At this Tech ED Session Pete LePage Talked about top 10 mistakes that web developers do, when creating a website. This has for a long time been a problem, although standards are there, too aid the developer in designing/developing the website (and apparently this is very much still an issue.

• The use of colors on websites 
• Not optimizing websites for search engines
• Over extended use of Flash, Silverlight and Rich Media in general
• Not giving the ?tab? key any thought when using forms
• Inconsistent website design
• No easy navigation of the website
• Errors in the code 
• Extreme use of ads on websites, and sticking them in everywhere
• Having non designers, design the websites

Web developers have to pay close attention to the use of colors on their sites. There are many great resources out there to help finding those ?websafe? or ?websmart? colors. When building a site using a lot of colors, we tend to forget about the millions of colorblind people out there not being able to use the sites due to web developers use of colors that suck! And because of the developer being a little to creative with the use of colors like yellow background with blue text etc?

There are also a lot of developers, that do not make use of the meta tag keyword in their websites. This meaning that search engines will categorize the websites using their <h1> tags (So please also make sure that this tag gives a meaningful interpretation of what this page has to offer!). An search engine rank a website by their use of meta tags:

their <h1>, <h2> tags and the text used to describe the <h1>, <h2> tags.. (Think about his before making everything as a picture on the site!).

When designing a website there are trends moving towards using a Flash only website?? Please open up a browser and take a look at this awesome car site

 http://www.miniusa.com/ 

Looks really cool right? Now open up your browser and disable JavaScript and browse the site again! If you click on a few links, you even get an 404 error!!  Be aware of using to much flash will cut some people from using your site. And if it?s a products site trying to sell something, then you?re cutting potential buyers from buying your product?

A basic an simple thing to keep in mind when using forms on the website is to have a tab order index, and have that index match what you would expect when filling out a form.

When creating a web site, one of the most important things to keep in mind is to design/develop the site consistently. Every page on the site most have the same look and feel to it (when ever possible). There are a lot of sites on the web, which do not have consistent look and feel to them, and honestly it look ridiculous and un-professional.  For example look at these two sites:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/flowmaps/bridges.htm

http://wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/
It is the same site, just different views of traffic information, but the two pages doesn?t have the same look!

Links on a web page is the most important thing to have! But some sites really makes you guess what are links and aren?t.

http://www.samanzerin.com/

It?s graphically a really cool site, but it makes the users have to guess what the links are? Too much ?Glam? in a site, will ruin what the site is actually supose to say? Hey we want to sell you something, and that something is?.. Remember that the users have to be able to use the navigation, let alone find the navigation on your website.

Be aware of using to many automated tools, without knowing what they do! Make sure you know what DOCTYPE your using when developing your site. When developing your site, the architecture must be designed with DOCTYPE in mind. Otherwise you will end up having HTML code tags that are not supported by the given DOCTYPE, and the web browser engines will not render your site correctly. This tend to leave even more hacks in the HTML code just to make the site function as intended. When web site is designed with a specific DOCTYPE in mind, you will ? in advance ? know what tags you?re able to utilize, and in the architecture design fase, how to implement it?..

A quick word on ads on your site!

http://www.barcelona.com/

What are they trying to tell me? Is this an website promoting ads? Are they selling ads, or do they just like lots of ads? Too many ads, in ?weird? places ruins the site entirely, and the user will click away!

In the end, find out what you want your site to state! And be aware of too much information on the website (not too little, and not too much) . This web page gives a good example of ? what not to do!

http://www.havenworks.com/

What just happened here!?

Also, when putting up a website, developers are very often not the right persons to get to write the content on the website! In general, people with deep knowledge of the subject is very often the wrong ones to write the information made availeble on the site. They tend to use specific language terms etc. in the text, that end-users will not understand? Get someone to read through the text, sugesting normal langu<ge terms, and please?? Check the spelling! ;-)

And again, because you can do something, it doesn?t mean it?s a good idea!?

http://web.archive.org/web/20060613061524/http:/moire.ch/

Try hovering over the links?