Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them (Interactive Technologies)

L

Labels

aligning consistently, 146

aligning with the bottoms of text fields, 144, 145

careful placement of, 154, 156

connecting with fields or buttons visually, 145

guidelines for aligning, 145-146

inconsistent horizontal alignment of, 143

lame placement of, 142-146

placing too far from a field or control, 142

sloppy vertical label alignment of, 143

on tabs, 274-276

wording carefully for menus , 132-133

Lame Label Placement blooper, 142-146

language-specific sites, unneeded choice, 59

large websites , avoiding multiple competing navigation schemes, 92, 93

LATimes.com. See Los Angeles Times website

Latin filler for website mockups , 39

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates website. See Erlbaum.com

layout of forms, 154, 156

LCD monitors , viewing at an angle, 265

left-aligned labels, well-positioned, 146

left alignment, making the official default for table cells , 260

Legal Disclaimer for a website, consisting of fake Latin filler, 39, 40

legal obstacles to data transfer across organization boundaries, 51

legibility, ensuring for text, 249-251

legible text, ensuring on all computers and browsers, 254

legitimate data, beware of rejecting, 127

lengthy links, 196, 197, 198-199

letter-case, making irrelevant, 128

lexicon enforcer, 214

lexicon of allowed keywords, 178, 182. See also site lexicon

"line-mode" browser, 5-6

link appearance bloopers, 221-244

link color change, preventing, 241-242

link colors, using nonstandard, 242

link labels

keeping short, 196

leaving underlined , 232

linking to content, 30, 32

links

avoiding long lists of, 198-199

between documents, 240

burying in text, 236-240

deceptive duplicate, 93-102

distinct, 93

distinguishing followed from unfollowed, 240-244

duplication of, 93

fulfilling the promise of, 106

graphical, 224

labeling as actions versus objects, 214

lengthy, 196, 197, 198-199

missing, 116-119

multiline, 234-236

not allowing to wrap, 235

presenting, 221

textual, 222-224, 225

tiny fonts in, 248-249

title case versus sentence case, 214

wrapped, 234-236

Links Don't Look Like Links blooper, 222-226

linnaean system, 21, 24

listservs, changing settings on, 151

"literal text" versus "boolean" expressions, 161

literature search of a website's subject, 24

LIU.edu. See Long Island University's website

LLBean.com

menu defaults provided by, 134

menus lacking valid defaults, 131-133

radiobuttons with no logical default, 129

sloppy vertical label alignment, 143, 144

login status, maintaining for each user , 52

logins

designing universal, 52

requiring repeated, 49-51

Long Island University's website

checkboxes misused as radiobuttons, 147

labels closest to the next checkbox, 142

radiobuttons replacing erroneous checkboxes, 149

Looks Editable but Isn't blooper, 149-151

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet", searching for, 39

Los Angeles Times website

competing Search boxes, 167-168

false and true duplicate hits, 174-175

losing data, considering to be a showstopper bug, 52

Lost In Space: Current Page Not Indicated blooper, 107-111

lower case, 217

Lycos.com, similar looking hits, 170-171