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Smiley Cat: Christian Watson's Web Design Blog

Thoughts and commentary - sometimes intelligent, mostly useful - on web design, CSS, usability, SEO and related topics.

Are Server Side Includes Still a Relevant Technique for Managing Large Web Sites?Yesterday

Most of the sites I've managed have used content management systems that spit out static pages.

As such, I'm become a proponent of using server side includes (SSI) as a way to manage global site components, due to their simplicity and ease-of-use.

Nothing frustrates me more than when I'm told that a simple, global change to a static web site — such as changing the copyright year — is a major update because of all the pages that will need to be touched.

"Why don't you have these types of global elements, such as footers, set up as includes?" I often wonder to myself.

More recently however, I've been told that they are not an appropriate technique for managing high-traffic static sites due to the additional load they place on the server.

I've also been told that they are simply a little out-of-date and that web teams have moved on to other methods for managing the types of issues that arise with the use of static web pages (for example, client-side JavaScript).

I'm not an overly technical person and so if a developer tells me that SSI are not the right way to go, I don't have a lot of ammunition with which to say otherwise.

So, my question is: are SSI an appropriate way to manage global parts of highly-trafficked static pages or have they gone the way of the splash page? Thanks for any wisdom anyone can impart.

Borders Magic Shelf: A Clever Take on the Home Page Promo AreaNovember 24

When I was researching sites for my carousel showcase I reviewed Borders.com and was immediately struck by the creative approach they have taken to their main home page promotional area.

Most sites would provide a fairly standard scrolling carousel of the titles they want to promote, with no guarantee that they will be of interest to the visitor (example).

However, Borders has made better use of this space by reproducing the experience of browsing the shelves in a book store in order to present a wider variety of titles in a familiar context.

Borders magic shelf

This provides the visitor with a much more engaging way to interact with this promotional content, while keeping the use of home page real estate to a manageable size.

Click on a title and an informative 'preview window' pops up with a summary of the product.

Preview window for a book

Although the design of the preview window could be improved (it's rather plain), I appreciate being able to navigate through the current row

Google's Starter Guide to SEONovember 20

Google have published their own SEO starter guide (PDF 550KB) which covers the basics of search engine optimization as it relates to the Google search engine.

If you're reasonable familiar with SEO there's not really anything new here.

However, if you're trying to educate a client or an internal stakeholder on this topic it's helpful to reference a document that is sanctioned by the world's largest search engine.

Error Message Design ShowcaseNovember 18

An important part of designing any kind of registration or login form is how you handle when things go wrong — a required field is missed or data is entered incorrectly.

How do you inform the user that they have made a mistake and help them in fixing it?

I thought it would be useful to collect some good examples of error message design to show how other web designers have tackled this issue.

Although often different in the specifics of their approach, these samples provide a sense of the main principles of good error message design:

• Show where the error(s) occurred in the form.
• Clearly explain what the error is (and how to fix it).
• Use color and possibly icons to make the error information stand out.

Not all of these examples are perfect. Some I've included more for the way they take a slightly different approach to a common problem.

However, in doing my research I was surprised by how poorly error messages are implemented on many sites. In many cases it seemed to have been added as an afterthought or without the involvement of a web designer.

View the error message design showcase.

Two New Web Site LaunchesNovember 12

The NCsoft web team has been busily working away, and recently launched redesigns for a couple of our game web sites.

The first is for our City of Heroes superhero game (shameless plug: 14-day free trial available).

This project involved combining the content from two previously separate sites — City of Heroes and City of Villains — into a single site and applying a more contemporary and exciting design.

We also made much better use of game art assets throughout the site.

As well as a visual refresh, it entailed a major overhaul of the IA which had grown organically over the years without much thought for the overall user experience.

In order to develop the new IA I used Websort to conduct initial card sorting studies to help me with the organization and categorization of the site.

We also used Flowplayer to create a pretty nice video player for all of our game videos and trai