I don't normally get easily annoyed by people, but some website designers just cheese me off so much I'll make an exception for them... Read on and see why.
My #1 pet hate on the web are sites that demand you use Browser X. The web should be free for all, not just the handful of people who can run the latest and most bloated browser available. Make use of the enhancements in the latest browsers, by all means, but please don't shut out the people who either can't or don't want to use these features.
Closely following this are images that aren't fully defined. Too many people
forget about the WIDTH, HEIGHT and ALT settings, with the result that their
pages are a) useless to people who can't/don't display images, and b) have to
be redrawn every time each image loads, because the poor browser only finds out
how much space the image needs once it's loaded...
COME ON! How much extra effort is it to add these three little settings? Maybe
if you've got a huge site with hundreds of images, it'll be a bit of a drag, but
once you've finished you'll never ever add another image to a webpage without
using these settings.
What else? Embedded audio files very rarely do anything except annoy me. Sure,
a well chosen bit of music, or a short introductory speech clip, can enhance
a page. But how often do we actually get that? Oh no, all too often it's just
some MIDI file chosen at random, or a huge WAV that takes forever to download
and adds next to nothing to the quality of the page.
Alhough I'm no great fan of Internet Explorer, at least it lets you ignore
audio files - something I wish Netscape did as well.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand words will probably download
a lot faster... Even those of us on fast links to the net don't want to sit there
for several minutes while our browsers download megabytes of background images, GIF
anims and other visual frippery. Yet there are webmasters who insist on using massive
image maps for navigating round their sites, and yet forget to provide a text equivalent.
BAH! Next time you design a web page, just try navigating round it after turning off
the "auto-load images" feature on your browser. If YOU the designer can't do
it, do you really think anyone else will be able to?
Client-Side image maps help a bit, by putting the URLs of the links in the
page source (so we can at least find them by looking at the source directly),
but that's still fiddly. And people that still use Server-Side image maps
without text alternatives are just plain stupid.
Remember, the T in HTML stands for TEXT. Graphics should be used to enhance the text content of the site, not to replace it.
And once you've written your page source, what are you going to do. Upload it
straight to the server? Or check it out first, to make sure it's valid. Because
there are far too many sites out there that don't seem to have been tested at all.
Why not? Testing should be an integral part of any site development. Even if
you just use your browser to look at the pages offline, that's better than
nothing - it'll catch some of the more common errors.
Just remember to check each page a few times, altering the browser settings to
look at the pages with and without images, with and without JavaScript, with
different browser window sizes (and no, saying that your site is designed for an
800*600 screen is NOT an acceptable way out), etc. etc.
And if possible, install a few different browsers on your system, don't just rely
on one for testing. If there's a version of Lynx available, get that - you may be
surprised just how bad your site appears to someone using it. And yes, there
are still people using Lynx (and other text only browsers). You're designing a
website because you want people to visit it, so why shut out a potential source
of visitors?
There are also syntax checkers available, both offline and online, and they do
a very good job at spotting little slip-ups, as well as spotting major blunders.
Use them.
(Note: Attempting to validate this page will throw up one error... This is deliberate,
since I've chosen to use the <BLINK> tag to prove a point. However, this is the
ONLY validation error you should ever find on this entire site. At the time of
writing, every single page of HTML apart from this one passes the scrutiny of SGMLS. Can
you say the same about your site?)
Of course, life is much easier if you can actually write bug-free (or near bug-free) HTML to start with, so get hold of up to date documentation and be sure that you're writing valid HTML to start with.
I'm not saying my own site is perfect, because it isn't. But I try my best, and as I learn better (or more correct) ways of doing things, I not only apply this new knowledge to future site alterations, I also go back and redo any existing parts of the site that need changing, no matter how much work it is.
So come on you lazy designers, put some real effort into your pages and make them work well on all browsers, not just the one you happen to like. Saying "Requires Netscape 3" is not going to impress anyone, especially not me. (*)
And finally:
It isn't big, it isn't clever, and it isn't going to make you any new friends.
So just leave <BLINK> where it belongs, in the "Tags we don't use"
drawer. Thank you.
(If the above sentence isn't blinking away, count yourself lucky that your browser
ignores <BLINK> ;-)
(*) Unless the site is really, really good. And ATM I can think of precisely no sites that I visit regularly that fall into this category...
This site will definitely appeal to anyone who's read this page going "uh-huh, yeah, couldn't agree more..." And if you think I'm talking rubbish and can't understand why I'm so against browser-specific sites, then perhaps you need to pay a visit as well.