Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster with Top Aligned Labels | UX Movement by anthony on 09/01/10 at 3:48 pm Imagine a user who is really excited about your product or service. They’re ready to sign up, so they go to your form page and start filling out their information. The way you align your labels with your form fields can affect how easy it is for users to fill out the form. Do you want to give users a quick, easy and painless experience or do you want to give them a hassle? If you want to make their experience quick, easy and painless, consider using top aligned labels for your form fields. Top aligned labels are faster and easier to fill out than left or right aligned labels. The only drawback with top aligned labels is that they can make the form long. The difference is clear.
Web Developers Handbook | CSS, Web Development, Color Tools, SEO, Usability etc. Vitaly Friedman's The Web Developer's Handbook creativity | css galleries & showcases | color tools | color schemes, palettes | color patterns | fashion: colors selection | color theory | royalty free photos | css daily reading | web design daily reading | css layouts | css navigation menus | css techniques | css: software & Firefox Extensions | css-web-tools & services | html-web-tools & services | accessibility checkers | miscellaneous tools | ajax | javascript | DOM | fonts | typography | RSS | CMS | blogging | specifications | usability & accessibility | add a link (free) | seo tools | seo references | howtogetthingsdone | freelancers resources | web2.0 | 2read Advertise here! creativity css: selected showcases css galleries & showcases color tools color schemes, palettes color patterns fashion: colors selection color theory royalty free photos specifications usability & accessibility add a link (free) seo tools seo references howtogetthingsdone freelancers web 2.0 2read: this week
Texting before bed can make teens even moodier By Daniel Bates Updated: 12:06 GMT, 8 November 2010 Children who text and email late at night may be damaging their health. Teenagers and children who send electronic messages after they have been sent to bed may have poorer quality sleep and become moody, a study found. Those who were unable to put their phones or laptops to one side were also more likely to be anxious and depressed or suffer learning difficulties. Distraction: Across both sexes, emails and texts woke them up once a night on average and a worrying 77 per cent had persistent trouble getting to sleep The U.S. researchers said that unlike watching TV, which is a largely passive activity, sending emails and texts involved more interaction so kept the brain busy at the time when it should be shutting down. The pilot research team from the JFK Sleep Centre in Edison, New Jersey, gave questionnaires to 40 people aged between eight and 22, asking about their sleep habits and use of texts and emails.
PDFs Become Contextually Amazing With Scribd's Apture Integration The Portable Document Format, or .PDF, sometimes feels silly these days - doesn't it? Sure, they are often pretty - but they feel so static and inflexible. No more! With the new integration of contextual search tool Apture, HTML5-powered PDF viewing and sharing community Scribd now offers a radically new way to read PDFs. Above, you can see an image of my screen while reading a PDF titled The Internet of things: Networked objects and smart devices. "Reading has been a flat experience for thousands of years," Scribd CEO Trip Adler said about the partnership. Those are strong words, but really - the user experience is there and remarkable. Apture Highlights on Scribd from Tristan Harris on Vimeo. ReadWriteWeb uses Apture as well - try it out here by highlighting any word or phrase on any page. Most of the time right now I read PDFs on my iPad.
20 Free Social Media Icon Sets For a More Shareable Website If your blog needs a face lift, the creative types who power the web are here to help. Sometimes a few well-designed, tastefully placed icons can add a little class or creativity to an otherwise neutral theme. Social media links, which we'd argue are a priority for any blog, are a great opportunity to add some texture. You could always roll with the standard-issue glossy, rounded-edge fare, but for those who want to distinguish themselves, there are more creative options out there. To help, we've rounded up some of the most impressive works of social icon art circulating the web lately. If you use a fun icon set that didn't make our list, be sure to share the wealth in the comments section. 1. You don't need a "science" blog to take advantage of these lovely beakers. 2. These are just too cute to pass up. 3. These ice cubes are less practical, but they're so nicely rendered we had to include them. 4. 5. 6. There's something about the texture of these swatches that draws the eye. 7. 8. 9.
Daily Artisan & 14 Awesome Google Tricks You May Not Be Using Posted by admin in News on 08 25th, 2010 | no responses If you ask your average Internet surfer what Google does, they’ll tell you that “it helps you find stuff, silly.” Some may even mention that it’s good for email, maps, and maybe a couple of other things. What many do not realize is that Google has some excellent functions that aren’t always easy to find. Here is a guide to 14 of the most innovative functions that many will find useful and most will find cool. 1. Visiting a place and want to know what’s the weather there like? Example: Vienna Weather 2. If you want to know the time local time at anyplace worldwide all you have to do is type “What’s the time in ______”. Example: What’s the time in London? 3. Just enter the name of airline and the flight number and Google will show you the arrival and departure times. Example: American Airlines 293 4. Type in “city1+city2” to get links for booking your flight. Example: Atlanta+Chicago 5. Trust Google to know. 6. 7. 8. Example: Paris 9. 10.
Why I'm Loving the Livefyre Comments System Regular readers of this blog will have noticed the introduction of the Livefyre comment system. While I’ve written in the past about my reasons to go back to the WordPress comments system, I saw Livefyre in use on a couple of blogs I enjoy and was intrigued enough to check the system out. While it’s not perfect (and, to be fair, it’s still in beta), having used Livefyre for a week or so now, I’m really enjoying the experience. So, what’s Livefyre comments all about then? Comments and Community On first inspection, Livefyre looks like much like the other main third-party comments systems (Disqus, IntenseDebate and Echo). But it’s when you start using Lifefyre that you can see the goal behind the company – to build a solid commenting community where everyone is “accountable” (this isn’t as Big Brother-ish as it sounds). At first, I wasn’t sure about this approach (and raised it in the comments over at the Livefyre blog). Real-Time Chat and Replies Checking in to Comments Other Features My take?
How To Create a Screencast Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed We have had more screencast submissions lately than we can even count. I know all of you are anxious and hoping to be featured in our channels. However, you’re wasting your time – and ours – if you aren’t following a few simple steps. Dylan took the time to create this screencast to help all of you have a better chance of having your work showcased. HD Quality – 1080p is not required. 780p is more than sufficient. Thanks, Dylan, for doing this screencast for us. Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Podcast: Play in new window | Download (13.2MB) Will Internet censorship bill be pushed through lame-duck Congress? | Raw Story By Daniel TencerSunday, November 14, 2010 12:37 EDT A bill giving the government the power to shut down Web sites that host materials that infringe copyright is making its way quietly through the lame-duck session of Congress, raising the ire of free-speech groups and prompting a group of academics to lobby against the effort. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced in Congress this fall by Sen. Critics say the bill is both a giveaway to the movie and recording industries and a step towards widespread and unaccountable censorship of the Internet. Opponents note that the powers given the government under the bill are very broad. Activist group DemandProgress, which is running a petition against the bill, argues the powers in the bill could be used for political purposes. A group of academics, led by Temple University law professor David Post, have signed a petition opposing COICA. The bill is “awful on many fronts,” he wrote at Volokh Conspiracy.
s Guide to Protecting Electronic Devices and Data at the U.S. Border Amid recent reports that security researchers have experienced difficulties at the United States border after traveling abroad, we realized that it's been awhile since we last discussed how to safeguard electronic devices and digital information during border searches. So just in time for holiday travel and the 27th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, here's EFF's guide for protecting your devices and sensitive data at the United States border. The Government Has Broad Legal Authority to Search Laptops, Phones, Cameras, and Other Devices at the U.S. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable government searches and seizures. While the Supreme Court has not yet decided the issue, several courts have considered whether the government needs even a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to search a traveler's laptop at the border, and have regrettably decided that the answer is no. Carry as little data as possible over the border.
Joi Ito: The web needs copyright tools | Technology | The Observer Joi Ito, ceo of Creative Commons, wants to ease the 'friction' in information sharing online Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Observer Joi Ito, 44, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with a particular interest in the world wide web, was an early investor in Twitter, Technorati, Flickr and Last.fm. He grew up in Japan and the US; he once owned a nightclub in Tokyo and worked as a DJ in Chicago. What is Creative Commons? It is a non-profit organisation with volunteer judges, lawyers and activists in 80 to 100 countries. How does it work? It establishes a standard set of legal and technical tools that allows interoperability. Look at Wikipedia or Skype or eBay – all of these would have seemed like dumb ideas before they were created, yet in retrospect they seem obvious. So my assertion is: as each layer involved in a transaction becomes cheap and interoperable, the next layer becomes the friction spot. Where do you think things are heading? You have invested in some great start-ups.
Info pirates seek an alternative internet - science-in-society - 06 December 2010 After dumping thousands of secret US diplomatic cables in the public domain last week, WikiLeaks ended up losing its web hosting company – twice – and its wikileaks.org web domain to boot as providers got cold feet about its content. But a plan being hatched by fellow travellers in the file-sharing community may shield the controversial data dumper from such takedowns in future. It all started with a tweet on 28 November: "Hello all ISPs of the world. This missive, complaining about the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was from Peter Sunde, an anti-copyright activist based in Sweden and one of the founders of The Pirate Bay website, which tracks the locations of copyrighted movie and music BitTorrent files. Taken down on a whim What's their beef? Sunde has lost at least one domain this way, seeing it taken over by music trade body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and, with others, faces a huge fine and prison for running The Pirate Bay.
Trust by Design April 17, 2003 I'm relaxing back into the pleasures of Ann Arbor life after several weeks in the air and on the road. Boston, Massachusetts. A strange mix of conferences, consulting, and opportunistic tourism. I visited IBM and the IMF, talked freedom and findability with librarians, met Stewart Brand, explored Powell's City of Books, wandered Torino with an itinerant Australian, and spoke at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. On my mind, through all this travel, was the concept of trust. Web Credibility In recent months, I've become a big fan of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and the Web Credibility Project. Their studies regarding how people evaluate a web site's credibility show the critical importance of information design and structure. This is a huge validation for visual designers and information architects. Of course, this also adds more complexity to design. Trust in Commerce I relate this directly to my experience as a speaker. Trust in Organizations
Linking the Real World to the Web: 3 Emerging Technologies Compared Hamilton Chan is CEO of Paperlinks and Paperspring. Through its iPhone app (previously featured as the #1 New & Noteworthy free app in the iTunes store) and QR web platform, Paperlinks makes context sensitive marketing plug-and-play for small, medium and large businesses. No longer tied to a desktop browser, we now demand access to a broad range of information anytime and anywhere via our smartphones. In the past few years, three different technologies have emerged enabling such real-world linking through the capabilities of our smartphones: quick response (QR) codes, near field communication (NFC) tags, and visual recognition technology. QR codes, NFC and visual recognition technology each pose individual advantages and shortcomings that the savvy marketer must understand in order to leverage them properly. Quick Response (QR) Codes Technical Details: QR codes were originally developed in 1994 to track automotive parts efficiently by Japanese company and Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave.