cmarshall - 1:17 pm on Jan 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

Don't forget font contrast.

A lot of the "Web 2.0" "look" is pastel, gradients and low-contrast text and backgrounds. #666666 text over #cccccc backgrounds seem to be a favorite.

Yuck.

Also, people insist on removing underlines from links, and making link colors much more like the normal text colors. Sometimes, they make the links look exactly like the text, or color the main text the same as links.

NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY. VERY NAUGHTY.

I always leave links underlined and a fairly noticeable blue color. I do control link color (something that they often tell you is an accessibility no-no), but I use blue with red rollovers. I will usually make the blue a bit darker than normal and the red a bit darker than normal. I make the underline disappear on rollover.

My rule is: "If it moves on rollover, you can click it. If you can click it, it will move on rollover." I don't rely on color change that much, because color blindness and badly-calibrated monitors can be a problem. I also use CSS to control rollovers, not JavaScript. Image rollovers use CSS background-image properties.

Another thing that annoys me is visited link colors. They are sort of useful, but a heck of a lot less useful these days than they were. Good page layout, clear navigation, fast-loading pages and descriptive names will help people determine where they want to go a heck of a lot more than a darker link. My own anecdotal experience is that people get confused by visited link colors. This may be in part because they have been "trained" to think of links as either normal or active.

If your typographic/graphic design is so delicate that it can't accept basic accommodations for usability and accessibility, then it's a bad design. The Web is a really rotten place for carefully controlled appearances. Your meticulously laid-out Web page is gonna get bent, folded, spindled and mutilated. It is going to get viewed on badly-calibrated monitors, or old cheap pieces of crud that can only display 16 colors. People are going to turn the contrast up until everything looks black and white.

And you will still need to work for them.

One thing that many designers don't seem to get is that Web design is not graphic design. It's industrial design. It's much more like designing an instrument panel than a concert poster. It involves interaction, which most graphic design does not. Graphic design tends to be a one-way medium.

Another important thing is text-block width and justification. Don't make your text blocks too wide. Columnar text layout is hundreds of years old for a reason.

Justified text is great for paperbacks and newspapers, but not always so good for computer screens. I'm not saying don't use it, but use it wisely.

The most important thing that you can do is have people OTHER THAN THE USUAL SUSPECTS use your site, then, now, this is important: LISTEN TO THEM, EVEN IF THEY SAY STUFF YOU DON'T LIKE.

</rant>