http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/category/usability/ Best practices, tips, information, and resources about usability mostly related to websites and online experiences -- such as site navigation, fonts and font-sizing, page redirects, friendly URLs and URIs, cross-browser issues and usability, age groups and needs, accessibility, information architecture. en-us Usability Copyright 2000-2008 Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns. All rights reserved. Shirley Kaiser 2006-10-12T15:29:40-08:00 720 daily 2 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://backend.userland.com/rss http://brainstormsandraves.com/xml/brainstorms88.gif http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/category/usability/ 88 31 Best practices, tips, information, and resources about usability mostly related to websites and online experiences -- such as site navigation, fonts and font-sizing, page redirects, friendly URLs and URIs, cross-browser issues and usability, age groups and needs, accessibility, information architecture. There are lots of great new and recent articles, tutorials, and tips about Web accessibility. Today's post includes links to articles and tutorials on Web accessibility in general, accessible forms, accessible style switching, including my own site's style switching, accessibility and the blind and low vision users, helpful accessibility tools for Web developers, and more. (1412 words, 42 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/10/12/accessibility/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/10/12/accessibility/ Shirley Kaiser 2006-10-12T15:29:40 Building on the previous post, User-friendly Contextual Navigation with Simple PHP Includes, I thought I'd take things one small and simple step further by using PHP once again, this time to add a CSS class for the current page. Then it's easy to use this CSS class to create a helpful visual cue within your navigation. Read the entire post for a simple way to accomplish this, PHP code, markup, CSS, and graphic examples. (1001 words, 5 links, 4 images) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/10/09/navigation2/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/10/09/navigation2/ Shirley Kaiser 2006-10-09T21:07:20 Usability experts continue to tell us not to have a live hyperlink pointing to the current page, as it can be confusing for visitors. With some basic, simple-to-use PHP and one PHP include file, you can customize your navigation so that the current page does not have a live hyperlink to itself. In addition, you can manage your entire site's navigation from that one include file, making your site's navigation management convenient, efficient, and easy to maintain. Today's post is a short tutorial on how to create this type of navigation with a couple of short snippets of PHP code, clean and lean HTML markup, and one PHP include file for your entire site. (1062 words, 18 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/09/27/navigation/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/09/27/navigation/ Shirley Kaiser 2006-09-27T18:21:48 Jakob Nielsen and Andy King both have new articles at their sites that cover window resolution, user-friendly website design, and related issues. This important topic is also regularly discussed and debated in Web design and development discussion lists. Below I've highlighted their articles, but be sure to check them out in full, too (links below). (658 words, 9 links, 2 images) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/08/01/usability/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2006/08/01/usability/ Shirley Kaiser 2006-08-01T11:21:53 Many of you have probably seen references to "Web 2.0" around the 'Net. Tim O'Reilly has taken on writing about what this term means in his recent article, What Is Web 2.0, Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. It's not just a boring article defining the term or written so that only programmers would understand it, though. Tim's new article overviews how the Internet arrived where it is today, comparing the past with comparables today in a way that even a non-programmer like myself can understand. Today's post provides an overview of this fascinating new article. (389 words, 3 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/11/07/web20/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/11/07/web20/ Shirley Kaiser 2005-11-07T14:23:42 Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents is Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox article, dated August 29, 2005. Although he'd previously stated not to force links to open new windows, he now feels that you should indeed set links to open in new windows for PDF and other non-Web documents. Even after reading this new article, I still feel strongly about considering the website's target audience, letting the user choose, and avoiding accessibility problems. Today's post goes into why I feel that way and even includes an informal test to check out Nielsen's latest recommendation for yourself. (1195 words, 9 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/08/29/newwindows/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2005/08/29/newwindows/ Shirley Kaiser 2005-08-29T21:18:36 Need to test your Website for accessibility? Testing with Lynx, the text-only browser, can give you helpful insight. As the result of a recent discussion via the Wise-Women discussion list, I wrote up a few tips about using Lynx, including links to downloads, online testing, and more: A few Tips for Using Lynx. (56 words, 3 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/10/05/lynx/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/10/05/lynx/ Shirley Kaiser 2004-10-05T09:37:05 Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design is the latest website usability article by Jakob Nielsen. Whether or not you agree with everything he's written in the past, in this new article Nielsen covers some terrific points about what works and what doesn't work with sites. I think we've all visited far too many sites that don't seem to consider users or perhaps they don't understand much about how to create a user-friendly website. Below are some snippets from Nielsen's new article. (411 words, 1 link) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/08/30/usability/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/08/30/usability/ Shirley Kaiser 2004-08-30T10:24:24 One of the challenges in creating, maintaining, or redesigning a website, especially with larger companies, is that all too often the people making the major decisions are clueless about what matters the most with websites behind the scenes. Content is what truly matters the most, but the way it's delivered can unnecessarily cost a whole lot more with bandwidth, page load times, visitor satisfaction, and ultimately with lost revenue. (1217 words, 16 links, 3 images) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/07/30/money/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/07/30/money/ Shirley Kaiser 2004-07-30T18:08:05 Be sure to check out Accessible HTML/XHTML Forms, a recent tutorial on creating accessible, user-friendly online forms, by Accessibility expert Ian Lloyd of Accessify fame for the Web Standards Project (WaSP). Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms, by Simon Willison for SitePoint, is a recent, helpful tutorial to create more usable forms. Read my post about why, along with resources and links. (175 words, 14 links) http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/07/06/accessibility/ http://brainstormsandraves.com/archives/2004/07/06/accessibility/ Shirley Kaiser 2004-07-06T11:28:36