Archive: March 2006
I was recently recommended this as a
site for good Information Architecture information. Now, I'm sorry but what?! OH. MY. GOD. I think it's the most unusable site I have ever visited. Using nested tables for layout? Check. Using tiny fonts I can't read? Check. Navigation using Javascript controlled image maps? Check. 100's of lines of code before you even hit anything useful in the source? Check. Ugly as hell? CHECK! Really, only visit if you have a strong constitution. I was criticised for not even reading it. But surely if you are writing on IA you should practice what you preach? How can I value his knowledge when his site is so awful?
29 March 2006
I've been experimenting a bit lately with the idea of designs built on a modular layout. I still haven't quite worked out how to do that in a usable way - allowing for accessibility. I like the idea of designing a page around set columns with "modules".
UX Magazine takes it to the extreme. Ultimately I'd like to utitilise
drag and drop.
29 March 2006
Although this link is listed on my delicious page I just had to include it here. A fabulous set of
Information Architecture tools including templates for usability testing, business briefs, affinity diagramming, persona charts, competitive analysis and more.
28 March 2006
Another useful guide from the
Boxes and Arrows crew. I recently tried to understand card sorting by reading
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
and found it extremely difficult. Definitely written from a geeky coder perspective. There's no use illustrating principles using examples if non-geeks can't even understand what the examples mean!
19 March 2006
Well, Jacob Nielsen and I have never really seen eye to eye (usable doesn't have to mean ugly Jacob!) so I had to chuckle when I saw
this. Hehe.
19 March 2006
I recently went to my first
Women In Media event. It was at Nou Nou restaurant in Kemp Town and I had a really good time. I met some very interesting people and hopefully set up some future freelance work. I would definitely recommend WIM to other geeky girls out there.
10 March 2006
I have a few website ideas in the pipeline. One of which makes use of
Spreadshirt. I recently came across this
article on A List Apart that really helped me understand the goals of my site. It talked about how to maximize the success of your site by increasing the
energy you transfer to your readers, and reducing the friction within the
page or pages on which the reader has to do something. Simple but it works!
08 March 2006
You've coded your page, it validates, looks fine in Firefox but what's that?? Some random letters just hanging around in places in your page. What the heck is that? Welcome to the world of the
duplicate character bug in IE.
06 March 2006
I've decided that in order to be able to provide a true end-to-end web design service I need to be able to buid a CMS for a client. I've checked out
Open Source CMS and so far,
CMS Made Simple seems to be the best option for me. I like the commitment to allowing you to implement standards compliant XHTML/CSS.
05 March 2006
So I bought this book on Amazon the other day. I must admit finding anything written on Information Architecture that isn't at least 3 years old is difficult. I had high hopes as it was recommended on
Boxes and Arrows but to be honest, it was a huge let down. I felt I learnt nothing and, worse still, it didn't really appear to be about IA at all. All I wanted was a beginners guide to IA but it failed to deliver. If you are looking for a good book on IA you should buy
The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garret. I borrowed it from a friend and it has become my new bible. It may not have the magic words in the title but it is definitely the one to read.
03 March 2006
I don't know about you but I've always used
display: none to hide code I have in my page that I only want to be there for screenreaders or search engines. Well I did, until I read
Andy Budd's book. Argh, so
display: none hides the text from screenreaders? Bummer. I guess I will have to go back to using
text-indent: -1000em but somewhere in the back of my mind I remember this causing issues in an old browser - maybe IE on the mac...
02 March 2006
