how to be a snobby web designer

I’m not talking about the attitude that comes across in your writing, but instead how you design your pages. I’ve seen these problems crop up from time to time on various sites and it always bugs me, because you’re pretty much saying to a certain group of users that you don’t care about them or even acknowledge them. If your site doesn’t look good in Netscape 4.7, you’re not a snobby web designer, you’re just being practical because that browser is so old and such a tiny percent uses it. The following list, though, categorizes some issues that affect a much larger percent of web surfers.

1. Javascript – It’s awesome and has led to some great web technologies. It can greatly increase the convenience of a web site. It can make fun toys and pretty navigation effects. Despite this, not everyone uses Javascript. They turn it off in their browsers because they’re on a slow connection, they’re sick of the annoyances that some developers create with Javascript, their browser doesn’t support it, it makes things choppy on the computer they’re on, or another reason entirely. Whatever the reason for not having Javascript support, if you exclude visitors by making your site very inconvenient to use without Javascript, or if your site doesn’t work at all, you’re being a snob. Stop going for the gusto with those nifty Javascript effects and just give us a plain text link, darn it.
2. Flash – The benefits and problems with Flash are pretty much the same as above. Offer some text-based site that doesn’t require the Flash plugin and be considerate of your visitors. I myself have all Flash animations hidden by default because so many sites use Flash for annoying, flashy ads.
3. Specific browser – This one is a classic because it’s been around forever, but it still persists today. Don’t assume that your visitors are going to all be using Firefox or Internet Explorer. Don’t assume those using IE will be using the latest version. Don’t assume you won’t have a few Mac users that prefer Safari. It’s safest to test your site in all the major browsers because you’re bound to have a few visitors using each.
4. Specific operating system – This isn’t typically a problem but it can still be an issue. My university’s College of Pharmacy site is a prime example. When I view the site in Firefox in Ubuntu Linux with Flash and Javascript enabled, I get no main content. I see the sidebars, the pretty header, but a big blank space where the content should be. When I view the site on my Powerbook running OS X, I get the sidebars and main content, but no header. Todd, who is a web developer for the College of Pharmacy, said this wasn’t a big concern for their designer because the majority of their visitors use Internet Explorer in Windows. That just smacks of elitism to me. I’ve often seen Linux being excluded because people think its users are a minority, but Mac users with Firefox? Come on.
5. Limiting design choices – This is a big hunk of a problem that’s very common. All too often I see sites that choose a tiny font, colors that are unreadable, background patterns that cause reading the text difficult, etc. Sometimes there’s the added problem where, if I increase the font size through my browser, the layout gets messed up. As a designer, you have to accommodate your users as well as realize that they’re lazy. They aren’t going to want to do a whole lot in their browser to be able to read your content. Increasing the font size is about as far as they’re going to go. Don’t cause them to turn off stylesheets so they can read plain text, turn off their speakers because your site plays annoying music, or take some other extra step in order to make use of your content.

You may be wondering what the big deal is. So a few users see a wonky layout, can’t navigate, or otherwise have a problem with your site, so what? Well, you made your site for a reason, be it to share your blog posts with the world, sell a product, get people involved in a project, or something else. If I go to a site and it looks bad or doesn’t work for me, I don’t have much faith in the owner. If that owner is trying to get me to read blog posts, I don’t really want to. What do I care about what this person has to say? I can’t read the fonts they chose, the words are all covered up with the sidebar that’s positioned differently in my browser, the Flash navigation has rendered it so that I can’t get to a blog post to even read it, etc. To me as a user, these problems would come across as a message from the owner telling me that they don’t really care about me as a visitor. If they don’t care about me, why should I care about them? I’ll just go read one of the other millions of blogs out there. The same goes for sites that are selling something, only it’s even worse for them because my leaving their site means that I won’t be spending my money there. It might even go so far as to mean that I’ll spend my money at one of their competitor’s sites.

The bottom line is: make your visitors happy or they’ll leave. That means accommodate them by supporting as many browsers as possible, as well as different browser configurations. If your site makes a visitor happy when they’re viewing it in IE 7 on Windows XP with Flash, Javascript, Java, and a 1600×1200 resolution, great; if your site makes a visitor happy when they’re viewing it in lynx (a text-only browser) on FreeBSD in a 80×20 terminal, great. With that said, I want to emphasize that I’m not suggesting you cow to every demand of your users. It’s not a problem if your actual content upsets everyone and makes the Pope curse your name, but it is a problem if the manner in which your content is displayed does.

This article is an extension to Clichés of a Crappy Site that I wrote in December of 2005.