Testing Content/writing for the web. Nobody needs to convince you that it’s important to test your website’s design and interaction with the people who will use it, right?
But if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on feedback about the most important part of your site: the content. Issue № 320 Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether they can find information or complete transactions is a missed opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? Can they read and understand what you’ve written? A tale of two audiences#section1 Consider a health information site with two sets of fact sheets: A simplified version for the lay audience and a technical version for physicians. You’re doing it wrong#section2 Have you ever asked a user the following questions about your content? How did you like that information? A List Apart. A List Apart: Articles: Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches. If you’re like thousands of other designers, programmers and other creative professionals out there, at one point in time you’ve considered starting your own business.
Unlike most, you’ve gone against common sense and decided to open shop for yourself. And not just freelance full-time, mind you, but file for the company name, get some stationery, and wade through the legal mumbo-jumbo. Maybe even get a real office with a water cooler. This article offers real-world advice from the trenches of a small start-up, and is applicable to designers, web developers, copywriters, usability experts and all manner of service providers. Freelancers take heed: there are several items that are just as pertinent to your profession. Write a Business Plan#section1 The most important thing you can do to prepare for starting and operating your own business. A few years ago, new age business rhetoric said forget the business plan and just run with it.
File for a Fictitious Name#section2 Funding#section3. In Search of the Holy Grail by Matthew Levine. I’m sorry.
Really. I didn’t name it. I don’t mean to overstate its importance or trivialize the other and rather weightier Holy Grails. Article Continues Below But the name’s out there, and we all know what it means. Three columns. Many articles have been written about the grail, and several good templates exist. A recent project has brought my personal grail quest to an end. Have a fluid center with fixed width sidebars,allow the center column to appear first in the source,allow any column to be the tallest,require only a single extra div of markup, andrequire very simple CSS, with minimal hacks patches. On the shoulders of giants#section1 The technique presented here is inspired by Alex Robinson’s brilliant One True Layout. Another lead came from Eric Meyer’s adaptation that uses positioning to mix multiple unit types. Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style by Nick Rigby. Anyone who has created drop-down menus will be familiar with the large quantities of scripting such menus typically require.
But, using structured HTML and simple CSS, it is possible to create visually appealing drop-downs that are easy to edit and update, and that work across a multitude of browsers, including Internet Explorer. Better still, for code-wary designers, no JavaScript is required! (Actually, a tiny bit of JavaScript is needed, but it’s not what you think.) Article Continues Below Here’s a sneak preview of the menu in action. Creating the menu#section1 The first and most important part of creating our menu is the menu structure itself. That’s it: some simple HTML that is both accessible and easy to edit. Visually appealing? If you have previewed the menu above, you’ll see a pretty boring list of items.
The first step is to remove the indents and bullets from the unordered list and define the width of our menu items. Next, we need to position our list items. Now the fun bit.