
The 12 Do’s and Don’ts of Web Design - babich
https://theblog.adobe.com/12-dos-donts-web-design-2/
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TheAceOfHearts
I'm not sure if Adobe is in a position to be giving advice on web design,
especially when they seem to ignore their own advice.

One of their Don'ts is to avoid generic photos of people, yet the same post
has a generic photo of a guy using a computer. That adds absolutely no value
and just makes for a heavier payload. Not every blog post needs to have a big
stupid header image. Stop pulling that manipulative crap.

"Don’t show automatic pop-ups too early" should be "Don’t show automatic pop-
ups". They're always annoying. If you want to get users to sign up to your
newsletter or whatever, you can just provide a link at the end. This is
something that this blog got right.

"Don’t use too many typefaces" should be "Don't use custom typefaces". Your
website is not special. There's certainly exceptions to this, but in general
I'd say it's better to completely avoid custom typefaces. This also has the
added benefit of allowing your site to load faster.

Not gonna go over each individual point. But one extra criticism of the blog
itself: holy crap, why is there this stupid fixation of having a huge fixed
header that scrolls along with you? That header is gigantic and serves no
purpose, as I can scroll to the top just fine.

Another point: your blog has absolutely terrible accessibility. I can't
navigate it with my keyboard. You specifically removed outlines on focused
links, effectively killing keyboard navigation. This is literally prioritizing
the designer's fantasies over the user's needs.

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davehtaylor
> 5\. Don’t show automatic pop-ups too early

How about don't show automatic pop-ups at all?

These things have become a plague on the modern web. I'm so fucking sick of
every single website pestering me to sign up for their newsletter. No, I don't
want your newsletter. I want to read your article and move on. I'm probably
never coming back to your site anyway. And no, I'm not turning off adblock
either. So blocking me from entering your site because I'm running an
adblocker means I will most certainly _never_ whitelist your site, I will
leave and never come back, and no matter what your content is, you're never
getting ad revenue from me.

TL;DR: Stop with the pop-ups. Period.

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news_to_me
> Don’t show automatic pop-ups too early

Imo, showing popups at all is a design sin. It wasn't cool in the 90s when it
happened with separate browser windows, and it isn't cool now embedded in your
page.

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zodPod
It's actually worse now because there's no easy way to block them!

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romuloab42
NoScript does wonders. Some might say this isn't easy, as it will break some
sites, but in my experience you can get pretty far with it.

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camus2
13/ make sure your webpage doesn't depend on Javascript just to display an
article and its title, like 99% of news websites and blogs today...

14/ avoid sticky headers,like this page has, that take 1/8 of the screen real
estate on a laptop and even worse on mobile.

15/ A reader should be able to increase/decrease the size of the text without
destroying your layout.

16/ Stick to simple "websafe" fonts for the body of your articles. Some fancy
fonts that look good on your MAC look really bad on Windows.

17/ the most horrible thing designers do: light text on white background.
Please stop. Just because it looks good on your calibrated $2000 screen
doesn't mean it will on a $250 laptop with limited contrast settings.

~~~
romwell
14a/ avoid sticky footers too, like that page has

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CM30
Well, there's some nice advice here. Okay, it's not exactly revolutionary, and
most web designers should probably be aware of everything on the list already,
but in a world where certain bad design ideas seem to be making a comeback,
it's a nice refresher none the less.

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zengid
This is pretty good stuff. My wife is an Art Professor who's trying to learn
basic web-design so she is eligible to teach it to Art students. The schools
mostly use Dream Weaver and Muse (both from Adobe) and to be honest I think
its a good idea (Though I've convinced her that the first few weeks they
should go through codecademy's HTML lessons so they at least have an _idea_
about how HTML and CSS works).

I feel like web design is mostly a solved problem. These do's and don'ts
highlight the fact that we know what the heck a web site should do, and
there's so much crappy experiments to try and make it more that what it is.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for innovation, but sometimes I enjoy turning
javaScript off and seeing how much easier life is by being able to just read
the text without being assaulted by shitty attention grabbing cruft. If you're
a web dev, I suggest you spend an afternoon each week turning off JS and
seeing what it's like.

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robtaylor
The creators of Flash have some nerve running that article :-)

~~~
NegativeLatency
FutureWave and Macromedia created Flash

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philipodonnell
How about 'dont ask for permissions to send push notifications to my browser'
for everyone who gets to your page? or 'Dont overlay fixed ads on the screen'.

It used to be that I only had to clear one popup, now every news site its ok,
I do want to continue my life in agony without your newsletter, close this ad
overlay so I can see the content, no don't want you pushing notifications to
my browser". Skip!

Can I disable that little popup in Chrome asking if I want to allow it?

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ghostbrainalpha
Is u/babich a bot? I don't understand the possible purpose of posting so many
low quality articles about design that usually don't generate any discussion.

~~~
TheLoneTechNerd
The author of the article is named Nick Babich - looking at his past
submissions, it looks like he's just sharing his own articles here

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reaperducer
...from the people who brought you Flash. And continue to bring you
Dreamweaver. And so so many other web atrocities.

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thrownaway954
1) don't use flash 2) don't use coldfusion 3) don't ????

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tinus_hn
At least the page is designed reasonably so the reader view can strip all
their crap and show just the story.

