Category Archives: Design

IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

Posted on by David
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Here is some helpful information from the MS IEBlog about how to run IE 6 and 7 on the same machine.

IEBlog : IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

This is really important for any web developer or designer since IE6 will be with us for quite a long time to come.  The downside here is that it isn’t possible to run both browsers within the same instance of the operating system, which is why MS is offering a free virtual server with which to run 6 in parallel. Not ideal.

I’m surprised that MS didn’t foresee this need before they launched 7.

Coding Like 1995

Posted on by David
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From Gary LaBranche at Association Forum: 100 Million Served

There were less than 20,000 Web sites in the world in 1995, all with limited usability [Gary probably means functionality here. -dg]. In the spring of that year, I served on a team charged with developing a Web site for an association, and recall the debate about including a membership application. Half of the team argued that it was a waste of time and no one would ever apply for membership online. The other half argued, “What the heck, it can’t hurt.”

The joke was on us. Just five years later, online applications were the leading source of new members.

Everything looks pretty obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it? What bothers me today is not that people don’t recognize the potential of the Web (they do to a large extent) but that poor knowledge of usability and design impedes their ability to really take advantage of it. Given that it is feasible for almost any group to enable online payment for transactions, the competitive differentiator online now often comes down to how easy it is to complete the transaction (assuming roughly equal value of product, of course).

Quoted in The Washington Post: Access Denied

Posted on by David
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In case you missed it, I was in the lead of an article on the first page of the business section in The Washington Post this past Saturday: Access Denied by Yuki Noguchi.

Between work and personal e-mail, multiple banking and retirement accounts, two association memberships, photo sites, Web communities, and retailers like Amazon.com and eBay.com, C. David Gammel maintains 130 online accounts, each requiring a user name and password.

Gammel tracks his sundry log-in information in a file on his computer, but on at least two occasions he’s confused or mistyped his password, and been locked out of his SunTrust bank accounts, forcing him to call the bank or look for an open branch to regain access.

“It’s frustrating — if understandable,” said Gammel, a consultant in Silver Spring. He has also been denied access on a news site when he couldn’t remember his log-in information, he said. “I bail on them if I’m having a difficult time,” he said.

I actually keep most 0f those logins stored in my browser and only those for non-sensitive sites. I provided some tips on better managing logins and balancing security with ease of use but that didn’t make it into the piece.

The article is a good lesson for site developers to keep in mind: the plethora of usernames and passwords that people have to manage these days is a real burden and a barrier to using sites in many cases. You have to balance your security measures with the sensitivity of the data you are storing and the value of your service to your customers. It is also critical to unify your own login system so that ONE username/password pair can be used to access all services related to your company.

Targeting Accessibility

Posted on by David
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A new court ruling you should be aware of that sets a precedent for web site accessibility:

The court held: “the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination in the enjoyment of goods, services, facilities or privileges, is that whatever goods or services the place provides, it cannot discriminate on the basis of disability in providing enjoyment of those goods and services.” The court thus rejected Target’s argument that only its physical store locations were covered by the civil rights laws, ruling instead that all services provided by Target, including its Web site, must be accessible to persons with disabilities.

…

The plaintiffs charge that target.com fails to meet the minimum standard of web accessibility. It lacks compliant alt-text, an invisible code embedded beneath graphic images that allows screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of the image to a blind computer user. It also contains inaccessible image maps and other graphical features, preventing blind users
from navigating and making use of all of the functions of the website. And because the website requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction, blind Target customers are unable to make purchases on target.com independently.

The irony here is that there is no good technical reason for not having a highly accessible web site these days. The limitations of Target’s site mentioned above are all old school design techniques that are quite simply out of date and unnecessary. Why they didn’t just update their site design instead of fighting a costly court battle is beyond me.

Why You Should Test Your Site in IE7 Right Now

Posted on by David
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Do you know how your site looks and functions in IE7? No? Better get testing: IEBlog : IE7 to be distributed via Automatic Updates!

To help our customers become more secure and up-to-date, we will distribute IE7 as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates (AU) shortly after the final version is released for Windows XP, planned for the fourth quarter of this year.

Emphasis added. Based on this, I would expect IE7 to be adopted pretty quickly even though users will have the option not to install it when it downloads via Automatic Updates.

(Via Gadgetopia.)

Assessing Coding Quality of Potential Developers

Posted on by David
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I responded to a question earlier this week about how you can judge the quality of a web application’s code. The question was from someone who would be receiving the source code for the app in question once it was finished and they would be responsible for maintaining it after launch. How can you tell if the code is of high quality and easily maintainable if you are not a programmer yourself?

Here are a few things I would look for in this situation:

  • The application provides helpful/friendly error messages to users when something bad happens. If they have put thought into error handling then they have probably done so throughout the application.
  • They use a code versioning system repository for developing the application. Any programming shop who knows what they are doing should use a tool like this. If they are not, I’d consider them amateurs.
  • Source code is well documented. Browsing through the code, you should be able to understand what each section does, even if you are not a programmer. If the comments are too cryptic or few, then it will be harder to maintain when they hand it off.
  • The application uses classes for commonly executed operations. If the same bit of html has to be rendered repeatedly, make sure they have that pulled out into a single class rather than simply repeating the code over and over throughout the application. This makes maintenance much easier.
  • They use unit tests. Unit testing can be somewhat challenging with web apps but can be done. Unit tests are a series of tests that will check that the application is functioning properly after a change is made (regression testing). I’d consider a shop doing this effectively to be very competent.

Some of those obviously require a coder to asses for you but at least you know some questions to ask that will get at whether the developers in question have good practices in writing code. It is no guarantee but will weed out the poorest candidates.

Here are a few books you may want to review if you want to learn more about good development practices:

(had an issue with my amazon links, list to be reposted later)

Also see Joel Spolsky’s reading list.

AMS-CMS Integration Audio Download

Posted on by David
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You may recall that I did an audio conference a couple weeks ago with Wes Trochlil on the potential and pitfalls of integration association and content management systems. The session was very well received by our attendees at the live event.

I am pleased to now make the program available as a download: Understanding the Potential (and Pitfalls) of Integrating CMS and AMS Systems Audio Product. For $99 you will receive an MP3 file of the audio and a PDF of the slides. A sample of the audio is available in this post.

And here is a special one week offer to my blog readers: use this code when you buy the product and get 40% off! This code will be good until one week from today (May 24, 2006). Enter this code in the shopping cart to receive your discount: V823R4E1 Please feel free to share the code with anyone you think might benefit from this unique program.

Learn more about the audio program.

http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=P31bc3801ea0660e0757bb7158480fa6eYF97SlREYmN2&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21

One CMS to Rule Them All?

Posted on by David
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A couple of good posts this month on whether a single CMS can be used to manage both your public and intranet web sites. Short answer: usually, no. For more detail follow the links.

I agree with those authors that more often than not, a single CMS will not be appropriate for your public site and your intranet site. The requirements for each are going to be pretty different once you get past basic authoring and content management features. Even for associations, whose public web sites could be considered more intranet-like than the usual corporate web site, are going to be hard pressed to find a single tool that effectively supports both.

Dabble DB Demo Blows Away Meeting Industry Functionality

Posted on by David
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This seven minute demo of the Dabble DB web application should put the fear into conference web site providers. In a mere seven minutes, they take a comma-delimited file of session information and create a highly usable web interface for searching, displaying and modifying the data. Seven minutes! And to make it worse (or better, depending upon your point of view), the Dabble DB is for working with any data, not specifically meetings.

Usability failure is eventually going to be the death of many companies serving the association space. The barriers to entering the web application market are so low that the current players’ interfaces aren’t going to cut it for much longer.

(Via Paul Bissex.)

Card Sorting: The Book

Posted on by David
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Rosenfeld Media has announced their first author (other than Lou himself): Card Sorting by Donna Maurer.

Card sorting is a technique that is used to gather user input to design the information architecture of a site. The technique is easy to prepare and run, and great fun. But sometimes the results can be hard to interpret and it is not always clear how to use them to design the IA.

This short, practical, and accessible book will provide the basics that designers need to conduct a card sort in a project. More importantly, it will explain how to understand the outcomes and apply them to the design of a site.

I use card sorting exercises with clients quite often. I’m looking forward to reading the book when it is done and hopefully participating in its creation (this is a beta book type of publishing process).