The Awesome Power of Visualization 2: Death and Taxes 2007

Visuals that provide insights come from 1) a deep understanding of the goal / objectives 2) from thinking beyond what standard trend lines or stacked bar graphs can provide. Something non-normal to grab attention and yet communicate insights (sort of already contain recommendations and action items and not just data).

Kaushik, Avinash. Occam's Razor (2007). Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>Log Analysis

The AxsJAX Framework for ARIA

Charles L. Chen and T. V Raman have developed a common JavaScript framework to enhance the accessibility of AJAX-based applications. The framework is called AxsJAX, pronounced, 'Access JAX.'

Lemon, Gez. Juicy Studio (2007). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Ajax

B2B: Help Your Fans Convince Their Bosses

B2B websites must support a more complex buying process than B2C sites. Three key goals are to make a buyer's shortlist, offer a downloadable advocacy kit, and build a reputation for great service.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>Community

B2B Usability

User testing shows that business-to-business websites have substantially lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Back to Basics

Design and optimize products around basic features. The result--you will sell more products and improve the chances of people using secondary features (such as value added services).

Szuc, Daniel and Gerry Gaffney. Apogee (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability

Back to Basics

Web documents are nothing more than Source. For all of the inspiration, thought, and sweat that might go into a page, it is merely a mess of characters that happens to contain a lot of brackets. After five and a half years of actively building pages, it's occurring to me that a lot of developers haven't figured this out. What I see is not what they get.

Henick, Ben. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>HTML

Background Positioning vs. Centered Elements

When the browser is told to center a background image within that container, it has to decide where the actual center lies. In the case of an odd total pixel width, the browser must select one side or the other of the central odd pixel as the "center" of the container.

Bergevin, Holly and John Gallant. Position is Everything (2006). Design>Web Design>Document Design>CSS

A Backward-Compatible Style Sheet Switcher

You asked for it, you’ve got it: an Open Source alternate Style Sheet switcher that even works in Netscape Navigator 4.

Ludwin, Daniel. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>CSS>DHTML

Bad Design Can Be So Taxing

When people design Web forms, they often overlook some great sources of professional expertise in the world -- the existence of form design techniques with which nearly all users are familiar. This month, the cranky user looks at form design and management.

Seebach, Peter. IBM (2005). Design>Web Design>Forms

Bad Human Factors Designs

A scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow human factors principles.

Darnell, Michael J. baddesigns.com. Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability

A Bad Site: Martha Stewart Gets "Vasperized"

Even public relations web sites must be user-centered in design and content. Narcissistic, arrogant PR sites are counter-productive in the digital age of transparency, fault-admission, and altruism via shared information. Find out why Martha Talks is a web site failure from a usability and ethics point of view.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>Public Relations>Marketing

Baking up a Batch of PDF Files  

Customize how Acrobat works for you by building and using batch sequences. The beauty of a batch sequence is that you can modify or run it as you like.

Baker, Donna L. Adobe (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat

Balancing Act: Keeping Your Screen Movies Small and Beautiful

Screen recordings are a valuable tool for enhancing training, tutorials, manuals and websites. Companies use this technique to produce streaming and downloadable content. The recording tools are readily available and affordable. In this article, we explore some techniques, tips and tricks for recording sound, mouse movement and happenings from your screen to an AVI file. We will talk in both general terms and use specific examples. The examples pertain to HyperCam, a downloadable screen recording application from Hyperionics Technology. Like most screen recording applications, HyperCam captures the action from your Windows screen -- including cursor movements and sound -- and saves it to an AVI movie file.

Rice, William H. IV. WilliamRice.com (2002). Design>Documentation>Multimedia>Screen Captures

Balancing Image Quality and Speed: How to Shave Seconds off Your Download Time

The Internet has changed the way information is displayed. According to Weinman and Heavin, (1997) “It is no longer necessary to only create compelling visuals and information - the speed with which your site is viewed is also subject to critique,” (p. 36). Internet audiences are not captive. They can leave, and often do, at any time. It is the daunting task of web designers to not only draw the audience into a page, but to keep them there. One way to attract and keep an audience is by maximizing image quality while minimizing download time. This can be accomplished by choosing appropriate graphic file formats and by utilizing a variety of file size reduction techniques.

Larsen, Laurie and Christine Phillips. Usability News (2001). Design>Web Design>Assessment

Balancing Visual and Structural Complexity in Interaction Design

Usability is based on principles such as 'Less is more' and 'Keep it simple, stupid'. But there is more to simplicity than meets the eye. By reducing visual complexity at the cost of structural simplicity, you will give your users a hard time understanding and navigating the content of a web site.

GUUUI (2003). Design>Web Design>Interactive>User Centered Design

Ban Comic Sans

We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance.

Ban Comic Sans. Organizations>Graphic Design>Typography

The Banality of the Radical

As more Web designers begin transforming their sites from the tables-fonttags-single-pixel-gifs concoctions to stripped-down CSS chic, more observers are asking the questions: if the promise of CSS and standards was liberation from the tyranny of warring browser lords, why do all the CSS designs look the same? If this is the radical shift that will allow the Web to realize its potential, why does it appear so dull? Implicit in these questions is an increasing consensus that, in the words of Chris Casciano, 'Your CSS Bores Me'.

Kaminski, Chuck. Western Civilization (2004). Design>Web Design>CSS

Banned from Other Blog Sites

Freedom of expression is not ruling the blogosphere, because insecure bloggers will block your attempt to post comments, or even read their blog, should they decide you are "too controversial" or "too different from me". Opinionated blogs are the worst culprits of cowardly post blocking.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Banner Blindness, Human Cognition and Web Design

Benway and Lane have studied 'Banner Blindness' – the fact that people tend to ignore those big, flashy, colorful banners at the top of web pages. This is pretty interesting stuff, for the entire reason they are so big and obnoxious is to attract attention, yet they fail. Evidently nobody ever studied real users before -- they simply assumed that big, colorful items were visible. This paper, shows once again the importance of observations over logic when it comes to predicting human behavior. People behave the way they behave, not the way our logical analyses and wishes would have them behave. People follow their interests, their needs, their customs. They are driven by curiosity, boredom, emotion. And the 'they' refers to 'we': us.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Experience

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>Ethics>User Centered Design

Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss 'Obvious' Links

Suppose you are designing a web page where one particular link among many is likely to be the most used by visitors. For example, perhaps you have a web page for sending text messages to pagers. 'Send a message' is likely to be a very popular link, and it is important that all users notice it. On a travel reservations page, the designer wants to be sure that users notice the link for 'make a reservation.' Web guidelines usually recommend that to make an important item stand out, it should be near the top, and be large and/or brightly colored.

Panero, Jan Benway and David M. Lane. Internetworking (1998). Design>Web Design>Usability

Barras de Mosaicos

Las barras de mosaico (TileBars) son una técnica de visualización de búsquedas en documentos que permiten hacerse una idea más clara de lo que nos devuelve un buscador, añadiendo la serendipia (descubrimiento accidental) al concepto de relevancia.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2002). (Spanish) Design>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction

Barrierefreies-Webdesign

Barrierefreies Webdesign - manchmal auch Zugänglichkeit oder Accessibility genannt - ist die Kunst, Webseiten so zu programmieren, dass jeder sie lesen kann.

Hellbusch, Jan Eric. Barrierefreies-Webdesign. Design>Web Design>Accessibility

Basic Flash Concepts and Terms

Macromedia Flash uses a movie-making metaphor in how they define their concepts and areas of their interface. The basic terms used to describe the animation are the movie, stage and motion.

Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions (2002). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash