Category Archives: Usability / IA
Usability myths and professionals
A recent post by a local authority web officer was fairly frustrating for me, as it perpetuates several myths in usability, as well as calling into question my motives. The last part is about usability advice (from me) published on the localdirect.gov.uk site.
IA and accessibility
If your interest was peaked by mention of addressing accessibility issues at the Information Architecture (IA) stage when reading my .Net article, there is finally some further reading on it.
CMS editable Flash
With all the fuss over AJAX and Flash accessibility you get, I thought it might be worth outlining the process we used to create a Flash/AJAX widget and highlight one of the advantages you get with this method. It also means that the use of Flash has no impact on your Search Engine Optimisation. @media 2007
I’m just back from @media, and thought I’d post up brief notes (such as they are) for my own reference and anyone else’s gain. Obviously, I will only comment on the presentations I saw, and it’s all from my own particular perspective.
Jesse James Garrett – Beyond AJAX
I didn’t …
Upcoming relaunched
Upcoming.org is a site that allowed people to publish their events, and therefore you could see all the events by location and/or type of event. Yahoo bought the company, they have relaunched the site, and it's pretty good (functionality wise at least, I've not checked the markup).
Powerpoint bad for your brain?
Just an off the cuff post during lunch: There is an article republished on Outlaw called Official: Powerpoint bad for brains, which I tend to agree with, but I suspect their analysis of the cause may be flawed.
Perceptions of page loading speed
It is fairly amusing when people (clients or otherwise) demand that a page load in under x seconds (where 'x' varies by which guru article they were reading). This hit home today when David Hyatt (lead developer of Safari) highlighted people's mis-perceptions.
Criteria for using Web 2.0
Whether you think the term "Web 2.0" is a passing buzzword or a useful umbrella term for a range of concepts, I've been hearing some strange requests from clients. Over the course of a few conversations I've distilled down the main criteria I use for establishing whether we should use some fancy new Web 2.0 magic.
Accessibility or Help links?
You see a lot of links on sites which are for "Accessibility", to provide both help for those with accessibility issues, and state what levels of accessibility the site is aiming for. However, I believe that this content should be split up between two different pages.
Accessible WYSIWYG editors part 1 – The problem
There is an elephant in the corner type of problem in the accessibilty world, that of WYSIWYG editors. In the first of a three part series, I outline this problem. The later posts will define what a solution would be, and see if it exists yet.