Alex RasmussenI make things that do stuff with computers

Introduction

So, you have a LiveJournal? You have an account on MySpace? The odds are pretty good that your experience with the Internet is limited to browsing it. The odds are even better that words like HTML and CSS are nothing more than nerdy acronyms to you. You might, however, have stumbled across these mysterious beasties without even knowing they were there. Your exposure might, in all likelihood, have come from the look-and-feel options available in most community portal and blog engine services gaining increasing exposure and popularity these days. Tools like LiveJournal and MySpace give the user unprecedented power over the way that their particular corner of the Internet looks and what it does. This power makes people like you extremely dangerous to web geeks like me because you have the ability to innocently create things that, sadly, hurt our souls.

“Hurt your soul?” you say, “I don’t understand. How could my MySpace profile do such a horrible thing?” Allow me to elaborate; there are stylistic atrocities so grievous, annoyances so horrible that the mere sight of them causes the innermost core of my being to scream “AUGHH!” in horror. You have been given the power to create relatively personalized web content but with great power, Spider-fans, comes great responsibility. The goal of this diatribe is to inform you, the web content newbie, of a few things you must avoid doing at all costs lest you cause the souls of your visitors undue amounts of anguish. Avoid these things and you will make the Internet a little better for us all.

Massive Tiled Picture Backgrounds

I know you love picture X. It’s the greatest picture in the world, you say. You want everyone who views your profile to see it in all its glory, so you set it as your profile background and allow it to tile (e.g. myriad copies of picture X are displayed in a grid in the background). As you do this, you neglect to change your profile’s text color to something other than its default value (which tends to be black). I visit your profile, and my soul convulses in agony.

Why It Hurts My Soul

Sure, you think picture X is awesome. That does not mean that I want to see it ninety-five times. Also, your text is black and your picture, unless it’s a picture of a particularly white sheet or a snowman eating a snowcone in a snowstorm, is more than likely fairly non-white in most places. The result? Your text is there, sure enough, but nobody can read it. I attempt to read your profile, fail, and go somewhere else.

Solutions

I’m in no position to deny the merit of picture X. Content is everything on pages like this, and picture X is an example of great content. The problem here is that, by making picture X the background, you’ve allowed it to overwhelm everything else on your page. Put it on the page once, in the foreground, near the top where everyone will see it, and take it the hell off your background. Find something that’s designed to serve as a tiled background and use it as such, or just make your background a single color. If you absolutely, positively insist on putting the image in the background, run it through Photoshop and brighten it enough that I can still read the rest of the page.

Unstoppable Background Music and Embedded Movies

You just can’t get enough of song Y/video Z. Just thinking about it makes your blood vessels burst in paroxysms of excitement. You find code from some good samaritan promising to allow you to play Y or Z for all your visitors, showing them your impeccable taste, if you paste it in the appropriate place. I load your profile and my soul screams in anguish.

Why It Hurts My Soul

This piece of audio-visual genius loads completely without my authorization and often without my knowledge. Most of the time I don’t notice it until it’s too late to stop it from playing. Suppose it loads and I’m not too fond of listening to/watching it at the time. I have to scroll frantically to find it (if it’s even visible) and pause it. If no pause button can be found, my back button takes me far away from the source of my discomfort.

If your movie happens to be copyrighted, I could be redirected to some kind of “copyright infringement bad, MPAA good” notice, which I frankly don’t want to waste my time reading. If the location of the movie has changed, the plug-in informs me of its failure with a massive dialog box. This exasperates me.

Chances are I was listening to something else before your media interjected. I don’t care how much you worship Britney Spears; if you interrupt my Chopin etudes with Britney, you are guilty of crimes against humanity.

Solutions

Again, this is not an issue of bad content, it’s simply good content being presented in a bad way. Consider slapping a link to the song/music video on your profile instead. It’s much less obtrusive, takes almost no time to load and takes up much less space. If you don’t know how to make a link to the song/video you want to show or you’re interested in really making your profile or blog look good, it would be a good idea to learn HTML as soon as possible. W3Schools has an excellent HTML tutorial if you’re looking for a place to get started. Trust me, HTML was designed to be accessible to the common man – there’s little geeking out here.

Thirty Quadrillion Images

I click your profile link. Your profile loads. And loads and loads and loads. Wait for it … still loading. As the 75th image loads, my soul writhes in unspeakable pain.

Why It Hurts My Soul

It’s been seconds, minutes maybe, since I started loading your profile and it’s still not done. In this age of instant information and zero length attention spans, I’ve long since ceased to care and moved on to something else. Yes, I’m sure you take many pictures of many interesting things and people. Digital cameras allow you to take mountains of images for nothing. I don’t want to see them all when I visit your MySpace profile. I’m sorry, but if I wanted to see your photo album I would have asked for it.

Solutions

Most community sites have a gallery feature precisely to prevent such things from happening. If your service has a gallery feature, use it. You’ve filled your alloted gallery space, you say? There are several free services that offer gallery services. Flickr and Photo Bucket are but a couple of the many sites offering you free-as-in-beer space to store and display your photos. Want to link them from your profile. Chances are the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for whatever service you choose will tell you how to do it. As long as you give me the option of not viewing your pictures, I’m happy.

Conclusion

There you have it. These simple things, if avoided, will make your viewing audience happier and will keep my soul pain-free and happy. Now go carve your chunk out of the Information Age, and remember to be nice to the ‘net.