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Designing web pages is a black art, it sometimes seems. Basically there are a lot of little helper programs that browsers understand that help web pages seem more like applications and less like static pages. If you’re not a web developer, you would be amazed at the cryptic gibberish of a half dozen languages that it takes to make seemingly simple effects a reality in a web browser.

The way that Gmail behaves, to give a popular example, is the product of heaps and heaps of behind-the-scenes wizardry executed by some very smart people intent on having a cool, intuitive web site. Facebook is another great example, I feel, as well as hulu.com.

But even when you find that slick piece of wizardry, you still have to fight with the web browsers themselves, as some of them refuse to follow standards in attempt to leverage operating system market share to gain web browser market share. Looking at you, Internet Explorer 6.

If you think I’m making that up, go up to any web designer and say “IE6″ and then run, because that person will immediately break something large… possibly on or about your person.

Sometimes web design seems like trying to get an automatic transmission to work with a horse and cart.

On the flip side, some of the things these helper applications can do are extremely annoying and, in my opinion, to be avoided at all times. One such black spell one can cast is to effectively disable the “back” button in a users browser. Most of us have probably experienced this, and it’s terrible.

Can you imagine wanting to leave a normal brick-and-mortar store, only to have the door to the outside lock you in? If you were the store owner, would you do that to your customers? Probably not, I imagine. So why is it ok to do it to them on your site?

Well, I don’t think it is. My philosophy with web pages is that good content will keep interested people coming around. I think its a much better business practice to draw traffic than to drive traffic to your web site.

Driving traffic is what the old media methods tried to do. There was almost no targeting, so your message went out to everyone. Many people who didn’t care were forced to see it, and you were forced to pay to broadcast to everyone… even people who didn’t care!

The most amazing part of the Internet is that everyone starts out with the same voice. So, having a web site is not like buying a TV or Radio ad where more money always means more exposure, although some people do still try to behave that way. I encourage people to spend those resources instead on creating good content on their own site. Draw traffic. Don’t try to drive it!

If you should be lucky enough to get someone’s attention, don’t abuse your relationship by disabling features of their experience. Treat them like a guest, not like a shoplifter.

Now, there may be times, such as during a shopping cart checkout procedure, where allowing the back button to work would create a double charge on someone’s bill, or cause two rows to be inserted into a database but I think that ultimately these technical concerns are the responsibility of the programmers to figure out, not the user.

I think relationships are everything in business. Let’s work together!