10 things I hate about your site

© Griszka Niewiadomski
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This week’s resource is a cool little Dreamweaver plug-in that quickly and easily lets you create the newest web craze: the accordion effect. I came across this plug-in while pulling my hair out trying to modify open source AJAX code for this clever effect. This new design style is being tested on my old workhorse, Web-Betty.com. A note of caution…this redesign is still underway and buggy in IE 6. NOT the accordion effect, but the refusal of IE 6 to play nicely with .png transparency! (Visit Web-Betty on IE 6 at your own risk.)

From Trio Solutions:

This is a handy tool if you don’t want all sections of your webpage to be visible at the same time, for example, if you have a long page. Gives your page a professional, elaborated look.

In addition to the ROW, I’m also going to try a TOW, or “Thing of the Week.” Again, there is no rhyme nor reason to what I choose, however, TOWs will all have one thing in common: good design, or at least elements of good design. While a site might strike my fancy, if its design sucks, what’s the point? Besides, you deserve a little more insight into my thinking, if you want me to tell you 10 things I hate about your site.

This week’s thing is:

While the main purpose of this blog is to spout my opinion, I truly do want it to be a resource for people who endeavor to make their sites and blogs better—better design, better usability, better content, better whatever. To that end, I’m going to start featuring a resource, on a weekly basis (ok, hopefully on a weekly basis). There will be no rhyme or reason as to what I decide to feature on any given week. Whatever suits my fancy; whatever mood I’m in; whatever I’m working on. These will all be deciding factors. So, without further ado, this week’s resource is

From TechRepublic:

“Many novice Web developers use CSS positioning and layout directives without a sound understanding of how they really work. A brief introduction to the box model explains what it is and how you can use it to make better decisions about positioning your HTML elements on a Web page.“

‘d like to thank Holistic Healing for being my first victim. Below is the down-and-dirty list. Click on “Continue Reading” for explanations and recommendations.

10 things I hate about your site:

1. Too many font colors.
2. Inconsistent navigation.
3. Lack of a clear header hierarchy.
4. Odd color scheme/palette.
5. Random “floating” flowers.
6. Link treatment—link, hover and visited.
7. Yahoo! Babel Fish translator.
8. Inconsistent layout.
9. Lack of proofreading.
10. Broken links.

What is this, anyway? Well, I’ll tell you. I joined several blog communities the other day, in an attempt to gain viewers/comments/social acceptance/etc. Having three blogs already (this is my fourth—I guess I have a lot to say), I do find myself getting distracted as there are so many people out there, blogging away, on so many interesting and significant (and not so significant) topics. In my meandering, I came across a discussion entitled “10 things I hate about your blog.” Of course, this discussion had hundreds of bloggers commenting and waiting their turn for public humiliation.