I’ve written before about the importance of usability, but here’s a useful list of guidelines for anyone interested in usability for blogs.


Jakob Nielsen, the author of the list, is something of a zealot when it comes to usability, although he takes things to extremes he does make some useful points.

Here’s one guideline on a practice to avoid from the list which I liked:

Links Don’t Say Where They Go - Many weblog authors seem to think it’s cool to write link anchors like: “some people think” or “there’s more here and here.” Remember one of the basics of the Web: Life is too short to click on an unknown.

I couldn’t agree more, I come across this ambiguous linking style quite often and am much less likely to follow one of those links than I am to follow a link with good signals about where I’m going to end up. If you want people to follow you links you better let them know where they’re going.