THE WEB CAN BE A BETTER PLACE TO SURF AND DO BUSINESS !
Last Updated: October 30, 2004
[August 26, 2002]
On vacation at last! I'll be back blogging September 2, or so.
[August 24, 2002]
Meg Hourihan (O'Reilly Network): The Sanctity of Elements, or Why You Shouldn't be Double-clicking in a <textarea> - "As the expert, you have a responsibility to respond with suggestions that make sense. Help your client or other team members understand why elements act the way they do; explain why it's important to have GUI widgets respond in standard ways. Many times people are making suggestions to be helpful and don't have the same level of experience as you. Just as a client explains his business rules to you, you can explain design constraints to him. A successful client relationship is founded on communication. ... Building a strong client relationship, whether you're working with an external client or you're an interface designer butting heads with someone from the sales department, will help you build a consistent and usable Web site."
[August 23, 2002]
Boxes and Arrows: Recording Screen Activity During Usability Testing - "There is one obvious limitation to the software approach-it will only record what happens on the screen. It won't record users themselves. If you want to learn something from the body language and physical movements of the user then you'll still need a camcorder."
adrian holovaty: Coloring off-site links vs. in-site links - "... And using three, maybe four, different link colors (in-site link, off-site link, visited link, link hover) on the same page could get confusing quickly. My opinion: This is technological overkill."
I Want Media: Christopher M. Schroeder: The Future of News Sites is 'Content Orbiting' - "People don't just come into the site, read the story and leave. They're engaged, they stay, they explore."
Coming soon: Opera 7 - "Over one year ago Opera's engineers started working on two separate development branches. One of them later became the successful Opera 6, released in December 2001. The latter was a longer project: optimizing Opera's core with the latest and best in standards support and features, while not compromising speed."
[August 18, 2002]
Craig Saila: Web Building Tips
Semi-Daily Journal: Is UNIX the Answer for Office Workers?: It Can Be
WebmasterWorld: "Do you put a phone number on your site? Is it worth the trouble?"
[August 16, 2002]
New Architect: Making Mistakes Well - "Contingency design is design for when things go wrong. It's error messaging, graphic design, instructive text, information architecture, and customer service that helps visitors when a problem occurs. Yet no matter how much testing and quality assurance has gone into a Web site, customers will encounter problems. And, Web sites consistently fail their customers at crisis points."
ZDNet: "Users of Mozilla 1.0 are happy with its ability to block pop-up ads on the Web, but the latest Netscape release doesn't use this functionality"
Real World Style: Environmental Style - "Without suggesting a dogmatic way of setting up your style sheets, I want to present a technique that works for me. This technique is closely tied with the way you mark up the HTML documents that are paired with the style sheets. I call it Environmental Style. Not because it is somehow more 'green' than other techniques, but because it is based on styling elements within a given environment on a page."
User Interface 7 East conference: Interview with Gerry McGovern - "XML is a powerful toolkit for metadata standards. But, if you don't choose the right metadata, XML is useless. XML can only work when there is a common approach to metadata. ... Metadata delivers essential information such as: who, what, when. Who wrote it? What is it about (the summary)? What subject is it under (the classification)? When was it published?"
In My Experience: People salivate for "www."
SAP Design Guild: Color Glossary
[August 14, 2002]
Digital Web Magazine: An interview with Jeffrey Veen and Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path - "When you develop a Web site, you play a game of constraint and compromise. There are dramatic technical constraints, not to mention design languages, marketing messages, usability concerns, and budget issues. To me, IA plays a key role in representing the user's goals against all these internal limitations. ... IA is the bridge between the conceptual and strategic aspects of site development and the practical matters of design and implementation. IA can shape your site in a way that draws people in, entices them to explore, helps them find what they're looking for, and encourages them to come back. But IA won't help you if your content isn't compelling."
John Patrick: "The future is extremely bright - we're only 5% in of the Internet's ability with 95% to go."
[August 13, 2002]
macnyt.dk: The history of the Apple logo (via WebReference) - "The full story on the genesis of the logo, it's appearance, meaning and interpretations."
Gary Marchionini: Co-evolution of user and organizational interfaces: A longitudinal case study of WWW dissemination of national statistics (about 440K as .PDF file) - "The data systems, policies and procedures, corporate culture, and public face of an agency or institution make up its organizational interface. This case study describes how user interfaces for the Bureau of Labor Statistics website evolved over a five year period along with the larger organizational interface and how this co-evolution has influenced the institution itself. Interviews with BLS staff and transaction log analysis are the foci in this analysis that also included user information-seeking studies and user interface prototyping and testing."
[August 12, 2002]
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra: 1930-2002 - "Throughout his scientific career, Dijkstra formulated and pursued the highest academic ideals of scientific rigour untainted by commercial, managerial, or political considerations. Simplicity, beauty, and eloquence were his hallmarks, and his uncompromising insistence on elegance in programming and mathematics was an inspiration to thousands."
[August 10, 2002]
Jill Walker - Hypertext 2002 (via McGee's Musings): Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web. - "Search engines like Google interpret links to a web page as objective, peer-endorsed and machine-readable signs of value. Links have become the currency of the Web. With this economic value they also have power, affecting accessibility and knowledge on the Web. ... This short paper is a first attempt to scan the field from a critical, humanist perspective."
Paul Boutin: Web Standards for Hard Times
A-Prompt: Web Accessibility Verifier - "A-Prompt (Accessibility Prompt) is a software tool designed to improve the usability of HTML documents by evaluating Web pages for accessibility barriers and then providing developers with a fast and easy way to make the necessary repairs."
Wired News: Raising the Accessibility Bar - "Stanford University's Archimedes Project is working to make information accessible to everyone -- not just individuals with disabilities, but also the elderly, those who can't read and just about anyone else who uses computers and information appliances."
[August 9, 2002]
WebmasterBase: Debate - Design Is Not Dead! - "The Internet is changing the world, and design is the central process that makes this possible. Is design dead? It's not even out of diapers yet."
Digital Web Magazine: Smarter Content Publishing - "Building a semantic website to increase the efficiency and usability of publishing systems"
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, one of the creators of the art and science of computer programming, has died. He was 72.
[August 8, 2002]
L.Uden and A.Dix: Iconic Interfaces For Kids On The Internet (about 77K as .PDF file) - "Children in schools are increasingly using the Internet to search for information to use in their school work. Although web browsers enable users to search for information easily, the interface is not well suited to children who have limited reading and spelling abilities. To overcome this, a graphic interface is needed. The design of an effective iconic interface is not a simple task. We must understand the mental models of the children so that appropriate icons can be developed."
[August 7, 2002]
Macromedia - Designer Developer: The Usability Testing Process for Pet Market - "This article describes some of our user feedback and the changes we made to Pet Market to improve the user experience. Some of what we found surprised us because it didn't agree 100% with traditional principles of usable web design. Most of what we found inspired us because it demonstrated how well Macromedia Flash MX benefits users on a website if designed appropriately."
Think Research: Transparent Computing - "Responsive to your every word and gesture, future interfaces will let you focus on tasks instead of technology."
[August 6, 2002]
Step Two Designs: What are the goals of a CMS? - "Content management systems should be made to meet specific business goals. Without a clear vision of these goals, it is impossible to track the success of the project, or ensure that the benefits are maximised."
Dan Gillmor: "User Interface, User Experience -- Where's It Going?"
[August 5, 2002]
Dey Alexander: Interview Questions for Usability Analysts - "A list of questions (sourced from various mailing lists) that can be adapted for use by interview panels seeking to employ web usability analysts/designers."
[August 3, 2002]
Usability.gov: Searching Vs. Linking on the Web (about 790K as .PDF file) - "This report summarizes the available research on how users search for information within Web sites. It addresses topics such as users' search behaviors, how to improve users' accuracy and success in finding information by using a site's search capability and site links, and when to encourage users to use site links versus the search capability to find information. ... Linking requires less effort from users, and tends to get them to desired content faster. To encourage linking versus searching to find products or information, provide more links on pages. Links should be descriptive, distinguishable from related links, and clearly represent users' needs."
Streaming Media World: Inside Skip Intro: An Author Interview - "Ultimately, Nielsen has many great things to teach about usability, but all his approaches are based on familiarity with controls, etc. I think that we need to break away from this mode of thinking. Forcing familiarity is a great thing because it ensures every interface works the same way, but too much of it breeds staleness and a lack of innovation. Do we really want to be using the same mouse and scrollbar for years to come? There has got to be a better way!"
[August 2, 2002]
Usability News: Comment: Technical Accessibility - a Means, not an End - "A truly accessible design is one that is usable, and not just one that passes some arbitrary technical milestones."
The Web didn't kill libraries. It's the new draw.
Home Archive Index
Location: Netanya, Israel. My email address is LucDesk.
Privacy Policy. © 2000-2006 Lucian Millis.