Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - Posts
Janell says some of the darnest things. New format too. This one might actually stick.
In the bag tonight (counts): Development:14; Security:4; Tricks:4; Blogging:3; Hockey:1; XML: 1
I like having a hockey item for once.
Just a note to note that I've started a new microblog focused exclusively on Microsoft SQL Server's Reporting Services. The new blog is named "Enjoy Every Report." You can subscribe to it's feed here.
I'm most certianly not abandonning “the Sandwich” though. Most of the good stuff -- well, at least as I see it -- will be remain here in the happy home that the SQLJunkies folks are letting me use. What won't be here, though, is much new content about Reporting Services.
RSS Feed Here. Thanks for pointing this out Mike.
I'm working with an internal customer helping her get a site redesign done. She asked me what some of my favorite sites we're and why. I don't know that enumerating that list here would be very interesting, but maybe starting some discussion about why I liked those sites would be. I've come up with this list of ten rules for effective web site designs. I'd love to hear your feedback.
- Make it obvious what I can do with your site and how to do it. The more you hide things or make it difficult to find them, the worse. Underline your links and use standard colors for links; it's what users expect from using other web sites.
- Do have site specific searches and make them a highly visible feature. Most folks find your content through searching rather than navigating.
- Think of menus as tables of content, not indices. Most people navigate by searching more than they do by menus, at least -- initially. Do use breadcrumb navigation when possible.
- Do support text-only navigation. For example, its seldom -- if ever -- appropriate in my view to have Flash or JavaScript be the only way somebody can navigate your site.
- Do use an appropriate medium for the message: I wouldn't use Flash to provide a list of addresses for Border's stores because it's a list. I would use flash to provide a clickable map of Border's stores.
- Use the golden formulas:
- A picture better we worth more than a hundred words, because each picture "costs" more to send to send than one-hundred words on both sides of the exchange.
- Six to ten units of content support one unit of design. Using a cake analogy: A two-pound cake (32 ounces) "tastes" best with three or four ounces of frosting on it. Too little frosting and it becomes bland and dry. Too much frosting and it becomes well... not frosted cake, but frosting with cake.
- You've got ten seconds per unit of user motivation. Casual users will make a judgment about your site in ten seconds. You buy yourself ten more seconds if you show them that you might have what they want; you get 20 seconds if they know you have what the want or need; assume you never get more than 60 seconds of attention from the user in any case.
- Use and try, as best possible, to conform to standards. Use CSS instead of <FONT> tags, validate your pages, etc.
- Do make effective use of Meta Tags and don't be shy about them: Use keywords, content, location and link.
- Do separate content from markup where possible. This is hard with HTML today because its strictly a mark-up language. The key thing here (today at least) is to use CSS effectively rather than trying to make HTML do all of the work you want.
- Do design for repurposing. For the next few years, its likely that most people will consume content with a Web Browser of some sort. Technologies like XML and RSS and mythologies like the Semantic Web will likely degrade that over time.