Some common usability mistakes:

1. Kitchen sink home page.
You know the one. The home page that lists EVERYTHING the company has to offer — the home page should set the tone for the entire site not be a collection of links.

2. Too many top-level navigation items.
The top-level navigation should be no more than 5-7 links for maximum scanability. There are some exceptions to this, Amazon has 13 top-level items for example. But it is safe to say most people are not designing sites as large as Amazon.com.

3. Overly complicated forms.
When generating sales leads or sign-up information there is no reason to ask 20 questions of your users. It is better to strike fast and get the lead before a user gets distracted or has second thoughts.

4. Too small of a font size.
Generally the body copy should be at least 12px for best readability. 13px is probably better. I see a lot of print designers designing websites with 10 and 11 point font. While this may be desirable for print design — it can be difficult to read on screen.

Remember, web design without good usability is merely decoration — and who wants to be a web decorator?

The code is as follows:

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<!--[if !IE 6]><!-->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" media="all" />
<!--<![endif]-->

In IE6, it looks like this:

Not pretty, but at least the content is readable.

I am sure there are some who think that I should support IE6 — that every site should fully support IE6. But to this I say: ‘No thanks’. Continued support of an almost 10 year old browser is a waste of time and money. Most projects are limited by budget, so we should spend our time wisely and continue to move the medium forward.

There is a new internet coming. An internet crafted through HTML 5 and CSS 3. An internet viewed on tablets and mobile devices — an internet where even Microsoft will be supporting these new technologies in their upcoming Internet Explorer 9.