Your preferences in website design

[Durandal]

What do you guys like? I'm just curious about some of the following:

Menu buttons across the top of the screen? Or on the side?

Down the side, personally.

Plain buttons? Or animated buttons?

Rollover buttons are probably the best. Animated stuff is just distracting.

Fluid-width pages? Or fixed-width pages?

You tend to post essays, and really wide paragraphs tend to make text harder to read. There's a reason every newspaper website uses fixed-width divs for their text.

Flash? Or no Flash?

What would you need Flash for?

Frames? Or no frames?

There are entire societies dedicated to the eradication of frames from the Internet. They're a nightmare in terms of page focus and following links, with behaviors that vary from browser to browser. I'd say you should avoid them.

[Starglider]

While we're at it, what do you guys think of this layout? It's a sample page for a project I'm working on. It's just for the proof of concept and maybe early public beta, we'd definitely hire at least one professional web designer to redo it if the project gets stage two (i.e. VC) funding.

[Edi]

I'll amend my earlier post regarding frames, wasn't thinkiing straight. They're a bad idea. Fluid width pages are good, but forcing text to fixed width columns might not be a bad idea in some cases.

[Argosh]

What do you guys like?

Menu buttons across the top of the screen, plain buttons, fixed width and definitely no flash.

[General Zod]

While we're at it, what do you guys think of this layout? It's a sample page for a project I'm working on. It's just for the proof of concept and maybe early public beta, we'd definitely hire at least one professional web designer to redo it if the project gets stage two (i.e. VC) funding.

Useful links are too far down the page. They need to be on the top or the side where people will expect them or they'll get missed. Transposing the login box with the useful links might work. Otherwise it's tolerable.

[RogueIce]

I like frames. I can see where it might be a bit annoying for something like Mike's site or a place with a lot of articles and essays people might want to link to.

Of course the one site I ever made in earnest was for a gaming group. So to me it was better to have people go to the main page and see all of it, rather than simply going straight to any individual subpages.

However, this

There are entire societies dedicated to the eradication of frames from the Internet. They're a nightmare in terms of page focus and following links, with behaviors that vary from browser to browser. I'd say you should avoid them.

is something I have never heard of nor come across before. I've never had any bad experiences where a website had frames, either when I made it or was just visiting. Can anyone elaborate?

[Beowulf]

I like frames. I can see where it might be a bit annoying for something like Mike's site or a place with a lot of articles and essays people might want to link to.

Of course the one site I ever made in earnest was for a gaming group. So to me it was better to have people go to the main page and see all of it, rather than simply going straight to any individual subpages.

However, this

There are entire societies dedicated to the eradication of frames from the Internet. They're a nightmare in terms of page focus and following links, with behaviors that vary from browser to browser. I'd say you should avoid them.

is something I have never heard of nor come across before. I've never had any bad experiences where a website had frames, either when I made it or was just visiting. Can anyone elaborate?

If you go to share a site, and it's in frames, and all you do is C&P the address bar, they end up at the front of the site. Also, the only title you see is that of the front page.

Anyway, you can emulate the behavior of frames with the use of CSS, and not have to worry about any of the preceding problems.

[RogueIce]

If you go to share a site, and it's in frames, and all you do is C&P the address bar, they end up at the front of the site. Also, the only title you see is that of the front page.

Yeah, I know about that. As I said, for what I used it for (a gaming "clan" site) that's what I wanted people to do anyway. So they'd look around at everything and maybe decide they want to join.

Though I'll say for something like Mike's site or indeed most personal sites, no frames would be better. Still, I'm asking about problems people have with them besides that, since it can be a useful deliberate feature.

Anyway, you can emulate the behavior of frames with the use of CSS, and not have to worry about any of the preceding problems.

Ah yes, that's probably like when I tried to do a rollover button thing. Something I probably could figure out (and it might be easier considering how long ago it was since I tried the rollover thing) but I'd have to play around with a bit to make work. Whereas I know how to make frames work.

Laziness could easily win the day for me...

[muse]

Buttons on the left side going down. Plain buttons, fixed width page, no frames, and no flash. Keep it simple & clean so it loads real fast.

[Hugh]

Though I'll say for something like Mike's site or indeed most personal sites, no frames would be better. Still, I'm asking about problems people have with them besides that, since it can be a useful deliberate feature.

Here's one: Search engines will most likely index the individual pages, since that's where the content is. So when people find your site via Google, they'll be sent directly to the content. Not only they won't see your entrance page, they won't even see the navigation elements.

Of course, you can always put a "Home" or "Show menu" link on every page. That's what I've seen most frame-based websites doing.