#30873
Few usability professionals are as well-rounded as Avi Parush. Avi has worked in industry and academia, testing and design, the Old World and the New, with web applications and airplane cockpits, in operating rooms and on the bridges of ships.
Anderson, Clifford. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>Interviews>Web Design>Usability
#28322
Avoid Edge Cases by Designing Up Front
Better planning and a beefed-up style guide may be exactly what you need to avoid markup derangement or, worse, a dysfunctional product.
Henick, Ben. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Project Management>CSS
#30661
Avoid Unnecessary Ajax Traffic with Session State
Where possible, creating Web applications -- including Ajax-based applications -- in a RESTful way avoids a large class of bugs. However, a pitfall of REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is sending duplicate data across similar XMLHttpRequests. This tip shows how the moderate use of session cookies can maintain just enough server-side state to significantly reduce client-server traffic, while still allowing fallback to cookie-free operation.
Mertz, David. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax
#27939
On the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link: it should bring up a new page. Within-page links violate this model and thus cause confusion.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Design>Web Design>Hypertext
#26363
Describes an alternative to automatic page refresh in HTML. Automatic page refresh can confuse users with cognitive disabilities when a page reloads without the user's request. This article provides you with instructions on how to apply explicit manual control of page refreshing.
Microsoft (2003). Design>Accessibility>Web Design
#25968
Describes an alternative to automatic page refresh in HTML. Automatic page refresh can confuse users with cognitive disabilities when a page reloads without the user's request. This article provides you with instructions on how to apply explicit manual control of page refreshing.
Microsoft (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>DHTML
#21012
Avoiding Bias from the Survivor Effect
Only a few of the survey sites we analyzed in 2000 are still around. We can safely assume that the surviving sites are not a random sample of the original group, but rather that significant differences exist between the sites that made it and those that died. Survival might be due partly to luck, but it is mainly a result of good management and an understanding of Internet fundamentals. Thus, the surviving sites are likely to be disproportionately clued-in about what it takes to run an online business.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Usability>Methods>Web Design
#20660
AWARE: Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education Center
AWARE stands for Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education, and its mission is to serve as a central resource for web authors for learning about web accessibility.
#30471
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
#27694
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
#22586
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
#27031
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
#13267
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
#27930
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
#20225
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
#25462
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
#24577
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
#13327
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
#23280
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
#27617
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
#24589
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
#18395
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
#29552
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
#13070
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
#19203
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
