Blog entries tagged usability

Happy 5th Birthday, Joomla!

Jen Kramer — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:04:05 +0100

Dear Joomla,

We’re all so proud of you and how far you’ve come these five years. Your 20 parents conceived of you because they wanted to have fun. Ever since, people have come to you looking for a good time, to make friends all over the world, to contribute to the greater good.

In dog years, or technology years, you’re actually 35. This is actually a better age to describe you. You’re old enough to have been around the block, and old enough to know better...

Alternative Joomla Administrator Templates and Dancing Bears

Jen Kramer — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:17:27 +0100

Dancing Bear Syndrome is a term coined by Jared Spool and Alan Cooper (among others in the usability community). Someone says, "Look! A dancing bear!" And you are amazed! The bear is dancing! How cool is that?

Of course, bears don't dance well. It's just amazing that they dance at all. The novelty of it all is what catches our attention, not the quality of the dancing.

Alternative Joomla administrator templates are dancing bears.

First off, what is a Joomla admin template...

Two new titles for Lynda.com in the can, and other news

Jen Kramer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:12:18 +0100

I just got back from a great week at Lynda.com, recording two more titles, hopefully out soon.

The first title is "CMS Website Strategy and Planning", and it covers all of the things you should think about and talk about with your client before building your website.

The second title is "Preparing CMS Web Graphics Using Open Source Tools". It covers how to think about a good design for a CMS as well as create an HTML page using GIMP for graphics and KompoZer for writing th...

Usability is everywhere

Jen Kramer — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:22:47 +0100

Everywhere you look, usability problems exist everywhere.

Sometimes those usability problems are a direct result of branding.

Let's take this example. Health insurance! Now, there's plenty of usability problems in the health insurance industry, but I want to focus on one tiny little problem, a direct result of branding conflicting with usability.

In the US, if you have health insurance, you get a card that describes your health insurance plan, account numbers, group numbe...

Certificate in Open Source Web Development, featuring Joomla

Jen Kramer — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The Marlboro College Graduate Center in Brattleboro, Vermont, just released its Open Source Web Development certificate in a wholly online format.

If you've been working with Joomla, but you want to know a lot more about it, this is the certificate program for you. The certificate introduces students to Joomla, as well as planning a website, understanding the code that runs it, and developing and executing an online marketing plan.

The certificate consists of 12 credits:

...

Sections, Categories, Articles, Menus: It's all a SCAM

Jen Kramer — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Sections, categories, articles, menu items. See how it's a SCAM? Remember you do need to create them in this order, as menu items for articles can't exist without the article, the article can't exist without section/category, the category can't exist without section.

Then there's this thing called "uncategorized" associated with an article. So you CAN have an article that exists without section and category! Well, sort of. Think of "uncategorized" as the default section and...

The web is NOT like having a TV playing in your tri-fold brochure.

Jen Kramer — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

I am not a graphic designer. I can't draw stick figures well, and I always wear jeans, khakis, or black pants because I've been told they match everything.

But I've worked with enough graphic designers through the years to know that there are rules to working in a given medium, and there are limitations to that medium as well. For example, if you're making a rack card, those are a certain fixed dimension. You may want to make a bigger design, but you have to work within the limitations ...

Cool new extension: Alienation Digital Image Editor

Jen Kramer — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Got an email this morning announcing the new Digital Image Editor that runs inside of Joomla. Very cool!!! I have only tried the demo on the site, but it looks great.

It's a very basic editor that does simple things like crop, rotate, resize, flip, and apply a few filters. There's a history option so a client can go backwards if they make a mistake. That's really all a client needs to get images on their site. It's definitely not Photoshop -- but it doesn't NEED to be....

Obama Launches iPhone App, Makes Everyone A Campaign Worker

Jen Kramer — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Article is here.

Leave politics aside for the moment, and just consider the beauty of this application.

The problem: You need to get millions of people to vote for you in an election.

The details: You know that personal contact is the best way to win voters. But personal contact needs to happen regularly. It's just not possible to do this when you must reach millions of people.

You also know that voters can be influenced by friends and family, and that conversati...

4Web Update: Why are we so busy in this economy?

Jen Kramer — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

For our fans, we haven't been posting much because... well, we've been awfully busy. We are thrilled with our first 9 months in business. We established a new company, just as the economy was tanking and gas and oil prices were going sky-high. Yet we've had plenty of leads, and plenty of work to keep us very busy.

Watch this blog over the next 3 months. We anticipate launching 4 large, substantial sites by the end of the year, all with various custom-coded components and modules, and of...

My Google Chrome rant encapsulated

Jen Kramer — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

The first pane of the first page of the comic book on Google Chrome says this:

"Today, most of what we use the web for on a day-to-day basis aren't just web pages, they're applications."

Ok, pop quiz: How many people's favorite non-technical friend has any clue what a web application (or any kind of computer application) is? What is a definition?

Thought so. Certainly not my mom (a smart lady to boot), certainly not a pile of my clients.

Talk to your users, G...

New browser: Google Chrome

Jen Kramer — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Yesterday, Google announced it was releasing its own open-source web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Microsoft, called Google Chrome. The big links include:

The main Google Chrome web page (link not working as of this writing)A comic book describing what Google is doing with this new browserScreenshots of what Chrome will look like.

My initial reaction? Why the heck would Google want to release a web browser? If they want to support an open source web brow...

Signs of a well-developed mobile phone site

Jen Kramer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0100

While on vacation, I used my phone for surfing the web. Each morning I check the weather, the news, stuff like that. While away, I used my phone to do this.

So let's compare two news sites: The Washington Post and CNN, regular formats, and the Post and CNN, mobile formats.

NOTE: Yes, the Post is a newspaper while CNN is a cable news channel, so the comparison isn't absolutely perfect. But it's pretty good.

Point #1: The URLs

CNN has a short URL to start with, whi...

Screen resolutions

Jen Kramer — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Still designing for 800x600? We might finally be able to look at 1024x768 instead.

Browser stats at W3Schools suggest that only 8% of the population are still using 800x600 settings.

What should you do? It Depends, of course. If your client has analytics software (and everyone should, given that Google Analytics is free and works great), check it to see what their individual traffic is like.

But if you don't know what you individual client's stats are like, there...

Keep It Simple

Samantha Bovat — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Have you ever gone to a restaurant only to be completely overwhlemed by the menu? There were so many choices that you just couldn't make up your mind? Well, think about that the next time you create a web page.

As Barrie made quite clear in his talk to Jen's class this past Saturday- Give your visitor what they are looking for!

Who is your target audience? What are they looking to find? Are you making it easy for them to obtain?

There are so many sites that are...

Wow! Even Bill Gates rants about how bad Windows is

Jen Kramer — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Of course, the Seattle PI has published something from 5 years ago, but it's still very interesting reading.

Dropdown/flyout menus: A Rant

Jen Kramer — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Crossposted from my Joomla class discussion:

Some of you have been very interested to discuss dropdown menus (also called flyout menus) on your websites.

By "dropdown menus", we're talking about the list of links that show up as subnavigation for a given piece of your website. Roll over the link for "about", for example, and you see a list of links for Mission, Vision, Board, Senior Management, History, etc.

In general, these menus are technologically d...