Even
in today's world of Flash animation, animated GIFs, sound files, VRML and other
dazzling special effects, the basic reason why people surf the web is to read.
Yes, the pictures are great, and yes the animations are wonderful, but what
people really care about is what you've got to say. That being said, it's so
very important that you don't destroy your message by presenting your text in
ways that discourage people from reading. One of the most classic mistakes is
to make your text very small. After all, you've got a lot to say and you want
it to fit on one screen, right? So why not make it as small as you can? There
are times when you want to make the text small. A link at the bottom of your
page to your privacy notice is a good example. If someone wants to see this
they will find it. Otherwise, it's just something that you have to put there.
Another mistake is to TYPE IN ALL UPPER CASE. This, fortunately, is generally
restricted to the newest of the newbies. People soon learn that all caps does
not porn gifs mean "give me your attention" on the web - it means shout in your
face. It's also a good way to get people to hit the back key. On the other
hand, a very common problem is to make your text a similar color to your background.
If I run into a page with everything like this I hit the back button fast.
Thank god most people understand that blinking characters are not cool (and not
supported by Internet Explorer, which is a good thing). Something which I see
all of the time is sites which use non-standard fonts. I know that the special
font which you paid a hundred dollars for is awesome, but believe me I'm not
going to pay a hundred dollars just to see your web site display correctly. You
can get away with this, if you include a button to download the font and
complete instructions for installing it. Be sure to include an alternate, more
common font in your font list though, for those people who do not want to
download the correct one. You can use downloadable fonts, but be aware that
browser support and standards are spotty at best. Even if you do include
downloadable fonts, be sure and specify alternates in your tags just in case
the browser did not do the download. To sum it up, what I do is simple. I write
my document, then sit back from the screen about 4 feet. If I can still read
the text without trouble, then I ask my wife to do the same thing. If we can
both read it, then the document is fine. Otherwise , something has to change.
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