As I mentioned in my last article, “Things to avoid on your website”, one of the keys to building a successful website is to make sure that it’s compatible across browsers and platforms. I also mentioned the importance of avoiding unnecessary bells and whistles that may potentially turn away your visitors. In this follow-up article, I’d like to discuss some additional things to avoid on your website.

Frames

Frames allow you to divide the pages of your site into several different regions, or “frames”. In graphical browsers, each frame has its own scroll bar, and a link in a given frame can cause a new page to be displayed in that same frame without affecting the other frames. This functionality can be very useful in certain situations, especially when you’re dealing with a complex web-based software application. However, there are some downsides to using frames on a site whose primary mission is to present information.

The problem with frames is that all the pages of your site will appear to your visitors as having the same unique URL, or address. An example will help to illustrate this. Let’s say your site is www.mysite.com. If you were not using frames, your home page would be accessible at www.mysite.com, and your contact page might be accessible at www.mysite.com/contact. However, if you do use frames on your site, both the home page and the contact page will have the same address: www.mysite.com. The trouble starts as soon as someone tries to bookmark your contact page. Every time they try to access this page through their bookmarks, the home page — not the contact page — will be displayed, and this can be both confusing and annoying. Another consequence of all pages having the same address is that it makes it difficult for other sites to link to pages within your site other than the home page.

Jacob Nielsen’s classic 1996 article on frames highlights many of the problems that frames present for web users. Although some of the information in the article is outdated, most of the points he makes are still valid today.

Opening links in new windows

I often come across sites where certain links open in a new browser window. This technique is most commonly used for links that go to external sites, but is sometimes used on internal links as well. Although the rationale may be different from site to site, one of the primary reasons why web authors make use of this technique is that they don’t want you to leave their site. They think that the chances of you returning to their site are greater if it’s still available in the background while you’re browsing the other sites.

Unfortunately, as with frames, this practice usually only causes confusion and annoyance for your visitors. The biggest problem is that opening a new browser window causes the browser’s “Back” button to become disabled. This is especially a problem for novice users, who often don’t realize that a link they clicked on opened in a new browser window. Since the “Back” button no longer works, they have no idea how to get back to the previous page. Even if you’re a more experienced web user, having links open in a new window is irritating, since it makes navigating more difficult. Now you have to open and close separate browser windows rather than simply using the “Back” and “Forward” buttons on your browser.

For more information about this issue, see chapter 16 of Mark Pilgrim’s online book, Dive Into Accessibility.

Non-descriptive link text

It’s common to see links on web pages where the link text says “click here”, or in some cases simply “here”. While this is a common practice, it’s usually not a good idea. For example, let’s imagine that you’ve got a long paragraph with several links in it. If each link simply says “here”, it’s very difficult for your readers to determine where those links will take them. This is especially true if they’re scanning the paragraph (people often scan web pages rather than read them word for word). All they’ll see is a haze of “here”s.

Fortunately, it’s very simple to remedy this problem: simply try to make your link text as descriptive as possible. For example, if you want to draw visitors to your music page, you might be tempted to say something like “Click here to listen to samples of my music”. A better option might be “Listen to my music samples”.

The W3C Quality Assurance Team has more information about this issue in a quality assurance tip.

Through the eyes of your audience

I’ve been discussing very specific dos and don’ts in this article. However, there is a more general principle on which these guidelines are based: put yourself in the shoes of your audience. If links opening new browser windows confuses you, it probably confuses your visitors as well. If you’re scanning a page for a link and can’t find it because all the links say “here”, this will probably be a problem for your visitors as well. By adopting the perspective of your audience, you will be well on your way towards building a website that is easy to use.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 at 3:31 pm by Thomas Fowler.

Questions or comments about this article? Are there other topics you would like us to discuss in the future? Please contact us with your suggestions.

Author biography: Thomas Fowler is Vice President of Technology and Development at NoteWay Media. He has been involved with music for most of his life and now earns a living building websites.