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Sometimes you just want to get the information you’re after, save it and move along. And you can’t. Usability nightmares — which are rather the daily routine than an exception — appear every now and again; usually almost every time you type your search keywords in Google. In his article “Why award-winning websites are so awful” Gerry McGovern points out that “the shiny surface wins awards, real substance wins customers” and that is absolutely true. Nevermind what design you have, and nevermind which functionality you have to offer — if your visitors don’t understand how they can get from point A to point B they won’t use your site.

In almost every professional design (except from special design showcases such as, e.g., portfolios) you need to offer your visitors

• a clear, self-explanatory navigation,
• precise text-presentation,
• search functionality and
• visible and thought-out site structure.

And that means that you simply have to folow the basic rules of usability and common sense. You want to communicate with your visitors, don’t drive them away, right?

In this article we take a look at some of the usability nightmares you should avoid designing functional and usable web-sites. At the end of the article you’ll also find 8 usability check-points you should probably be aware of.

1. Hidden log-in link.

Backpack, 37signal’s one of the most usable organizational and project management tools out there, explains exactly what the tool can be used for, how one can use it and which features it has to offer. However, once you’ve signed up, you might need few minutes to find out what you should do to actually start using the tool.

The “Log in”-link (hint: in the yellow box) should have a greater font-size — also icons would do the job. Every registered user has his/her own personalized page, however new registered users will need a while to find out how they can log in. As Lee in our comments said, “someone thats invested their time to sign up for a service will spend more than two seconds finding out how to log in.” Ok, but why should he/she? Why not just place the link somewhere where it’s visible? It sounds reasonable to us.

2. Pop-ups for content presentation.

Almost every modern web browser uses a popup-blocker to prevent pop-ups, ad blocks and further site content recognized as advertisement. Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer make use of it — therefore the idea to use pop-ups to present the main content isn’t probably the most reasonable idea web-designer might come up with.

However, Adidas developers team seem to consider pop-ups as a creative approach for their target audience. It’s not clear what ImpossibleStory.com is actually about — most users will never find out; even we were too lazy to deactivate our popup-blocker.

3. Dragging instead of vertical navigation.

Actually, this technique — not a real nightmare, but very unusual — might become a new trend in the future. Dragging, as used from .pdf-documents, can also be adapted to web-sites. Fichey offers a Flash-based solution. Interesting approach, however you can’t bookmark specific parts of the site - a typical problem for Flash-based designs.

An introductory info box on the start page of the site informs its visitors about the new way of navigation. The tool shows sites which are currently popular in social media. By the way, the displayed links don’t work - apparently, the tool shows the screenshots which are saved and embedded as images.

4. Invisible links.

Visitors have to know where they are, where they’ve been and where they can go next. If designers don’t present this information in an appropriate way, visitors can have serious problems with site navigation. Real Player had been using a bunch of invisible links for a while. Take a look at the picture and the labels below (originally created by Trenton Moss) — can you spot the links?

1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 11 are links, and 2, 5, 8, 9 and 10 aren’t.

5. Visual noise.

Often less is more. Visual noise is probably one of the most typical problems large web-sites’ designers have to cope with. And it’s extremely easy to get it wrong. As Overstock does.

Bonus: It’s also not quite clear what is a link and what’s not. Overstock also uses a number of different link presentations and hover effects. Link or not a link? You might have a lot of fun finding out.

6. Dead end.

You can use different approaches to introduce your new web-service to your visitors. Scriblink welcomes its visitors with a pop-up and a Java-applet. Visitors have to provide some input to start browsing through the site.

Nothing helps:

• clicking on “cancel” doesn’t help,
• OK doesn’t help,
• full-screen mode doesn’t help,
• clicking somewhere else doesn’t help,
• closing the browser window doesn’t work,
• clicking on the question mark for help doesn’t work.

Unfair, really. We just wanted to see what the tool does…

7. Content blocks layering upon each other.

A typical problem which always appears if large Flash-movies are used on large web-sites. The site navigation is hidden; whatever users might be willing to browse to — they have no chance.

The same problem on Yahoo.com:

8. Dynamic navigation.

What looks like a usable site navigation, shows itself soon enough from its worst side. Nevermind where you point your mouse pointer to — supporting images slide down and up and change the focus of the link you’ve clicked on. On the image below the link “history” was clicked - it moves away; and no, the sliding images aren’t linked to the page you’d like to browse to.

The effect appears in both left- and right-side navigation menus. Visitors might need some time to find out what is happening. However, once the idea is understood, the navigation isn’t that hard to deal with.

The same idea on Kabe243. Bonus: visual noise at its best.

9. Drop-Down Menus.

Drop-Down menus are useful for web-developers and almost always get on users’ nerves. If you — as a designer — hide navigation items in a drop-down menu you can save yourself a large amount of vertical space; however users have to focus the mouse precisely to get to the section they’d like to visit. It’s not usable.

However, it can be even worse. If the distance between different levels of navigation is too large (for instance because some navigation items have more text) users have to move the mouse horizontally. If the mouse focus changes its vertical position, users have to start from the beginning.

2Advanced and Brita.net are excellent examples for these usability nightmares.

Notice: it took us a dozen of attempts to actually make these screenshots.

10. Blinking images.

Sometimes you just want to read the content of a web-site you are visiting. And you can’t. To fight against the banner blindness advertisers make use of animated ads — usually animated .gif-images or Flash-movies. In both cases it might become extremely hard to focus on reading if such images are blinking all around the content.

Digital Web Magazine, an excellent online magazine we read on a regular basis, has a disturbing animated ad on the left side of every article.

Future Nightmare?
Pointing the mouse instead of clicking.

Dontclick.it, an interesting experiment in interaction design, explores a clickfree environment. It wants to explore how and what changes for the user and the interface once you can’t rely on the habit of clicking.

Within this interface you won’t find any buttons. Instead you navigate the contents in a different way — by pointing the mouse to the areas of the site you are interested in. What sounds like an interesting approach might soon become a usability nightmare - just imagine web-users trying to open external links in a new browser window; besides it’s interesting to know how exactly users will be able to, let’s say, open a list of links in new browser tabs (updated to clarify why we’ve put Dontclick.it in this post).

8 Usability Check-Points You Should Be Aware Of

1. You don’t use pop-ups.
   Pop-ups interrupt the browsing session of the visitors and require an instant feedback. Respect your visitors.
2. You don’t change users’ window size.
   The same argument as the one against pop-ups holds. Some browsers, e.g. Internet Explorer, saves the browser dimensions and uses them for further browser sessions. As Ben Bodien commented, “it’s just plain inconsiderate to assume that you know better than the user how their software environment should be configured?”
3. You don’t use too small font sizes.
   Long passages are harder to read, and to read brief sentences readers need more time. It holds also for links, buttons, forms, search boxes and other elements. Good news — in Web 2.0 the opposite is the case.
4. You don’t have unclear link text.
   Links have to be precise and lead to the destination they describe. Ambiguous link descriptions should be avoided.
5. You don’t have dead links.
   There are too many of them anyway; why would you want to point your visitors to a dead end?
6. You have at most one animation per page.
   If blinking images are wide-spread through the site, it’s extremely hard to focus on one single site element. Give your visitors an opportunity to perceive your content. Using animated ads, don’t place them right along your articles.
7. You make it easy to contact you.
   Maybe because you just don’t want to be contacted, but If visitors do want to get in touch with you, but can’t find any contact information, you lose their interest and trust. Disastrous for online-shopping, a missed opportunity for the rest.
8. Your links open in the same window.
   Visitors want to have control over everything what happens in their browser. If they’d like to open a link in a new window they will. If they don’t want to, they won’t. If your links open in a new window you make the decision which is not your decision to make.

Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.

We aren’t going to discuss the implementation details (e.g. where the search box should be placed) as it has already been done in a number of articles; instead we focus on the main principles, heuristics and approaches for effective web design — approaches which, used properly, can lead to more sophisticated design decisions and simplify the process of perceiving presented information.

Please notice that

• you might be interested in the usability-related articles about 10 Usability Nightmares and 30 Usability Issues we’ve published before,
• we’ll cover more principles of effective design in our following posts. Therefore you might want to subscribe to our RSS-feed.

This article has been translated to Hebrew.

Principles Of Effective Web Design

In order to use the principles properly we first need to understand how users interact with web-sites, how they think and what are the basic patterns of users’ behavior.

How do users think?

Basically, users’ habits on the Web aren’t that different from customers’ habits in a store. Visitors glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. In fact, there are large parts of the page they don’t even look at.

Most users search for something interesting (or useful) and clickable; as soon as some promising candidates are found, users click. If the new page doesn’t meet users’ expectations, the Back button is clicked and the search process is continued.

• Users appreciate quality and credibility. If a page provides users with high-quality content, they are willing to compromise the content with advertisements and the design of the site. This is the reason why not-that-well-designed web-sites with high-quality content gain a lot of traffic over years. Content is more important than the design which supports it.
• Users don’t read, they scan. Analyzing a web-page, users search for some fixed points or anchors which would guide them through the content of the page.
  Users don’t read, they scan. Notice how “hot” areas abrupt in the middle of sentences. This is typical for the scanning process.
• Web users are impatient and insist on instant gratification. Very simple principle: If a web-site isn’t able to meet users’ expectations, then designer failed to get his job done properly and the company loses money. The higher is the cognitive load and the less intuitive is the navigation, the more willing are users to leave the web-site and search for alternatives. [JN / DWU]
• Users don’t make optimal choices. Users don’t search for the quickest way to find the information they’re looking for. Neither do they scan web-page in a linear fashion, going sequentially from one site section to another one. Instead users satisfice; they choose the first reasonable option. As soon as they find a link that seems like it might lead to the goal, there is a very good chance that it will be immediately clicked. Optimizing is hard, and it takes a long time. Satisficing is more efficient. [video]
  Both pictures show: sequential reading flow doesn’t work in the Web. Right screenshot on the image at the bottom describes the scan path of a given page.
• Users follow their intuition. In most cases users muddle through instead of reading the information a designer has provided. According to Steve Krug, the basic reason for that is that users don’t care. “If we find something that works, we stick to it. It doesn’t matter to us if we understand how things work, as long as we can use them. If your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboard, then design great billboards.”
• Users want to have control. Users want to be able to control their browser and rely on the consistent data presentation throughout the site. E.g. they don’t want new windows popping up unexpectedly and they want to be able to get back with a “Back”-button to the site they’ve been before: therefore it’s a good practice to never open links in new browser windows.

1. Don’t make users think

According to Krug’s first law of usability, the web-page should be obvious and self-explanatory. When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks — the decisions users need to make consciously, considering pros, cons and alternatives.

If the navigation and site architecture aren’t intuitive, the number of question marks grows and makes it harder for users to comprehend how the system works and how to get from point A to point B. A clear structure, moderate visual clues and easily recognizable links can help users to find their path to their aim.

Let’s take a look at an example. Beyondis.co.uk claims to be “beyond channels, beyond products, beyond distribution”. What does it mean? Since users tend to explore web-sites according to the “F”-pattern, these three statements would be the first elements users will see on the page once it is loaded.

Although the design itself is simple and intuitive, to understand what the page is about the user needs to search for the answer. This is what an unnecessary question mark is. It’s designer’s task to make sure that the number of question marks is close to 0. The visual explanation is placed on the right hand side. Just exchanging both blocks would increase usability.

ExpressionEngine uses the very same structure like Beyondis, but avoids unnecessary question marks. Furthermore, the slogan becomes functional as users are provided with options to try the service and download the free version.

By reducing cognitive load you make it easier for visitors to grasp the idea behind the system. Once you’ve achieved this, you can communicate why the system is useful and how users can benefit from it. People won’t use your web site if they can’t find their way around it.

2. Don’t squander users’ patience

In every project when you are going to offer your visitors some service or tool, try to keep your user requirements minimal. The less action is required from users to test a service, the more likely a random visitor is to actually try it out. First-time visitors are willing to play with the service, not filling long web forms for an account they might never use in the future. Let users explore the site and discover your services without forcing them into sharing private data. It’s not reasonable to force users to enter an email address to test the feature.

As Ryan Singer — the developer of the 37Signals team — states, users would probably be eager to provide an email address if they were asked for it after they’d seen the feature work, so they had some idea of what they were going to get in return.

Stikkit is a perfect example for a user-friendly service which requires almost nothing from the visitor which is unobtrusive and comforting. And that’s what you want your users to feel on your web site.

Apparently, Mite requires more. However the registration can be done in less than 30 seconds — as the form has horizontal orientation, the user doesn’t even need to scroll the page.

Ideally remove all barriers, don’t require subscriptions or registrations first. A user registration alone is enough of an impediment to user navigation to cut down on incoming traffic.

3. Manage to focus users’ attention

As web-sites provide both static and dynamic content, some aspects of the user interface attract attention more than others do. Obviously, images are more eye-catching than the text — just as the sentences marked as bold are more attractive than plain text.

The human eye is a highly non-linear device, and web-users can instantly recognize edges, patterns and motions. This is why video-based advertisements are extremely annoying and distracting, but from the marketing perspective they perfectly do the job of capturing users’ attention.

Humanized.com perfectly uses the principle of focus. The only element which is directly visible to the users is the word “free” which works attractive and appealing, but still calm and purely informative. Subtle hints provide users with enough information of how to find more about the “free” product.

Focusing users’ attention to specific areas of the site with a moderate use of visual elements can help your visitors to get from point A to point B without thinking of how it actually is supposed to be done. The less question marks visitors have, the better sense of orientation they have and the more trust they can develop towards the company the site represents. In other words: the less thinking needs to happen behind the scenes, the better is the user experience which is the aim of usability in the first place.

4. Strive for feature exposure

Modern web designs are usually criticized due to their approach of guiding users with visually appealing 1-2-3-done-steps, large buttons with visual effects etc. But from the design perspective these elements actually aren’t a bad thing. On the contrary, such guidelines are extremely effective as they lead the visitors through the site content in a very simple and user-friendly way.

Dibusoft.com combines visual appeal with clear site structure. The site has 9 main navigation options which are visible at the first glance. The choice of colors might be too light, though.

Letting the user see clearly what functions are available is a fundamental principle of successful user interface design. It doesn’t really matter how this is achieved. What matters is that the content is well-understood and visitors feel comfortable with the way they interact with the system.

5. Make use of effective writing

As the Web is different from print, it’s necessary to adjust the writing style to users’ preferences and browsing habits. Promotional writing won’t be read. Long text blocks without images and keywords marked in bold or italics will be skipped. Exaggerated language will be ignored.

Talk business. Avoid cute or clever names, marketing-induced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names. For instance, if you describe a service and want users to create an account, “sign up” is better than “start now!” which is again better than “explore our services”.

Eleven2.com gets directly to the point. No cute words, no exaggerated statements. Instead a price: just what visitors are looking for.

An optimal solution for effective writing is to

• use short and concise phrases (come to the point as quickly as possible),
• use scannable layout (categorize the content, use multiple heading levels, use visual elements and bulleted lists which break the flow of uniform text blocks),
• use plain and objective language (a promotion doesn’t need to sound like advertisement; give your users some reasonable and objective reason why they should use your service or stay on your web-site)

6. Strive for simplicity

The “keep it simple”-principle (KIS) should be the primary goal of site design. Users are rarely on a site to enjoy the design; furthermore, in most cases they are looking for the information despite the design. Strive for simplicity instead of complexity.

Crcbus provides visitors with a clean and simple design. You may have no idea what the site is about as it is in Italian, however you can directly recognize the navigation, header, content area and the footer. Notice how even icons manage to communicate the information clearly. Once the icons are hovered, additional information is provided.

From the visitors’ point of view, the best site design is a pure text, without any advertisements or further content blocks matching exactly the query visitors used or the content they’ve been looking for. This is one of the reasons why a user-friendly print-version of web pages is essential for good user experience.

Finch clearly presents the information about the site and gives visitors a choice of options without overcrowding them with unnecessary content.

7. Don’t be afraid of the white space

Actually it’s really hard to overestimate the importance of white space. Not only does it help to reduce the cognitive load for the visitors, but it makes it possible to perceive the information presented on the screen. When a new visitor approaches a design layout, the first thing he/she tries to do is to scan the page and divide the content area into digestible pieces of information.

Complex structures are harder to read, scan, analyze and work with. If you have the choice between separating two design segments by a visible line or by some whitespace, it’s usually better to use the whitespace solution. Hierarchical structures reduce complexity (Simon’s Law): the better you manage to provide users with a sense of visual hierarchy, the easier your content will be to perceive.

White space is good. Cameron.io uses white space as a primary design element. The result is a well-scannable layout which gives the content a dominating position it deserves.

8. Communicate effectively with a “visible language”

In his papers on effective visual communication, Aaron Marcus states three fundamental principles involved in the use of the so-called “visible language” — the content users see on a screen.

• Organize: provide the user with a clear and consistent conceptual structure. Consistency, screen layout, relationships and navigability are important concepts of organization. The same conventions and rules should be applied to all elements.
• Economize: do the most with the least amount of cues and visual elements. Four major points to be considered: simplicity, clarity, distinctiveness, and emphasis. Simplicity includes only the elements that are most important for communication. Clarity: all components should be designed so their meaning is not ambiguous. Distinctiveness: the important properties of the necessary elements should be distinguishable. Emphasis: the most important elements should be easily perceived.
• Communicate: match the presentation to the capabilities of the user. The user interface must keep in balance legibility, readability, typography, symbolism, multiple views, and color or texture in order to communicate successfully. Use max. 3 typefaces in a maximum of 3 point sizes — a maximum of 18 words or 50-80 characters per line of text.

9. Conventions are our friends

Conventional design of site elements doesn’t result in a boring web site. In fact, conventions are very useful as they reduce the learning curve, the need to figure out how things work. For instance, it would be a usability nightmare if all web-sites had different visual presentation of RSS-feeds. That’s not that different from our regular life where we tend to get used to basic principles of how we organize data (folders) or do shopping (placement of products).

With conventions you can gain users’ confidence, trust, reliability and prove your credibility. Follow users’ expectations — understand what they’re expecting from a site navigation, text structure, search placement etc. (see Nielsen’s Usability Alertbox for more information)

BabelFish in use: Amazon.com in Russian.

A typical example from usability sessions is to translate the page in Japanese (assuming your web users don’t know Japanese, e.g. with Babelfish) and provide your usability testers with a task to find something in the page of different language. If conventions are well-applied, users will be able to achieve a not-too-specific objective, even if they can’t understand a word of it.

Steve Krug suggests that it’s better to innovate only when you know you really have a better idea, but take advantages of conventions when you don’t.

10. Test early, test often

This so-called TETO-principle should be applied to every web design project as usability tests often provide crucial insights into significant problems and issues related to a given layout.

Test not too late, not too little and not for the wrong reasons. In the latter case it’s necessary to understand that most design decisions are local; that means that you can’t universally answer whether some layout is better than the other one as you need to analyze it from a very specific point of view (considering requirements, stakeholders, budget etc.).

Some important points to keep in mind:

• according to Steve Krug, testing one user is 100% better than testing none and testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end. Accoring to Boehm’s first law, errors are most frequent during requirements and design activities and are the more expensive the later they are removed.
• testing is an iterative process. That means that you design something, test it, fix it and then test it again. There might be problems which haven’t been found during the first round as users were practically blocked by other problems.
• usability tests always produce useful results. Either you’ll be pointed to the problems you have or you’ll be pointed to the absence of major design flaws which is in both cases a useful insight for your project.
• according to Weinberg’s law, a developer is unsuited to test his or her code. This holds for designers as well. After you’ve worked on a site for few weeks, you can’t observe it from a fresh perspective anymore. You know how it is built and therefore you know exactly how it works — you have the wisdom independent testers and visitors of your site wouldn’t have.

Bottom line: if you want a great site, you’ve got to test.

Web design consists, for the most part, of interface design. There are many techniques involved in crafting beautiful and functional interfaces. Here’s my collection of 10 that I think you’ll find useful in your work. They’re not related to any particular theme, but are rather a collection of techniques I use in my own projects. Without further ado, let’s get started.

1. Padded block links

Links (or anchors) are inline elements by default, which means that their clickable area spans only the height and width of the text. This clickable area, or the space where you can click to go to that link’s destination, can be increased for greater usability. We can do this by adding padding and, in some cases, also converting the link into a block element. Here’s an example of inline and padded links, with their clickable areas highlighted to show the difference:

Obviously, the larger the clickable area is, the easier it is to click on the link because there is less of a chance of missing it. Converting links into block elements makes the text area span the whole width of the container, unless the width is specified otherwise. This makes it ideal for links located in sidebars. We can do it with the following code:

a {
	display: block;
	padding: 6px;
}

Make sure to also add a healthy dose of padding to the links, because converting a link into a block only affects its behavior and width; adding padding ensures that the link is high enough and has some room to breathe.

2. Typesetting buttons

Attention to every detail is what separates a great product from a mediocre one. Interface elements such as buttons and tabs are clicked on many times a day by your users, so it pays to typeset them properly; and by typesetting I mean positioning the label. Here’s a couple of examples of the kind of misplaced labels I sometimes notice:

At first glance they look okay, but notice that the text is placed too high because the lowercase letters have been used as a guide to align the text vertically in the center, like so:

However, if we use uppercase letters as well as lowercase letters with ascenders (”t,” “d,” “f,” “h,” “k” and “l”), the balance shifts upwards, making the label appear too high on the button. In such cases, we should set the type using the uppercase height as a guide — or set it a little bit higher if most of the letters are lowercase. Here’s what I mean:

This gives the whole button a more balanced look and feel. Little touches like this go a long way towards making your interface more polished and satisfying to use.

3. Using contrast to manage focus

Similarly, you can also manage the focus of your visitors’ attention with contrast between elements. Here’s an example of a post headline and some meta information underneath regarding who posted the article and its date:

All the text is set in black. Let’s decrease the contrast between the meta information (the date and author’s name) and the background by putting the text in a light shade of gray:

The highest contrast element here is the headline, so it literally pops out at us. The other elements fade into the background. Here, I’ve chosen the author as the second-most important element, and the date as the least. The font also differs in size and style, but the contrast level can be very powerful. Let’s reverse the order of importance to date, author and headline:

You can see how effective it is in shifting focus: the date now pops out at you, while the headline fades away. This technique comes in very handy for information-heavy websites, such as blogs, forums and social networks, in which you want to make a lot of information easily scannable while still showing a lot of additional things, like dates. Fading the extras allows visitors to easily focus their attention on the most important pieces of text.

4. Using color to manage attention

Color can also be used to effectively focus your visitors’ attention on important or actionable elements. For example, during the US presidential election, pretty much all of the candidates’ websites had the donation button colored red. Red is a very bright and powerful color so it attracts attention, and it stands out even more when the rest of the website is blue or another colder color.

Warmer tones like red, yellow and orange are naturally bright and so tend to attract the eye. They also “expand” when set against colder colors like blue and green. This means that an orange button on a blue background looks like it’s flowing outwards and taking the front seat. Conversely, a blue button on an orange background contracts inward, wishing to stay in the background. Here’s a picture to illustrate:

Here’s a couple of examples of websites that use color effectively to direct users’ attention to the important elements:

Function features a “We’re Hiring” link on its jobs page. To ensure the link is not missed, the designers set it against a red background that pops out from the dark background header, effectively grabbing attention.

Causecast use color effectively. Four bright pink elements pop out at you: the logo, the feedback link, the donate link and the website description message.

Want the “About” blurb on your website to grab the visitor’s focus? Make the background yellow. Want to make the “Join” button stand out? Color it orange. Make sure not to highlight too many elements, though; if you do, they may get lost in each other’s company.

5. White space indicates relationships

One of the most crucial elements in an interface is the white space between elements. If you’re not familiar with the term white space, it means just that: space between one interface element and another, be it a button, a navigation bar, article text, a headline and so on. By manipulating white space, we can indicate relationships between certain elements or groups of elements.

So, for example, by putting the headline near the article text we indicate that it is related to that text. The text is then placed farther away from other elements to separate it and make it more readable. Here’s an example in which white space could be improved:

The text looks all right and is certainly readable, but because the spaces above and below each heading are equal, they don’t separate each piece of text clearly. We can improve this by increasing the white space between each section and also by slightly tightening the line height of the paragraphs:

This results in more clearly defined blocks; we can easily tell which headings go with which pieces of text and can see the separate sections clearly. Good designers often squint or glance at their work from a distance, which lets them see the blocks of elements separated by white space as they merge together. If you cannot see these groups clearly then you may need to tweak your white space.

6. Letter spacing

Web design is pretty limiting for typographers. But while there are only a few safe Web fonts and not a great many things you can do to style them, it’s worth remembering that we do still have some level of control. “Tracking” is a term used in the field of typography to describe the adjustment of spacing between letters in words. We’ve got the ability to do this with CSS using the “letter-spacing” property.

If used with restraint and taste, this property can be effective in improving the look of your headlines. I wouldn’t recommend using letter spacing on the body text because the default spacing generally provides the best readability for smaller font sizes.

Here’s an example of letter spacing in use:

And here’s the CSS code used for the above examples:

h1 {
	font-family: Helvetica;
	font-size: 27px;
}

h2 {
	font-family: Helvetica;
	font-size: 27px;
	letter-spacing: -1px;
}

h3 {
	font-family: Georgia;
	font-size: 24px;
	letter-spacing: 3px;
	font-variant: small-caps;
	font-weight: normal;
}

The effect can be useful when you want to craft a more aesthetically pleasing or more original heading. Here, I’ve used only a couple pixels for letter spacing, but already it makes a big difference to the style of the font.

7. Auto-focus on input

Many Web applications and websites feature forms. These may be search forms or input forms inviting you to submit something. If this form is the core feature of your application or website, you may want to consider automatically focusing the user’s cursor on the input field when the website loads. This will speed things up because users can start typing right away without having to click on it. A good example of this is Google and Wikipedia’s websites.

Upon arriving at Wikipedia.org, the search box is already highlighted, ready to accept text.

To automatically focus on input fields, you’ll need a little bit of JavaScript. There are various solutions, and the one you should use depends on the functionality you want to achieve. The simplest way to do it would be to add the following to your body tag:

<body onLoad="document.forms.form_name.form_field.focus()">

Your form code should look something like:

<form method="get" name="form_name" action="#">
	<input type="text" name="form_field" size="20" />
	<input type="submit" value="Go" />
</form>

Now, every time the page loads, the text field called “form_field” will be automatically selected, ready for input.

The only problem with this is that if your users want to return to the previous page using the Backspace key, they will be out of luck because they’ll just be deleting characters in the input field. Thankfully, Harmen Janssen has another simple JavaScript solution you can find here. Harmen’s script allows the Backspace key to go to the previous page when there are no characters left in the input field to delete.

8. Custom input focus

While the default look of form elements suffices for most functions, sometimes we want something a little prettier or a little more standardized across various browsers and systems. We can style input fields by simply targeting it with an “id,” “class” or plain old “input,” like so:

input {
	border: 2px solid #888;
	padding: 4px;
	font-size: 1em;
	background-color: #F8F8F8;
}

What’s more interesting is also being able to style the input field when it’s in focus; that is, the state it’s in when it has been clicked. To do this, we need to attach a “:focus” after the “input” property:

input:focus {
	border-color: #000;
	background-color: #FFFE9D;
}

If you’re using custom backgrounds to style your input field, they may clash with some browsers and operating systems’ default focus styles. For example, here’s a screenshot of a custom-styled form clashing with the default blue OS X glow effect:

In such cases, you could also use the “input:focus” property to remove the default styling. The default blue glow in the screenshot above can be removed by disabling the “outline” property:

input:focus {
	outline: none;
}

The blue glow effect will now be gone:

Obviously you would only want to remove the outline if you’re replacing it with your own styling, so that you don’t negatively affect the accessibility and usability of your forms.

9. Hover controls

Some Web applications have extra utility controls, such as edit and delete buttons, that don’t necessarily have to be shown beside every item at all times. They can be hidden to simplify the interface and focus visitors’ attention on the main controls and content. For example, these hover controls are used in Twitter when you hover over messages:

These hover controls can be achieved with some simple CSS code, without any JavaScript. Simply style the <div> with the controls when its parent <div> is in a hover state. Here’s the code to hide and show the controls (using a <div> with the class “controls” inside a <div> with the class “message”):

.message .controls { display: none; }
.message:hover .controls { display: block; }

When you hover over the “message” <div>, the “controls” <div> inside it will appear, along with all of its content, giving you the same functionality as shown in the Twitter screenshot above.

There may be an issue with accessibility because screen readers may not be able to read the hidden <div>. There are plenty of other ways to hide the inner <div>, such as offsetting it with a negative margin that takes it off the page (e.g. “left-margin: -9999px”), coloring its text the same color as the background or simply placing another <div> on top of it.

This technique should of course be used with restraint because you don’t want to hide your important controls; but if used correctly, it can be useful for cleaning up your interface by removing those extra utility links that you don’t want to show up at all times.

Note that this doesn’t work in IE6, so you’ll need to override the hiding property in your IE6-specific style sheet or, if you don’t have one, simply use the following IE6-specific code inside the <head> section of your code:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
  <style type="text/css" media="screen">
    .message .controls { display: block; }
  </style>
<![endif]-->

10. Verbs in labels

You can make options dialogs much more usable by thinking through the labels you use on buttons and links. If an error or message pops up and the options are “Yes,” “No” and “Cancel,” you have to read the whole message to be able to answer. Seems normal, right?

But we can actually speed things up by using verbs in the labels. So, if instead of “Yes,” “No” and “Cancel,” we have “Save,” “Don’t Save” and “Cancel” buttons, you wouldn’t even need to read the message to understand what the options are and which action to perform. All the information is contained in the button labels.

Using verbs in labels on buttons and links makes the options dialogs more usable because the labels contain all of the information the user needs to be able to make a decision.

To Conclude

Hopefully, you’ve found a few new techniques that will be useful in your work. As always, using them effectively comes down to restraint and thoughtful implementation. For example, controls that appear on hover may clean up your interface, but they will also increase the learning curve because people may not notice these controls at first. But showing all controls at all times may not be the best strategy either because users would need to scan more things to find what they’re looking for.

Striking the right balance between what you show and what you hide is a delicate art and is completely in your hands as the designer. Don’t use a technique just because it exists: use it if it makes sense in your context.

More and more applications these days are migrating to the Web. Without platform constraints or installation requirements, the software-as-a-service model looks very attractive. Web application interface design is, at its core, Web design; however, its focus is mainly on function. To compete with desktop applications, Web apps must offer simple, intuitive and responsive user interfaces that let their users get things done with less effort and time.

In the past we didn’t cover web applications the way we should and now it’s time to take a closer look at some useful techniques and design solutions that make web-applications more user-friendly and more beautiful. This article presents the first part of our extensive research on design patterns and useful design solutions in modern web applications. Below you’ll find a collection of 10 useful interface design techniques and best practices used in many successful web-applications.

1. Interface elements on demand

Simplicity is important in user interface design. The more controls you display on the screen at any time, the more time your users will have to spend figuring out how to use your interface. When there is less choice, the available functions become more apparent and are easier to scan. Simplifying an interface isn’t easy though, especially if you don’t want to limit the app’s functionality.

When you click on the search link in Kontain’s search box, a similar drop-down menu appears. So, if you need to narrow your search, you can use the menu to select the sort of content you’re looking for. Tucking these options away simplifies the search box.

One way of making things simpler is to hide or conceal advanced functionality. Find out the most commonly used functions of your interface and tuck away the rest. You can do this with pop-up menus and controls, which are very common on desktop software. For example, if your search bar has advanced filters, put them away in a special drop-down menu at the end. If users need those filters, they can enable them with just a couple of clicks. Deciding what to keep and what to conceal isn’t a simple task, though, and will depend on how important and how frequently used each of the controls is.

When you click on the search link in CollabFinder, you aren’t taken to a different page. Instead, the search box controls drop down, allowing you to begin your search straight away.

2. Specialized controls

It’s important to select the right interface controls for the situation. Different situations can be handled in different ways, and certain controls are better at their intended task than others.

Backpack has a compact calendar date and time picker for selecting a reminder date.

For example, you can select a date by using drop-down lists for day, month and year. Drop-downs aren’t very efficient, however, when compared to a calendar picker, where you can click directly on a day you want. Calendar pickers also help you see the days, weeks and months (and especially workdays and weekends) more easily and so allow you to make a more informed decision more quickly than you would with a simple drop-down list.

MyBankTracker’s APY calculator features easy-to-use slider controls for quickly trying out different projections.

Another good example of this are sliders. Yes, you can always input a number manually, but for certain situations, slider controls do a much better job. Not only are they easy to use — just click and drag — but you can also see how your selection fits between the minimum and maximum of an available range.

3. Disable pressed buttons

One of the problems Web applications encounters with forms is the submission process. With very simple forms, if you click the “Submit” button twice or more very quickly, the form will be submitted two or more times. This is obviously problematic because it will create duplicates of the same item. Preventing duplicate submissions isn’t very hard, and it is essential to do this for most Web apps.

There are two tiers to this safeguard: client-side and server-side. We won’t go through the server-side safeguard here because this will vary depending on the programming language you use and your back-end architecture. What you should essentially do is put in a check to ensure during the processing stage that whatever is being submitted is not a duplicate, and if it is to block it.

Yammer disables the “Update” button while your new message is being submitted.

The client-side stage is much simpler. All you have to do is disable the “Submit” button the very moment it is clicked. The easiest way to do this is to add a piece of JavaScript to the “Submit” button like this:

<input type="submit" value="Submit" onclick="this.disabled=true" />

Of course, we would advise you to also implement server-side checks to be sure that duplicates don’t get through.

4. Shadows around modal windows

Drop shadows around pop-up menus and windows aren’t just eye candy. They help the menu or window stand out from the background by reinforcing its dimensions. They also block out the noise of the content beneath the window by darkening the area around it with a shadow.

This technique hat its roots in traditional desktop applications and helps the user to focus his/her attention on the appearing window. Since most modal windows aren’t as easy to distinguish from the main content as in desktop applications, shadows help them to appear closer to readers, because the window appears to be three-dimensional and lay above the rest of the page.

Digg’s log-in window has a thick shadow around it to block out the noise of the page beneath.

To achieve this effect, designers often create a container with a transparent PNG-image as background and place the content inside the container - with equidistant padding on all sides of the box. Another option is to use a background image with transparent borders and position the content box within this box using absolute positioning. This is exactly what Digg does — this is the image they are using (dialog.png). And this is the markup and CSS-style they are using:

(X)HTML:

	<div id="container">
		<div style="display: block; top: 236px; opacity: 1;" class="dialog">
			<div class="body">
        		<div class="content">
        			...
        		</div>
        	</div>
        </div>
      </div>

CSS:

.dialog {
    position: absolute;
    left: 50%;
    margin-left: -315px;
    width: 630px;
    z-index: 100001;

}
.dialog .body {
    background: url(/img/dialog.png) 0 0; /* semi-transparent .png image */
    padding: 40px 13px 10px 40px;
}

Alternatively, you can also use JavaScript-based lightboxes or drop shadows using CSS3-attributes we’ve described earlier, but you need to be aware that Internet Explorer won’t support them.

Basecamp’s project switcher window has a large soft drop shadow that helps the menu area stand out.

5. Empty states that tell you what to do

When you’re designing a Web application, it’s important not only to test it with sample data, but to ensure that it looks good and is helpful when there is nothing there yet. You should design the empty states.

When there is no information for a page or query yet, a helpful message telling the user how to start could go in that empty space. For example, a project management application’s home page may list the user’s projects, but if there are no projects yet, you could provide a link to the project creation page. Even if there is already a button to do that on the page, an extra bit of help doesn’t hurt.

Campaign Monitor points you in the right direction when you start building an email campaign.

This technique encourages users to actually try out the service and proceed directly with using the service after registration. Guiding the user through single steps of the application may help him or her to understand what advantages the application offers and if it’s useful or not. It is also important to present most important options to the users and only them — it doesn’t make sense to overflood them with numerous options. Keep in mind that users usually want to get a more or less concrete idea of what is offered to them, but they don’t want to jump into details — they have neither time nor interest in it.

Using empty states to motivate users and animate actions, you can significantly reduce the amount of “drop-outs” and help your potential clients to gain a better understanding of how the system works.

Wufoo’s forms page has a large, friendly message inviting you to create a new form if none yet exist.

6. Pressed button states

Many Web applications have custom-styled buttons. These are anchors or input buttons that have custom images assigned as their backgrounds. The default input buttons may not be suitable in some cases, and the text links are sometimes too subtle. The challenge is, when you make your links look like buttons, they should act like buttons — and this includes having a “pressed” look when the user clicks on them.

This isn’t a purely visual tweak. Giving instant feedback to the user will make the application feel more responsive and bring the experience closer to what the user experiences on desktop applications.

You can add a pressed button state with CSS by styling the active pseudo-class of the link in question. So for example, if your anchor has the class add_task_button, you can style its active class by targeting add_task_button:active.

Buttons in Highrise actually show a pressed state when you click on them, providing the user with a satisfying responsive feel.

7. Link to the sign-up page from the log-in page

Some people who haven’t yet signed up to your application will inevitably end up on the log-in page. They likely want to try out your application but can’t find the registration page in a hurry. Perhaps they’ve tried accessing a feature that’s only available to registered users.

Don’t have a Delicious account? No problem; a sign-up link is provided on the Delicious log-in page.

Goplan has a nice colored button on the log-in page pointing to the sign-up page.

Make things easy for these folks by placing a registration link on your log-in pages. If they haven’t got an account yet, they shouldn’t have to look for a registration page. Our studies confirm: 18% have a sign-in form or a link to the sign-in form placed next to it (e.g. YouTube, Reddit, Digg, Lulu, Metacafe).

8. Context-sensitive navigation

It’s important to think about what the user expects to see and what they need in every given context. You don’t need to display the same navigation controls everywhere because users simply may not need them in every situation.

One of the best examples of context-sensitive controls is the recent change in the Microsoft Office 2007 interface, in which the default set of toolbars was replaced by ribbon controls. Each tab on the ribbon holds different controls relating to a particular activity, be it editing graphs, proofreading or simply writing. Web applications can also benefit from such context-sensitive controls because these controls help unclutter interfaces by showing only what the user needs, not everything that’s available.

Lighthouse features a familiar tabbed navigation menu; however, it also has a second level of menus right under the set of tabs. This level displays only the items associated with the active section of the website.

9. More emphasis on key functions

Not all controls hold the same importance. For example, on a screen for creating a new item, you may have two buttons: “Create” and “Cancel.” The “Create” link is more important because that’s what the user will be doing most of the time. Only rarely will they need to cancel the screen. So if these controls are located side by side, you may not want to give both the same emphasis.

The “Create ticket” button in Lighthouse. You can see the “cancel” link next to it, in plain text. The button not only commands more importance but also has a larger clickable area and is easier to spot because of its frame.

To shift emphasis to the “Create” link, we can simply use different styles or types of controls. Some applications use the form input button for the create action, and have the cancel action as a text anchor. This not only gives the create button more clickable area, it also helps to grab the users gaze better when they’re looking for it.

10. Embedded video

While pictures and text are a great way to communicate and teach your users about your app’s features, video can be an even better alternative if you have the resources to produce it. Video has been gaining popularity on the Web in recent years. For Web apps, videos are generally used on the marketing website as a kind of screencast to show off a product’s features; however, this isn’t the only way to use video.

GoodBarry features a video screencast on its front page showing off the product. It also uses screencasts inside the app to teach people on how to get started.

MailChimp includes tutorial videos right on the admin panel to help out new users.

Some Web apps use video inside the application itself to teach users how to use certain features. Video is a fantastic way to quickly demonstrate how your product can be used, because it is easier to consume than a page of text, and it is also much clearer because the viewer can see exactly what to do.