pages. That's the Pitch There is, or by now there was, a commercial that uses the tag line, "I'd never work this hard for anyone by myself." Web design is like that. You're about to build something out of nothing. You're about to put something to the Web that is from you. The decisions are yours but they affect the people who visit you. Okay. Let's make a site.