Advanced 2 - Bells and Whistles   Back | Next

A lot of people equate "sophisticated" web design with all the fancy stuff you've seen on other sites. Flashing banners, music, pop-ups, slide shows, flash animation - all will make a site more complex.

Notice I did not say they'll make a site more attractive or effective, just more complex. Like, over-complicated, distracting, and more likely to kick out your validation rating. The very bells and whistles you love may annoy and drive away people you'd rather have lingering over your site.

Think about the reasons you want people to visit and spend time at your site. If you're providing information and/or offering goods or services for sale, fancy gadgetry can make it harder for visitors to focus.

You may lose them before they've absorbed the truly important content of your site. And if it takes forever to download all those bells and whistles, a lot of people will get impatient and move on. So keep it simple, make it easy for your guests to relax and explore the most important part of your site: the content, not the gimmicks!

Have nice images? What size are they? After you learn how to display an image a certain size on a page, and are happy with that size, re-size the image you upload so it's that size. Use an image editor to do that. Otherwise, your visitors may click off your site because an image you think is small is actually quite large, and will take a long time (up to several minutes) to load on a dialup connection. Don't care about all those dialup users? Guess again.

If you've still got your heart set on bells and whistles, consider a separate "entertainment" site, strictly for amusement. Pack it with all the entertainment, animation, bells and whistles you like, with the understanding that you will have a much narrower audience. And yes, it's ok to have more than one web site!

Why I have added Popups and Frames to the list on the right

Popups:

The obvious answer is that many people now use popup blockers, and they will not be able to use the features of your site. I have posted a link on the last page of this tutorial to a site with an interesting article on why you should consider not using popup blockers.

Frames:

A lot of people may confuse "frames" and "tables." This page is made with tables (notice the separate columns). You can usually tell a site with frames, because of the scroll bars beside each column. This may sound good at first, but read on...

Frames were the big new idea in the 1990's. The idea of having a navagation frame or header frame that stays put while the main content scrolls may seem attractive. Unfortunately, most people arrive at web site by way of a search engine. The problem is that the search engines will find your frames, not just your index page.

If a viewer arrives on a frame, it will fill the whole window. If you have navigation links on each frame, they may be able to navigate your site. If you only have your navigation links on a navigation frame, they will be lost, click off, and go to another site. Many webmasters put all their navigation links in all their frames for this reason.

Another problem with frames is that some browsers do not support them, or the user has turned off browser support for frames. If you do a framed site, you need to write an entire additional site without frames - a lot of work. This concept is explained in some of the tutorials found in the links on the links page.

A final reason to forget frames is this: If you have a nice looking page, why cram it into the relatively smaller main frame in a frame set? Why not let it fill the whole window? You may have a large screen monitor, but many do not. I do not recommend you use frames. On the last page of this tutorial, I have posted a link to a site with an interesting article on the pros and cons of frames.

To summarize bells and whistles:

The danger of creating your own site is that you tend to fall in love with it - it's hard to see it objectively. Before you put it on the web, ask several friends for spontaneous feedback - what works? what doesn't? Take notes, make changes, and ask again. You will gradually evolve a site that will please other people as much as it pleases you! (This site continues to evolve through the thoughtful advice of viewers like you.)

One of the fastest ways to get the feel of what a good site looks like is to look at a whole bunch of dreadful sites at once. Look for the link on the links page to a site which features the worst of the worst. A hilarious experience, with pointedly educational "don't overdo it like these folks did - keep your web site off our page" type advice. You hope your web site does not wind up being featured on that site!

Almost ready for the web? Not quite...

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