September 2008 Entries
Tiffani Jones of Blue Flavor has an excellent post in regards to quality marketing techniques.
[...] Similar online marketing tactics like banner ads are also losing steam. Basically, marketing that depends on interrupting or hitting potential customers over the head with your message is bound to fail. It’s time to move on. (via)
She goes on to explain a better tactic to your marketing, which involves actually engaging people. She says:
There a lots of ways to get people excited about what you have to offer, and the most important of these is providing value. In other words, it’s a good idea to offer people something they like, want, or can use. (via)
Excellent article, Tiffani. I couldn't agree more.
Walt Disney's mantra was, "I don't make movies to make money. I make money to make movies." What about you? Why do you make money? (via)
One of the reasons there may be so much debate about this topic is that too often Web designers/developers assume they are making a "wizard" and that people will need to move backwards and forwards through a series of steps. In the vast majority of Web forms, people just want to get through the questions they need to answer and move on. (via)
One of the main reasons why many people cling to the expectation that a web design should look the same across every browser is that one of the first things that designers show them is a carefully crafted static design made in Photoshop or Fireworks. Both of these are fantastic design tools, but the static JPG, PNG or TIFF files that they export are far from ideal tools for helping a client really understand how their pages will look and function when implemented in markup and CSS. (via)
So, here's the question: if all I want, the only extra, is for someone to be nice to me when I visit your business, how much extra does that cost? (via)
So, I ask you, fellow web professionals: is pagination still necessary? I obviously don't think so, but I'm not a User Experience guy, I'm a user (and also the guy who has to make the UX happen, and make sure your server can deliver the results mentioned above). Tell me what you think. (via)
My answer? Yes
I recently had a chance to write a review of Silverback, the beautifully simple usability testing application from the folks at Clearleft. It was published today, so head on over to Think Vitamin to check it out and provide feedback.
asmSelect is a jQuery plugin that answers some of these issues. A progressive enhancement is applied to the select multiple that makes it much easier to use. This enhancement automatically hides the original select multiple, and instead presents a regular select showing the available options, and an HTML list showing the already-selected options. While hidden, the original select multiple is updated as the user makes changes. (via)
I haven't played around with it too much, but it looks to be promising. I definitely think it is an advantage over the multiple select option.
Jay Fields recently posted an excellent article entitled Passionate, not Dogmatic. He starts by saying:
In the past 3.5 years I had the opportunity to interact with some of the smartest people in our industry. I consider many of those smart people to be among the best software developers in the world. Unfortunately, some of the smart people I met weren't much more than assholes. The big difference I noticed between the two groups was -- The assholes were dogmatic, while the best developers were passionate
He then continues to say:
I used to be dogmatic. I have no problem admitting it. My earlier writing is clearly arrogant and often shortsighted. Part of the problem was lack of experience. When you take an immature industry and give a platform to someone with limited heuristics you are bound to receive solutions with limited applicability.
As I gained more experience I realized that what I considered to be best practices were only best practices within certain contexts. I also realized that presenting something as the "one true way" only benefited those that worked within exactly the same context that I worked. People who follow my advice when it doesn't apply to their context must fail. The advice isn't flawed, but it is incomplete. You need to see the full picture.
This second part is important. It is why I struggle to see the value in posting code samples or processes on different projects, because without the bigger context, it simply won't make sense. The platform of the Internet makes this harder, as people want instant answers and gratification, and usually aren't willing to try and read something with context to give the big picture.
One of the benefits of web standards is that our documents are marked up correctly before we reach the presentational stage. One of the benefits of IE6 (et al) is that we can target specific versions using Conditional Comments. The combination of the two means we can still send our content to old browsers, but not have to bother with the presentation, thus saving ourselves hours of needless headaches and frustrations, while not punishing the users of said old browsers by denying them access to our content. (via)
This entry was written on September 4th, 2008. It was tagged with ie6
Nathan Smith lists out some specific reasons as to why he feels the need to drop support for IE6. As he states, this is just a short list, but it contains some of the major offenders. Great list with links to more information and resources related to the bugs.
I am on board with Nathan, and others, who are ready to drop support for IE6. I don't think it's about complaining and throwing it out the window, that won't solve anything. I think it's about taking a stand and charging clients extra for the extra time it takes to work on the ancient browser. This helps protect your time and investments, and also helps to educate clients on why IE6 is a hassle and let them know there are alternatives.
This entry was written on September 4th, 2008. It was tagged with ie6