A colleague of mine just dug up some old training material that I created in 2003 for an internal HTML training course at my company. We had a chuckle about the following section:
Tables are used to give the designer greater control over the layout of the page and positioning of elements. Tables give web pages their beauty by facilitating exact layouts in ways that normal formatting (align etc) doesn’t. Tables are where HTML gets REALLY REALLY cool!
There is also some great stuff in there about effective use of the <font> tag, but I have already embarassed myself enough for one day.
When I wrote that I was oblivious to the benefits of semantic markup and standards compliance. We never had an issue about building our site using the table methods and we were pretty bloody good at it. It’s amazing how things have changed in just 4 years!
Kathy Sierra, the author of the brilliant user experience blog, Creating Passionate Users, has had her life thrown into turmoil by some vicious comments and posts circulating the blogosphere.
That a life can be ruined by a few people with evil in their hearts is shocking. Surely those accused - I think Kathy does a pretty good job at pointing the finger at those she assumes are responsible - are in a position to know that they can easily be found. Hey, If the RIAA can find you then surely the authorities will be able to locate those responsible for the comments.
I look forward to them being brought to justice and Kathy returning to her life.
A great little post on the Information Architects Japan site highlighting some basic but necessary typographic rules of thumb. Many of which I have not implemented on this blog (yet).
Following on from my recent post about Photoshop moving online, I read this great post on Joel Spolsky’s site. Joel asserts that the new API is HTML and that the Windows API is in trouble. His premise is this;
- People buy an operating system because of the applications they can run on it
- People buy Windows because you can run a great variety of apps on it
- People don’t buy Mac’s or Sun’s not because they are inferior operating systems but because of the limited apps available
I definitely agree with that. I have resisted buying a Mac for a long time because I know what Windows apps work for me. I am now seriously considering buying a Mac with an Intel chip and BootCamp. Best of both worlds hey?
When this new and exciting arena of rich web apps matures, what will Microsoft’s competitive advantage be? It won’t be that their OS has the most applications written for it.
When Mac users and Linux users and Sun users are able to access the same software online as Windows users, people will pay more attention to the features, stability and security of the OS than they will to the variety of software that was written for that platform.
Further, it seems logical that developers will embrace the cross platform HTML API in order to increase their reach and OS compatibility.
Whether the application is built in Ajax or Flash or some other technology is irrelevant, although I do agree with Jeff Atwood that JavaScript will become more popular on the grounds that that is where the lions share of the development community is working.
The new uTorrent web interface is a great example of the power of Ajax to avail the core features of a desktop app online. It’s lacking a bit of polish and all of the features of the desktop version but it lets you get the job done!
Viacom’s suing of Google for $US 1 million is laughable. Copyright is such a massive issue in this age of digital distribution and it appears that copyright holders are getting increasingly desperate in their attempts to plug the dike.
Viacom and Google were obviously unable to reach a compromise in their negotiations so Viacom decided to become the schoolyard bully who didn’t like it when he got pushed around and ran to the head master.
“After months of ongoing discussions with YouTube and Google, it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users,” Viacom said. “Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video.”
It is slack, lazy, opportunistic, unnecessarily aggressive and ultimately foolish for Viacom to pursue Google over this. GoogTube certainly isn’t the only place in the world where Viacom’s copyright is being infringed but they are the only target because they have the deepest pockets.
Seems to me that Viacom’s legal department have spotted some low hanging fruit and they are heading in for the harvest.
I think this page is more of a criminal web page than a web page about a criminal.
I get angry every time I go to MySpace. Thing is, I just don’t get it! I don’t understand how a site that breaks just about every researched, well understood and documented usability/user experience rule or principle can be one of the most popular and successful properties on the internet. It would have been OK in 1998 but it looks like that is where it is trapped and will stay forever as long as people keep using it like they do!
I ‘get’ user generated. I heart user generated. I think user generated is what the internet is all about. But, I don’t get MySpace!
The page in question, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, was created by the Arkansas Police Department as an attempt to raise public awareness of a wanted armed robber. It seems like a good idea and I’m really impressed with the constabulary embracing the internet and being open to trying new things.
What pisses me off most is the fact that my entire office jumped up and came to my desk when my computer was hijacked by the Citizens on Patrol music that started playing on page load. Further, take a look at the page! Even the MySpace navigation has been made illegible by the greenback background. How can MySpace allow their own navigation style to be hijacked by the user?
So, I guess I really don’t see how the social attraction of MySpace can remain with such poor usability, usefulness, readability and desirability
At a time when my team is busy defining a user experience strategy, I have to ask myself, why do we bother?
What do you do when you look at your competitors solution and say “yep, they nailed that one”?
As a designer, you are fighting hard to try to come up with a better way but you keep coming back to your competitors solution, the one that has nailed it.
At what point do you stop pulling your hair out and admit that you are unable to come up with a better way of doing something? Further, what do you do at that point? Do you:
- Reapply with pride - effectively copy what your competition has done
- Deliver a weaker offering - effectively conceed defeat to your competitor in order to ensure you won’t be accused of copying?
The answer is often controversial, as evidenced by the Yahoo! vs. Digg debate from a few weeks ago, but I maintain that there is nothing wrong with accepting the fact that someone else got something right before you did - as long as it doesn’t happen all the time.
Sometimes it is difficult to know whether you are suffering a creative block or whether there really is not a better way. Ask your peers to help, more often than not, they will help spark some creativity but sometimes, all you can do is say “well done Competitor X, the best I can do is mimic”.
I’m a convert!
I have always worked in a Microsoft shop. I have always worked with ASP, .NET, IIS and Windows. I have always wondered how I might go about setting up a CMS, shopping cart, BB or blog. I have done some research into these areas in the past and ended up throwing it all into the too hard basket.
I always avoided looking at Apache/PHP solutions because I figured I’d best go with what I know and stick to the technologies and languages that I was familiar with. Foolish!
In setting up this blog, I decided on WordPress as an engine, partly because I knew I could get it running on my Windows server.
When a mate offered me some space on his Apache server, I jumped at it and very quickly discovered the beautiful world of 1 click installation. Thanks fantastico!
I’ve just played with a bunch of shopping carts, CMS’ and BB’s and am now confident that I could set up these products on sites that I build.
Every question I have had has been answered by a quick Google search and there is generally a plugin/installer/script/instruction within easy reach.
Hmm, getting PHP, MySQL and Mambo running on my Windows box is going to be tough. Oh, apparently not! Thanks mambosolutions!
Anyway, I’m sure that I am preaching to the converted. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to get here, but I’m very glad that I have finally arrived. Now, I’m off to learn some PHP.
Massive news today that Adobe are planning to release an online version of Photoshop within 6 months.
This is an enormous leap and highlights the potential that Ajax and Flash driven rich interfaces have to change the way we use computers.
One of the more interesting points is that Adobe plan to make this online Photoshop free for consumers. They expect to make revenue from advertising on the site, acknowledging that if it works for Google, then it can work for us. I have been a fan of picnik but I fear that when presented with a choice of online photo editor, the peeps will vote for the Photoshop brand.
Great to see Adobe coming out on the front foot with this one, instead of trying to protect their shrink wrapped products. I think it will prove successful. Microsoft - are you watching?
