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Website Development & Hosting

Except for those sites that break Back by: 

a

opening a new browser window (some users assume these are pop-up advertisements

and close the window before anything is displayed)

a

using an immediate redirect: every time the user clicks Back, the browser returns to a

page that bounces the user forward to the undesired location 

a

preventing caching such that the Back navigation requires a fresh trip to the server; all

hypertext navigation should be sub-second and this goes double for backtracking 

12. Opening New Browser Windows

Minimise the number of New Windows on your site. Those visitors to your site who will require

new  windows  most  of  the  time  will  open  them.  Designers  open  new  browser  windows  on  the

theory  that  it  keeps  users  on  their  site.  The  strategy  may  be  self-defeating,  however,  since  it

disables the Back button, which is the normal way users return to previous sites. Users often don t

notice  that  a  new  window  has  opened,  especially  if  they  are  using  a  small  monitor  where  the

windows are maximised to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to the origin will be

confused by a greyed-out Back button. 

Consistency is  one  of  the  most  powerful  usability  principles:  when  things  always  behave  the

same, users do not have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen,

based on earlier experience. Every time you release an apple over Sir Isaac Newton, it will drop on

his head. That s good. 

The more users  expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the

more they will like it. And the more the system dashes users  expectations, the more they will feel

insecure.

Interaction  consistency  is  an  additional  reason  for  not  opening  new  browser  windows:  the

standard result of clicking a link is that the destination page replaces the origination page in the

same browser window. Anything else is a violation of the users  expectations and makes them feel

insecure in their mastery of the web. 

13. Lack of Biographies

Web  studies  have  shown  that  users  want  to  know  the  people  behind  information  on  the  web.  In

particular, biographies and photographs of the authors help make the web a less impersonal place

and increase trust. Personality and point-of-view often win over anonymous bits coming over the wire. 

Sites with by-lines often forget the link to the author s biography and a way for the user to find

other articles by the same author. Instead, a by-line is made into a mailto: link as opposed to a

link to the author s biography. Two reasons: 

a

it is much more common for a reader to want to know more about an author (including

finding the writer s other articles) than it is for the reader to want to contact the author  

sure, contact info is often a good part of the biography, but it should not be the primary

or only piece of data about the author 

Copyright  NESIS 2002

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