10 Principles Of Effective Web Design - Smashing Magazine
Advertisement Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. We aren’t going to discuss the implementation details (e.g. where the search box should be placed) as it has already been done in a number of articles; instead we focus on the main principles, heuristics and approaches for effective web design — approaches which, used properly, can lead to more sophisticated design decisions and simplify the process of perceiving presented information. Please notice that you might be interested in the usability-related articles about 10 Usability Nightmares1 and 30 Usability Issues2 we’ve published before,we’ll cover more principles of effective design in our following posts. This article has been translated to Hebrew4. How do users think? 1. 2. 3.
FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts
Flickr is back in the news this week with reports that it will add video. But we're still loving the photo-sharing element: here's 100+ ways to get even more out of the popular photo site. Desktop Applications 1001 for Mac OS X - Allows batch uploading and can notify you of new photos uploaded by your friends. Background Switcher - Will auto-change your desktop background on a Windows machine at intervals of your choosing from a pool of photos you pick. Desktop Flickr Organizer for Gnome - Desktop organizer for Linux that allows online and offline work on your photos and tagging. Flickr and Webimager - Lets you capture your entire screen, or just a portion, and auto-upload it to your account. Flickr Exporter for Aperture - Tag and upload your photos, store ID and URL for your photos in the Aperture program. Flickr Exporter for iPhoto -Edit photos, add tags, resize before loading and several other useful options. Flickr Finder - Mac OS X application for browsing your photos. Firefox Extensions
10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of - Smashing Magazine
Advertisement Sometimes you just want to get the information you’re after, save it and move along. And you can’t. Nevermind what design you have, and nevermind which functionality you have to offer — if your visitors don’t understand how they can get from point A to point B they won’t use your site. a clear, self-explanatory navigation,precise text-presentation,search functionality andvisible and thought-out site structure. And that means that you simply have to folow the basic rules of usability and common sense. In this article we take a look at some of the usability nightmares you should avoid designing functional and usable web-sites. 1. Backpack2, 37signal’s one of the most usable organizational and project management tools out there, explains exactly what the tool can be used for, how one can use it and which features it has to offer. The “Log in”-link (hint: in the yellow box) should have a greater font-size — also icons would do the job. 2. 3. 4. 5. Often less is more. 6. 7. 8.
A Short Story About “Back To Top” Links - Smashing Magazine
Advertisement Often it is the close attention to small details that makes a design outstanding. During the development of a website, designers tend to quickly forget about small details and focus on major design elements, such as navigation, typography and layout. In this way, little details are important because they can help the design stand out. In this post, we showcase the design of “Back to top” links, a forgotten and rarely used link that helps users jump to the top of a given page. When “Back to Top” Links are Useful Unfortunately, this friendly service — letting users jump to the top of the page — is offered very rarely. In fact, “Back to top” links are not always useful. However, websites with long pages can offer visitors a nifty feature that saves time and avoids the need for vertical scrolling with the mouse. Where Should the “Top” Link be Placed? The most obvious and common place for a “Back to top” link is the footer. How to Create a “Top” Link? <div id="footer"><! Wording (al)
A reputation economy via "via:"?: aqualung
As posted at the end of last year, 2006 was the year I really got into del.icio.us, in large part due to Cote' pointing me to the "for:" tag (the other large part due to the Firefox extension for replacing the standard bookmarks with del.icio.us tags). The corollary to "for:" is "via:" - if somebody tags something "for:aqualung:" and I like it, I save it too, add some tags of my own, and tip the hat with (for example) "via:JamesGovernor". Go search del.icio.us for THAT tag, and you find (at time of writing) there are 113 occurrences - 113 times that James has alerted somebody to something of interest that the somebody has appreciated, AND tagged it with the "via:". Anyway - this is the sort of idea that pops into my head when woken for work at 3:30am ... vintage has well and truly started. [Aside: my Redmonk schwag arrived today - Flickr pix when I get time to take them!]
Webdesign-Regeln - Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability - The design of forms
10 Qualitative Tools to Improve Your Website | Tools
If you run or manage a website, you probably have experience with a web analytics package (like Google Analytics). These tools are great at answering the quantitative questions, the “what?” questions that every good webmaster should ask themselves. Questions like, “How many visitors did I have last month?”, “How many conversions?” The list below represents a compilation of some of the best qualitative tools out there, all of which you can start using to improve your website today. You may be interested in the following related articles as well. Feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts that our readers may find helpful. Don’t forget to and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates. Qualitative Tools to Improve Your Website This list is certainly not comprehensive, nor is it meant to be. 01. The Rundown: Concept Feedback is a brand new community for designers, developers and marketers. The Benefit: Getting a second opinion on your work is never a bad idea. 02.
Blogs » Usability tips for bloggers
Now this is an article that grabbed my attention straight away! Often when I think about web usability and usability heuristics I think about it from a commercial perspective. I think about my clients and the type of sites I would normally work on: Finance, government, retail, travel, telco’s… you get the picture. But one genre I haven’t considered in much detail is the blog. Tom Johnson has just published a really useful and well researched article on his blog, I’d rather be writing. I’ll leave it for you to take a look at the post yourself, but in summary his 20 tips are: Let me tell you, if you haven’t already noticed ;), I struggle with the last one and it’s something I’m working on at the moment :) This is a really great list of tips that most of us will be able to work with immediately; many of them you’re probably already doing… But it’s a great check-list to identify ways of improving your blog further.
