1. Can we open that link in a new window?

The answer is No. Under no circumstance is this a good idea.

The default behaviour of a web browser is to open links in the same window or tab. When a new window or tab is opened by clicking a link the user may not notice. When they use the back button to go back to the page they clicked the link on they find it doesn’t work. This is bad for accessibility, usability and downright annoying. If a user wants to open a link in a new window or tab, they can of their own accord by clicking the middle mouse button or choosing so with right-click menu options. Users are becoming more clued up on how to use their browsers all the time.

Think about performing a Google search. Would you expect each search result link to open in a new window or tab? Even though each link goes to another website completely? Certainly not.

Furthermore, the HTML that makes links open in new windows or tabs is now defunct.

2. Can we make the content fit above the fold? AKA ‘I can’t see the whole page. I don’t want people to have to scroll’.

The answer is No.

‘The fold’ is a print media phrase. It’s the place where, for example, a newspaper is folded in half. In this context is makes sense to put important, eye-catching content ‘above the fold’. When the paper is on the rack in a newsagent this is what people will see. However, this principle doesn’t carry across to online media. Firstly, what fold are you talking about? The fold on my 17 inch widescreen laptop? The fold on your 8 inch netbook screen? Or maybe on my three inch mobile phone screen? Online, the fold is everywhere, and nowhere, at once. How do you deal with something that’s everywhere and nowhere, at once? Ignore it. It’s not an issue… Or become a quantum physicist.

Secondly, the belief that website users don’t like to, or are  somehow incapable of scrolling, is untrue. Scrolling is automatic behaviour. Having said that, it is probably is a good idea to have elements like the site’s title and navigation fairly high up on the page. But that’s it. Anything else, if the user values your content, will be scrolled for.

3. Can we fill up that empty space over there?

The answer is No.

If you have a half decent web designer and they have left gaps (white space) in the design, it’s for a reason. Designers don’t just see blocks of content, they see the spaces around them. They are part of the design. That sounds a little washy, but it’s one difference that defines a designer from a non-designer. For a designer, it’s plainly obvious when there is not enough space for the content to breath. To a non-designer it can sometimes seem like dead space. A wasted opportunity to plonk something (sometimes anything) in there.

If a design doesn’t have enough white space it can feel crowded, disorganised and off putting. Content needs room. Content needs to be in the right place in the page hierarchy. If you want to put content in that tempting space-under-the-left-side-navigation, don’t. Visually, and in the code behind the site, it’s out of place. Let the designer have their space.

A funny thing happened recently while looking at a website. It had chunky navigation at the top made up of about five links. Hovering on the links made the background colour animate from black to grey, with a second or two transition time. I hovered and un-hovered a few times to see the effect again, then went to click the link. As soon as I did, I realised that I didn’t want to click it until the transition had completed. This struck me as a tad insane. I knew it was a link and that I could click it as soon as my cursor was on it. Logical me said ‘click the damn link’. Otherly me said ‘no, wait until it’s done with its effect, then click it’.

Clearly my brain wasn’t happy.  I didn’t feel comfortable clicking during the time it was changing. It goes without saying that this is exactly the opposite of what you want to achieve when building a usable website. Afraid of clicking the links? An utter disaster.

My guess as to why this happened?..

A learned experience of user interfaces? A lot of the time when some piece of the interface is changing (loading spinners, content fading in etc), you have to wait until you can perform your next move.

A natural behaviour? Maybe it’s natural to wait until something that’s in flux has reached a steady state before proceeding. Think getting off a train that hasn’t quite stopped yet. Scary, daring… Better to wait the extra three seconds, even though I know I’ll be fine, no? Could the strange cognitive block be partly due to that more basic gut feeling for self preservation? Maybe that’s going too far.

Anyway, making elements transition over time to another state when they are perfectly capable of being clicked, tapped or acted upon immediately, is a little bit of a brain ache. It may actually be delaying people from doing what they, and you, want them to be doing.

@kevadamson’s tweet nicely illustrates my thoughts on this. A great, real word example.

“The range of devices accessing the web is increasing. We are faced with a choice in how we deal with this diversity…”

In the past I remember a large amount of websites were designed to fill the page. Then designers started fixing the width of their sites, firstly at around 750px, and then around 960px width. These values reflected the predominant computer screen resolutions at the time, but now, many designers are reverting back to a more fluid layout.

The benefits of changing to flexible, responsive layouts are clear. Design that morphs itself by adapting to the device it’s being viewed on is more easily browsed (who wants horizontal scrollbars?) and more inclusive (why would you want to alienate an ever growing audience by serving up a broken, almost impossible to navigate website?). Changing the width of the browser window and watching the design stretch and squash into new shapes is also just fun.

So how do we do it? I’ll let people more eloquent than me explain…

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/320_and_up/

http://adactio.com/journal/1696/

I’m pledging to never build another fixed-design website. Who’s with me?