I think I will use it to comment on web design. I've been looking into it a lot these days, and I have formed some opinions. Now, I know my main site is currently no example of a great-looking website, but I'm working on that. On the other hand, I think that a lot of web designer have gotten into some bad habits. I'll go into them in greater detail later, but here's a short list off the top of my head:
- Busy sites with lots of memory- and bandwidth-clogging stuff that has to load. I recently had some computer problems and had to accept a kind donation of an older computer. This computer runs Windows XP on 256 megabytes of RAM. That's not a lot. I can't currently afford to upgrade my memory, so I'm stuck with this situation. Lately I've come to love minimal, text-heavy, graphics/video/Flash/whatever light sites. Well, actually I've always been like that, but now I really appreciate sites like that. The opposite kind don't get very many visits from me.
- Fixed-width layouts that are for large (17" and up) monitors. See the above info about my donated computer: it also came with a small (14") monitor. I have it set to 1024x768 because that's as small as I can set it and still read from it comfortably. When I open my web browser (Firefox's latest build, natch) I am seeing that horizontal scrollbar a lot more than I used to -- if I'm not seeing info just vanish off to the side without any way of me getting to it. However you are doing that, people, stop it. I mean, you do want me to see your sites, don't you? If you don't care about people with older, smaller monitors, then think of people with those cute little Macs, or those netbooks, or iPods. Okay, maybe not the iPod people. Anyway, fluid layouts rule.
- Fixed sized fonts. I don't always mind if the font in question is normal sized, but when it's teeny tiny... and I can't resize it... well, I'm getting old, I can't afford right now to replace my $500 progressive-lens glasses (that was what they cost four years ago), so if I can't read your site I won't be visiting it.
- The Ugly, otherwise known as Web 2.0 design. I thought once that Web 2.0 meant nice, clean design (clear fonts in normal sizes and colors that everyone could read, websites that were well-ordered not flashy, cluttered messes, bright, clean colors, etc.), but apparently I was mistaken, or hadn't read the fine print. (Maybe it was 9px Arial in pale gray.) Anyway, those diagonal stripe backgrounds and big, kandy-kolored "follow my RSS feed!" icons need to die. And I got so sick of the rounded, puffy-looking menu buttons and tabs everywhere that I even set my Windows XP desktop to one of the plainer, more squared-off "Classic" settings.
- My new pet hate: the Arial/Helvetica font. Both are ubiquitous -- Arial for Windows, Helvetica for Macs. I'm just sick of seeing Arial (I don't get many Mac encounters -- I think the nearest Apple store to me is in Charlottesville or somewhere). Please investigate other common sans-serif fonts -- Verdana is a good option, and it's on everything Windows now. I don't know if there is a Mac equivalent but there should be. Anyway, I went into the stylesheet for this site and changed the body font to Trebuchet MS just because I didn't like Arial.
- Speaking of Macs... I realize that most designers and such artistic people mostly use the Apple brand of computer. I wish they would remember, though, that most people in the world don't, and the websites that look so pretty on a Mac can often look plain and dull on a Windows computer. And sometimes even if the site has been set up to look pretty on a Windows computer, it's often been set to some non-standard font (like Futura) that I don't have and can't afford. Designers, you should keep a Windows computer around just to check your design. And if you are thinking "well, you should switch to a Mac then!" all I can say is I take donations. Just feel free to visit my main site, click on the Paypal icon you'll see prominently displayed, and donate the cost of the Apple computer of your choice. (I rather like the MacBook Air. Yeah.)
Well that got longer than I intended. And now my elderly computer is complaining about low virtual memory, so I need to wrap this up. More will follow!
