Archive for 2009
Common examples of poor hyperlinking
Our friends over at SitePoint.com have rounded up some humorously poor practices of embedding links into your content. They’ve dubbed these outlaws as “The Rogue’s Gallery.” I whole-heartedly agree with their description of “The Telemarketer” The scourge of hypertext, the telemarketer link includes a hovering box displaying a thumbnail preview of the target web page. What possible use is there for a small blurry thumbnail of the link target that pops-up and obscures the surrounding text? And what about those double-underlined advertising links? Users should... [read more]
Open source web analytics: piwik
Here’s an interesting alternative to Google Analytics…has anyone tried piwik yet? Features include: A customizable dashboard showing traffic, viewing patterns, and referrer details. Ability to show traffic patterns over time (so you can see if there was uptake related to your releases) and how numbers are looking over the last year. Embeddable widgets and APIs to provide access to your piwik data. Here’s the high level messaging…. Piwik is a downloadable, open source (GPL licensed) web analytics software program. It provides you with detailed reports on your website visitors:... [read more]
Adobe CS 4 Gripes
Before upgrading to CS 4, you might want to take a look at this website for some screenshots of all the User Interface problems that are springing up: http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/ Fair warning, there’s some strong language there – not for the faint of heart. Of course, all those swear words were brand new to me. It seems complaints about CS 4 have been pretty widespread and there have also been reports of horrible driver issues (slowness, etc.) with Photoshop CS 4. If you’re thinking about upgrading, maybe wait a bit for Adobe to iron out the problems. And if you’re... [read more]
eduWeb 2009: Chicago
eduWeb conference is in Chicago this year, July 20-22. The keynote speaker is Dimitri Glazkov, a Software Engineer at Google, and their tracks fall under the topics of Marketing/Communications, Design & Development, and one just called “Get it Done.” While they are still filling up their schedule, the following workshops have been announced: 1) “Student Recruitment in the Online World: Communicating from First Web Search to Final Enrollment”, by Bob Johnson, Bob Johnson Consultling 2) “Make It Last: Design for the Future, DO Your Homework Today”, by... [read more]
Surfing on your phone is a “cringeworthy process”
You’ve got to love Jakob Nielsen’s use of the English language. In his Feb 17th Alertbox article “Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998” he discusses the similarities he uncovered during a recent usability test of mobile sites: Abysmal success rates Download times dominate the user experience Scrolling causes major usability problems Bloated pages hurt users (not physically I hope) Unfamiliarity with a browser’s user interface limits the user’s options JavaScript crashed and problems with advanced media types (video, flash, etc) Reluctant to use websites on mobile... [read more]
