The basics of internet communication...

The more webpages I see, the more I am convinced that many people who design for the web forget why they're making webpages.

The simple goal of every webpage should be to communicate something.

If you don't have something to communicate, you shouldn't be putting something out on the web. If you do have something to communicate, make sure that every part of your webpage somehow enhances the communication of that information.

Don't use background and fonts that distract. Don't put animated graphics that distract. Make sure the information that you want to communicate is easily found, easily read, and easily understood.

That's it, that's all, that's the end of the story.

The reason I'm thinking of this today is because I've been checking out some online projects from a class that I'm in and because I was checking out the webpage of the high school that I attended back a decade and a half ago.

First, the KSU projects...the assignment was to make a multi-page website that met some requirements and took us through much of out Hands On Training book on DreamWeaver. Simple enough but with lots of room for individual projects that interest us, right?

Here's what I've got so far. I'm not thrilled with it, but it's a decent start. I'm particularly bothered by the black line in the top left. Can't figure out how to get rid of it. Any advice or help is always appreciated.

Here are some of the other folks' projects...

• Professional portfolio - What's the goal here? If it's to communicate how professional you are and what a good employee you'd be, I'm thinking that the use of garish background colors and changing font sizes and colors might distract from that message. I'm also bothered by the long list of menu buttons that requires scrolling down to see them all, but that's a lesser problem in my eyes.
• TACA webpage - The rest of the pages (here) seem pretty good at first glance, but the opening animation doesn't serve any purpose.

Lots of the other KSU class projects are in initial states of development, and it might not be fair to comment on them just yet.

A site that has been developed long enough that it should be far, far better than it's current state is New Albany High School's page. It's my alma matter, so I check in from time to time, but there just isn't much there that makes me think that anybody working on the pages has any sense of design whatsoever.

There's a huge black area in the center that accomplishes nothing. There's the weirdo rotating bulldog cube that is cutesy but accomplished nothing. Lots of the information pops up in a weird, below the black blob frameset, making things hard to read. Some of the pages use an older template that the site has clearly abandoned. And, dear god, some of the pages seem to be designed with the goal of being difficult to navigate. Animated graphics abound and are just in the way of communication rather than helping things out.

C'mon, folks. We've been on the web for a decade or so now, and we have to start learning how to use this thing.