Usability: December 2003 Archive Page

--WebWord Returning Soon! (WebWord)

John S. Rhodes, whose WebWord.com has been down for several months, is planning to bring it back early in 2004. Hurrah!

--Virtual Punchcard Server (Facade.com)

I found this and a great Tongue Twister Database (if by "database" you mean "long list") via J-Walk Weblog.

Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show. --Jakob Nielsen --Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003 (Alertbox)

Usually Nielsen's blurbs are more informative... the "summary" on his site reads more like a marketing tease. To give you a sense of what the page is like, I'll have to collect the first 5 subheadings: "1. Unclear Statement of Purpopse," "2. New URLs for Archived Content," "3. Undated Content," "4. Small Thumbnail Images of Big, Detailed Photos," and "5. Overly detailed ALT Text."

Since archived content, thumbnails and alt text (that's the descriptive text that sometimes pops up near your mouse pointer, usually in a yellow box) are all good things, Nielsen's observations are helpful for those who have implemented these good things in a less-than-optimal way. Observations six through nine are about information architecture, and thus not something my own students are likely to need; while the last item (warning designers about pages that link to themselves) is very relevant to my teaching of newbie web authors.

Same color palette: greens, blues, and reds on a synthetic base of white. Same kinds of curves and contours, same balance and proportions. Whereas once upon a time toothbrushes were made from a single plastic cast, contemporary models, like contemporary athletic shoes, are built up out of inscrutable deposits of layers and sediment that speak to some elsuive yet exquisitely refined ergonomic principle. --Matt Kirschenbaum --Of Sneakers and Toothbrushes (MGK)

This one made me smile. Does the target audience for Nike ads actually call them "sneakers" these days? Just curious.

In my opinion, Google today is far from the great search engine it was in those far-off days, yet I still use it.

Even knowing that it indexes only a small proportion of the web using a technique that too often gives precedence to pages that lack authority or coherence, that it is skewed by multiple blog links and can be manipulated by unscrupulous advertisers, doesn't stop me typing search terms into my toolbar and feasting on the results. --Bill Thompson --Is Google good for you? (BBC)

If there's a problem with PowerPoint, it's not that it makes you dumb, it's that Microsoft has never taken the time to show us how it can make you smart. --Mike Gunderloy --PowerPoint Doesn't Make You Dumb (ADT Mag)

Enough people responded ethusiastically to the NY Times article dissing PowerPoint that I thought it worthwhile to link to an opposing viewpoint.

What's that on the home page of ADT Magazine -- is that an ad for Microsoft? And what's that on the main menu bar -- a link to a whole section devoted to Microsoft's .NET?

While Gunderloy is critical of Microsoft, his claim that people simply haven't been trained to unlock the power of a piece of software is consistent with a marketing policy to sell training sessions (or books, or magazines) so that people will be better able to use Microsoft products.

Of course, the subject of the NYT article, Edward Tufte, is also selling his anti-PowerPoint brochure, so what's my point?

I'm not sure... I must've missed that slide.

Back to my grading.

On another note... I realized that I just used the word "dissing" without quotation marks or self-conscious irony, which probably means that what coolness it once had is now officially over.

Weblog TweakingJerz's Literacy Weblog)

I've made a few very minor tweaks to the blog, as I re-familiarize myself with JSP. Will is planning on making some changes to the site soon, and I want to be up to speed so I can more fully understand what he's accomplished for me.

The underlying code that he created for me is beyond my fathoming at this point, but Will has very wisely separated the guts of the program from the display, which is what I'm fiddling with.

Now the comments display the date. (That info had always been collected, I just didn't get around to figuring out how to display it until now.) I've also changed a few things about the editing screen that I use, mostly to reduce the amount of scrolling I have to do when creating a new blog entry.

My next project will be creating an RSS feed.

No matter how digital the electronics got, the companies that made the gadgets were still stovepiped; suites of devices worked in perfect harmony - as long as they all wore the same corporate logo. If you managed to force a Sony receiver to work with a Panasonic TV, you lived in a rat's nest of cables with a coffee table covered in remotes and a spouse who couldn't turn on the television without a briefing. | Why didn't consumer electronics firms compromise on standards for interoperability? Because they're jerks.... This is where the PC industry comes in and the golden age begins. --Sonia Zjawinski --The Golden Age of Gadgets (Wired)

Mmmm... gadgets.