新サイト最適化講座1−画像編 (第1回)

百聞は一見にしかずじゃないけれど、その分量の対比という意味では、同じ読み込み時間で、テキストなら何ページ分も表示できるのに、大きな画像は1枚表示するのがせいぜい、というインターネットの世界を良く表しているね。ウェブサイトを巡っていれば、最後に出てくるのは画像だというのは知ってるだろ、読み込みにかかる時間の大半を画像ファイルに費やしちゃってるから、表示が最後になっちゃうんだ。

Cook, Jason. Webmonkey (2003). Design>Web Design

新サイト最適化講座1−画像編 (第2回)

PNGとGIFの圧縮は可逆圧縮といって、JPEGとは違い、画像の詳細部分がぼやけたりしないんだ。とても細かい地図なんかをスキャンしたり、小さなテキスト付きの画像を作るんだったら、GIFかPNGのどちらかを選んだ方が良いね。ただ、大きな写真をGIFやPNGで保存すると、ファイルサイズが巨大になって、読み込み時間も長くなっちゃうからね。

Cook, Jason. Webmonkey (2003). Design>Web Design

34 Ideas for Promoting Your Intranet

The promotion of an intranet is never-ending. From the day it's launched, through to its eventual retirement, an intranet must be constantly advertised to staff. Without this, many staff will remain unaware that the intranet even exists. Others won't recognise the full value of the intranet, or use anything but a tiny corner of the site. This article outlines 34 ideas for promoting an intranet, ranging from the obvious through to the very unusual. Somewhere in this list should be a few approaches that you can apply to your own intranet.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2003). Design>Web Design>Intranets

3D Type Effect

Using Photoshop's built-in features, you can easily create a simple looking 3D type effect in a few easy steps.

Kelby, Scott. Mac Design Magazine (2003). Design>Typography>Software>Adobe Photoshop

404 File Not Found: Citing Unstable Web Sources    

Researchers, including students, must accommodate to the mutating character of hyperlinks on the World Wide Web. A small study of citations in three volumes of BCQ demonstrates the phenomenon of 'URL rot,' the disappearance of sites cited in the sample articles. Digital technology itself is now being used to create pockets of permanence, but with the understanding that preservation of content is only one ingredient in the mix of media and format migration. Databases like JSTOR offer digitally preserved copies of many scholarly journals. Online journals and search engines may offer their own archives. In general, researchers should cite digital articles in databases where possible and consider avoiding references to online journals with print editions.

Griffin, Frank. Business Communication Quarterly (2003). Articles>Research>Style Guides>Online

"About Us" -- Presenting Information About an Organization on Its Website

Study participants searched websites for background information ranging from company history to management biographies and contact details. Their success rate was 70%, leaving much room for usability improvements in the 'About Us' designs.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2003). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Writing

The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

Ever wonder about that mysterious Content-Type tag? You know, the one you're supposed to put in HTML and you never quite know what it should be? I've been dismayed to discover just how many software developers aren't really completely up to speed on the mysterious world of character sets, encodings, Unicode, all that stuff.

Spolsky, Joel. Joel on Software (2003). Articles>Language>Standards>Unicode

Academic and Workplace Genres

Students will be asked to choose and research particular social situations, analyze texts produced in the contexts of these situations, and present the results of these explorations in written assignments and oral presentations. Students will be asked to go through drafting and peer review and revision processes while working on the course assignments. In-class time will be provided for peer review sessions.

Artemeva, Natasha. Carleton University (2003). Academic>Courses>Genre

An Academic Strikes Back: Transgressing the Genre of Bureaucracy

The rhetorical event described in this article shows that the rhetor can introduce an alien genre into a community of practice and createa kairotic moment.

Tachino, Tosh. Newsletter of the CASLL (2003). Articles>Language>Rhetoric

Academic Writing: Reviews of Literature

The format of a review of literature may vary from discipline to discipline and from assignment to assignment. A review may be a self-contained unit -- an end in itself -- or a preface to and rationale for engaging in primary research. A review is a required part of grant and research proposals and often a chapter in theses and dissertations. Generally, the purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, and theoretical articles.

University of Wisconsin (2003). Academic>Writing>Style Guides

Academic Writing: Scientific Reports

This handout describes an organizational structure commonly used to report experimental research in many scientific disciplines, the IMRAD format: Introduction, Methods, Results, And Discussion. (This format is usually not used in reports describing other kinds of research, such as field or case studies, in which headings are more likely to differ according to discipline.) Although the main headings are standard for many scientific fields, details may vary; check with your instructor, or, if submitting an article to a journal, refer to the instructions to authors.

University of Wisconsin (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Reports

Accents and Accented Characters

Have you ever needed to set an accented character in copy but couldn’t find it on your keyboard? If these characters leave you feeling naïve, you’re not alone. Diacritic characters, as these accented letters are called, are essential to the proper pronunciation and meaning of many foreign words. When you come across an accented letter, don’t assume it can be eliminated without consequence, or you might end up misspelling a person’s name! Accent marks also turn up frequently in foreign-born words and phrases that have become part of common English usage, such as résumé, passé and tête-à-tête. Happily, diacritic characters can be accessed or created with most professional-quality fonts.

Strizver, Ilene. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2003). Design>Typography

Accepting Roles Created for Us: The Ethics of Reciprocity  

Grounded in theories of feminist research practices and in two empirical studies we conducted separately, our argument is that seeing reciprocity as a context-based process of definition and re-definition of the relationship between participants and researcher helps us understand how research projects can benefit participants in ways that they desire.

Powell, Katrina M. and Pamela Takayoshi. CCC (2003). Articles>Workplace>Ethnographies>Gender

Access All Sights

If your company has a public website, it needs to be accessible - and that's the law.

Joseph, Cliff. Guardian Unlimited, The (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>United Kingdom

Access Key, HTML Accesskey Generated by JavaScript

One of the great advantages of using first letter of the link text as access key is that it can be generated by code. Conventional wisdom states that it should be done server-side. Bad that it is much easier with JavaScript.

Tverskov, Jesper. Smack the Mouse (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>JavaScript

Accessibile.net

The site is a resource for everyone who is interested in E-accessibility and Internet Society. Here you can find freshly updated informations about Italian, European and Worldwide conferences, laws, researches, books and statistics about accessibility situation and new media.

Patrizia, Bertini and Bazz. Accessibile.net (2003). (Italian) Resources>Accessibility>Journalism>Italy

Accessibility and Macromedia Flash MX 2004

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 helps to accelerate accessible application development with a core set of UI components. These components can automate many of the most common accessibility practices related to labeling, keyboard access, and testing and help to ensure a consistent user experience across rich applications created with Macromedia Flash MX 2004. For each component, the designer or developer need only enable the accessibility object by using the command enableAccessibility(). This includes the accessibility object with the component as the movie is compiled. Because there is no simple means of removing an object once it has been added to the component, these options are turned off by default. It is therefore very important that the designer or developer enable accessibility for each component. This step needs to be done only once for each component; it is not necessary to enable accessibility for each instance of a component.

Adobe (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Flash

Accessibility of Online Chat Programs

This article will evaluate the accessibility of three types of popular synchronous communication tools: IRC, Web-based chats and instant messengers.

WebAIM (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Accessibility>Online

Accessibility of UK Government Web Sites Investigated

The UK’s first e-Minister, Patricia Hewitt, gave a commitment in February 2001 that all new government websites should be accessible. Two years later, UK government sites are a long way from being accessible.

Accessify (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>United Kingdom

Accessibility Redefined  

Accessibility has come a long way. Not only most public places but even many private areas now claim to be 'accessible'. However, this term usually implies that a person in a wheelchair is able to get to the inside of a venue. This is not enough. If I am using a wheelchair, I would like to be completely autonomous and move around freely. I don’t want to have to go along a long dark corridor to use a service lift in order to get to another floor. Although I always appreciate it, I don’t want to have to count on the generosity of passersby to help me open a door or push my wheelchair up a slope. My only wish is to blend in with other people, and enjoy life as much as anyone else.

Vais, Fabien. STC Proceedings (2003). Design>Accessibility>User Centered Design>Universal Usability

Accessibility Testing on a Budget

How do you find out how your site sounds? Without dipping in to the wallet, here are some suggestions about how you can test your pages.

Accessify (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Visual

Accessible And Attractive Websites

And, as a result, selling the concept is never all that easy. Sure, you can harp on about all the 'business benefits' (potential increased audienced, reduced bandwidth costs, good PR), but what you really need to be able to do is show that it's possible to do this without compromising on the design. That's often where the problems begin.

Lloyd, Ian. SitePoint (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility

Accessible Web Typography: An Introduction for Web Designers

Text is your flexible friend; it can be transformed into audio or braille; used to describe non-text elements; and be presented visually in an infinite number of sizes.

Byrne, Jim. Scotconnect.com (2003). Design>Typography>Web Design