Charles Jeter

This blog is about Technical Communication--mostly. I may stray from time to time into family oriented posts. Located in sunny San Diego, loving the Southern California weather.

Jeter, Charles. Charles Jeter. Resources>TC>Web Design>Blogs

Charlie Kreitzberg on Web 2.0 and You

This is the recording of the presentation from the Catalyze Community monthly webcast featuring Charlie Kreitzberg on December 13, 2007. Charlie spoke on "Web 2 and You - How Web 2.0 Will Catapult Business Analysts and Usability Professionals into Center Stage" which examined his models for understanding Web 2.0 and explored the vast opportunities for professionals who define and design new software and websites.

Catalyze (2007). Design>Collaboration>User Experience>Web Design

Cheaper Over Better: Why Web Clients Settle for Less

Schumacher explains why clients hire bad web designers (and what good web designers can do about it).

Schumacher, Adam. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Consulting

Check Your PHP Code at Every Level With Unit Tests

Test-driven development and unit tests are the latest way to make sure your code is behaving as you expect through changes and refactoring. Find out how to unit test your PHP code at the module, database, and user interface (UI) level.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2006). Design>Web Design>Server Side Includes>PHP

Check Your Website's Usability Quickly and Cheaply

Anybody who hasn't done a usability study desperately needs to. No one knows yet how to design the perfect user interface, so even simple do-it-yourself studies often show you serious problems.

Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Checking Out or Getting Out? Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment

People used to abandon online shopping carts because they didn't understand how online shopping works. Now, it's because they do.

Janisch, Troy. Icon Interactive. Design>Web Design>E Commerce>User Centered Design

Chessboard Layout Pattern

A multi-screen GUI has become a favourite amongst designers aiming at a wider and less experienced user community. It is widely held that multiple overlapping windows can be confusing and visually cluttered for the novice user. Another common motivation is that a predominantly data intensive business application must provide simple, fast and by implication 'a-modal' navigation across large sections of the problem domain. This is a common requirement when user task analysis and interviews indicate that the user is often interrupted or must frequently switch between incomplete tasks. It is also common to prefer an a-modal design when it is impossible to predict in advance what the user will prefer to view and when. Particularly true of applications for the World Wide Web where the user community can be unknown or undefined and prior research into their needs and preferences has not been done. It is proposed to provide a single (almost) full screen presentation of a single view, whilst allowing the user to quickly navigate to other related data through no more than two mouse clicks / navigation choices or selections.

UIdesign (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability

A Child's Garden of XML

Sooner or later, most web designers will be called upon to create an internal site. And will quickly learn that one's own company can be tougher to deal with than any client. Dave Linabury offers tips on surviving the process (and building something good in spite of it).

St. Laurent, Simon. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>XML

Chinese Banks Homepage Usability Research Report

The homepages of three leading Chinese retail banks are assessed for their usability.

Zhao, Ming. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Choices and Challenges: Considerations for Designing Electronic Performance Support Systems    

Introduces the breadth of decision-making required in EPSS design. Explores choices and challenges facing designers in the design process, performance cycle, technology constraints, use of storytelling techniques, evaluation, and success factors.

Carliner, Saul. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>EPSS

Choices, Challenges, and Constraints: Putting Documents on the World Wide Web  

A case study of the Unidata Program Center’s efforts to move information into online formats on the World Wide Web. Types of documents placed on line are discussed, as is the appropriateness of the medium for those documents. The conversion process is looked at. Obstacles to placing information online are also reviewed.

Hicks, Matthew B. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Publishing>Web Design

Choosing an Intranet Project Sponsor

Numerous surveys across a diverse range of IT projects have identified that the lack of support from senior management (project sponsorship) is one of the biggest causes of project failure. This briefing explores the need for a project sponsor, the role they need to play, and how to choose one.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Collaboration

Choosing the Right Database System

The Web-surfing public doesn't really care about flashy-yet-useless technology. They want Web sites that do something for them: provide a service or entertainment; help get a job or a date; check bank account balances, stock prices, interest rates, availability of airline tickets, today's weather ... and so on.

Dice, Richard. Webmonkey (1998). Design>Web Design>Databases>Adaptive

Choosing The Right Strategy For Your Online Business: Pay for Inclusion versus Pay per Click

How to determine the ROI for Pay for Inclusion and Pay per Click marketing strategies.

Zwicky, Richard. Metamend (2004). Design>Web Design>Marketing

Chunking Content: Toward a Rhetoric of Objects  

We need to develop a rhetoric of objects to understand the new way in which we must create and deliver content over the Web. We are facing a new multiplicity of audiences—niche groups, and even individuals, to whom we offer customization and personalization. With our new tools and new ways of thinking about what we create, we are inventing informative objects that address the needs of our audiences, letting go of the concept of a document, as we plunge into a world of small chunks of content. In this presentation, I consider how this new approach to technical communication affects our ideas of audience, invention, arrangement, style, delivery, memory, and character—the canons of traditional rhetoric.

Price, Jonathan R. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Rhetoric

"Chunking" Information

Most information on the World Wide Web is gathered in short reference documents that are intended to be read nonsequentially. This is particularly true of sites whose contents are mostly technical or administrative documents. Long before the Web was invented, technical writers discovered that readers appreciate short 'chunks' of information that can be located and scanned quickly.

Lynch, Patrick J. and Sarah Horton. Yale University (1999). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Writing

Clarity

Once you have your content, arranged it into a likely architecture, and worked out where it will sit on the page, you're ready to design the display layer.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>Writing>Rhetoric

Classificazioni per il Web

Dopo aver esplorato i principali modelli di classificazione elaborati dalla biblioteconomia, l'articolo si sofferma sulla classificazione a faccette (Faceted Classification), illustrandone le possibili applicazioni al web e i gli indubbi vantaggi che ne derivano.

Marino, Vittorio. AIB (2004). (Italian) Design>Web Design>Information Design

Clean Up Your Act with XHTML  

Describes how elements and attributes are rendered in XHTML.

McLaughlin, Douglas J. Intercom (2000). Design>Web Design>XHTML

Cleaner, Sharper GIF, JPEG, And PNG Images

While they're not absolutely necessary for Website functionality, images help improve the appearance of a site. With a few gcood quality, highly optimised images, you can give your site the edge it needs to leave a lasting impression. The problem is that many Webmasters, both novice and experienced, don't feel confident when it comes to creating clean looking graphics and optimising them for the Web.

Rutter, Thomas. SitePoint (2003). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design

Cleaning Your Web Pages with HTML Tidy

A detailed article on using the HTML Tidy utility to clear up problems in an HTML file.

Nesbitt, Scott. InformIT (2004). Articles>Web Design>HTML>Software

Clickthru Is Evil II

Ten years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the web. Five years ago, advertisers started discovering it. Now they are poised to wreck it. Double-Click’s poison cookie has Alan Herrell foaming at the mouth as he explains why Clickthru is Evil.

Herrell, Alan. List Apart, A (2000). Articles>Web Design>Marketing

The Client Did It: A WWW Whodunit

Why is it that we allow ourselves to be put in a compromising position where the client tells us how to be web designers? Maybe it's because the perception among the wider public is that 'anyone' can make a website. And they're right. Anyone can make a website--but not everyone can make an emotionally engaging interactive experience that will live in the visitor's memory. (Similarly, anyone with access to a photocopier and a stapler can 'make a book,' but good books are scarce.)

Shepherd, Robbie. List Apart, A (2000). Careers>Consulting>Web Design

Client Side Load Balancing for Web 2.0 Applications

Load balancing increases the reliability of a web site by routing requests to other servers in the cluster when one of the servers is too busy or fails. There are many techniques for achieving load balancing. There is an approach to load balancing modern web applications that does not require any load-balancing hardware, and handles failure of servers more gracefully than round-robin DNS.

Zhu, Lei. Digital Web Magazine (2007). Design>Web Design

ColdFusion User Group - Ireland

CFUG.ie was formed in 1999 with the aim of promoting the benefits of using ColdFusion within the Irish web development community.

CFUG.ie. Organizations>Web Design>Server Side Includes>Ireland