On Web Usability: Mouse Cursors and Actionable Page Elements | engfer(s) Whether we realize it or not, the displayed cursor image tells us about the area of the screen below our mouse cursor; it tells us whether or not we need to click, drag, move, resize, or even wait. Now, I know that we all know this, but I believe that sometimes as developers (especially web developers) we forget that not all items in an application have the correct default cursor for the action that is assigned for that item. The Web Standard For years we lived without JavaScript in our browsers; it wasn’t used by developers, or it was turned off or disabled by the user because there were so many security flaws with the JavaScript engine; however, as those security flaws are fixed and JavaScript’s functionality increases, the age of no-script is quickly coming to a close. One of the side-effects from living without JavaScript for so long is that users are now used to relying on the mouse pointer to signal whether or not something on the page is clickable or actionable. Taken For Granted
Save web articles as PDF for reading later: Joliprint Information Architects – The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard by Oliver Reichenstein Most websites are crammed with small text that’s a pain to read. Why? There is no reason for squeezing so much information onto the screen. It’s just a stupid collective mistake that dates back to a time when screens were really, really small. So… Screen vs. magazine: 100% is NOT big; image by Wilson Miner. Don’t tell us to adjust the font size We don’t want to change our browser settings every time we visit a website! Don’t tell us busy pages look better Crowded websites don’t look good: they look nasty. Don’t tell us scrolling is bad Because then all websites are bad. Don’t tell us text is not important 95% of what is commonly referred to as web design is typography. Don’t tell us to get glasses Rather, stop licking your screen, lean back (!) Five Simple Rules 1. The font size you are reading right now is not big. We don’t want to click bigger or smaller buttons and we don’t want to change our preferences. 2. Let your text breathe. Good Nielsen – bad Nielsen. 3. 4. 5.
Nitro PDF Reader — Un lecteur de PDF Reader totalement repensé 16 Pixels: For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake - Smashing Magazine 16 Pixels: For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake Advertisement I know what you’re thinking. “Did he just say 16 pixels? I’d like to persuade you otherwise. As usability expert Oliver Reichenstein says in “The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard1”: [16 pixels] is not big. In this article, I’ll explain why 16 pixels should generally be the minimum size for body copy in modern Web design. You see, in most cases, if you’re building websites with the font size set between 10 and 15 pixels, you are costing your clients money. Readership = Revenue If you’re building a website for someone — even yourself — chances are its purpose is to make money. Perhaps it’s to sell a product directly, or to offer a service, or just to generate leads. So, every element should be designed to achieve that goal. Think about it. Important Facts About Reading There are some particular findings that are pivotal to issues such as readership and readability and comprehension, which is really what body copy is all about.
Detect and Set the iPhone & iPad's Viewport Orientation Using JavaScript, CSS and Meta Tags Last week we showed you how to use Safari for iPhone and iPad website testing. This week we'll show you how to detect and set the devices' viewport orientation to Landscape or Portrait using JavaScript, CSS and meta tags. Developing websites for the iPhone and iPad is a bit different than developing a website for a standard, desktop web browser. When you are viewing a site using an iPhone, for instance, if you are holding the device upright, you will see the page in portrait view. Using Meta Tags for iPhone and iPad Orientation The best way to detect the orientation of the device is by using meta tags. The initial-scale is the one that renders when the page initially loads. To keep users from expanding the window size beyond the size it needs to display properly, you can set the maximum-scale to 1.0. Using JavaScript for iPhone and iPad Orientation Using CSS for iPhone and iPad Orientation Another method that you can use to your advantage is using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
UIFont - iPhone Development Wiki Languages: English • français UIFont is a class representing a font face and the font size. This class is built on top of GSFont. Default font families Default font sizes There are 4 font sizes that can be obtained using +[UIFont someSize]. Undocumented methods +fontWithFamilyName:traits:size: Returns a font with specific family name, traits (bold/italic) and font size. // Equivalent to [UIFont fontWithName:@"Arial-BoldMT" size:24]UIFont* font = [UIFont fontWithFamilyName:@"Arial" traits:GSBoldFontMask size:24]; +fontWithMarkupDescription: Create a font using a CSS font description, e.g. // Equivalent to [UIFont fontWithName:@"Arial-BoldMT" size:24]UIFont* font = [UIFont fontWithMarkupDescription:@"font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold;"]; Unlike real CSS rules there are heavy restrictions on the "markup description": The font-family rule must be exact. -traits Returns the traits (bold/italic) of the font. -isFixedPitch Returns whether the font is monospaced or not. References
Designing With Audio: What Is Sound Good For? Advertisement Our world is getting louder. Consider all the beeps and bops from your smartphone that alert you that something is happening, and all the feedback from your appliances when your toast is ready or your oven is heated, and when Siri responds to a question you’ve posed. Today our technology is expressing itself with sound, and, as interaction designers, we need to consider how to deliberately design with audio to create harmony rather than cacophony. The cacophony is beautifully captured in Chris Crutchfield’s video, in which he interprets the experience of receiving email, SMS texts, phone calls, Facebook messages and tweets all at the same time: In this article, we’ll explore some of the uses of audio, where we might find it and when it is useful. Audio is a form of feedback that can be used either in combination with other forms, such as haptics, visual displays and LEDs, or on its own. Audio is not always warranted. Where We Find Audio (Image credit: Fey Ilyas) Mobile Gaming
UX, It's Time to Define CXO What is a Chief Experience Officer (CXO)? We’ve been singing its praises when the title started cropping up in boardrooms. “Thank the gods, UX has finally made C-level!” There were riots in the streets, free sharpies were given out on every city block, and colored pencils rained from the sky... But now that the CXO title has been around for a few years, I ask you: what does the CXO really do and how have things changed for us? I think that this role needs some serious examination. Let’s start by looking at how CXO is defined today. corporate leadership in UX strategy software and hardware design management creative reviews and concept development intellectual property positioning and protection Even this seems a little bit sketchy, but we’re progressing. So, let’s define it for ourselves! First, let’s think about the intended output. Understand the users, business, and technology In order to know our users, we need to institute a design research framework.
Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications Advertisement Business Web application design is too often neglected. I see a lot of applications that don’t meet the needs of either businesses or users and thus contribute to a loss of profit and poor user experience. It even happens that designers are not involved in the process of creating applications at all, putting all of the responsibility on the shoulders of developers. This is a tough task for developers, who may have plenty of back-end and front-end development experience but limited knowledge of design. So, we will cover the basics of user interface design for business Web applications. Websites vs. Confusing Web applications and websites is easy, as is confusing user interface design and website design. A website is a collection of pages consisting mostly of static content, images and video, with limited interactive functionality (i.e. except for the contact form and search functionality). Different Types of Web Applications First, Know Your Users How to Identify Users? Testing
In Defense of Eye Candy We’ve all seen arguments in the design community that dismiss the role of beauty in visual interfaces, insisting that good designers base their choices strictly on matters of branding or basic design principles. Lost in these discussions is an understanding of the powerful role aesthetics play in shaping how we come to know, feel, and respond. Consider how designers “skin” an information architect’s wireframes. Or how the term “eye candy” suggests that visual design is inessential. Why aesthetics? For starters, aesthetics is concerned with anything that appeals to the senses—not just what we see, but what we hear, smell, taste, and feel. Perhaps more importantly, “aesthetics examines our affective domain response to an object or phenomenon” (according to Wikipedia). Aesthetics and cognition#section2 Cognition is “the process of knowing.” Here, aesthetics communicates function. In this example, the visual language confi‚icts with the intent of the message. Aesthetics and affect#section3
Explaining Personas used in UX Design – Part 2 « Melbourne, as in the city. Out of the entire UX toolkit, personas are the tool that I find myself having to explain and justify the most. Everyone that I’ve introduced them to recently, as part of the overall UX process, seems to have a negative association with them that is usually based upon some Marketing driven personas that they’ve been exposed to previously and have seen little value in. So in this 2-part piece, here’s how I explain the how they are created and differences in how they are used. Creating UX Personas using research-based insights Done properly personas are created after conducting qualitative research with the target users of a product. The real world details and quotes from participants are used to flesh out the ‘personality’ of the personas, thereby ensuring that they represent real world experiences rather than fictional internal expectations of what the target audience does. Here’s the steps involved in creating them: 1. 2. Behavioural variables identified in post-it notes. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
How To Create a Horizontally Scrolling Site If web pages were made out of wood, the grain would be running up and down. Vertical is the natural flow of web layout. When page elements reach the right edge of the browser window and go over, the flow defaults to "wrapping" that element down onto the next line. The more content on the page, the taller it gets, not the wider. Why is this? This natural flow has lead to conventions in web page layout and even into hardware itself. View Demo Download Files The best way to do it I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think a table is the best layout technique for a horizontally scrolling site. Set a really wide static width. The <table> method What we need is a page element which can expand horizontally as needed and never "wrap". Let's assume we are trying to lay out a series of blog posts one after another horizontally. <table><tr><td> .. blog post #1 </td><td> .. blog post #2 </td><td> .. blog post #3 </td></tr></table> Yuck, right? <article class="post"> .. blog post #1 ..