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Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
- callum85 11y agoOf course the web is full of crap design – there's a very low barrier to entry. That's a good thing. There's also some great design. And a lot of in-between stuff (otherwise decent sites compromised by too many ads/scripts). It serves whoever pays for it and makes it. Don't use it if you find it 'abusive'. This guy needs to get over himself.
- yoz-y 11y agoThat seems quite excessive and only applicable for web sites that display articles. Amazon without javascript and multi-column pages would be unbearable. Ad-supported content is fine and keeps the web free, as long as ads are sufficiently on-topic and unobtrusive (sponsored posts, light banners à la The Deck, native advertising...). Also, the fact that the page is unreadable without either using a custom CSS or resizing the window does not add much to the credibility of the author.
- mscharrer 11y agoI works quite fine without any css for me with any window size I tried. Are you using a mobile device? However, he does include images from third party sites which may cause referrer leakage which goes against the no-tracking issue he raised. (I'm only being this harsh because the article is too)
- yoz-y 11y agoNo, I am viewing it on a 24" screen. However I consider long lines of text as unreadable and my default size for a browser window is quite large. I really think most sites with simplistic CSS would include body { max-width: 11in; } or something similar in their stylesheet. Note that my own personal website conforms very well to his expectations (except loading images from flickr (without javascript) which, as you pointed out, leaks private data). I would add however that the most important thing is readability, responsiveness and speed. A webpage without stylesheets is technically responsive, but in practice not very readable, due to pretty bad defaults in most browsers (i.e.: tiny fonts and cramped text) Finally, the most important part of any article-based website (for me) is a full text RSS, which enables me to have actually good reading experience - outside of a web browser.
- hollerith 11y agoIs it not better to specify max-width in ems? body { max-width: 35em; } That way, if the user makes the text very large, the entire width of the window will be used.
- yoz-y 11y agoThis probably depends on the browser but Safari, for example, scales inches (and centimetres) with the zoom level, so the result is probably the same. I don't like em and rem much as they do not really reflect the actual size in tangible units, but that is largely a personal preference.
- hollerith 11y agoWhat if the user changes the font size with CSS?
- yoz-y 11y agoThat is a valid point. Although I think that if you are modifying CSS then you either know exactly what you are doing, or disabling it altogether and replacing it with your own stylesheet. I think that there is quite a lot of stuff that will break if you increase the font size too much. I'll play with it a little bit more, the ems might be a better solution after all.
- tired_man 11y agoYou aren't alone in thinking that long lines reduce readability. It's a fact proven out by years of practice in print.
- dredmorbius 11y agodon't specify max width in physical units, except for print. Specify them in either em or rem units. My preference is ems for text width as that translates naturally to line length. Toss in an auto left an right margin for centered text and a padding directive for keeping text out of the gutters and you're a long way to readability.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- digi_owl 11y agoBrowsing amazon without css seem to be an improvement in Firefox, as Amazon seems to do something in the background that basically chokes the render engine.
- krapp 11y agoThe article seems to imply that the only legitimate use of the web is displaying static, text-based pages. There would be no Amazon.
- markyc 11y agoUnder very few circumstances do you actually need the visitor's email address how do you retreive a forgotten password?
- enno 11y agoI believe the point was that you probably don't need the user to make an account. If they don't need an account, they have no password, and you need no email address, unless your true goal is to put as many people as possible on your mailing list and spam them.
- markyc 11y agoactually, in the same paragraph he goes on to say: In any case, if a login is required, take the absolute minimum of necessary information, ideally only a login name and a password. maybe better than a login name and password, make it an email address and password. email address seems pretty vital for any kind of future communication
- mscharrer 11y agoSome sites let the user provide a email address in order to allow password reset, but don't force it. I think this is a good practice.
- soft_dev_person 11y agoIf you have any kind of non-tech savvy users, it's a terrible practice, as you would be flooded with support requests on how to get into their accounts with no way of verifiying the actual owner.
- markyc 11y agoyes.. even having an unconfirmed email address can get really messy when you need to get in touch with someone but just can't because the address is invalid
- soft_dev_person 11y agobody { max-width: 1000px; } Ahh. Much better.
- mjmasn 11y agoMy thoughts exactly
- mhd 11y agoStrangely enough the CSS has "body { /* width: 47em; */ }" commented out. Maybe they really want to show the importance of user CSS?
- soft_dev_person 11y agoHe clearly makes a point of supporting user CSS, but also a point of being usable by default, so it clearly misses that... Also, I doubt most regular users could be bothered to actually write custom CSS for the entire web. Most people have zero knowledge of how to do it, not to mention how to actually improve what they want to improve. The only reasonable real world case I can see is accessibility, which is certainly a valid case, and should be considered by all web designers/developers.
- mscharrer 11y agoI think the article is a bit extreme but he does raise a lot of good points. I actually went and checked my website without css, and even tried it in [links](http://www.jikos.cz/~mikulas/links/ http://www.jikos.cz/~mikulas/links/). I very much agree that the the use of JavaScript for the simplest of things has gone overboard, but I wouldn't be as harsh as the OP. Cross site scripting is out of the question in my book.
- jbb555 11y agoI agree a great deal with some of this. I disagree a great deal with other parts.
- teddyh 11y agoI agree with some of what you say, but disagree with other things you say.
- clemlais 11y agoI don't see the point of these manifesto-rants. To quote : "designers with goals often counter to our own interests". Well of course and it's perfectly fine. The website you visit is not yours, and is not made to comply to all of your demands. If you don't like what you see don't visit it. The day you pay to visit a website, you will have the right to complain.
- enno 11y agoWhat the article proposes is an extreme position, and while I don't agree that the entire web can work this way, a lot of it can. Look at the page you're currently viewing (hacker news): It's by no means a terrible experience, and yet it manages to check all the boxes: it has no javascript necessary for viewing (there is one function for voting, but that is non-essential), no proprietary plugins, no ads, no visual clutter, doesn't download fonts, no tracking, and if I just want to read content, no account is required. So we see that it's not impossible to make sites that follow the goals of this "manifesto", and I would say that all of these non-features speaks in favor of the quality of HN. Clearly, there are sites that do not follow these guidelines, and their business model makes it impossible for them to do so (Facebook, anyone?). As a consumer, which one of those would I rather use?
- clemlais 11y agoThat's exactly my point. Most users do not care about javascript, css override and whatnot. Web designers build website with their specifics goals in minds (maximise revenue, maximise viewers etc...). And thats fine, that's what make the web viable. I am not saying it's impossible to build a website following that manifesto, as indeed HN is pretty close, but HN target a specific audience. Their designers didn't search to monetize but to maximise their presence on the web. In that case their interests do not conflict with yours (no advertisements, simple design etc..). They did not design HN with your specific preferences in mind but the majority of viewers. "As a consumer, which one of those would I rather use?" Well you might prefer HN to Facebook design, but the majority of Facebook users would not.
- eddd 11y agoThis article is suggesting not using any js library, no XMLHttpRequests, no single-page aps. Just go back to 1990?
- tenfingers 11y agoIs it really that bad? Most of the web is about reading content, and this is where all points on the page shine. I agree with basically everything on that page. In fact, we built fully-fledged browser extensions to override website's choices in fonts, colors and whatnot (point 1). We build extensions to kill js by default (point 2). We increasingly disable plugins by default (point 3). We have extensions to block advertising, including inline ones (point 4). Frames are a thing of the past (point 5), although visual clutter still reigns in "web tabloids" (although we still patch the css via custom styles/extensions) 6) Web fonts have very often poor hinting and lower quality than the exact equivalent in the system. The difference between my locally installed Roboto font and the Woff version is insane. The worst part is that the google font loaders loads the woff version ANYWAY! Web tablois will still chose random fonts based purely on the looks. Combined with poor hinting, this has prompted me to disable web fonts on my standard browsing profile. Of course, nobody wants tracking, this seems quite widespread now, with browsers including the useless DNT header (point 7) "No pagination" went even overboard with continuous loading pages, which many (including myself) hate (point 8). What about the "facebook/linkedin" login that many websites/betas require to join, and that almost everybody hates? (point 9) And when all you need to do is reading, you don't want over-the-top animations when you hover on this, dynamic loading that prevents pages to be saved to disk for later reading, and whatever webdesigners think "it's cool" nowdays, because in the end what matters most is the content. The fact that we have "reader modes" in browsers now is pretty saddening. And it's all due to massive, abusive design using otherwise good browsers extensions.
- barrad0s 11y agoI do agree as well.
- krapp 11y agoYes. There is a difference between optimizing the design of the parts of the web which are for reading text, or filtering the web as it is to your liking through plugins or whatnot, and forbidding the web from ever being about anything more than simply reading text. Because of course, most people don't have a problem with the web as it is, except maybe for a few details like intrusive advertising which could be done away with without eliminating javascript, css and layout complexity entirely. They use it, and enjoy it, and it brings value to their lives. Insisting that the web is wrong, that most of the people using it are wrong to accept it, that most of the creative decisions made in it are wrong for even attempting to design it, that every possible use of javascript is wrong by definition, and that the only "proper" web is one in which simple, static text documents be allowed to exist is, yes, "really that bad."
- sgwil 11y agoOld Man Yells At Cloud
- michaelbuddy 11y agoyup, an actual cloud CDN for serving convenient javascript libraries and webfonts and muddying his ideal world.
- hello_there_you 11y agoNot everyone has these demands and well.. cares this much, to be honest. I would say that the majority of web browsers (the human kind) simply don't mind the different fonts, and colors and what not, it's part of the experience and who the hell even knows what CSS is? This is of course obvious to all of us, and probably to this author as well, but I felt like I had to point that out. Strange.
- keyboardwarrior 11y agoThe Church of HTML send thy 10 commandments. Only the purest of websites will make it to our kingdom. obey you heathens.
- kephra 11y ago> 6 No non-standard fonts I really hate those. Especially sites like github who capture the Tibetan Unicode block for their font, as this is a character set that I need. http://kephra.de/src/WylieUTF8/ http://kephra.de/src/WylieUTF8/ ok I'm likely one of the few who can read Tibetan, but this shows a typical US ignorance, and certainly gives github a bad karma, as they make it impossible to display any Tibetan text on github. 11: Sites that can be viewed better without CSS, if you are a NoScript user. e.g. main page of Medium shows a grayed out layout where its not possible to click on articles without JS. But the become readable again once you disable CSS also. eBay does similar.
- mscharrer 11y agoI really hate sites that send all content as html, but then hide it only to unhide it with JavaScript. It's getting quite common though. I wouldn't go as far as the OP and say no JS, but how about: don't use JS just because you can, use it to actually do something that makes the site more usable.
- A010 11y agoI think it's highly possible because ads, to prevent people disable JS to block ads so there's no content.
- lordsper 11y agoAdblockers take care of that. I run NoScript for security and not because it makes pages look prettier - believe me, it doesn't. I see hiding the content of the site for lack of JS simply as lazy web development, which only considers the most common use case. I don't bother visiting sites who don't support NoScript or text-mode browsers such as Links2.
- mscharrer 11y agoJust found this: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ I think it passes on all points.
- synthmeat 11y agohttp://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com Unsure is it better, should check on more devices/systems/browsers.
- ikurei 11y agoI'd say it is better. The first one is very uncomfortable to read in a full-screen/maximized-window browser on a widescreen, and mine is only 1080p. I think it's a great counterexample of the point it's trying to make. Of course is a satire, and the author probably would add a bit of design in a "real" web site.
- repsilat 11y agoHow much of the difference between those two pages is enshrined in web standards? Are Firefox or Chrome still standards-compliant if they set the default line-height to 1.4? If they bump up the default font-size and change the background colour to a light grey? I imagine bumping up the margins could be problematic, but I'd say all of the other problems are just browser bugs.
- dredmorbius 11y agoMy spin: http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB
- dsjoerg 11y ago"If you are trying to make a web application, just stop. Build a native application. It's nicer for everyone." <-- On which platforms? Windows + iOS + Android + OS X + ...? Or, I could just make it a web application. Not a hard choice. This point was ill-considered.
- lfender6445 11y agoexactly - doesn't that sound nicer for everyone?
- diminish 11y agoSomehow all the annoyances, abuse and clutter mentioned in the manifesto have won after the mobile app/javascript framework duo dominated to influence the newest web apps. Maybe we should build a new "sub-web" for hackers with a unique safe browser with no plugins, ajax, javascript, css-animations, html5-* with only non obstrusive sound, video, image and form support.
- mscharrer 11y agoIf only there was a search engine that filtered for these criteria.
- paulojreis 11y ago> With regards to visual design, the fact is that any individual has a far better idea of what constitutes comfortable-to-read text for them than a designer could. A designer either designing for his or her own tastes or trying to find some best-of-all-worlds design will ultimately fail to satisfy the vast majority of visitors to the sit > Designers, it may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone loves your work. Computer scientist, it may come as a surprise to you, but there are competent people outside of your field of expertise. You're not a genius, and everyone else isn't stupid. If a designer (or whoever decides) chooses to have custom fonts, client-side scripting or custom style sheets, it's because he weighted the downsides of said choice and still opted for it. If he did not, or he is not aware of the downsides, then it's a matter of incompetence, not web design. So, your pseudo-manifesto should be anti-incompetence, not anti-web-design. Being "anti-web-design" only tells us that a) you know nothing about design (you don't have the smallest idea regarding methodology or even simply what a designer actually does); and b) it's no more than a rant - all your valid points (which are a few) are obscured by the arrogant and oblivious attitude.
- ThomPete 11y agoI think you are judging this on the wrong premise. It's a manifesto not a lecture it's even an anti-web-design manifesto. I for one appreciate someone trying to establish other perspectives than my own. Yes we designers know a lot that he doesn't, but a trip to Dribbble will tell you that there are also many of us who are victims of some of the patterns he is trying to establish an opposition against.
- paulojreis 11y ago> Yes we designers know a lot that he doesn't, but a trip to Dribbble will tell you that there are also many of us who are victims of some of the patterns he is trying to establish an opposition against. Still, that's a problem with incompetence, not with web design. And Dribbble it's not a good example at all - what's the ratio of pixel-pushers to designers? 10:1? 100:1? I wouldn't say that it's a problem with "us", since it's clearly a separate group which deserves addressing. There are designers who actually "design" (meaning, they conceive a solution to "someone"), and there are pixel-pushers which mix and mash the latest fads without any particular regard for users and their context (elderly? Here, take flat design! Teens? Flat will do!). These are two completely distinct objectives: designing vs. doing "something" which looks good. I think the "manifesto" is - or should - be aimed at the latter: gratuitous usage of UI elements/patterns/options. But that's not what design is about, so the "manifesto" is totally misguided and - to be honest - it even becomes ridiculous when the author starts to speak condescendingly to designers (as in the example in my original replies), while being completely oblivious that "design" in itself would imply that any of the options he criticizes were adequately considered (against users and their context).
- benbristow 11y ago> Fonts are subtle, in that most people probably do not pay much attention to which one is in use False. Fonts make a massive difference in how people perceive a brand, and different fonts can be used for different types of content. Imagine if every company used Comic Sans for their logo font. http://comicsansproject.tumblr.com/ http://comicsansproject.tumblr.com/
- digi_owl 11y agoAnd this one could not care less. Seriously, i looked over the page and could not tell the difference for the most part. Only ones i noticed some difference was those where you had a single prominent letter doing all the work.
- lfender6445 11y ago> 2) No client-side scripts If your website cannot be viewed properly with Javascript disabled, it is broken. Completely disagree with this one. The web has evolved into a landscape that exceeds its original intended use. It's not just about semantic documents any more - its community, interaction, and more in the most portable format we've ever seen. The web has taken on a life of its own, beyond what it was initially designed for.
- A010 11y ago6.1 No tiny font size Don't expect your users to surf your website with a magnifying glass, e.g. http://smittenkitchen.com/ http://smittenkitchen.com/
- monofonik 11y agoMy favourite part was when, after reading a rant about the evils of web applications, client side scripts and plugins, I was encouraged to visit his Bandcamp to load up a web app with client side scripts and plugins.
- platinumdragon 11y agoI was kinda hoping this was a parody. Wow, is this guy really that happy with his Netscape browser that he's afraid of web apps?
- vbezhenar 11y agoI would love to browse proper internet described in this manifesto. Too bad that noone will listen to it, and many people are forced to disable JS, disable CSS, etc, just to be able to read articles without much annoyance.
- dredmorbius 11y agoReader mode in Safari and Firefox comes close. Try Readability, Pocket, or Instapaper for example.
- 0x4a42 11y ago9) No abusive account requirements 9) bis - If your site/app/product/service requires an account, show me what I'll get BEFORE forcing me to sign-up!
- normloman 11y agoAll the shitty things we do to websites is to make money. We stuff them full of ads because ads make money. We load 10 megabytes of JS trackers because it helps the ads make money. We paginate articles in order to show more ads, to make money. We add unnecessary columns of social media streams, related articles, and share widgets to trap people in an endless cycle of clicks (to see more ads. To make more money.)
- robgibbons 11y agoThese arguments are poisonous for the web. This may shock some people, but JavaScript is not evil. Its use should be limited, yes, but declaring that it should never be used is just ignorant.
- krapp 11y agotldr; anything beyond unstyled, purely textual HTML in a single column, without plugins (and definitely without javascript) is objectively wrong and bad and people shouldn't be allowed to do it. I'm assuming images are fine but I wouldn't be surprised if not. The last paragraph in this manifesto is the author pre-complaining about every possible change that will be made in HTML in the future. How much more "hipster yells at clouds" can you get? As I too am a Person On The Internet, allow me to retort: HTML was never entirely about displaying plain text, but content. That that content is primarily text doesn't imply it must be primarily text. That train left the station when img tags became a thing. The ability to embed plugins was a breakthrough, not a mistake. Plugins are the reason video on the web is possible, and video on the web is revolutionary for sharing culture and expression. Flash and Java applets, for all their faults, allowed applications to be accessible by URL, and thanks to HTML5/Canvas and tools like asm.js and whatever-to-js transpilers, we're on the verge of having the web become a network of hyperlinked applications. When you think about the ramifications of that, it's a really big deal. To want to forbid the web from even reaching the complexity and richness of HTML 1.0 is, frankly, asinine and presumptuous. Notwithstanding that, yes, simple text-based sites have a place and, yes, most uses of javascript to display simple text are kind of pointless and absurd, the author is wrong to want to limit the world's creativity and the web's expressive potential to the boundaries of his own personal elitist prejudice.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- 392c91e8165b 11y agoOne point not mentioned in the OP: the people in charge of Firefox, Opera and Chrome have been and will continue to be a hindrance, not a help, on net to users who agree with the manifesto. The qualifier "on net" is intended to acknowledge that they do some pro-manifesto things, such as allowing any user to install any third-party extension, but that those things are cancelled out by anti-manifesto things, such as web fonts. (Note that these years, the company behind Opera gets most of their revenue from advertising.) The people in charge of Safari, Edge and Internet Explorer have not been much of a help either although I suppose there is a chance that will change some day since their sponsors don't make most of their money from advertisers and other professional persuaders. (Although one could argue that the people in charge of Internet Explorer helped a lot in the 1990s and the first half of the last decade, I have seen no signs that they have been helping since then.) Sometimes I think that the only way for users who agree with the manifesto to get free of the need for regularly writing new user CSS, installing new add-ons and extension and continuing to tweak about:config settings is for them to migrate to a browser whose maintainers have some sympathy for the manifesto. I sometimes believe that what I just wrote would make a good business plan for a startup. If I were to buy a phone or a tablet today, I would probably choose one from Apple just because of the content-blocking API Apple promised for iOS 9. (Yes, theoretically, the fact that much or most of Android is open source makes it possible for some new organization or project to offer an Android fork that offers even better ad-blocking than iOS 9 will allow, but after 23 years of experience with open-source software, I know that merely the existence of a particular software freedom does not mean that programmers and designers will do the hard work of converting that freedom into actual code that I will want to use.)
- lshevtsov 11y agoThis reminded me of Dogma 95, a similar manifesto for film directors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95 It's not practical, but something uniquely valuable can be grown from the constraints.
- dredmorbius 11y agoFirst, I agree strongly with Brandon on virtually all of this, with one minor clarification. My read is that his "no foo" requirements don't disallow sites from using CSS, javascript, plugins, etc, but require that core functionality be available without these. At the very least the ability to read the page. I'm leaning strongly to sites focusing on a small number of basic design templates and allowing strong user deference in how those are styled: article, homepage, gallery, slideshow, catalog page. That may be a vain hope, but most sites operate with a small set of basic templates, and tools such as LaTeX have achieved tremendous mileage from a small set of standard document types. Yes, they tend to look similar. ThatsThePoint.jpg. As a strong counterexample, take another current HN story, "On doing things other people can't", a Blogspot post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136955 http://pathsensitive.blogspot.com/2015/08/sources-of-power.html http://pathsensitive.blogspot.com/2015/08/sources-of-power.h... Unless I specifically enable JS for pathsensitive.blogspot.com, www.blogger.com, and www.blogblog.com, the article displays as a blank page. Even with these enabled, the page is awkward to read -- a pop-out menue overlays the top of the scrollbar, the fonts are too small, the line length too long, and an annoying persistent header overlays the top 25% of the page (including browser elements: titlebar, tabs, navigation, and menus). I literally transcribed raw text to Markdown to read the entry Of major blogging sites, Blogspot's among the worst for default themes, and its "dynamic" themes are especially bad. I'm among those who've been ranting about the horrible state of the Web for basic reading for some time: https://redd.it/256lxu https://redd.it/256lxu https://redd.it/29eqrk https://redd.it/29eqrk So, if I may offer some interpretations of Brandon's suggestions: Completely override-able CSS: Not "don't use CSS", but "use a standard, minimal page structure which allows elements to be readily identified and styled, and don't go fucking overboard with styling. Compare, Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5, which 1) has a really nice default stylesheet, and a really fucking minimal page structure: http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html view-source:http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html The entity nesting depth is mostly one (there's not even <article> tags), rarely more than two. Contrast that with pages in which every single element is explicitly styled inline and absolutely positioned. I've got a "bruteforce.css" which strips most such nonsense. As Brandon notes, excessive div nesting is almost always a sign of such breakage. No client-side scripts: Again, to simply read the site. See the Blogspot example above. Plugins: As before. Better: look through old sites featuring A/V content and note the instances of RealPlayer requirements. I'm not sure that plugin's even available any more, I certainly wouldn't want to rely on it. Sites which provided WAV files, or better, MP3 or OGG downloads, still work. Sites reliant on proprietary plugins, not so much. Flash and client-side Java are rapidly heading here, similarly Silverlight (specific to Microsoft MSIE). Advertising: Many or most of the problems online are a direct consequence of advertising: bloated pages, cross-site scripting, security vulnerabilities, and crap content. I see a fundamental need to change the funding model, though no clear path to doing so. No frames, multi-columns or other visual clutter: On this I agree. I've restyled many sites to push sidebars, asides, floats, etc, either above or below the main content. I'll occasionally encounter such sites unstyled and ... it's usually a shock. See: https://redd.it/1tm4ox https://redd.it/1tm4ox Examples: Stock/multicolumn: http://i.imgur.com/80zmE3i.png http://i.imgur.com/80zmE3i.png http://i.imgur.com/M2OiyOU.png http://i.imgur.com/M2OiyOU.png Modified/single column: http://i.imgur.com/nBdCZoY.png http://i.imgur.com/nBdCZoY.png http://i.imgur.com/sNoOdZp.png http://i.imgur.com/sNoOdZp.png No non-standard fonts: The problems I have here are, variously: 1. WebFonts which simply do not render. Medium.com on my (ancient) Android mobile device is completely blank, as is Wired.com. This is annoying. 2. Fucking with font-weight, letter-spacing, and/or text-shadow. You do not want to do this for body text EVER. My instant response on seeing such a page is to simply sigh. Usually I'll move on. Pagination: This is an absolute. There's no need to break up content any shorter than a book chapter (though improved content navigation for longer works is a weakness of HTML). Account requirements/registration: Data. Are. Liability. Any time you request user data, you should ask yourself, "can we not do this?" You cannot lose what you do not have. You will lose what you do have, though when, where, to whom, and how far after the fact you realise it are all open questions. What's really sad is how old most of these guidelines are. Jacob Nielsen compiled his original list of 10 mistakes in Web design in 1996. Modulo a few technology nomenclature changes, they all still apply: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/original-top-ten-mistakes-in-web-design/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/original-top-ten-mistakes-in... 1. Using Frames (now: iFrames) 2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology 3. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations (carousels, autoplay video) 4. Complex URLs 5. Orphan Pages 6. Long Scrolling Pages (for landing pages. For articles, not so much) 7. Lack of Navigation Support (also: mystery-meat navigation, see "hamburger"). 8. Non-Standard Link Colors (now: nonstandard any colours. Fad now is fucking with ::selection colours). 9. Outdated Information 10. Overly Long Download Times Nielsen's returned to that topic many times, see: "Ten Good Deeds in Web Design": http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-good-deeds-in-web-design/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-good-deeds-in-web-design... "'Top Ten Mistakes' Revisited Three Years Later" http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-ten-mistakes-revisited-three-years-later/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-ten-mistakes-revisited-t... "113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability" (October 31, 2001) http://www.useit.com/articles/113-design-guidelines-homepage-usability/ http://www.useit.com/articles/113-design-guidelines-homepage... "The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines" (November 10, 2003) http://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-violated-homepage-guidelines/ http://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-violated-homepage-guide... Note especially: 2. Use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the homepage size. Yes, responsive design. In two thousand fucking three.