Discussion on:

Reduce visual clutter to improve usability

In addition to pages that seem to think everyone runs their browser full screen on high end systems, what about so many navigation frames that the actual content can not be printed for reference?

Builder.com and TechRepublic.com are among the few sites that have a PRINT button that actually formats a content-only page I can take with me and writes notes on while working an issue.

Printing problems can be solved with a second linked style sheet that is set to print only content and not all menus and sidebars. No need for a "Print" button.

I've done my own work arounds for printing web pages (and I'm still learning (since 2000)) so I was wondering if you had created some pages yourself that you could show as an example. This would be a great help.

I'd love to see some fine examples that avoid all the other pitfalls inherent in web development.

Actually, to my perception, I find Adobe website a nice example.

Usability is often dependent upon the quantity of information presented on a page. It is not based on the prettiness of the page.

Want to reduce clutter? How about scrapping that "attractive graphic" on the home page. Most users will click through before it finishes downloading. Don't be afraid of scroll bars. Users would often prefer to TAB through a screen rather than hop through several links to finish the job. Also note that I said "TAB." Users doing data entry often do not want to take their hands off of the keyboard to use a mouse.

Usable web pages often look much more industrial strength and focus less on graphics and small sizes.

It used to be clean home page + keyword meta tags = top placement in search engines.

Now it's Menu items + nice graphic + tag line = search engine invisibility.

With the ever-growing dependence on home page content (among other things, of course) SEO now dictates what goes onto the home page. It's marketing, stupid.

Having spent a little more time than I care to admit in SEO tasks, let me say this comment was spurrious at best. If you have menu items and a nice graphic with a tag line, you are not (repeat NOT) invisible as long as you have taken the time to produce adequate meta information for the bots to follow.

Also, please note that noone has said that having information on your home page was bad. They just stated that too much information was bad. And non-printable information was bad (mmmkay?).

If you take time to put information in your site, then you don't have to flood the front page. Now, if your site is your home page, then you have issues.

Just my $0.05 worth.

Accessibility is also becoming bigger and bigger with large corporations being sued over their website not being accessible.

But accessibility actual goes hand in hand with SEO. Little things like ALT and TITLE attributes give you points in the search engine scale of things, along with helping disabled users. The W3 has a guideline that, if followed, helps out your SEO standing.

I design all my sites to run on 640 resolutions where possible. I know people who are still using Windows 98 at these resolutions. Also I find if my page is redable at these resolutions then the printer shouldn't have any problems printing the page.

I wrote a small article with an example concerning Screen Real Estate:
http://www.dimensionalized.com/instruction/screenrealestate.html
Because really, there is a potential width of at least 220px or more, that still could be used on the right side if they have a LARGE screen!

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