http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/List_Apart,_A A listing of works published by List Apart, A in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/List_Apart,_A http://tc.eserver.org/35488.html http://tc.eserver.org/35488.html "Content-rich" is not enough. Most websites are not learner-friendly. As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. Amber Simmons tells how to begin creating rich content sites that invite and repay exploration and discovery. http://tc.eserver.org/35489.html http://tc.eserver.org/35489.html It's hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you'd like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise. http://tc.eserver.org/35404.html http://tc.eserver.org/35404.html Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team's priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can't discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome. http://tc.eserver.org/35405.html http://tc.eserver.org/35405.html A bad client relationship is like a bad marriage without the benefits. To avoid such relationships, or to fix the one you're in, learn the five classic signs of trouble. Recognizing the never-ending contract revisionist, the giant project team, the vanishing boss and other warning signs can help you run successful, angst-free projects. http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that. http://tc.eserver.org/35352.html http://tc.eserver.org/35352.html There seems to be this idea going around that usability testing is bad, or that the cool kids don’t do it. That it’s old skool. That designers don’t need to do it. What if I told you that usability testing is the hottest thing in experience design research? Every time a person has a great experience with a website, a web app, a gadget, or a service, it’s because a design team made excellent decisions about both design and implementation—decisions based on data about how people use designs. And how can you get that data? Usability testing. http://tc.eserver.org/35161.html http://tc.eserver.org/35161.html Despite the fact that site search often receives the most traffic, it’s also the place where the user experience designer bears the least influence. Few tools exist to appraise the quality of the search experience, much less strategize ways to improve it. When it comes to site search, user experience designers are often sidelined like the single person at an old flame’s wedding: Everything seems to be moving along without you, and if you slipped out halfway through, chances are no one would notice. But relevancy testing and precision testing offer hope. These are two tools you can use to analyze and improve the search user experience. http://tc.eserver.org/35162.html http://tc.eserver.org/35162.html Now when people show up at a website, many of them ignore our lovingly crafted navigational elements and jump to the site search box. The increased use of site search as a core navigation method makes it very important to understand the data that site search generates. http://tc.eserver.org/35163.html http://tc.eserver.org/35163.html While goal-driven analysis is wonderfully useful, we’ll explore a different, “bottom-up” approach that relies on pattern analysis and failure analysis to help you understand your users’ intent in qualitative ways that complement the top-down approach. http://tc.eserver.org/35164.html http://tc.eserver.org/35164.html Ready or not, here it comes. Despite the confusion surrounding its evolution, real-world HTML 5 is right around the corner. Longtime ALA contributor J. David Eisenberg returns to get us all up to speed on the markup we’re about to be writing. http://tc.eserver.org/35165.html http://tc.eserver.org/35165.html In his article in this issue, Peter-Paul Koch proposes adding custom attributes to form elements to allow triggers for specialized behaviors. The W3C validator won’t validate a document with these attributes, as they aren’t part of the XHTML specification. This article will show you how to create a custom DTD that will add those custom attributes, and will show you how to validate documents that use those new attributes. http://tc.eserver.org/35166.html http://tc.eserver.org/35166.html The reason that we use XML instead of a specific application is that XML is not just a pretty face, living in isolation from the rest of the computing world. XML is more than a rulebook for generating custom markup languages. It is part of a family of technologies, which, working together, make your XML-based documents very useful indeed. To demonstrate what I mean, I decided to create a new XML-based markup language from scratch, and show what you can do with a document written in that language, using off-the-shelf tools. http://tc.eserver.org/35167.html http://tc.eserver.org/35167.html If you’re working with the latest technology, there may not be any user reference material at all; the only documentation available is the specification. In such a case, learning to read the spec is a necessity, not a luxury. http://tc.eserver.org/35168.html http://tc.eserver.org/35168.html Inline validation gives people several types of real-time feedback: It can confirm an appropriate answer, suggest valid answers, and provide regular updates to help people stay within necessary limits. These bits of feedback can be presented before, during and / or after users provide answers. http://tc.eserver.org/35169.html http://tc.eserver.org/35169.html While MVC is a familiar term to those in back-end application development—using frameworks such as Struts, Ruby on Rails, and CakePHP—MVC’s origin in user interface development lends itself to structuring client-side applications. Let’s examine what MVC is, see how we can use it to rework an example project, and consider some existing MVC frameworks. http://tc.eserver.org/35170.html http://tc.eserver.org/35170.html If content strategy isn’t in the current budget, though, how do you convince your client to add money for it? Your client might already realize content strategy can help create measurable ROI. If they don’t, help them understand. After all, relevant and informative content is what their audience wants; content strategy assesses the content they have and creates a plan for what they need and how they’ll get it. http://tc.eserver.org/35171.html http://tc.eserver.org/35171.html In just two years, Erskine Design grew from two people working at home into a full-fledged agency of eight, working with some major clients. Our website needed to better reflect our achievements, abilities, team strengths, and to get better information from client inquiries to help grow the business. I’ll explore our thought processes and share the decisions we made as our own client. http://tc.eserver.org/35172.html http://tc.eserver.org/35172.html Fond as I was of my site’s current incarnation, I’m a one-person show and my website is my main act. I couldn’t risk letting it stagnate. http://tc.eserver.org/35173.html http://tc.eserver.org/35173.html Affordance allows us to look at something and intuitively understand how to interact with it. For example, when we see a small button next to a door, we know we should push it with a finger. Convention tells us it will make a sound, notifying the homeowner that someone is at the door. This concept transfers to the virtual environment: when we see a 3D-shaped button on a web page, we understand that we are supposed to “push” it with a mouse-click. http://tc.eserver.org/35174.html http://tc.eserver.org/35174.html It’s time we came to grips with the fact that not every “document” can be a “web page.” Some forms of writing just cannot be expressed in HTML—or they need to be bent and distorted to do so. But for once, XML might actually help. http://tc.eserver.org/35175.html http://tc.eserver.org/35175.html RDFa (“Resource Description Framework in attributes”) is having its five minutes of fame: Google is beginning to process RDFa and Microformats as it indexes websites, using the parsed data to enhance the display of search results with “rich snippets.” http://tc.eserver.org/34727.html http://tc.eserver.org/34727.html Getting even semi-publishable writing from experts is notoriously difficult; they may be immersed in their “real jobs” and too busy to write even a first draft of content, they may not understand why web content matters at all, they may not be fluent in the language(s) in which you publish your website, or they may just be terrible writers. Define a content workflow as early as possible, preferably as part of a unified content strategy that includes a content audit (a detailed analysis of what content you have, what content you need, and how to bridge that gap), voice and tone guidelines, and a schedule for collecting and generating content. http://tc.eserver.org/34728.html http://tc.eserver.org/34728.html It’s an open secret in our daily work how often the challenges posed by content elude our collective talents and acumen. We’ve all been there. For me, lorem ipsum makes it personal. It personifies the proposition at the heart of what content specialists do and mocks how often the manifold complexities of content can get the better of all of us. It’s happening because we haven’t been talking. http://tc.eserver.org/34663.html http://tc.eserver.org/34663.html User interface experts are often suspicious of the role of visual aesthetics in user interfaces—and of designers who insist that graphic emotive impact and careful attention to a site’s visual framework really contribute to measurable success. Underneath the arguments, I see a fundamental culture clash. http://tc.eserver.org/34664.html http://tc.eserver.org/34664.html The web is designed to be consumed by humans, and much of the rich, useful information our websites contain, is inaccessible to machines. People can cope with all sorts of variations in layout, spelling, capitalization, color, position, and so on, and still absorb the intended meaning from the page. Machines, on the other hand, need some help. A new kind of web—a semantic web—would be made up of information marked up in such a way that software can also easily understand it. Before considering how we might achieve such a web, let’s look at what we might be able to do with it. http://tc.eserver.org/34665.html http://tc.eserver.org/34665.html Web databases do much more than passively store information. Part of their power comes from indexing records efficiently. An index serves as a map, identifying the precise location of a small piece of data in a much larger pile. For example, when I search for “web development,” Google identifies two hundred million results and displays the first ten—in a quarter of a second. But Google isn’t loading every one of those pages and scanning their contents when I perform my search: they’ve analyzed the pages ahead of time and matched my search terms against an index that only references the original content. http://tc.eserver.org/34666.html http://tc.eserver.org/34666.html While you’re always optimistic when leading a team, you know that not everyone’s got your back. Liars and poor communicators can wipe out good work faster than a 404 error. Learn how to think critically about verbal and non-verbal behavior and to separate office politics from truth, so you don’t let the Werewolves win. http://tc.eserver.org/34481.html http://tc.eserver.org/34481.html We get better design when we understand our medium. Yet even at this late cultural hour, many people don’t understand web design. Among them can be found some of our most distinguished business and cultural leaders, including a few who possess a profound grasp of design—except as it relates to the web. If we want better sites, better work, and better-informed clients, the need to educate begins with us. http://tc.eserver.org/34367.html http://tc.eserver.org/34367.html Clients, like other humans, often fear what they don't understand. Daniel Ritzenthaler explains how sound goal-setting, documentation, and communication strategies can bridge the gap between a designer's intuition and a client's need for proof. http://tc.eserver.org/34368.html http://tc.eserver.org/34368.html The web, with its low barrier to entry and permeable social boundaries, is the ultimate medium through which to explore the finer points of the wisdom of crowds. You’re surrounded by online examples: Google’s search results. BitTorrent. The “Most E-mailed” stories on your favorite news site. Each is powered by wisdom gleaned from crowds online. You need a few things to enable online crowds to be wise. http://tc.eserver.org/34158.html http://tc.eserver.org/34158.html If we, the people who make websites, want the world to know who we are and what we do, it’s up to each of us to stand up and represent. Last year, 30,055 of you did just that, taking time out of your busy day to answer the sometimes detailed and often thought-provoking questions in the second A List Apart Survey. This year’s findings paint a clearer picture of the distinctions between full-time and freelance web professionals: how you work, what you earn, and what you love about the job. Interestingly, too, despite the brutality of a global recession that was already in full swing (like an axe) when we offered the survey, most respondents revealed a surprisingly high level of job security, satisfaction, and confidence in the future. http://tc.eserver.org/34098.html http://tc.eserver.org/34098.html We’ve all been part of communities since kindergarten, or earlier. Churches, schools, sports teams, and neighborhoods all satisfy basic human desires to interact with others and work toward a common goal. And yet, when these communities are online and we start to think of them as “social sites,” these concepts can suddenly feel foreign. My work in communities (primarily as the editor of community-created magazine JPG) has shown me that different sets of people are usually motivated in similar ways. Most people have an innate need to belong and feel like part of something, and successfully contributing to that something can really reinforce self-worth. Whether you’re at a company such as Yelp working with product reviews, or Threadless working with t-shirts, or in a church group working on an annual recipe book, try some of these methods to nurture great content. http://tc.eserver.org/34099.html http://tc.eserver.org/34099.html Bringing heart to web experiences can be difficult, since websites and applications are fundamentally a construct of logic (via code). While you can’t create a website that functions as a pure expression of wabi-sabi, finding ways to infuse our creations with a hint of wabi-sabi adds a new dimension to our work. It forces us to consider how the natural order of our physical world should inform the virtual worlds of information that we create. One way this natural order finds expression in the web design world is through the notion of elegance. http://tc.eserver.org/34100.html http://tc.eserver.org/34100.html Fluid layouts are an undervalued commodity in web design. They put control of our designs firmly in the hands of our users and their browsing habits. They’ve also utterly failed to seize the imagination of web designers. http://tc.eserver.org/34101.html http://tc.eserver.org/34101.html Humans can behave in surprising ways when you bring them together. In an information space, a human’s needs are simple and his behavior straightforward. Find. Read. Save. But once you get a bunch of humans together, communicating and collaborating, you can observe both the madness and the wisdom of crowds. http://tc.eserver.org/33941.html http://tc.eserver.org/33941.html Fluid layouts are an undervalued commodity in web design. They put control of our designs firmly in the hands of our users and their browsing habits. They’ve also utterly failed to seize the imagination of web designers. http://tc.eserver.org/33942.html http://tc.eserver.org/33942.html While your designs can never control people, they can encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. The psychologist Kurt Lewin developed an equation that explains why people do the crazy things they do. Lewin asserts that behavior is a function of a person and his environment: Bf(P,E). You can’t change a person’s nature, but you can design the environment he moves around in. Let’s explore some of Alexander’s patterns I’ve observed in my work and the design work of my fellow practitioners. http://tc.eserver.org/33943.html http://tc.eserver.org/33943.html The worsening economy will adversely affect our industry, at least in the short term. However, our skills and products are suited to ride out hard economic times. Marketers can easily measure return on investment for electronic media. Likewise a web address—such as an online shop—provides a wider audience and lower overhead than a street address, and could therefore be a better investment. So how do you ensure your company isn’t a wallflower? Keeping your dance card full is about making a truly positive contribution. Here are seven steps to help get you into the rhythm. http://tc.eserver.org/33944.html http://tc.eserver.org/33944.html Despite the ubiquity of reading on the web, readers remain a neglected audience. Much of our talk about web design revolves around a sense of movement: users are thought to be finding, searching, skimming, looking. We measure how frequently they click but not how long they stay on the page. We concern ourselves with their travel and participation—how they move from page to page, who they talk to when they get there—but forget the needs of those whose purpose is to be still. Readers flourish when they have space—some distance from the hubbub of the crowds—and as web designers, there is yet much we can do to help them carve out that space. http://tc.eserver.org/33945.html http://tc.eserver.org/33945.html When used effectively, JavaScript debuggers help find and squash errors in your JavaScript code. To become an advanced JavaScript debugger, you’ll need to know about the debuggers available to you, the typical JavaScript debugging workflow, and code requirements for effective debugging. In this article, we’ll discuss advanced debugging techniques for diagnosing and treating bugs using a sample web application. http://tc.eserver.org/33946.html http://tc.eserver.org/33946.html Creative professionals who can see all angles of a project are the ones who ultimately succeed in the industry. They win awards, get promoted, and make money, but most importantly they develop a reputation for caring about detail, for putting a personal and deliberate effort into making sure all of the tiny things are in place to make the final product perfect. http://tc.eserver.org/33686.html http://tc.eserver.org/33686.html Let’s face it. Technology moves fast; academia doesn’t. So how should educators teach web design and development—subjects that change constantly? How should educators prepare students for real-world expectations? How do educators stay up-to-date? And how do web professionals help educators to create graduates who fit in and actually know what they’re doing? http://tc.eserver.org/33687.html http://tc.eserver.org/33687.html Our young medium is still ironing out a few kinks—perhaps the biggest of which is the way budding web professionals are being educated. Schools that teach web design struggle to keep pace with our industry, and those just starting their curricula often set off in the wrong direction because the breadth and depth of our medium can be daunting. http://tc.eserver.org/33639.html http://tc.eserver.org/33639.html Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them. If we want our customers to embrace IA, we must help them understand why we need it. http://tc.eserver.org/33640.html http://tc.eserver.org/33640.html Agile is here to stay. The economic difficulties of the past months have finally put waterfall out of its misery; now more than ever, long requirements phases and vaporous up-front documentation aren’t acceptable. Software must be visible and valuable from the start. For many designers, Agile is already a fact of life (and for those less accustomed, some recommended reading follows at the foot of this article). We are reaching the point where we must either acclimatize or risk being bypassed. The good news is that Agile does allow us to still do the things we hold dear—research, develop a vision, and test and improve our designs—we just need new techniques. Now is the time to get real, and prove design can adapt, if we want to stay relevant in these increasingly unreal times. http://tc.eserver.org/33637.html http://tc.eserver.org/33637.html We, the people who make websites, have been talking for fifteen years about user experience, information architecture, content management systems, coding, metadata, visual design, user research, and all the other disciplines that facilitate our users’ abilities to find and consume content. Weirdly, though, we haven’t been talking about the meat of the matter. We haven’t been talking about the content itself. http://tc.eserver.org/33638.html http://tc.eserver.org/33638.html It’s an open secret in our daily work how often the challenges posed by content elude our collective talents and acumen. We’ve all been there. For me, lorem ipsum makes it personal. It personifies the proposition at the heart of what content specialists do and mocks how often the manifold complexities of content can get the better of all of us. It’s happening because we haven’t been talking. http://tc.eserver.org/33594.html http://tc.eserver.org/33594.html If you’re just getting started with mobile design, you may face a number of hurdles, including the cost or technical challenge of designing and maintaining a second site—or a simple lack of understanding of how people on the go might use your site. This article discusses a first step toward mobile design that uses CSS to maximize interoperability across platforms. By starting simple, you can provide a decent initial experience, solicit user feedback, and iterate toward a more mobile-friendly design. http://tc.eserver.org/33595.html http://tc.eserver.org/33595.html HTML 5, the W3C’s recently redoubled effort to shape the next generation of HTML, has, over the last year or so, taken on considerable momentum. It is an enormous project, covering not simply the structure of HTML, but also parsing models, error-handling models, the DOM, algorithms for resource fetching, media content, 2D drawing, data templating, security models, page loading models, client-side data storage, and more. There are also revisions to the structure, syntax, and semantics of HTML. http://tc.eserver.org/33309.html http://tc.eserver.org/33309.html As in finance, so on the web: self-regulation has failed. Nearly ten years after specifications first required it, video captioning can barely be said to exist on the web. The big players, while swollen with self-congratulation, are technically incompetent, and nobody else is even trying. So what will it take to support the human and legal rights of hearing impaired web users? It just might take the law, says Joe Clark. http://tc.eserver.org/33310.html http://tc.eserver.org/33310.html When broken links frustrate your site’s visitors, a typical 404 page explains what went wrong and provides links that may relate to the visitor’s quest. That’s good, but now you can do better. With Dean Frickey’s custom 404, when something’s amiss, pertinent information is sent not only to the visitor, but to the developer—so that, in many cases, the problem can be fixed! A better 404 means never having to say you’re sorry. http://tc.eserver.org/32919.html http://tc.eserver.org/32919.html Most online mapping applications do not address issues of web accessibility. For a visually impaired web user, these highly visual maps are essentially useless. Is there a way to display text-based data on a map, keeping it accessible, useful and visually attractive? Yes: using an accessible CSS-based map in which the underlying map data is separated from the visual layout. http://tc.eserver.org/32661.html http://tc.eserver.org/32661.html Since 1994, the web development community has beaten graceful degradation’s drum. A carry-over from the engineering world, the concept was, at its core, about giving the latest and greatest browsers the full-course meal experience while tossing a few scraps to the sad folk unfortunate enough to be using Netscape 4. It worked, sure, but it didn’t really match Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision for a universally accessible web. At SXSW in 2003, Steve Champeon and Nick Finck gave a presentation titled “Inclusive Web Design For the Future.” There, they unveiled a blueprint for this new way of approaching web development. Steve also gave it a name: progressive enhancement. http://tc.eserver.org/32662.html http://tc.eserver.org/32662.html Some websites change every week; many change every day; a few change every few minutes. Daypop’s Dan Chan calls this the Living Web, the part of the web that is always changing. Every revision requires new writing, new words that become the essence of the site. Living sites are only as good as today’s update. If the words are dull, nobody will read them, and nobody will come back. If the words are wrong, people will be misled, disappointed, infuriated. If the words aren’t there, people will shake their heads and lament your untimely demise. Writing for the Living Web is a tremendous challenge. Here are ten tips that can help. http://tc.eserver.org/32443.html http://tc.eserver.org/32443.html Progress always comes at a cost. In the case of web browsers, users bear the cost when developers take the rendering of certain authoring tools and browsers (especially Internet Explorer) as gospel. We could spend hours explaining why our sites broke, but wouldn’t it be better if they didn’t break in the first place? http://tc.eserver.org/32444.html http://tc.eserver.org/32444.html Version targeting allows browsers to much more easily develop new features and fix bugs and shortcomings in existing features, which has the potential to speed up the evolution of web design and development. That alone is reason enough to give it a chance. http://tc.eserver.org/32237.html http://tc.eserver.org/32237.html Seeing the same thing from different perspectives is much praised but little practiced. We don’t often realize what we can gain by seeing another scene in the picture. http://tc.eserver.org/32238.html http://tc.eserver.org/32238.html I recently conducted a study into the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of zebra striping—the shading of alternate rows in a table or form. The study measured performance as users completed a series of tasks and found no statistically significant improvement in accuracy—and very little statistically significant improvement in speed when zebra stripes were implemented. http://tc.eserver.org/32140.html http://tc.eserver.org/32140.html The rise of the social web demands that we rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments, and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our users are producing around us. It’s time for a new metaphor. Consider cartography. http://tc.eserver.org/32141.html http://tc.eserver.org/32141.html In 2004, Dave Shea took the CSS rollover where it had never gone before. Now he takes it further still—with a little help from jQuery. Say hello to hover animations that respond to a user’s behavior in ways standards-based sites never could before. http://tc.eserver.org/32142.html http://tc.eserver.org/32142.html In Utah, technical writers abound but are hidden. Utah probably has at least 500 technical writers spread out across companies all over the state (most in Northern Utah), but communication among the technical writers is sparse. The community is a little disconnected. http://tc.eserver.org/32001.html http://tc.eserver.org/32001.html Because of limited awareness around Deafness and accessibility in the web community, it seems plausible to many of us that good captioning will fix it all. It won’t. Before we can enhance the user experience for all deaf people, we must understand that the needs of deaf, hard of hearing, and big-D Deaf users are often very different. http://tc.eserver.org/32000.html http://tc.eserver.org/32000.html The web is a conversation, but not always a productive one. Web discussions too often degenerate into whines, jabs, sour grapes, and one-upmanship. How can we transform discussion forums and comment sections from shooting ranges into arenas of collaboration? http://tc.eserver.org/31826.html http://tc.eserver.org/31826.html At $4.14 a gallon in the United States, $5.29 a gallon in Canada, and $8.70 a gallon in the U.K., the price of gas is just one reason many web workers now commute from the bed to the basement as part of a conscious choice to work from home. http://tc.eserver.org/31824.html http://tc.eserver.org/31824.html Working from home, whether as a freelance contractor or remote employee, can be a great thing, particularly if you live alone. But what if you have a spouse and/or children at home with you while you work? Every work environment offers distractions, but those who work from home with their families face a unique set of issues—and need equally unique ways of dealing with them. http://tc.eserver.org/31617.html http://tc.eserver.org/31617.html It is perhaps the market forces driving web development projects that find us aligning ourselves with the lexicons of marketing and advertising rather than publishing. As a result, we have lots of “brand identity guidelines,” but not so many “style guides” (for content, at least). We have “strategists,” but no “commissioning editors,” and we more often “go live” than “publish.” Hence, we tend to first think “copywriter” when trying to get our content sorted, whereas very often an editor is the person we should be engaging. That’s not to say there aren’t editors in our industry—there are—but they tend to be a part of large online publishing projects after launch rather than a part of the development lifecycle from the beginning. (Somehow, we’ve become a kind of freak cousin of publishing, ignoring that industry’s expertise.) In many cases, an editor would be a great addition to our process as well as, in some cases, a better and more rational investment than a copywriter. http://tc.eserver.org/31616.html http://tc.eserver.org/31616.html Remembering why you were hired—and identifying whether or not you belong—is just as important as getting the gig. To sustain career and mental health, you must work within your means and know how to navigate ambiguous workplace situations. Using client and project management techniques is one part of the solution. Using your talent is the other. http://tc.eserver.org/31419.html http://tc.eserver.org/31419.html Any community—online or off—must start slowly, and be nurtured. You cannot “just add community.” It must be cared for, and hosted; it takes time and people with great communication skills to set the tone and tend the conversation. http://tc.eserver.org/31418.html http://tc.eserver.org/31418.html The user of a table would be looking for one or more data points. Therefore, if we set a task that uses a table, and zebra striping does make things easier, then we would expect to see improvements in accuracy and speed. http://tc.eserver.org/31208.html http://tc.eserver.org/31208.html The “why” of Ruby on Rails comes down to productivity, says Michael Slater. Web applications that share three characteristics—they’re database-driven, they’re new, and they have needs not well met by a typical CMS—can be built much more quickly with Ruby on Rails than with PHP, .NET, or Java, once the investment required to learn Rails has been made. Does your web app fall within the RoR “sweet spot?” http://tc.eserver.org/31211.html http://tc.eserver.org/31211.html The “how” of Ruby on Rails: Hivelogic’s Dan Benjamin prepares non-Rails developers, designers, and other creative professionals for their first foray into Rails. Learn what Ruby on Rails is (and isn’t), and where it fits into the spectrum of web development and design. See through the myths surrounding this powerful young platform, and learn how to approach working with it. http://tc.eserver.org/31101.html http://tc.eserver.org/31101.html When designing interfaces for browsing data-driven sites, creating navigation elements that are also visualization tools helps the user make better decisions. Wilson Miner demonstrates three techniques for incorporating data visualization into standards-based navigation patterns. http://tc.eserver.org/31102.html http://tc.eserver.org/31102.html It is now possible to replicate Google Maps' functionality with open source software and produce high-quality mapping applications tailored to your design goals. Paul Smith shows how. http://tc.eserver.org/31071.html http://tc.eserver.org/31071.html Findability is to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as 'web standards' is to 'table layouts.' In a web whose vastness exceeds comprehension, sites with findable content win. The good news is that everyone on your team can help make your site findable. http://tc.eserver.org/31072.html http://tc.eserver.org/31072.html You load a new web service, eager to dive in and start engaging, and what's the first thing that greets you? A sign-up form. We can do better, says Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. Via a technique of "gradual engagment," we can get people using and caring about our web services instead of frustrating them (or sending them to a competitor's site) by forcing them to fill out a sign-up form first. http://tc.eserver.org/30888.html http://tc.eserver.org/30888.html CSS selectors are handy things. They make coding CSS easier, sure, but they can also help keep your markup clean. http://tc.eserver.org/30887.html http://tc.eserver.org/30887.html For contract web workers, consultants, and freelancers who work with far-flung collaborators, multiple clients, and constantly shifting teams, the rules of digital engagement--the way we interact with each other and resolve conflict in virtual space--are constantly changing. As we adapt to new ways of collaborating, we must also learn how to communicate effectively, set expectations, and build team confidence in an evolving work environment. http://tc.eserver.org/30886.html http://tc.eserver.org/30886.html Standards-aware developers, by their very nature, will object to adding a line of unnecessary markup to their documents just to get one single browser to behave as it should by default. http://tc.eserver.org/30885.html http://tc.eserver.org/30885.html Real DOM support is a game changer. Enabled by default, it would bring many sites to their knees. That would break the web, and not in quotes. Providing IE8's greater compliance on an opt-in basis is the only way to get everyone over the scripting hump. http://tc.eserver.org/30450.html http://tc.eserver.org/30450.html In web design, when we think about flow we usually think about 'task flows' or 'flow charts' but there's another type of flow that we should keep in mind. It's that feeling of complete absorption when you're engaged in something you love to do without being disrupted by anxiety or boredom caused by tasks that are confusing, repetitive or overly taxing. http://tc.eserver.org/30449.html http://tc.eserver.org/30449.html HTML 4 has been around for nearly a decade now, and publishers seeking new techniques to provide enhanced functionality are being held back by the constraints of the language and browsers. http://tc.eserver.org/30184.html http://tc.eserver.org/30184.html Most e-mail obfuscation techniques I've tried tend to be bothersome and time-consuming to implement because they have to be applied to each and every e-mail address that you want to protect. Most require you to use lengthy inline script elements and inline event handlers. They may also invalidate your markup. http://tc.eserver.org/30185.html http://tc.eserver.org/30185.html Anyone can be a copywriter, but the best copywriters actually think about what they're writing. http://tc.eserver.org/30101.html http://tc.eserver.org/30101.html When used at critical points in the design process, group sessions build strong, respectful relationships. Since clients directly experience the design work, you don't need to sell clients on an idea--they were with you the whole time. http://tc.eserver.org/30100.html http://tc.eserver.org/30100.html Calm tension, communicate more easily, and run your projects more efficiently by applying the right relationship management techniques. http://tc.eserver.org/30099.html http://tc.eserver.org/30099.html Lay out images consistently across your site using a liitle clever JavaScript. http://tc.eserver.org/30102.html http://tc.eserver.org/30102.html Mobile Safari--unlike other browsers--does not maintain a constant size for content viewing. Because of the small screen, the content area is constantly adjusted to maximize the space available for the task at hand. http://tc.eserver.org/30098.html http://tc.eserver.org/30098.html Between April 24th and May 22nd, 2007, A List Apart conducted the first survey of 'people who make websites'; 32,831 web professionals participated. Straightforward survey responses are summarized. Detailed findings, derived by cross-referencing various data, make up the remainder and bulk of this report, and constitute its chief claim to significance. http://tc.eserver.org/29560.html http://tc.eserver.org/29560.html CSS is ten years old this year. Such an anniversary is an opportunity to revisit the past and chart the future. CSS has fundamentally changed web design by separating style from structure. It has provided designers with a set of properties that can be tweaked to make marked-up pages look rightand CSS3 proposes additional properties requested by designers. http://tc.eserver.org/29561.html http://tc.eserver.org/29561.html The iPhone includes a sophisticated new Safari browser. This version is touted as 'the most advanced web browser on a portable device' and from what I've seen, it deserves this accolade. So what does this mean for you? Millions of visitors accessing your content on a small display with very high resolution. At some point in the near future, you're going to want to take a look at your current site design to make sure that it looks good and works well on this new device and its Mobile Safari browser. http://tc.eserver.org/28908.html http://tc.eserver.org/28908.html These days, 'framework' is quite a buzzword in web development. With JavaScript frameworks like the Yahoo User Interface library, jQuery, and Prototype getting a lot of attention and web application frameworks like Rails and Django getting even more, it seems like everyone is using some kind of framework to build their sites. But what exactly is a framework? And are they only useful to programmers, or can we web designers benefit from the concept, as well? http://tc.eserver.org/28907.html http://tc.eserver.org/28907.html Web design is still a young discipline, and it's generally poorly understood. As the web becomes mainstream, an increasing number of people and organizations want websites--and so more people are involved in commissioning, managing, and designing them. It's not surprising that many of these people aren't familiar with how web design works. Clients, managers, and colleagues often assume that web design is a subset of some other discipline, like advertising, graphic design, or software engineering. This creates a tendency to write it off as a low-value, straightforward process that can be streamlined and automated, like a production line. The result is unhelpful pressure on you, the web designer. You're asked to design faster, using a smaller budget, and without access to key stakeholders--which can make it difficult to maintain your professionalism, leaving everyone unhappy with the final design. The logical conclusion of this perpetual streamlining would be to stop using your judgment altogether, as if you were a piece of off-the-shelf software: a robot. http://tc.eserver.org/28819.html http://tc.eserver.org/28819.html Contrary to popular belief, designers and developers at many big companies use web standards in their work every day. They just don't talk about it. For standards awareness to reach the next level, they'll have to start talking. http://tc.eserver.org/28820.html http://tc.eserver.org/28820.html A designer formats and places text. Technically, the job ends there. But some designers go further, sharpening their clients' content to grab and focus user attention. In so doing, they create more effective sites--and gain an advantage over other designers. Drawing on decades of copywriter lore, Shaun Crowley discusses seduction by headline and other principles of writing that sells. http://tc.eserver.org/28800.html http://tc.eserver.org/28800.html Who decides what's best for a website? Highly skilled professionals who work with the site's users and serve as their advocates? Or schmucks with money? Most often, it's the latter. That's why a web designer's first job is to educate the people who hold the purse strings. http://tc.eserver.org/28799.html http://tc.eserver.org/28799.html You've got thirty seconds to sell your work to the well dressed nemesis who's paying you. Handle the next few moments gracefully, and the project will be one you can be proud of. Flub an answer, and you can kiss excellence goodbye. Are you prepared? Can you deliver? http://tc.eserver.org/28739.html http://tc.eserver.org/28739.html Design is largely an exercise in creating or suggesting contrasts in an effort to convey meaning. http://tc.eserver.org/28738.html http://tc.eserver.org/28738.html If a virtual design firm is to be successful, it must develop an adaptive culture that fosters and strengthens connections between far-flung collaborators. http://tc.eserver.org/28701.html http://tc.eserver.org/28701.html Our web applications can suffer from inaccessibility problems due to inherent markup limitations. Martin Kliehm helps us sort through the WAI specs for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) to increase usability. http://tc.eserver.org/28705.html http://tc.eserver.org/28705.html While building a browser slideshow object for a demonstration on dynamically pulling image information from a web server, I ran into difficulty with the DOM-compliant approach I had envisioned. A two-day journey into the world of XML DOM support for web browsers lay between me and a satisfactory solution. http://tc.eserver.org/28708.html http://tc.eserver.org/28708.html 'How can you best embed Flash content?' It should be a simple question, but is likely to evoke a lot of different opinions and arguments, as each of the many available embedding techniques have their own pros and cons. In this article, I will look into the complexities and subtleties of embedding Flash content and examine the most popular embedding methods to see how good they really are. http://tc.eserver.org/28712.html http://tc.eserver.org/28712.html Many web designers, myself included, come to the web with a background in the graphic arts. We think in pictures, not in code. When we first begin designing for the web, we'll use HTML and CSS crudely, as a means to an end--a method of arranging pretty boxes in space--without grasping the true nature of the box itself or what it contains. Altering that strictly visual mentality is the highest hurdle to overcome when a graphic designer first dives into semantics and web standards. For the visual designer, really understanding web standards means you'll have to change the way you think about design. http://tc.eserver.org/28704.html http://tc.eserver.org/28704.html Theoretically, usability testing is a great way of finding out what is wrong with the products and services we design. We sit the users down in the lab and ask them to perform certain tasks, to 'tell us what you think--give voice to your stream of consciousness.' And on the whole, it works. But... http://tc.eserver.org/28709.html http://tc.eserver.org/28709.html A project I recently worked on required an elastic layout with two columns of equal height, each with a different background color. As usual, there was no way to tell which column would be taller. I immediately thought of Dan Cederholm's Faux Columns, but I needed an elastic layout. I also looked at the One True Layout, but this seemed buggy and required too much extra markup and too many hacks for my taste. http://tc.eserver.org/28710.html http://tc.eserver.org/28710.html As interfaces become ever more complex and development schedules seem to get shorter and shorter, you may find it useful to give up your user-interface modeling software for awhile in favor of something simpler. All you need is paper, pens, scissors, and your imagination. http://tc.eserver.org/28711.html http://tc.eserver.org/28711.html You need to make a set of web design mockups for your client. You'd like to find an easy way to show these mockups in clean XHTML and CSS code, because plain JPGs don't convey the full sense of the design, and sliced tables are evil. In fact, let's forget table slices ever existed. This article is for people who need to produce valid, standards-compliant mockups quickly, with the graphics tools they already use. http://tc.eserver.org/28703.html http://tc.eserver.org/28703.html There's a lot we, as designers of the web experience, can learn from something as simple as a water glass. http://tc.eserver.org/28706.html http://tc.eserver.org/28706.html There's a belief within the web standards community that Flash is part of a different world. While all approaches have limitations and drawbacks, Flash has been scorned to the point that many refuse to acknowledge its benefits. Ultimately, this has led to the creation of a virtual separation among web designers; those who use Flash use it exclusively (leading to a saturation of full-screen, 'Skip Intro'-rich Flash sites on the web) and those who don't ever give it a second thought. Although the brilliant option of the hybrid (part Flash, part HTML) site had always existed, it's never really made it far past the typical Flash intro on a corporate homepage. Throughout the history of Flash on the web, the technology has always been intended to be embedded within HTML. Yet it has often seemed a foreign concept to use the two technologies to complement one another. http://tc.eserver.org/28702.html http://tc.eserver.org/28702.html It's easier these days to embed a video on the web than it is to set type consistently or align elements to a universal grid. http://tc.eserver.org/28707.html http://tc.eserver.org/28707.html Regardless of whether we find validation impractical or imperative, the infighting in the standards community is the biggest obstacle to real progress. Instead of trying to understand what factors make both sides agitated, we've vilified the people on the other side of the argument. We need to identify what's making 100% validation so expensive and difficult, and work on removing those factors. http://tc.eserver.org/28713.html http://tc.eserver.org/28713.html Sometimes, as in web design, it's difficult to add whitespace because of content requirements. Newspapers often deal with this by setting their body content in a light typeface with plenty of whitespace within and around the characters. http://tc.eserver.org/28456.html http://tc.eserver.org/28456.html Space constraints can put the squeeze on accessibility and usability. Mike Brittain shares his method for making itty-bitty forms more accessible and easier to use. http://tc.eserver.org/28457.html http://tc.eserver.org/28457.html The introduction of new mobile and computing devices challenges us to look beyond the liquid layout. Marc van den Dobbelsteen offers a way to bring appropriate layouts to a wider range of screens and devices. http://tc.eserver.org/28353.html http://tc.eserver.org/28353.html While anonymity may allow people to feel more free and disinhibited to discuss otherwise embarrassing or stigmatizing topics, it can also be a community's biggest enemy. http://tc.eserver.org/28352.html http://tc.eserver.org/28352.html Even where the application of ubiquitous technology would clearly be useful, I know enough about how informatic systems are built and brought to market to be very skeptical about its chances of bringing wholesale improvement to the quality of my life. http://tc.eserver.org/28351.html http://tc.eserver.org/28351.html We've all experienced low points, and whether they're caused by tight timelines, hostile clients, infighting, personal disasters, or something else entirely, we have to find a way to work through them. http://tc.eserver.org/28350.html http://tc.eserver.org/28350.html Every opening paragraph is the beginning of a delicate and transient relationship between reader and writer. This relationship begins quietly, usually without much fanfare--and if it's properly initiated, the reader doesn't even know it's happening. Yet the success of this relationship is an important factor in creating an enjoyable, engaging experience for the reader. This is especially true on the web where author credibility can be difficult to establish, and where, increasingly, readers have so many choices that separating the chaff from the wheat can be a daunting process. http://tc.eserver.org/28349.html http://tc.eserver.org/28349.html It seems strange to be talking about something as basic as 'navigation' 11 years into the web era. And yet, if you’re a web designer, chances are you’ve made some mistakes in this fundamental area. I know I have. So let’s go back to basics. http://tc.eserver.org/28322.html http://tc.eserver.org/28322.html Better planning and a beefed-up style guide may be exactly what you need to avoid markup derangement or, worse, a dysfunctional product. http://tc.eserver.org/28321.html http://tc.eserver.org/28321.html When good AJAX web apps go bad, these guidelines and techniques can help you and your users stay informed and productive. http://tc.eserver.org/28288.html http://tc.eserver.org/28288.html Challenging clients: avoidable pain or necessary stepping stone to enlightenment? Rob Swan considers the benefits of un-perfect clients. http://tc.eserver.org/28289.html http://tc.eserver.org/28289.html Gradients: a nutritious part of your Web 2.0 breakfast. Wouldn't it be swell if you could get all that goodness without opening Photoshop every time you needed a little gradient bliss? Matthew O'Neill explains how you can. http://tc.eserver.org/28238.html http://tc.eserver.org/28238.html ALA Production Manager Erin Lynch and the ALA staff offer a few starting points for the next generation of people who make websites. http://tc.eserver.org/28242.html http://tc.eserver.org/28242.html ALA production manager Erin Lynch sifts through our archives and offers up a list of starting points for new readers. http://tc.eserver.org/28236.html http://tc.eserver.org/28236.html Online communities can take time to get off the ground. Like small businesses, most fail to thrive due to poor planning and support. John Gladding explains how anyone who can host a great party can start a successful forum. http://tc.eserver.org/28240.html http://tc.eserver.org/28240.html IE/Win does not render these quotation marks, and because of this, most web authors choose not to use the Q tag. I'm here to change all that! http://tc.eserver.org/28235.html http://tc.eserver.org/28235.html Going from the browser to the printer has always been a bit of a guessing game. In this article, Pete McVicar shows us a method for providing users with a reliable print preview. http://tc.eserver.org/28244.html http://tc.eserver.org/28244.html Automate text flow along an irregular outline with PHP.