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Benefits of making your website accessible to disabled users – part 1: increase in reach
The Disability Discrimination Act states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. A website is regarded as a service and therefore falls under this law. Some organisations are changing their websites, but many are...
Introduction to VoIP
What is VoIP? First things first, VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. At a base level that means phone calls over your broadband connection. You really do need a high-speed connection to take advantage of VoIP to get phone calls...
Is Voice Over IP Right For Me?
Copyright 2005 Dave Markel For those of you that don't already know, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) allows you to make telephone calls using your internet connection. VoIP converts your voice to a digital signal which is sent over the...
UK Broadband
Ever since August 2000 when BT first launched their broadband internet package, speeds have been increasing and prices have been dropping. The end aim of the UK government and all broadband providers is high-speed internet in every home in Britain....
Will VoIP Make The Telephone Ring?
As a large proportion of people worldwide are increasingly favouring the Internet as a means of communicating with others, it should come as no great surprise to see it being adapted to encompass that other technological marvel of our age, the...
 
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Ten Simple Web Design Principles

Website design has become so complex, with scripting, and dynamic content and pulling content from RSS and ATOM feeds and Ajax enhancement and ad rotation and . . . and . . . and . . .

I've got a sticky note right on the lower right corner of my monitor. On it are four letters.

K-I-S-S

A glance at those four letters reminds me that there are many people who surf the web who have no clue what all the above stuff means. So I have to Keep It Simple, Stupid! I have to make sure that my website designs function no matter what the skill level happens to be of the person who is using the page. And any person doing web building, whether you're a hot New York Web Design Company or a one-woman web design boutique in East Jibippy PA better remember these ten simple website design principles.

* Each web page must have its purpose clearly stated. * Web Navigation must be clearly visible and easy to use. * Avoid clutter, distraction, and flashing/moving objects, and make things easy to find. * Business websites should have contact information easily visible. * Not everyone has broadband. Design it


SLIM, and dialup users will love you. * Bells and whistles may be fun, but if a gadget or page element doesn't add necessary functionality, don't use it. * Not everyone can see well, so make the text contrast enough against the background, and run the page through a "colorblind filter" (http://colorfilter.wickline.org/) to check usability. * Because not everyone sees well, keep the text scalable, don't use fixed pixel or point sizes. * Keep page lengths "bite size", no more than two page-downs. * ALWAYS remember that the page user can override almost anything you do. Does your design scale and/or degrade well?

These ten simple website design principles can make the difference between a page that's easy to use and a page that surfers will click away from before it even finishes loading.
About the Author

BJ Novack runs a web design boutique for small businesses and non-profit organizations, specializing in up to date, search engine friendly, templated, client-managed sites. http://kickasswebdesign.com