How Not to Design a Website
Your Webmaster is the best person to decide how to design a website.
However, it won’t be a bad idea to learn something about the coding
that must be avoided in a website. You can and should instruct your Webmaster
specifically not to include any of the following in your website design:
- Frames: Framing in the websites is an old and outdated concept.
The technique of framing assumes uniformity in the behaviour
of different web browsers, which is not entirely true. Frames
lend incompatibility to the website and thus, exposes the website
to all kind of negative criticism arising out of undesired
and cluttered appearance on different web browsers. Frames
have been replaced by Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS), which offer
much more dynamism to the web pages.
- Flash: The Flash technology can be used at different levels in
a website. It has both advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it
is advisable to seek a professional’s advise on using Flash
on your website. No doubt, a flash website is much more attractive
and easy-to-navigate. However, it may take some time to load a flash
file, which is not advisable if your target audience lives in a country
with low-bandwidth Internet connections.
- Image Size: You may or may not be aware of the ideal image sizes
and types for use on a web page. Several software and technologies
exist that can resize the images to a minimum size for insertion
in a web page. This is necessary as larger image size means heavier
web page that takes much longer to download. Generally, images with
.jpg extension are used on the Internet due to their lighter size.
The images with .gif or .bmp or other extensions are normally heavier
files and should be avoided. However, it is a general rule and subject
to exceptions.