October 2002 Archive
Off to Texas
I’m off to the great state of Texas until Thursday, so there won’t be any new entries for a few days. Have a good week, everyone!
What Does This Site Look Like?
I’m wondering what this site looks like via web enabled PDA, phone or hiptop device. Screenshots would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
This Is Children’s Book Text
Tanya Rabourn reviews the text sizing articles and compares the browser default settings to children’s book text:
For body type, I would like to not specify any size. Let the user make the choice. However, popular browsers don’t make the resizing options obvious and it’s been a long time since designers left text at the default size, so most users haven’t a clue that they have the power when you give it to them. They just see that in their browsers’ default settings the text looks huge and unsophisticated as if it were a children’s book.
Yes, this weblog has children’s book text, and I think it looks fine but not necessarily “unsophisticated.” One more time: the web is not print.
I used to care more about controlling the text size, but not anymore. I didn’t give up, I gave in - to the browser defaults. It seems the longer that I develop for the Web, the more I use browser defaults and leave the reading experience to the user.
User Friendly Is Not Always Business Friendly
Peter Merholz and Jeff Lash agree: user friendly web sites don’t always meet the needs of the business, i.e. make money.
In his most recent IAnything Goes, Jeff Flash discusses The myth of User-Centered Information Architecture:
As usability and information architecture started to gain prominence, the scales started to move in the other direction, sometimes too far. The cult(ure) of usability made people disregard the business aspects and throw their full faith in the users. This led to decision paralysis, where no decision could be made—no matter how small—without donning the white lab coat and testing it on the users. What is good for the user, however, is not always good for the business. Users were happy, but businesses failed.
Two weeks ago, Digital Web interviewed Peter Merholz, who had similar thoughts:
The primary problem of user-centered design is that people engage in it at the expense of all else. Oftentimes, what is *most* useful, usable, and meaningful to the end-user is untenable from a business perspective, and the product, while maybe popular, is a financial failure.
Update (October 25, 2002): A great discussion about this topic is going on over at WebWord.
User Centered Design vs. Usability
Peter-Paul Koch discusses UCD vs. Usability over at Digital-Web.
Joined Web-Graphics
I’m happy to announce that I’m now part of the web-graphics hypertext reporting team. Thanks Nate!
ia/ Is Now Accepting IApings
ia/ is now accepting IApings. Publicize your IA-related blog entries by simply pinging:
http://iaslash.org/tb.php?id=7031
Your entry will then appear on the ia/ slash right sidebar. Nice work Michael (aka jibbajabba).
JavaScript Should Enhance, but Not Take Away
That last post got me thinking about JavaScript and it’s use on the Web. A few years ago, scripted web widgets were all the rage. Many sites were using JavaScript to create enhanced interfaces. Unfortunately, many of those sites turned out to be unusable due to poor code, poor testing or a lack thereof. Other sites might have been usable to some, but completely inaccessible to disabled users.
Recently I’ve seen a lot more widgets that enhance the user experience without taking away from it. These widgets give users with JavaScript enabled browsers a little help using the site, but don’t render pages inaccessible for non-JavaScript users.
A few examples of this kind of widget can be found right here on this weblog. On each permalink page, I use four different mini-scripts, which (hopefully) make commenting easier. Can you find them all? (The buttons only count as one!) I’ll reveal the different scripts next week.
Using Web Widgets, Part 2
Just spotted Jodi Bollaert’s second article on Web Widget usability. Her first article focused on basic HTML widgets. This time around, she discusses scripted widgets such as expandable/collapseable menus, date pickers and scrollbars.
Now Broadcasting in RSS 2.0
The RSS 1.0 feed is no longer being updated and will self-destruct in 7 days. Please point your RSS reader to the new RSS 2.0 feed.
Cure Those CSS Blues
Three ways to find the answer to your CSS question:
- Start by searching the CSS-Discuss Archive. There’s a good chance someone already asked the same question.
- If that fails, many of the most common CSS-Discussions topics can be found (and edited) on the CSS-Discss Wiki.
- Finally, if an archive search returns only air and the Wiki moves a little too fast for your speed, subscribe to CSS-Discuss and ask someone yourself. Be sure to read the very definite groud rules before you post to the list.
This weblog entry was brought to you today by the style element and Eric Meyer.
Redesign Still In Progress
The visual end of the redesign is complete, which means that although I’m still making changes, you probably won’t notice most of them unless you view source and compare the markup to a previous version. Changes to come in the near future include improved accessibility, syndication feed upgrades, and some PHP magic. Not so near future changes include integration of MT-Search, the cool code by Jay Allen that’s now wrapped nicely into Movable Type.
An unfortunate consequence of the redesign is that I’ve been stricken by the IE6 Scrolling Bug. In September, Jeffrey Zeldman noted that it results from a caching problem and can be fixed using a simple JavaScript function. Soon I’ll include that script to fix the bug, but in the meantime if the text cuts off, we kindly ask that you hit F11 twice or use another browser such as Mozilla.
Update (October 24, 2002): Aaron Boodman replied to my inquiry regarding the JavaScript function. He told me to check the first five lines http://www.alistapart.com/tightmen.js and change “document.all.content” to the document.all.[the name of your content div here]. Works wonderfully. Please let me know if it causes any problems.
Storytelling and Web Design
Victor is looking for ways to use storytelling as the basis for IA and navigation:
I’m imagining the general storytelling format might make it more interesting and perhaps easier to digest the basic information even if the actual presentation - a few web pages in my case - don’t actually build up a whole lot of “dramatic elements”. I’ll retain the usual navigation so the visitors can bypass the story or get more details at the end.
HCI for the People
The School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University will be bringing us the HCI Fun project in November 2002:
The HCI Fun project aims to demonstrate to the public how science investigates making information technology more usable. We will be demonstrating, using interactive experiments, why technology is sometimes unusable and why this is not the user’s fault.
(via Usability News)
NUblog Finds Some Fresh Apples
Joe Clark of NUblog starts making the list of specific online-content genres. Over the next year, he says he’ll be pointing to “well-executed examples thereof and to examples that contradict the prevailing ethos.” Expect to see some exciting links from the NUblog over the next year.
Movable Type Turns One
Happy Birthday to Movable Type on its 1st birthday, and congratulations to Ben and Mena for creating a wonderful publishing tool. To celebrate, they’ve released version 2.5 of the steller software, which contains 85 updates, changes, additions and fixes. Woohoo!
Joshua Davis on Usability
Joshua Davis responds to claims that he’s anti-usability:
As my books suggests : If we are going to continue to build sites for all idiots then net will become a meeting place for all idiots.
However, I don’t think we should assume that everybody is so dumb. We should build projects that educate the user and continue to progress the medium - That way the net can be a place for both idiots and rocket scientists. (which is nice)
My work on barneys.com and motown.com (with the old crew at kioken) are great examples of sites which are pretty usable and don’t sacrifice visually.
(via WebWord)
Live Redesign in Progress
Inspired by Brad Lauster’s live redesign, I’ll be slightly updating the design of this site right before your eyes over the next week or so. As you can see, I’ve already rearranged the site to show the content first: a hopefully welcome change. There are still a few bugs to be worked out, so everything might not look right for a while. Be assured (or warned), I’ll be tweaking the interface slightly every few days. As always, comments on the design are welcome!
Donna Is Listening
Donna Maurer continues her insightful reflections on IA in the real world:
This is perhaps more important than all of the design techniques that I know. If I wasn’t able to listen deeply (and many, many people can’t), I might be able to make a usable site, but it wouldn’t be one that addresses needs that the users don’t even know they have.
Spam Stopping Tip
A more commonly known spam stopping tip is to never ever ever reply to spam. By replying and expecting to be removed from the spammers list, you’ve confirmed your existence. Now that the spammers know they have a live email address, they’ll continue to send to you spam.
In the September 26 Webreference Update, I learned a new way to stop the spammers: turning off automatic HTML image downloading in your email program. When HTML image downloading is on, the email contents is downloaded from the spammers server, also letting them know that they’ve got a live one at the other end of that email.
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