Monthly Archives: June 2007

No Spanish please, we’re English

Posted on Saturday 30th June, 2007

Just yesterday, in a supermarket, I witnessed something I’ve seen dozens of times, but which never fails to astonish me. A man, of about my own age, needed to pass through a queue. “Excuse me,” he said. If I’d been … Continue reading →

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How to catch spiders

Posted on Friday 29th June, 2007

As a site owner, you want visitors. To get visitors, you need people who are searching for sites like yours to find your site first. That means getting properly indexed on search machines (“ranking high for your keywords”). Which in … Continue reading →

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Recent Designs

Posted on Tuesday 26th June, 2007

If you’ve been here before, you will probably know that I am working at the moment (among other things) on a site for a Costa Blanca dental clinic. Since I spend a fair amount of time commenting on other Web … Continue reading →

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The new countryside

Posted on Saturday 23rd June, 2007

The girls who make the cold calls are always certain there will be no problems. The engineers who turn up always say it’s impossible. The Internet has redefined “the countryside”. It is no longer a place where farmers grow crops, … Continue reading →

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Visual Design: Picking Colours

Posted on Thursday 21st June, 2007

The impact of a Web site, and its usability, depend crucially on the colour palette employed—the range of colours, and their relations with one another. The one obvious rule is that colours should be used consistently and exclusively. For example, … Continue reading →

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To hyphen or not to hyphen?

Posted on Tuesday 19th June, 2007

A Web site needs a domain name, so that human visitors can tell their browser where to go. Notice, by the way, that the name is just for human visitors. The browser itself uses the 4-number Internet Protocol address, which … Continue reading →

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A feast for the eye

Posted on Monday 18th June, 2007

In my last post I mentioned ways you might wake up your creative unconscious. Another way is to let it wander round The Zen Garden. Or go straight to the list of designs. Even if you have no interest in … Continue reading →

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The well-designed Web site (3)

Posted on Sunday 17th June, 2007

After a couple of negative posts, I feel it’s time to accentuate the positive. So: back to the absolute fundamentals of Web design. I’ve already asserted—as dogmatically as I can—two unbreakable rules: Be 100% clear about what your site is … Continue reading →

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Web design, guv’nor?

Posted on Saturday 16th June, 2007

One of my favourite Web sites is Vincent Flanders’ Web Pages that Suck. He means to be provocative, so no one will agree with all his criticisms. At the same time, you can sometimes learn better design habits from analysing … Continue reading →

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Interruption to normal service

Posted on Friday 15th June, 2007

If you are a regular reader of this blog, sorry for the four days without posts. Because of some worries about my heart, I have been in hospital, in Benidorm. I am back at work now, and full of ideas.

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