Highlights of Week 02/2012
Posted by Michael Gaigg
Starting into the new year with a short list of high quality links. As always, your feedback and suggestions are greatly welcome 
Cheers!
- Cross Browser HTML5 Progress Bars In Depth (by Zoltan “Du Lac” Hawryluk)
- 15 Web Design Trends to Watch Out For in 2012 (by Jake Rocheleau)
- Profiling CSS for fun and profit. Optimization notes (by kangax)
- Google Maps: Designing the Modern Atlas (by Willem Van Lancker)
- Password strength verification with jQuery (by Jim Nielsen)
Highlights of Week 48/2010
Posted by Michael Gaigg
- What is an Experimental Typography? Trends and Examples (by Aimee Sway) - beautiful typographic examples.
- Human Behavior Theories That Can be Applied to Web Design (by Alexander Dawson) - what did you say about zombie's?
- What Every Web Developer Should Know About Front-End Performance (by Joel Sutherland) - don't let optimization slip under the table - it's to be taken seriously - start here...
- Access Ability (by the association of registered graphic designers of ontario) - A Practical Handbook on Accessible Graphic Design.
- 24 Ways (by Drew McLellan and Brian Suda) - Holiday season is here and 24 ways gives you 24 articles written by industry leaders. Enjoy.
- Silverlight 5 Plans Revealed (by Tim Heuer) - exciting new features ahead (beta in spring, release probably in Q3 2011) - XAML databinding debugging
- 15+ Free Holiday & Winter Vectors: Winterize (by Chris McConnell) - right in time, 17 vector graphics for the xmas season.
- The Digital Marketer's Master Library (by Mitch Joel) - marketing is part of our daily job/life and this list is incredible - so check it out.
- Australian DDA moves ahead (by Shrirang Prakash Sahasrabudhe) - Australia is now officially WCAG 2.0 for accessibility conformance.
Highlights of Week 38/2010
Posted by Michael Gaigg
- What Websites Can Learn From Mobile (by Michael Wilson) - funny, but my take-away is that 'constraints improve creative design'
- The Perfect Web Designer Should Not Exist (by Jason Gross) - base your design decisions on your sites' target audience and their goals - nothing else matters... uuuhhhhhhh....
- 97 Things to Know about Usability (by Jeff Sauro) - fantastic, fantastic, fantastic - must read!!
- Top 5 Web Font Design Trends to Follow (by Christina Warren) - WOFF-WOFF, love to hear that dog barking..
Highlights of Week 32/2010
Posted by Michael Gaigg
- Real Time Web Analytics Services – Best of (by hongkiat) - which web analytics service do you use?
- Guidelines for URI Design (by Jacob Gillespie) - URI structure is primarily important for user recognition and easy of use, search engine optimization is nice too.
- 8 Ways to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly (by Joel Reyes) - isn't it sweet that our mobiles will drive us towards better web development also? Something we should have been doing for a long time already?
- The ADA and the Web: Concerns and Misconceptions (by Jared Smith) - Is an accessibility law for e-commerce coming? Will this take the look of the web back to 1990? Jared has some nice Q&A there...
- Stop Designing Aesthetics, Start Designing Emotions (by John O’Nolan) - Design for emotions, definitely not a new concept but usually poorly covered. John takes a good stab on it.
- 5 Small Biz Web Design Trends to Watch (by Grace Smith) - Minimalism, Unique Photography, Bold Typography, Clear Calls to Action, A/B Testing - what more to say?
- iPad User Experience Guidelines (by UX Magazine) - with the source doc at Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for the iPad
Highlights of week 01/2010
Posted by Michael Gaigg
Happy New Year everybody! Hope you are healthy and fully motivated for a new decade of great things to happen. It's going to be great!
If the last decade gave us wikipedia, digg, facebook and all the other fascinating apps based on web 2.0, collaboration and connection then we can truly be excited of what lies ahead of us - I am!
Highlights of week 01/2010
Here is what made me happy last week:
- Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why (by Steve Silberman) - Belief is power, color, shape and labeling are important triggers for effectiveness; good article on wired; applicable to web design as well?!
- WAI initiative: Speak up! Tell organizations if their website is inaccessible - Take a few minutes to encourage web accessibility. Your voice counts.
- Myths & Misconceptions About Grid Systems - I'm a big believer in grid systems, but is it a one fits all? Do grid systems benefit each and every development? Is a website less valuable when not based on a grid system?
- Simple Numbers, Complicated Dates: 49 Innovative Calendars (by Michael Poh) - Start the New Year with some creative calendars.
- Web Design Trends and Resolutions for 2010 - A good collection and reflection by designreviver.com
- More Like This: A Design Pattern (by Greg Nudelman) - Design Patterns like 'More like this' help to speed up development, define a common language and should be part of everybody's toolkit
- Drop-Shadows and Gradients: Be Consistent in Your Visual Metaphors (by Nate Eagle) - How to design them correctly, please have a look, no excuses later!
Free book online: Search User Interfaces
Posted by Michael Gaigg
Marti Hearst generously made her upcoming book "Search User Interfaces" available for reading online. She is definitely not a newcomer to the scene and the book for sure not a Best-Of compilation, moreover the book is written in an academic fashion that backs up its theses usability studies, log studies, or some other form of proof (like it!) - like Harry Brignull states: "Caution: actual thought may be required when reading this book."
Contents: Search User Interfaces
The book has two main parts: search fundamentals (Chapters 1-7) and advanced topics (Chapters 8-12).
0: Preface
1: Design of Search User Interfaces
2: Evaluation of Search User Interfaces
3: Models of the Information Seeking Process
4: Query Specification
5: Presentation of Search Results
6: Query Reformulation
7: Supporting the Search Process
8: Integrating Navigation with Search
9: Personalization in Search
10: Information Visualization for Search Interfaces
11: Information Visualization for Text Analysis
12: Emerging Trends in Search Interfaces
References
Index
Design Guidelines: Content
Posted by Michael Gaigg
When writing content for the web it is essential to speak the language of your users. Become a word detective, use google trends. Words are the basic elements of links, get them precisely right to provide strong information scent. Identify trends, don't invent them. Look at the evolution of language.
Get to the essence of the message! Stop 'waving' on your webpage ('Welcome to the webpage of our company. We are proud to blah-blah...').
Always remember that the user is in charge, the user is impatient, nasty, demanding, in a hurry and in control to spend its time somewhere else (according to Jakob Nielsen: 'Users spend most of their time on other sites'). Online marketing is about giving attention (versus offline marketing is about getting attention).
Design Guidelines for Content
- Make information easy to find with clear headings and meaningful sub-headings (not ‘clever’ ones).
- Break up the information into manageable pieces.
- Put the pieces in a logical order for your readers.
- Keep your sentences short and employ one idea per paragraph.
- Use the ‘inverted pyramid’ style: conclusion (context) first, results later.
- Talk to your readers. Use "you".
- Write in the active voice (most of the time).
- Put the action in the verb, not in the nouns.
- Use your readers' words.
- Use half the word count (or less) than conventional writing.
- Use bulleted lists where appropriate – for a list of items and for parallel "if, then" sentences.
- Employ scannable text like highlighted keywords.
Best Practices
See my blog entry for Best Practices for accessible Content
References:
- Nielsen, J. (1997, 10 01). How Users Read on the Web. Alertbox: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
- Quesenbery, W. (2008, 05). Usability doesn’t stop when you write the content. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Usability_doesnt_stop_when_you_write_the_content.html
About Me
I'm Michael Gaigg, Lead UI Engineer at Esri's Prof. Services.
I have over 8 years of experience in designing map interfaces and can't stop thinking about improving them.
Help me by sharing your thoughts, ideas and comments.
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