Information Architecture, Internet Strategy

Designing for Change December 14th, 2009

Because the implementation of a new Web site is a large endeavor, it’s easy to overlook some aspects of the launch while you’re dashing across the finish line.

Before the button is pushed to launch the product, a Web team should choose a launch strategy that’s appropriate for their Web site. These strategies can help ease the transition and also maximize the impact of the launch.

Application Development, Web Development, ASP.NET, Chart

ASP.NET Chart Control December 3rd, 2009

This is technically old news, but because this control doesn’t ship with Visual Studio .NET, it’s easily overlooked. This is a graph/chart control that’s easy to use and is pretty powerful. It’s sub-par compared to any custom controls that you can build in Javascript, but if you want something that’s quick and gets the job done, this control does the trick.

Application Development, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Internet Strategy, Social Networking, User Experience Design, personas, prototype, scenarios, smithsonian, strategy

Smithsonian Commons: Vast, Findable, Shareable, Free December 3rd, 2009

Have you visited a Smithsonian website lately? Probably not. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Even those we interviewed on the National Mall in Washington DC at a physical Smithsonian museum hadn’t considered using a Smithsonian website. It’s a shame, considering the rich education available on their numerous affiliated websites. Few also realize the tradition of excellent and influential research conducted by the Smithsonian. What a lost opportunity to learn from one of the nation’s greatest collections of history, culture, art and science.

Internet Strategy, PowerPoint, presentation

Bye Bye Powerpoint November 24th, 2009

How many of us cringe when we’re stuck in yet another meeting with a Powerpoint (PPT) deck of text-heavy slides? Yes, I must admit, I’ve seen some presentations that kicked PPT up a notch, but they are few and far between. Many of us crank out the status quo PPT for many reasons – it’s easy, it’s familiar, it’s faster. Stop with the excuses! Let’s move the bar a little higher. After all, do you want to engage your audience and better sell your story?

Web Development, image optimization, performance

ImageOptim Image Compression Tool November 19th, 2009

Most of the time the tools used when creating and compressing images for the Web do a good job, but some of them leave behind some excess metadata that can increase the file size while providing no particular benefit. In particular, I’m thinking of Photoshop’s “Save for Web” functionality when it comes to PNG images.  There’s a number of command-line tools that can be used to help with things like this, but ImageOptim (for Mac OS X) wraps them into a handy GUI to make handling them easier.

Application Development, Web Content Management, Web Development, ASP.NET, Video

.NET Brightcove Video API Integrates with Sitecore November 19th, 2009

So a follow up to my post on Professional Video Services, here’s something I just found.

Social Networking, Facebook, Flickr, Google, search, social media, Social Networking, twitter, youtube

Social Search: What Are My Friends Saying – Right Now? November 19th, 2009

Through social media, we’re becoming more and more connected than ever before. We’re sharing opinions, posting links that we find important, and holding conversations in social spaces. Many of us consider our friends and social networks as a primary source for information, and especially trust their opinion over a stranger’s. For example, if I become a fan of a company and join their group or if I give a restaurant a rating, my friends are likely to take note.

Web Development, CSS, JavaScript, Microsoft, MSIE, Web Standards

IE9 Standards Support Work Underway, To Support Rounded Corners! November 19th, 2009

So Microsoft is starting to release information on the next release of Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), IE version 9. The IE team posted on their blog about the ongoing progress … but it covers everything from some of the performance profiling that they’re doing (which is an interesting read), to their current performance in the Acid 3 test, to some of the new Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) features that they will be supporting.

Technology

Digital Readers November 19th, 2009

When I worked for an online education company, I was quick to tell people that we also shipped books because at the time a 100% online curriculum had a slightly negative perception in the market. Most of my company’s curriculum relied on book-based learning. Books provided a certain immediacy, flexibility and ease of use that a Web page did not have. The idea was that the online portion would complement the offline version. The online learning could offer things that the paper version could not.

Interaction Design, Web Development, chrome, Google, operating systems

Google Unveils Chrome OS November 19th, 2009

Google announced their Chrome OS a few months back, but today they held an event to show off the first screens and explain some more of the concepts behind it as well as to open-source the project in advance of the 2010 release date. Engadget has more coverage of the event (including a gallery of screens).

Usability, User Experience Design, User Research

Spice of Life November 19th, 2009

How do you organize your spices? Depending on who you are, you might have a different answer. A grocery store organizes their spices differently than the normal person. In the grocery store it is important for the spices to be alphabetically sorted within each brand. They are grouped alphabetically within the brand groups because how else would someone find a particular spice? The grocery store is fulfilling particular user tasks.

Social Networking

Twitter November 11th, 2009

The number of tweets a day has risen from 2.4 million in January to 26 million in October. It will be interesting to see what this turns into in terms of relevance and sustainability.

Application Development, Information Architecture, Internet Strategy, Social Networking, Visual Design, Web Content Management, Web Development, Video

Professional Video Services for Businesses November 11th, 2009

An unlikely source for cutting edge technology news of course, but USA Today has an interesting article discussing the future of online video for businesses. They point out that video has a huge and critical future for most everyone doing business online these days, and there’s several major players coming in that exceed the offerings by such commonly known entities from YouTube and Vimeo.

Specifically, pay services targeted for businesses include:

Technology, Flash

Flash CS5 and Multi-Touch November 10th, 2009

Has anyone seen the movie “Minority Report”? In it Tom Cruise plays a cop of the future who uses a computer that is touch screen based and voice activated. The vision of this futuristic computer shows the obsolescence of the keyboard. The level of interaction that is possible using a virtual touch screen is visually stunning. This isn’t anything new since Microsoft’s Surface has been around for a little while, but what’s new is that with the latest release of CS5, Flash will now support multi-touch and open the doors to a new level of interaction with Flash.

Inside RIA has a great primer for it: http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/getting-started-with-multitouc.html.

Information Architecture, Internet Strategy, User Experience Design, Business Decisions, Web Redesign

Does Your Web site Need a Redesign? November 9th, 2009

Choosing whether to redesign your Web site can be a difficult decision to make, especially when many organizations are cutting costs in the midst of the current economic downtown. A Web site redesign project usually requires a cross-functional team with members from multiple departments and strong internal leadership. The resources required for a redesign can be considerable, particularly for organizations which already have a lot of Web content or have multiple third-party systems integrated with their Web sites.

Application Development, Web Development, JavaScript

Google Releases Closure JavaScript Tools November 9th, 2009

This past week the “almighty” Google released what looks like a very interesting set of Web Development tools for JavaScript development. It’s a set of tools they’ve created to build rich user interfaces and increase the performance of the scripting involved.

The release consists of the following:

Web Development, Front-end Engineering, history, HTML

Brief History of HTML and HTML5 Looking Real November 9th, 2009

Just some random bits for those interested in the state of the HTML world.

First, there’s a great post and discussion over on Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Mark Web site on the origin’s of HTML’s IMG element. I knew that Netscape and Mosaic were credited with the expansion of the World Wide Web as we know it by making it a graphical environment as opposed to one that was pure text. What I didn’t know was that Netscape’s, then Mosaic’s Marc Andreesson was the one who actually posted first suggesting the IMG element. That was 1993.

Fast forward to today, and we have the Web’s creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, commenting on the progress of the newest proposals to extend HTML, HTML5. There’s certainly plenty being said about HTML5 these days if you look for it. But purists might appreciate Tim Berners-Lee chiming in.

If I discuss HTML5, I guess I have to mention my article that was published a while back in Dr. Dobb’s via InformationWeek, “HTML5 Starts Looking Real“. Check it out.

Web Development, cloud computing, explanations, Video

An Introduction to Cloud Computing November 6th, 2009

CNN has posted a simplified explanation of what Cloud Computing is and published this handy explanation video.

Visual Design, Web Development

@font-face and OTF, EOT, and SVG Fonts November 4th, 2009

Jonathan Snook has written up a guide on how to implement custom fonts with more browsers than we have gotten accustomed to talking about in the past six months. Since the release of Firefox 3.5 and Opera 10 everyone has been excited about using @font-face even if the target would be the latest versions of most browsers.

Web Development, programming, ruby, ruby on rails

Ruby and Rails Ecosystem Whitepaper November 2nd, 2009

The folks at InfoEther have assembled a whitepaper describing the current state of the Ruby and Rails ecosystem.

The Ruby and Rails Ecosystem is a very large and robust community of companies, entities and individuals. This paper is meant to be an educational introduction for the layman, investor or business executive.

Web Content Management, Drupal, government, open source

Whitehouse.gov Moves to Drupal CMS October 30th, 2009

The team responsible for the Whitehouse.gov Web site has switched over to using the open-source Drupal CMS to manage the site.

From TechPresident.com:

The great Drupal switch came about after the Obama new media team, with a few months of executive branch service (and tweaking of WhiteHouse.gov) under their belts, decided they needed a more malleable development environment for the White House web presence. They wanted to be able to more quickly, easily, and gracefully build out their vision of interactive government.

More thoughts on the change and what it means in terms of technology and the public adoption of open-source software is available from Dries Buyatert (original creator and project lead for Drupal development) and Tim O’Reilly.

Social Networking, Web Development, Messaging, Mozilla, Raindrop

Mozilla Raindrop Aims to Help Filter Signal from Noise October 27th, 2009

The Mozilla Labs team has announced that they’re working on a new project named Raindrop which aims to gather up the various messaging sources that people get input from (email, Twitter, messaging apps, etc.) and then filter them to only what’s directed at the actual user (eliminating spam, messages to other users, etc.).

Raindrop Demo and Explanation Video

Application Development, Social Networking, Web Content Management

ExpressionEngine – Beta Test V2! October 21st, 2009

It looks like Ellis Labs is about to enter into the second phase of its beta testing for its ExpressionEngine V2 offering. If you haven’t had a chance to learn about it, here’s your chance! Looks to be an exciting offering, sitting on the CodeIgniter framework (also developed by Ellis Labs).

Application Development, Information Architecture, Web Development

Knowing When to Say "No" October 21st, 2009

Something to think about….

Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, “Does it do [x]?”, “Do you plan to add [y]?”. Finally Jobs said, “Wait wait – put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”
-Derek Sivers, president and programmer, CD Baby and HostBaby (from Say NO by default)

Social Networking, Web Development

Web 2.0 Applications October 10th, 2009

Ever tried to keep up with all the differing Web 2.0 applications out there? Yeah, me either. But just in case you are trying, this blog has a set of them already collected for you.

Web 2.0 Applications

Application Development, Social Networking

Jive Talking to Microsoft – More to Come October 10th, 2009

With products like NewsGator already on the market and targeted directly at Microsoft’s SharePoint audience, Jive Software has introduced its newest module for its Social Business Software package.

This will enable users to collaborate in a social setting on data typically stored in a CMS. The first module will target Microsoft Sharepoint and the company has plans for a Documentum one as well. As this market place will only become more crowded, getting in early and getting it right are key.

Project Management

Dan Pink on the Science of Motivation October 8th, 2009

Once the task called for “even rudimentary cognitive skill,” a larger reward “led to poorer performance.”

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

Application Development, Visual Design, Web Content Management, Web Development, performance

Web Site Performance Software October 6th, 2009

At NavigationArts, the client-side development team focuses heavily on optimizing the performance of Web pages and how fast they load. Some of the leading research in the area is from the likes of Yahoo! and their front-end engineering team.

Application Development, Web Development

Build Applications for iPhone and iPod Touch Using ActionScript 3 October 6th, 2009

“Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.”

Webcast

Applying IA Fundamentals to Create a More Effective Web Site October 1st, 2009

If you missed the live session of “Applying IA Fundamentals to Create a More Effective Web Site,” you’ll find the presentation and the recording below.

During this session, I define fundamental IA principles and how they can be applied to achieve a more effective Web site. If your Web site is poorly organized, difficult to navigate, or overwhelming for your users, you’ll want to hear how to apply best practices in user experience design to create a website that’s useful, usable, and searchable.

During this session you’ll learn:

Web Development

Google Maps API v2 or v3 September 29th, 2009

For those of you who deal with mapping functionality, I’ve worked with both Microsoft and Google products for this. My app of choice is Google Maps (although when going down this road, you have to sacrifice some level of control for their efficiency optimizations – this is usually a very reasonable trade-off). Anyway, Google came out with v3 for its API this year, which has some slimming down of its codebase, and probably has some back-end improvements on their server as well (although I’ve seen mixed reports on v2 vs. v3 latency).

Web Development

Web Analytics in Flash September 16th, 2009

“Adobe Systems said it would buy the Web analytics software company Omniture for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers monitor the effectiveness of such content.”

NY Times.

Web Development

IIS and OTF Fonts September 12th, 2009

To enable OTF fonts (CSS3) in IIS you need to register the MIME type.

Extension: .OTF
MIME Type: font/otf

Application Development, Project Management, Web Development

Waterfall vs. Agile vs. The Real World September 11th, 2009

In a nutshell, the “Waterfall model” to software development consists of taking a project from design to implementation in one single pass; the “Agile model” consists of very short iterative cycles.

Web Development

eCSStender 1.0 Released September 8th, 2009

From the release notes:

eCSStender does nothing on it’s own, but it facilitates the use of eCSStensions developed by the community. Some eCSStensions do simple things like reduce your dependence on proprietary CSS extensions like -moz-border-radius; others push CSS beyond the spec and pave the way for future iterations of the language.

Social Networking, Web Content Management, Web Development

Future of Content Management September 3rd, 2009

Julian Wrath has asked those of us interested in the world of CMS to comment on the “The Future of Content Management.” While I’d like to presume I know what the future will hold in that world, I’d like to express where I hope that it’s going.

Information Architecture, Insight Article, User Experience Design, Visual Design, Grids

Creative Standardization in Web Site Design September 1st, 2009

Beautiful Solutions

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Buckminster Fuller, architect, designer, and inventor:

Recently, Jeff Applegate, an Art Director in our office gave a presentation explaining the origins and advantages of using grids in Web site designs. He explained that grids are used to create visually harmonious design layouts and that principles of good design are rooted in the Golden Mean, a mathematical proportion that—when followed—produces designs that are aesthetically pleasing to most people.

Information Architecture, Usability, User Experience Design, User Research, Webcast, Healthcare

M. D. Anderson: Creating a Hospital Web Site to Drive Value September 1st, 2009

If you missed the live session of the “M. D. Anderson Case Study: Creating a Hospital Web Site that Drives Value,” you’ll find the presentation below.

To learn more about applying Web strategy and a user experience design process to a hospital Web site, you’ll want to view the presentation.

The presentation covers:

Information Architecture, Insight Article, Internet Strategy, Usability, User Experience Design, User Research, Visual Design, Web Content Management, Healthcare

7 Principles for Designing a Successful Hospital Web Site August 1st, 2009

With health information Web sites like WebMD setting the standard, hospital Web sites must at a minimum meet basic user expectations. Your hospital Web site is a direct extension of your brand and a poorly designed or outdated Web site will translate in the public’s perception to a poorly run hospital with outdated services.

What are the keys to developing a successful hospital Web site? All of the principles outlined below are rooted in the practice of user-centered design.

User Experience Design, Visual Design, Webcast

How to Evaluate a Web Design August 1st, 2009

If you missed the live session of “How to Evaluate a Web Design,” you’ll find the presentation and a recording below.

To learn more about the user experience design process, and how to evaluate a Web design, check out my presentation.

During the session you’ll learn:

Usability, User Experience Design

Read More and Click Here Links July 29th, 2009

The recent posting on Smashing Magazine, Designing “Read More” And “Continue Reading” Links, made me chuckle. To read about advocating ‘click here’ links baffles me. WCAG 13.1 states Clearly identify the target of each link.

Web Development, HTML, mobile

HTML5 from the Mobile Perspective July 23rd, 2009

So there’s an interesting article over at Cloud Four which takes on the HTML5 discussion from the standpoint of the mobile market.

Interaction Design, Social Networking, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design, Web Development

Audio and Video Standards in HTML5 July 1st, 2009

Ian Hickson on the HTML5 spec and why it will not contain language around what codec browsers should support for the <audio> and <video> tags (emphasis mine):

I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined, as has in the past been done with other features like <img> and image formats, <embed> and plugin APIs, or Web fonts and font formats.

Insight Article

CMS Application Development with Web Standards July 1st, 2009

Today’s Web sites and Web applications are getting more and more complex. On the front-end at least, this is largely because interactive features are getting more advanced. There’s been a jump forward in recent years in terms of Web browser capabilities that has enabled sophisticated, almost desktop software quality features. Loading external content, hiding and showing page elements, fixed positioning, animation, drag and drop, and alpha transparent layers have all become commonplace in advanced Web-based experiences.

Webcast

Making Web Redesign Easier, Calvert Investments Case Study July 1st, 2009

If you missed the live session “Making Web Site Redesign a Little Bit Easier: Calvert Investments Case Study,” you’ll find the presentation and a recording below.

To learn more about how to plan for success at the outset of a Web redesign project, you’ll want to watch my discussion with Noah about the Calvert Investments Case Study.

During the session you’ll learn:

Web Content Management, Web Development, Flash, Video

Flash and Flash Video June 30th, 2009

I have this question asked to me atleast once a week: what’s the difference between Flash and Flash Video, or do you need Flash to play a Flash Video. I found a nice article that articulates the difference.

“The thing most users don’t understand is the difference between Flash and Flash Video. Flash is the interactive part of the process, which allows the creation of the player that is designed to interactively manipulate the video: stop, fast-forward, rewind, etc.

Flash Video on the other hand, is just the video file that the Flash SWF file plays, using the Flash Player. SWF files may include video content that has been imported from FLV or F4V files, or may merely reference external FLV/F4V video files which the SWF file will play back at certain pre-defined or user-input intervals.”

Web Development

Fixoutlook.org Campaign for Better HTML Email June 25th, 2009

So I’m often grateful that NavigationArts doesn’t do a lot of HTML marketing emails. Web development is difficult enough, dealing with Web browsers’ differences, much less having to deal with different email clients, Web mail clients, and now, apparently, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010. With Outlook 2007, Microsoft dropped support for Internet Explorer rendering of HTML Emails in Outlook, and they’re continuing the practice in 2010.

Web Content Management, Web Development

Web Applications with Web Standards Front-end Development June 18th, 2009

Two years ago, I had the unique opportunity to contribute with some incredibly distinguished
industry names on a book about Web Standards-based Web development. The book, called Adapting to Web
Standards, is of course available from Amazon.com and other retailers … and some of it is available for free, online.

Webcast

Gov 2.0, Build a Strategy for Public Engagement June 1st, 2009

If you missed the live session “Gov 2.0, Build a Strategy for Public Engagement,” you’ll find the presentation and the recording below.

During this session, we discussed how to make Web 2.0 work for your agency. Is standing up individual tools (blogs, wikis, social media site pages, etc.) enough? We talked about how to transform the successes of individual tools into a cohesive Web 2.0 strategy that reflects the needs of citizens and the goals of stakeholders. We provided actionable tips about how to get started, and how to frame the issues for agency leadership.

During this session you’ll learn:

Insight Article

Rich Animation: Flash vs. jQuery June 1st, 2009

Early Web Animation

At the beginning of the Internet boom there were two ways to create animation. One was by using an animated gif – a very rudimentary web based version of flip cards. An animated gif strings together a number of images that change slightly, creating an illusion of movement when viewing them quickly in order. Not only could the files be very large at times, but they were also highly pixelated and not very smooth.

Insight Article

User Experience: Usability and Aesthetics May 1st, 2009

User centered design is the main tenet of the user experience profession. It has become a mainstream concept that seems simple, but underlying this simplicity are layers of complexity.

Webcast

SharePoint, the Right CMS for Your Website? April 1st, 2009

If you missed the live session “SharePoint: The Right CMS for Your Web Site,” you’ll find the presentation and a recording below.

To learn more about how to select a CMS the right way, you’ll want to watch David Mead’s primer on CMS evaluation. And if you’re considering either SharePoint or Sitecore for your CMS, you’ll want to see how these tools stack up in the evaluation process.

Insight Article

Content Migration vs. Site Building March 1st, 2009

Content migration is easy. You take an old page, copy it, and then paste it into a new page. It’s a one to one relationship, no real changes happen, and a couple hundred pages can be done with minimal effort. Most sites designed today could even be done without a CMS, simply using straight HTML.

Insight Article

Web Site Personalization January 1st, 2009

Web site personalization provides customers with information that is relevant to their specific needs, making their online experience more efficient and ultimately more satisfying. Once Web site personalization hits its golden age, the next generation of Technoratis may look back at today’s web technology in the same way we look back at the now archaic sites of Web 1.0. Despite the lack of fundamental information architecture, Web sites were built. This was before user experience design was even a consideration, and well before any thought of personalizing the web was technologically feasible. Just getting a web presence online in those days was an accomplishment.