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Today's web has alot of great technologies but also alot of things that should be abandoned.
There's all the spyware, virus and malware going around nowadays that could not have worked prior to DHTML. There's Media Access, SpyAxe and other garbage that plants itself on your computer, overwhelming your resources and crashing your machine when it isn't messing with Internet Explorer settings. There's a bunch of irritating advertisements that should never have been made in the first place. Popups, Flash commercials, Pop-Unders and those ones that crash your browser when you're visiting many major websites. How many times do you hear talking ads, irritating sound effects and are decieved into installing spyware. The list of useless features in web browsers is very big, but the most malicious are ActiveX, which is almost always some kind of trojan, Flash, used for irritating ads and Java, which is a browser crash waiting to happen.
But there's all the great things that are possible with these technologies. Javascript is powerful enough for full-fledged games. PHP and mySQL have made forums a viable option for a website. Web sites can be updated without wasting your life writing it. Cascading Style Sheets, along with Javascript allow for greater control over the look of the webpage.
I think the most vital things to do to improve the Internet are to:
1) stop using ActiveX, Flash and Java in webpages and eliminate the plugins. If I want to play a bad flash game, I'll download it and run it in an offline Flash viewer. Java should be used only for offline development and ActiveX has no reasonable use. Writing in PHP is a reasonable workaround for Java and Flash. PHP is faster and less likely to cause a Windows system failure for your visitors. Instead of ActiveX, either offer a download that the user can choose to use or write the function in Javascript. No plugins of any kind should be expected from your users.
2) All web pages should be valid according to standards and your DTD. Invalid code can crash some browsers. Don't write your pages for Internet Explorer and never test it in other browsers. This doesn't mean you can't expand on the (X)HTML standard with your own code, but your pages need to be compliant with the standards. Your own HTML is not a problem, as long as you don't rename elements or make conflicting names. You can remove features you never use, though.
3) Make sure your pages convert themselves downward, preserving the content for the old browsers and still looking decent. Internet Explorer compatibility is a must, unless you want to get IE users to switch to Firefox to view your site, which isn't a smart idea. That means writing a detection code in your Javascripts to turn IE away and a Jscript for IE to do the same thing if the documents don't work. You want your page to look decent when viewed on Macs and Linux, unless you are a Windows-only site, but testing those platforms is difficult. Nothing turns away potential visitors more than a Google listing with the description "You must have frames enabled to view this page." Design your site so it isn't dependent on stuff you don't see in a text-based browser. You don't have to use html formating anymore, because people using Netscape 3 or IE 2 should expect colorless pages. This means you should avoid gimmicks such as Iframes, frames, Flash and Java for your site design.
4) No redirect pages to optimize Google's experience. This should be a no-brainer. Google actively checks for deception. They even blocked BMW Germany for a few days because of deception. If you don't have a listing in Google, you've got nothing.
5) Don't use excessively disruptive or deceptive ads. A banner ad is fine, but no ads designed to irritate. It should be a red flag if you start seeing ads that look like page code showing up through your sponsor.
6) No Imagemaps. They confuse the user and encourage bad navigation. I know they've been around forever, but it can't be said enough.
This is all my personal opinion on how to design a web site. Some people may disagree strongly.
There's all the spyware, virus and malware going around nowadays that could not have worked prior to DHTML. There's Media Access, SpyAxe and other garbage that plants itself on your computer, overwhelming your resources and crashing your machine when it isn't messing with Internet Explorer settings. There's a bunch of irritating advertisements that should never have been made in the first place. Popups, Flash commercials, Pop-Unders and those ones that crash your browser when you're visiting many major websites. How many times do you hear talking ads, irritating sound effects and are decieved into installing spyware. The list of useless features in web browsers is very big, but the most malicious are ActiveX, which is almost always some kind of trojan, Flash, used for irritating ads and Java, which is a browser crash waiting to happen.
But there's all the great things that are possible with these technologies. Javascript is powerful enough for full-fledged games. PHP and mySQL have made forums a viable option for a website. Web sites can be updated without wasting your life writing it. Cascading Style Sheets, along with Javascript allow for greater control over the look of the webpage.
I think the most vital things to do to improve the Internet are to:
1) stop using ActiveX, Flash and Java in webpages and eliminate the plugins. If I want to play a bad flash game, I'll download it and run it in an offline Flash viewer. Java should be used only for offline development and ActiveX has no reasonable use. Writing in PHP is a reasonable workaround for Java and Flash. PHP is faster and less likely to cause a Windows system failure for your visitors. Instead of ActiveX, either offer a download that the user can choose to use or write the function in Javascript. No plugins of any kind should be expected from your users.
2) All web pages should be valid according to standards and your DTD. Invalid code can crash some browsers. Don't write your pages for Internet Explorer and never test it in other browsers. This doesn't mean you can't expand on the (X)HTML standard with your own code, but your pages need to be compliant with the standards. Your own HTML is not a problem, as long as you don't rename elements or make conflicting names. You can remove features you never use, though.
3) Make sure your pages convert themselves downward, preserving the content for the old browsers and still looking decent. Internet Explorer compatibility is a must, unless you want to get IE users to switch to Firefox to view your site, which isn't a smart idea. That means writing a detection code in your Javascripts to turn IE away and a Jscript for IE to do the same thing if the documents don't work. You want your page to look decent when viewed on Macs and Linux, unless you are a Windows-only site, but testing those platforms is difficult. Nothing turns away potential visitors more than a Google listing with the description "You must have frames enabled to view this page." Design your site so it isn't dependent on stuff you don't see in a text-based browser. You don't have to use html formating anymore, because people using Netscape 3 or IE 2 should expect colorless pages. This means you should avoid gimmicks such as Iframes, frames, Flash and Java for your site design.
4) No redirect pages to optimize Google's experience. This should be a no-brainer. Google actively checks for deception. They even blocked BMW Germany for a few days because of deception. If you don't have a listing in Google, you've got nothing.
5) Don't use excessively disruptive or deceptive ads. A banner ad is fine, but no ads designed to irritate. It should be a red flag if you start seeing ads that look like page code showing up through your sponsor.
6) No Imagemaps. They confuse the user and encourage bad navigation. I know they've been around forever, but it can't be said enough.
This is all my personal opinion on how to design a web site. Some people may disagree strongly.
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