Mistakes in 2002.

December 26, 2002 2 | Comments (Closed)

Christmas is over and it’s back to work. Hardly seems like the holiday season at all.

Today I had the chance to read though Jakob Nielsen’s Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002. Dun dun da! And lo the voice came from the mountain and the people knelt to absorb with wisdom from on high.

Anyway, there isn’t really anything new here. In general it’s a good list. However, it’s not all that helpful. But Nielsen rarely is. He points out problems, but offers no real solutions.

I had a few of his rules I took small issue with.

Rule number 4. When he talks about fixed font size, while I agree with him 100% in principle, I have to say that if Microsoft would just follow the lead of Opera and Mozilla and increase the functionality in IE for font sizing this would be an non-issue. Hopefully that’ll be sooner rather than later.

Rule number 9. He talks about keeping URLs under 75 characters. I think this is a good idea, but not always do-able. On top of that I would argue that the more important aspect of URL design isn’t the length, it’s what the URLs says. If you have a URL that reads:

http://ww1.mysite.com/~area1234/123xse/body.asp?id=1203

it’s worse on a user than having something that reads:

http://www.mysite.com/about/biography/d_keith_robinson/
the_early_years/5th_grade.htm

even though the later is much longer. I would agree shorter is better, but not when sacrificing human readability.

Rule number 10. He suggests that you never link a mailto: to a person’s name. Rather use an e-mail address or explicit wording for your link text. This makes sense, but I’ve not come across anything in my studies to indicate that a user is surprised by an e-mail program coming up when clicking on a name. Granted, I agree with him, but I also think that linking a mailto: to a name is common enough that it’s become a convention.

Anyway - some good, some obvious, and all delivered with that annoying pompousness that is Jakob Nielsen. As always you take it with a grain of salt.

Filed under: IA and Usability

Comments

1. Christian said:

Keith,

I agree with your comment about his pompousness (great word, which is sadly used all too infrequently); however, I do take issue with your comment that Jacob offers no solutions.

In my readings of his articles I find he always offers solutions to the ‘problems’ he highlights, although I think where many people take issue is the way that he presents these as the _only_ solution.

As a last point, for all his pompousness (woohoo!), if web designers only adopt 50% of the things he recommends, the web will be a better place for us readers.

Posted on December 31, 2002 02:04 PM | #

2. Keith said:

I guess I should clairfy. What I’m trying to say here is that Nielsen doesn’t offer “real” solutions. He doesn’t tell you how, in real world terms, to resolve the problems. At least not in a practical way. To his defense, maybe that is not something he should be doing anyway. He is a usability expert not a designer or developer.

I don’t having anything against the guy (well except for the way he comes across – and his mug shots) and I think he offers some really good information - I do however think one should be wary of just going out and “adopt(ing) 50% of the things he recommends” either. Rather I think a better course of action would be to take into advisement 90% of what he recommends. Keep in mind, this is a guy who makes blanket statements fairly often. Remember “Flash is 99% Bad?”

I for one don’t want Jakob Nielsen making my design decisions for me or assuming that his observations are always going to be what is right for my work and my readers/users.

Posted on January 2, 2003 01:51 PM | #