Tag Archives: audio

Boagworld is back

Posted in News on by Paul Boag

On the 20th March I logged off. No podcast, no twitter, no facebook, no posting, no nothing. But now I am back and this time I mean business!

What a crazy month. I have hosted both the Highland Fling and the Future of Web Design. I have re-built the Headscape website and re-launched boagworld with a new site and new team.

All of this has only been possible by completely cutting myself off from the web design world. But has it been worth it?

An interesting experiment

I dare to think how many hours I spend talking with people via Twitter, reading RSS feeds and adding friends to the latest social network. To be honest I don’t think I want to know.

However, what I can tell you is that going cold turkey for a month and a bit has been an enlightening experience. Without a doubt I have got a huge amount done. Productivity has been outstanding and I am pleased with the redesign of both Boagworld and Headscape.

Despite that, I am glad to be back. Life is about more than increased productivity and I have missed the social interaction of twitter and felt ignorant about some of the big web design stories of the last few weeks.

Time to think

Although I have been busy, the time away has given me an opportunity to think about my job and the podcast. Producing the podcast is demanding and I spend more time talking about web design than doing it. If I continue down this track I am in danger of becoming out of touch with what most of my listeners have to deal with.

Getting my hands dirty with both Headscape and Boagworld has reinvigorated me and given me loads of ideas for the show. In fact, I am intending to use the two sites as a case study over the coming weeks.

If I want the show to remain relevant I have to do either one of two things. Reduce the content or get some help.

The new Boagworld team

Although I am intending to curb the length of the show (I have said that before!), I am more attracted to the idea of getting some help on board. It is time that we produced the show in a more professional manor. With that in mind I would like to introduce three new members of the boagworld team…

Ryan Taylor – Ryan is going to be our producer. He is responsible for arranging guests, writing show notes and ensuring everything runs smoothly.

Paul Stanton – Paul is our researcher and he will work with me to find the best news stories and subjects for each week’s show.

Anna Debenham – Anna is our technician and will be responsible for making the show live each week and doing some of the audio editing.

They are all volunteers and I am incredibly grateful for their help. To learn a bit more about each of them check out our about us section.

The new site

Finally I want to quickly mention the new site. As you can see we have done a complete overhaul and tried to bring it more inline with Headscape (without becoming too corporate). However, I should confess that it was done in a rush. So, if you spot any bugs or problems that need fixing please drop me an email via our new contact us form.

P.S. All good websites have an easter egg. Mine is a page that allows you to stalk me (because I am that vain). See if you can find it. I might even be able to scrape up a prize for the first to succeed.

115. sxsw

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 115: Lessons learnt at SXSW, Garett Dimon on form design and how to find usability test subjects.

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News and events | Lessons learnt at SXSW | Garrett Dimon on form design | Listener feedback

News and events

Microsoft launches beta of Internet Explorer 8

The big story over the last couple of weeks has been Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer 8 as a beta. This has sparked a flurry of posts from various bloggers on the pros and cons of the new release. However the two that caught my attention were Kevin Yank at Sitepoint and Roger Johansson.

In short, IE8 looks like an impressive update with significant improvements in standards support. It would appear we can finally say good by to HasLayout, while at the same time welcoming decent CSS table support. This will open up a lot of possibilities for layout.

There are too many updates to go through here so I would encourage you to check out "what’s new in internet explorer 8" over at the MSDN blog. You might also want to look at the Internet Explorer 8 readiness toolkit that tells you all you need to know about the new browser.

Designers agnst

There seems to be a lot of designer angst flying around the tubes this week including two posts on A List Apart and one at ideas on ideas.

As designers we seem to spend too much time fretting over the creative process, always looking for inspiration and techniques to improve the quality of our work. Andy Rutledge piles on the pressure in a fascinating article about creativity where he redefines the word. A second post on A List Apart twists the knife further by arguing that as designers we need to be superhuman obsessives, willing to work late into the night to produce the truely exceptional.

It maybe the case that to be a truely outstanding designer we need to live in a world of unrealistic personal expectations. However, personally I like the down to earth reality of "Six suggestions that can make you a better designer." In this post Eric writes…

Your project doesn’t have to do everything. It doesn’t have to win awards, make you look good, or have a wry subtext. Getting something simple to work is hard enough. Concentrate on the basics, and see if your idea holds up when shown to the audience.

In my opinion there is too much written about being outstanding and not enough on just being better.

Usability challenges associated with web applications

The final story of the week is a post by Jared Spool. Jared is a truely exceptional usability expert and I can highly recommend his Podcast. He is also an excellent speaker that I had the pleasure to hear again this year at SXSW.

The reason I mention him is because of a post entitled "3 important usability challenges for designing web applications." What I find so refreshing about this post is that it focuses on the web applications we all have on our sites rather than the trendy web 2.0. apps we hear so much about.

Sites like delicious, gmail, of even the up and coming getsignoff (shamless plug!) are somewhat unusal in terms of web apps because the whole site is the app. Most web applications are a part of a greater whole. They are contact databases on corporate intranets or ticket reservation systems on airline sites.

The challenges associated with these types of web apps are different from their trendier cousins and Jared addresses these problems in his post.

It is definately worth reading if you have web applications on your site.

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Feature: Lessons learnt SXSW

Marcus shares his impressions of SXSW and the lessons we can all learn.

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Interview: Garrett Dimon on form design

Paul: So joining me today is Garrett Dimon. Good to have you on the show. How are you?

Garrett: Pretty good.

Paul: Now I have to say I’m really excited about having you on the show because I have to say I’ve become a bit of a fan. I’m sorry to admit this and I know it’s horribly embarrassing when people say things like this to you. But ever since you’ve released your website which so impressed me I’ve been kinda following your work since then, some of the stuff you’ve been doing. You’re everything I’m not. You’re minimalistic, you’re clean and considered and well thought through while I’m chaotic, over the top and brash. That’s why I’m attracted to your work I think because you’re the
opposite of me.

Garrett: Everything I do from my apartment and everything is just the less I have, the simpler things are, the better things seem to turn out for me.

Paul: If only I could live that way. I’m just not… my brain just doesn’t function in that way. But that’s really cool. So I wanted to get you on the show to talk about forms of all things. It’s something that we’ve touched upon a couple of times in the show but mainly as passing comments in news stories and things like that. In actual fact a couple of the times we have mentioned it, it’s your name that’s come up. It seems to be something that you write a lot about from time to time. You see different articles popping up in different places. Why forms? What is it about forms that seems to attract your attention?

Garret You know it’s hard to give an answer. I really don’t know. But in thinking about it probably my first bet is that I really don’t consider myself to be a designer per say in terms of the more traditional, more artistic design orientated type of visual designer. But with forms it’s more about the interaction design and the more logical aspects of design which are things that definitely work better in my head. So how do you write error messages; how do you label fields; what order do they go in; how should they be grouped; do they go on one page or two pages. Some of the more logical, more interaction issues. Then using what little design knowledge I have to supplement that and make it visually easier to digest the form and see and understand the pieces of it. Basically to me it’s basically the one thing that I feel like I can comfortably design and layout because there’s a lot more to it than just the aesthetics.

Paul: Yeah that kinda makes sense. Why do you think forms are so important in a way? It’s obviously something you consider important but there doesn’t seem to be huge amounts written on the subject. What is it that makes them worth of that kind of attention as far as you’re concerned.

Garrett: I think part of the reason is precisely because they don’t get enough attention. Any real attention you see to forms, I haven’t seen it recently but it’s how do you skin your forms to completely control how they look. Which to me is one of my huge pet peeves. It seems like such a waste of time. To worry about what the forms look like in the browser as opposed to how they actually work, I’m thinking if you’re going to invest the time worrying about how your forms looks it’s probably better to spend that time worrying about how they are going to work. Are you using the right form field for that job and some of the more critical things about forms. Really forms, especially now with web apps being what they are, forms are such a huge part of your everyday interacts. Things like efficiency, learnability, accuracy, all the vasts of usability that matter. It’s not just a matter of “Is this form efficient?”. Well it’s easy to make an efficient form but it’s not necessiarly going to be something that somebody else could learn and use or you might be able to learn it but will you remember how to use it next time you come back. Balancing all the different kind of vasts of usability that Nielsen identifies and really working them out so that you don’t dumb the form down so that it’s so simple that anyone can use it that it’s just a cumbersome process to fill out. Really kind of massaging it with all those things in mind.

Paul: You’re right when you say that in the world of web applications certainly forms are amazingly important but they pretty much appear on every site. It’s hard to thing of a site where they don’t appear.

Garrett: Well you think about a magazine site or anything like that where it’s more content orientated, it’s definitely a lower priority.

Paul: Yeah but you’ve still got contact us forms and things like that.

Garrett: Yeah, comment forms and…

Paul: Ok. So you touch there on the fact that one of your pet peeves was the fact that people worry about the design of their forms rather than how usable they are. What over common mistakes are you seeing from people about how they design and implement forms?

Garrett: I think there’s a whole slew of them and I think a lot of it is just worrying about the wrong things or not giving thought to things that matter. My main reason with the designing the form fields is that people are used to seeing form fields and what they look like in their browser, in their native rendering. Sure as a designer having pixel perfect control would be nice but I would hope that most of us who are now designing on the web would have forgone that state of mind where we have to have complete control over everything, it has to look exactly the way we want. A lot of time not only is it a waste of time but it actually hinders usability when those form fields don’t look like what someone expects a form field to look like or button for that matter. When the design becomes design for design’s sake it actually hinders usability in addition to just wasting time. When I initially started developing things it was all about consistency because consistency is easier to implement. If every form field looks the same, behaved the same, is the same size etc. it’s easier to implement because you use the same CSS and you don’t have to put as much thought into it. So while consistency is valuable there’s definitely an aspect of context that a lot of people don’t necessarily pay attention to. In some situations, I think 37 Signals have done a good job on this, they’ll make some fields larger than others relative to the size. In particular in Backpack, their headings aren’t just a form field they are actually bolder and look a little more like a header. They are a little larger font than the body of the note. It adds a little bit of context so that it’s more intuitive as to what the purpose of that field is. There’s a lot of different ways to do it. That’s just one of the more tangible ones. Basically the mistake being focusing too blindly on making everything consistent when there are appropriate situations to break the rules and use context to make some changes. Another one is just dumping a whole form onto the page without breaking it up into logical sections or groups. A lot of times people are afraid of making a form any longer visually because of scrolling. While you don’t want somebody to scroll 80 screenfuls, scrolling one versus eight screens is neligable.

Paul: So you wouldn’t suggest splitting forms across multiple pages then?

Garrett: Well there’s definitely context for that if it’s appropriate. Amazon is a great example there because you’ve got your payment screen and your address screen. It actually can be a fairly complex process but the time you’ve selected several addresses or updated an address, updated a payment method, changed the items in your cart. As you’re jumping around the different screen’s you definitely wouldn’t want all that interaction to try and be contained on one screen. It depends on the size of the form and the context of the form and how interactive it can be, how many potential branches off of that path are there to take. Another would be poor labelling. A lot of the time people label things. This goes back to just naming conventions in general. Just basic information architecture stuff. Whether it follows a corporate naming convention that may not be the right word for somebody that’s not inside the company wall or just simply flat out the wrong word for international [???]. Really anything. Just not putting enough thought into the label. The first thing that pops into your head isn’t always the right thing. Using the wrong kind of inputs so a lot of times whilst… and I have no idea in the world why people would do this… People who for instance who use checkboxes when they won’t use radio buttons and instead they write Javascript to control the radio button. Checkboxes as if they were radio buttons. Thinks like that where I just have no idea what these people were thinking in some of these situations. Just a lot of things like using a radio button or having a yes/no radio button where a checkbox could work. Multiple select lists which are an absolutely terrible interface element to use because a lot of people don’t know you can control+click. If there are small lines and you accidentally slip off that control key and click on a new one, it’ll select that new one and erase all your other selections in that list. There’s different things that kinda get abused and misused in situations where they really aren’t necessiary. A much simpler solution usually exists.

Paul: Yeah. I’ve seen the radio button, checkbox problem and it’s always very amusing.

Garrett: And vice-versa. Where it’s radio buttons and they try and make them checkboxes just because they think it looks prettier sometimes.

Paul: How bizarre.

Garrett: Which I guess is another great example – over using Javascript in forms. It’s one of those things. I don’t know where I heard it but the best description I ever heard of Javascript, Ajax or any of that stuff is that it’s really a spice. If you’re cooking you wouldn’t just dump a whole bottle into your pot. Or you wouldn’t start with a bottle of curry and dump it into a pot and say “OK, now what are we going to make?” You would decide what you are going to make and then think “You know this could really use a bit of curry here”. A lot of people just don’t use Javascript as a spice. It really starts to define the experience and in a lot of situations actually makes it worse or more confusing.

Paul: I presume you would encourage some use of Javascript for example. Things like doing some client side validation as long as it falls back on a server side validation. That kind of thing.

Garrett: Yeah absolutely.

Paul: OK so let’s turn that question around. We’ve been talking very much about the mistakes that people make, but what advice would you provide people about approaching forms? What are the things that they should be doing rather than shouldn’t be doing? I know that in some ways this is going to overlap but is there a particular approach that you take?

Garrett: One of the biggest things I guess is when ever; doing consulting for custom applications or things like that a lot of times we don’t realize that a lot of the complexity from forms comes from the complexity of the business. Whether it’s somebody doing markup or somebody designing a form, a lot of times you know if a business analyst or whoever creates these form requirements and says “here you go design this form.” It has 100 fields and this is out contact form and 80 of the fields are required. A lot of times people just say “okay, it’s my job to implement this. In my experience a lot of business analysts aren’t really familiar with principles of the web and what makes sense. A lot of times the real effort to creating a good form is in educating everybody else about what would be involved. Pushing back in situations like that. Not in a bad way but in a very professional productive way. “You realize that this is going to be a really bad contact form. Nobody’s acutually going to use it. I’ve even heard response like “That’s the point. If people contact us we have to take time a respond to them.” The problem isn’t with the form there, its with underlying things. Obviously that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. The idea is that the best place to start with forms and any kind of interaction like that is with the principles that are underneath there kind of guiding it. With the issue tracker that I am developing, I started out parring back the process of what’s the lifecycle of an issue. Trimming out parts that I didn’t think would really be necessary. I was just looking at it in the context of the lifecycle. I hadn’t even thought about what are the forms going to look like? How am I going to communicate this lifecycle within the context of the application? When it came down to the point when I had to explain how that actually worked, because I had trimmed the proccess and the lifecycle down so much, and it was only 3 steps really, I was able to translate that concept directly into the interface. If I had never actually gone and trimmed the lifecycle down and it had 6 different states that were very cross dependant and this state only is an option when you are in this state… It gets so complicated that even if I could express it in an interface, the code to build it would have been so absolutely unweildly that I could have never created a natural and intuitive inteface. So, I guess really challenging the underlying things rather than just thinking about the things on the surface. And then really just look at every form on it’s own. In it’s own light. What is the goal of this form? Should it be laid out like a traditional form? With one set of “label” “field” all the way down the page and a submit button. Should there be other buttons? Another thing when, I have a fairly consistent model that I am using when I am designing forms in my new application. The main form is for submitting issues and that one form is probably going to get 80% of the useage in this whole system. That and commenting. In the context of submitting issue alot of times you will be in a meeting capturing things as people are talking, capturing issues cause it’s an issue tracker. You want to be able to capture and issue, save it, and move on and capture another one really in kind of rapid succession. So I added an extra button at the bottom that I wouldn’t put on any other page, cause it doesn’t make sense, to save and add another. So it immediately saves that one and takes you back to the data entry screen. You can just continue in a circle and just keep on adding and adding. So really looking at forms and thinking about how are people going to be interacting with this? What are they doing in the real world while they’re using this form? Are they copying data from another application into here? Are they in the middle of a meeting just capturing items in rapid succession. What are they doing? Are they just quickly jotting it down from their iPhone? Understanding that context helps illustrate ideas and different sublte variations that you can do to forms and make them very very practical without adding a whole bunch of extra overhead on the implementation.

Paul: I remember you wrote an article at one stage redesigning eBay registration form. When you wrote about that you talked about the fact that this is a registration form. It is a one off form, and all of the ways that that then informed the way that you built the form. How it affected the positioning of things, and the layout and things, simply because it wasn’t going to be a form that people were using again and again. That’s the same kind of context that you are talking about.

Garrett: Yeah exactly. There’s always a different context to a form and it matters. It is easy to overlook it but that context, and really any design for that matter, context is so important but it is something that…I think that main reason that people don’t pay as much attention to context is because it requires a lot of extra work. A lot of times it’s easier, and it makes sense for kind of a first pass, to make every form look the same. It takes a lot more work to go through and re-invent the wheel every time you look at a form even though, re-inventing the wheel is probably a little bit extreme, to really give it some custom attention. Some tender loving care, just takes a lot more effort that lot of projects don’t have time for.

Paul: You mentioned earlier 37signals that you liked some of the stuff that they were doing. Are there any other good examples out there of forms that you really think are getting it right and are worth us having a look at?

Garrett: Probably the one thing that always jumps to my mind any time anybody asks me about forms is all of the work that Luke W is doing. I hate trying to butcher his name. The stuff that he is doing and hopefully his upcoming book is just really incredible. In depth. He’s done a lot of eye tracking research about label placement and button placement and he’s talked extensively about primary and secondary action buttons. All of his stuff is really incredible.

Paul: So where can people find out about him?

Garrett: I always just google for Luke W to get to his site. Functioning form is his blog. He’s the first hit for Luke W.

Paul: I’ll add it to the show notes. People can get to it via that. That’s interesting. I must admit I hadn’t hear of him so I’ll definitely check that out.

Garrett: He’s one of the, I don’t know his exact title, but he works at Yahoo and he’s got a plethora of presentations about form design and all of the kind of stuff. Really sharp guy.

Paul: And he’s writing a book you say as well?

Garrett: Yes he is for Rosenfeld Media. It’s due out early 2008.

Paul: Excellent. So just to finish us off. A little bit of bile at the end of the interview. Is there any forms that you want to name and shame? Any site that do things really badly that we can all go and laugh at and sneer at?

Garrett: You know that’s a very tough thing to do.

Paul: (lauging) So many out there.

Garrett: Well there are so many out there. But at the same time too there are a lot that seem like they could use improvement but they’re companies that are investing a lot of money and research to improving their forms. So I’m hesitant as an outsider, somebody who isn’t exposed to some of that data, to try and call them out, when they’re probably acutually right on the money. The top two that come to mind that I know are successful are eBay and Amazon. I think Amazon succeeds on the interaction design of their buttons and the flow of their checkout is natural and intuitive but I feel like a lot of their page designs, and it could be a very intentional thing in order to, although I hate thinking that Amazon would acutually do that, to kind of trap people and confuse them almost. If you look at each page in and of itself I think there is a lot of design things that they could make adjustments to that would make the pages easier to understand and comprehend at a glance. I feel like right now their design of their checkout process, or most of their site in general, is very busy and intense. It’s difficult to focus on one element because there’s so many elements. There is very little very intuitive page hierarchy within each page. And they’ve made leaps and bounds, watching the site evolve over the years. But, it still feels like there’s a lot more room for some design consistency for them to introduce. They’re slowly getting there. eBay is another one who, I know they acutually, I forget their CEO’s name, but she declared 2008 the year of user experience at eBay. They’ve acutually invested a lot in trying to improve their forms and really their user experience period. eBay is one that I’ve only successfully purchased something on there once and everytime I try to swim through there I get lost and just give up. Too me any situation like that is just begging for help. I think any form, even the best of the best, even 37signals, everybody is still learning. This is all so new that even the best forms have so much room for improvement. Even my stuff, I come a month later and say “what was I thinking there?” There’s so much work that needs to be done. I think that Luke’s work that he’s doing is probably some of the best and most important work that we’ll see in forms in the near future. He’s starting to really put down facts about what really is good and bad and why it is good and bad. Up until now most of us have just been pontificating based on “well this form is hard to fill out because of errors.” Or you know, the form breaks, or the error message isn’t helpful. Very obvious things. He’s tracking the much more subconcious things that until now nobody’s really dug into and made claims about. It’s kind of a cop out on your question.

Paul: No No. You gave two example there and you gave constructive reasons why they should be improved or could be improved. No I don’t thinks it’s a cop out. You’re just so much nicer than I am. You didn’t go for the jugular that was the only thing. Garrett it’s been great to have you on the show. I think that you’ve given us some real good hints to get going I guess and make some imrovements. It was good to talk to you.

Garrett: Yeah likewise.

Paul: No doubt we’ll get to talk again soon before too long. Especially when you’re issue tracker comes out. We’ll have to get you on hear all about that.

Garrett: Yeah. I’m hoping it will be sooner rather than later but it’s definitely tough to balance the feelancing and paying the bills and making progress on it.

Paul: I know exactly how you feel, we’re doing the same thing at Headscape at the moment. It’s always difficult. Client work is so tempting because it pays the bills here and now.

Garrett: Yup, exactly.

Paul: Okay good to talk to you and we’ll talk again sooon.

Garrett: Sounds good.

Thanks to Lee Theobald for doing the transcription

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Listeners feedback:

Finding usability test subjects

Our audio question comes from Clare who asks…

"Where do you find your test subjects for more formal user testing"

It can be hard to find good test subjects and I am not aware of any agencies out there that source people for you (although I am sure somebody will correct me).

I think it is worth stressing that finding users who match the demographic of your target audience is not a huge concern. As Steve Krug points out in his book "Don’t make me think" most problems are encountered by any user. That said, where possible it is good to find people that roughly match the specification.

To be honest our approach it is very adhoc. It normally consists of both Headscape and the client scrambling around to see who you can find. The client often has "tame" customers they can ask and we fallback on family, friends and other clients for recommendations.

I should also say my local church has been very handy! A church seems to have a good cross section of ages and backgrounds and an advert in the church newsletter often does the trick. Equally advertising in your local newspaper can attract people, but you have to be willing to pay for their time.

Accessible tables

This week’s email is from Daniel and takes the form of a recommendation rather than a question…

"Could you cover the tips discussed in this article [about accessible tables]? I have seen a lot of tables on the web. Almost none of them uses any of these tips."

The article Daniel is refering to can be found on the Opera developers site, which is a great resource covering all aspects of web development (not just stuff relating specifically to Opera). The specific post looks at how to markup data tables in an accessible format. Since designers have stopped using tables for layout they have become largely ignored. However, if not marked up correctly they can prove a real problem for speech readers. A simple table such as this…

Day AM PM
Monday Meeting Travelling
Tuesday Free time Meeting

…can become impossible to understand when read back because it is read in a linear fashion…

Day, AM, PM, Monday, Meeting, Travelling, Tuesday, Free time, Meeting

However, if marked up correctly it suddenly makes sense…

  • Day Monday AM Meeting
  • Day Monday PM Travelling
  • Day Tuesday AM Free time
  • Day Tuesday PM Meeting

Great find Daniel. These are tips we should all be implementing.

112. Jina

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 112: How to be more efficient using HTML snippets, Jina Bolton on women in web design and moving to a mac.

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News and events | Using HTML snippets | Jina Bolton on women in web design | Listener emails

News and events

Some customers are not worth caring about

My first piece of news is a post by Gerry McGovern. In his latest post he argues that some customer are not worth caring about.

The thrust of the article is that by appealing to everybody, you ultimately appeal to nobody. This is something I see repeatedly from clients who define their target audience as “the general public” or “men under 50.”

You also see it among developers who become overly concerned that people using IE4 with Javascript disabled might be unable to access the site. Even content providers suffer from this problem, dumping content on their websites “just in case somebody finds it useful.”

Ultimately building a website has to generate a return on investment and some customers don’t generate that return.

Version targeting rumbles on

Next up is two new articles on A List Apart, which once again tackle version targeting. Jeremy Keith argues against it, while Jeffrey Zeldman defends the position.

I have tried to stay fairly objective in my coverage of this issue. However, although I understand the position of people like Jeremy, I believe that Microsoft have done a good thing.

The arguments against strike me as somewhat naive and arrogant. We live in a world of compromise and yet as compromises go this isn’t a bad one. By adding a single line of code we have the ability to control how the market leader renders our sites. As Zeldman says…

Designers and developers should be popping corks, hugging each other, and weeping with joy. IE no longer sucks. No version of IE will ever again surprise us with unexpected displays or behavior.

Perhaps I am overly pragmatic, caring more about real world scenarios than purity of solution, but I am hopeful about the future.

Let users tagging your posts with delicious

The last news story is two posts from Christian Heilmann. The first is a Javascript technique that returns any delicious tags associated with the current page. This is a great way of introducing tagging to your site, without having to tag all of your own articles. The downside is that when users click on a tag, they are not taken to other articles you have written. Instead they see all delicious links associated with that tag. Good for the user, maybe not so good for retaining users.

The second post by Christian is another Javascript solution. This time he provides a mechanism for walking a user through the key features on your site. It generates an animated series of popup caption boxes beside different screen elements. It is definitely useful for showing off key features to new users. However, I have to wonder if a good screencast wouldn’t do the job better. Nevertheless, it is an interesting proof of concept. Check it out.

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Feature: Using HTML snippets

If you are part of a web design team or skip constantly between projects, then you might want to consider an alternative approach to writing your HTML. Discover how we became more efficient at Headscape by using HTML snippets.

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Expert interview: Jina Bolton on women in web design

Paul: Okay. So joining myself and Marcus today is Jina Bolton. How are you, Jina? Good to have you on the show.

Jina: I am doing well. How are you?

Paul: Yeah. Well, other than the weather that we just keep complaining about, things arenít too bad here. We are bearing up under the strain. So, for those of you that havenít come across Jina before, she is now an internationally renowned speaker

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: and author and incredible web designer. And is the kind of quality of person that is selected to appear at South by Southwest (SXSW) Marcus just for your interest that she is the kind of person they are looking for not you.

Marcus: You know, I know that because I got a magazine thing through by South by Southwest and there she was on the cover of it.

Paul: Ummm!

Jina: [laughs] Yeah. I got into a little for that too.

Paul: Why did you get into trouble for that? Who with?

Jina: The company I work or. Iím not really a speaker on behalf of that company, so

Paul: Ahhh, I see.

Jina: and they printed that company name by my name.

Paul: Right.

Jina: Anyway, different subject. [laughs]

Paul: Okay!

Marcus: [laughs]

Paul: And the company you work for will remain nameless and notorious for their strictness over things like that, so

Jina: Yeah.

Paul: There we go. But, basically yes Marcus. They want young attractive, intelligent and clever designer rather than an aging pop-star. Sorry about that.

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: [laughs] I can live with it.

Paul: Yeah. Jina has been kind enough to let me come on her panel, so that should be fun shouldnít it? Iím looking forward to that.

Jina: Yeah, I think it will be great.

Paul: If we actually get our act together and organize it.

Marcus: But, Jina is obviously that much richer after you have paid her Paul.

Paul: Well yes. You know I did have to bribe my way on. But, it seemed to work, so that is good.

Paul: So, there are so many things we could have gotten Jina on the show to discuss. She seems to be talking a lot about CSS lately. Mainly just by putting the word sex in the title of everything she does, which seems to improve your ratings to no end.

Jina: [laughs] You found my tactic.

Paul: Yeah. It seems to work for you Jina, so thatís good. But we wanted to go for a little bit of an unusual subject. I wanted to really look at the role of women within web design because well letís face it, your kind of a rare breed in some senses Jina. There arenít as many women in web design as perhaps there should be. And I just thought that it might be an interesting subject. And Iím sure that you have some opinions on it and so maybe we can encourage I know that there are a lot of women that listen to our show that maybe havenít moved full-time into the world of web design and maybe youíve got some advice to offer. So thatís the kind of plans. Does that sound okay with you?

Jina: Sure.

Paul: Good. Okay, well letís kick off then just by asking a really kind of obvious question, but kick us off with this Do you believe that women provide something unique to the world of web design, and if so what is that? Is there actually a difference? Is there something that makes womenís role unique?

Jina: Ummm. Well I think that there is something unique being brought to the table, that personís own personal style because I think that men and women have the same skill set. Now of course there are a lot of women that have a feminine style, so they do bring that into play, but I think it is more style than it is the natural skill of designing itself.

Paul: Okay. So, do you believe that there are kind of genetic differences really? ëTheyí make all kinds of things for example that woman have better color perception than men, but men have probably got better 3D acuity and things like that. Do you think that that actually makes a difference? Or is that all so marginal, that itís not that big deal?

Jina: Well I havenít really thought about that to be honest. As for color, I donít know. I guess, you know, a woman sense of color perception is supposed to be more acute. Maybe they could bring better colors to the table, but I think the skill sets are pretty much the same. I guess, you know, a lot of men can design for men and men can design for women. I think the skill sets are the same.

Paul: Oh, okay. So you wouldnít believe say, for example, if there was a website that was primarily aimed at a female market that it should be a female designer that works on a site like that?

Jina: Ah, well. So I do think that a female designer would have an easier time knowing how to cater to a female audience because they are that audience. But I donít think that it would make the website design better. I think a man would be just as capable in creating for that female audience.

Paul: Ah, that is interesting. Marcus, what do you think about that? I kind of always naturally presumed that somebody is more capable of designing for their own gender.

Marcus: Iím surprised by Jinaís answer to be honest. But, thinking about it, it is something that you think ëYeah, it makes more sense for women to design for women.í but really itíd to do more with the content. I think it would be hard for a man to produce content for a site aimed at women. But maybe the design is something, like Jina says, is more the designers have a set bunch of skills and whether you are a man or a woman it really doesnít make any difference. So it is more of a content issue.

Jina: I do agree that it would be easier for a woman to do it, because like I said she is that audience so sheís gonna know what kind of things a woman would like. But, I donít think that would make the website design any better because a man would be able to do just the same.

Paul: Hmmm.

Jina: You know it is kind-of sort-of like to ëbring issues into ití. Like, I had a firm that was from India who was asked to design for the National Civil Rights Museum and his isnít African-American, nor was he even American, but he did a fantastic job. So, I think for gender it would kind of the same. Like, if he was African-American he probably would have had an easier time but he would still have been creative with the artistic part.

Paul: So basically, he had to work harder to achieve the good design, but he could still do it.

Jina: Right.

Paul: Hmmm. Yeah. I do see where you are coming from on that. You mentioned earlier about a kind of feminine style to design. Do you think there are differences in style? What would you class as being a particularly feminine style of design?

Jina: I think it is really color choices and font choices, as well as certain patterns like some designers I think of at the top-of my head *Vera-Ley* and *Legha Alfanterra* they both you know if you look at there websites they are very very feminine. You know my website is really feminine looking, but I think it is because of the colors theyíve chosen and the font choice weíve picked and as well as the patterns. I notice a lot of guys tend to go for the grungier things and the girls kind-of go for more of a clean look. But I think those are stylistic differences.

Paul: So when do you think that kind of where do you think that comes from? You know is that something that is trained into us? You know, blokes tend to go for grungiest stuff? Even from being a kid I guess ëboys are blueí and ëgirls are pinkí, you know, all that kind of thing.

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: But, how much of it is nature and how much of it is nurture do you think?

Jina: Ewe I have no idea. [laughs]

Paul: [laughs]

Marcus: [laughs]

Jina: But, I do think it comes from the way people are brought up like you said ëgirls are pinkí and ëboys are blueí. I think it is really what that person has come to like as they have grown up.

Paul: Hmmm.

Jina: To be honest, Iím not a real fan of pink at all

Paul: [laughs] Good for you.

Jina: but I use it in my website for some reason. [laughs]

Paul: [laughs] I mean yes. You see the trouble that you are making Jina, is that we are trying to make informed comments on this show and nothing that we ever say on this show is informed.

Jina: I think, this topic is kind of just subjective I guess.

Paul: Yeah. Basically you are saying that I picked a dumb subject. That is what you are saying isnít it?

Jina: No, no.

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: A good topic to talk about it, but it is kind of confusing.

Paul: Yeah.

Jina: You know and when I started out doing websites, I used to do websites for rock bands. And all of those sites I did were grungy so I am kind-of contradicting myself.

Paul: Ahhh. So I mean, I guess the big question is that whether you know obviously the industry that you have chosen is a male dominated industry. There are far more men out there. Certainly there are far more high profile men out there on the speaking circuits and writing articles and all of the rest of it. I mean do you perceive that as a problem?

Jina: I am not really sure if ëproblemí is the word. I do think it is getting better. I see a lot more women speaking now and even attending conferences. I see more and more women in attendance. And of course, more women writing articles in books, but I think it may have to do with that it is a fairly new field, in comparison to other design related fields. And so now that it is getting taught in schools, more and more women will start getting into it.

Paul: Hmmm. I mean that raises quite an interesting question. You know, how did you get into it then? From you know, what is your background and how did you end up being a web designer?

Jina: Well actually, my Dad was playing around with making his own personal website and I was intrigued by the idea of publishing to the Internet. So he kind of showed me really-really basic-basic HTML using font tags and tables.

Paul: Yeah.

Jina: I grew up as an artist so I went to art school and I was actually going to be a print designer, but as I was learning HTML it became my hobby and it just kind of merged and became my job.

Paul: Hugh. Okay, fair enough. It is just interesting to know. Okay, so do you think we should be you know you talked about that there are female designers learning at school these days on how to become web designers. Do you think we should be doing active as a community to encourage women to come into the profession? I mean, I know for an example, that there was a lot of talk at one stage about proactively discriminating in conferences to encourage there to be more women speakers. Publications need to make a point of using female authors in order to you know setup role models almost artificially. Is that something you would encourage or do you think that is a slippery slope?

Jina: I have mixed feelings on that. As a woman, I have definitely benefited from people that were looking for more female speakers or more female authors so it has definitely helped me. But, I think discrimination is sort of a fine line and if a guy is more capable and more skilled he really should have more of that opportunity than a woman who is not as skilled. I wouldnít want her to get in, just because she is a woman. But, the fact that there are more opportunities is helpful so I am kind-of on the fence on that one. It is sort of like the same way I feel, and I know this might be considered controversial, but the whole you know like when you get a job. Are you getting hired in my case, if I get hired because I am a woman and I am half Asian versus somebody who maybe is a White male, but who are a lot more skilled than me. I donít know how I feel about that. You know, I am all for more opportunity, I think that is a really good thing. But I think that any discrimination is discrimination.

Paul: I mean it is an interesting one, as somebodyís employer, and I donít know Marcus will feel about this but there are occasions when I really think we miss out as a company. I am sorry to say, we are an all male company, all thirteen of us. And not because we have gone out to be that, in fact precisely the opposite. Weíve often offered woman jobs and they have turned us down actually.

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: And it is a very sad reflection on us. But, I mean Marcus how would you feel about actively going out and saying ëRight, okay, we want to hire a female designer because we want that female perspective.í?

Marcus: I am not too sure how I feel about that, from an employment point of view. As an employer, I think you have to look at who is the best candidate. But what I was thinking about when we were talking about earlier, and this goes back to what I am not talking at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: and one of the reasons of why I am not doing that.

Paul: Itís because youíre White, middle-aged and middle-class.

Marcus: No, but one of the things the people who are organizing the panel have to look at different they have to think about ëOkay we are going to have a bunch of panels talking about business, a bunch of panels talking about designí you canít have everything. All the panels cannot just talk about business, for example. So you have to think, okay we will have to split it equally between the different types of genre, if you like. Now, doing that we also want to have an equal split between men and women, I donít think there is anything wrong with that. As an employer it is a different thing. I am not sure, where the law stands on that.

Paul: Ummm!

Marcus: Iím not sure we actually would be able to say we have to have a female employee, or whatever. I think you would be discriminating against other people by doing that.

Paul: Yeah, I guess you are. But, I think we are actually (I have to be honest) I think we suffer as a business to some degree. A classic example of that was not long ago we worked on a website for a higher education institution where over 75% of the people that went there were women. And we were having to do a design. We did the first design and we put it in front of bearing in mind all of our designers are men and we put in front of some test users and the overwhelming response back was ëYouíre trying too hard. You know it is kind of overly feminine.í And it would have been so much easier in that situation if we had a female designer there just to say ëGuys. You really donít need to make it pink and you donít need the little fairies in the corner.í

Marcus: [laughs]

Jina: [laughs] Exactly, you donít want to go with crochets with pink and flowers unless that is the brand you are going for.

Paul: Yeah, I mean that is a good question actually. Do you think there is any bear in mind there is a lot of male designers out there that are listening to this show what are the absolute no-noís? How can they design for a feminine audience without kind of really going over the top? You know, is there any kind of advice you can give, or is it just kind of feel as you go along?

Jina: I think you definitely want to get critiques from women, like if you have peers letís say you are working at a design agency and there are female designers around you, get their opinions. If you donít really have that, I donít know, I guess go to Starbuckís or something

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: and get some critiques because I am just up more for just keeping it simple and clean.

Paul: Yep. That sounds like good advice. I think we are going to have to wrap it up there Jina. Not because I am bored with talking to you, but because the sound quality on Skype sucks so much today. I think weíre gonna have to get you back on the show another time to share maybe some more stuff.

Jina: Okay.

Paul: I donít know, maybe when you are over in the UK that might be possible. Iím sure that it will happen before too long.

Jina: That sounds good.

Paul: Okay.

Jina: And it might even be our Internet connection. I am sorry about that.

Paul: Thatís alright, these things happen. I blame Marcus personally. I never have problems except for when he is on.

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: Ha ha ha.

Jina: Thatís awful.

Paul: [laughs] Okay. Thanks very much for your time and we will talk to you again soon.

Jina: Okay. Alright.

Paul: Bye.

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Listeners email:

SXSW

This week we have a couple of questions about SXSW:

Rich asks…

I am attending sxsw for the first time this year. What should I expect and how can I get the most out of it?

Last year was my first year at SXSW and to be honest it is overwhelming. Before I went I planned out all of the panels I was going to attend but to be honest I wasted my time. I don’t think it is really possible to prepare for a 10 track conference. Ultimately what you go and see will be dictated by how much energy you have left after the various parties you were attending the night before!

Talking of parties, in my in my opinion it is the social aspects of SXSW that is really the most interesting. At the end of the day, you can find out about most of the topics covered online. However, it is meeting and chatting with other web designers that is the really inspiring bit. To this end I would suggest two ideas.

First, take time to just sit in the corridors and get chatting with people. If you are in a good conversation, don’t worry too much that you are missing the panels. Its amazing who you meet just sitting around. Oh yes, and don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to anybody. Most people are friendly and if they are not… screw them!

Second, if there are people you know already attending or if there are people you want to meet add them on Twitter. That way you can see where they are and what they are up to. As a newbie last year, twitter was how I found out where all the best parties were. Definitely add me as I intend to keep twitter up to date with my comings and goings.

Talking of parties and socialising Matthew asks…

Have you considered doing a live show at SXSW?

We have considered it but have decided against it. To be honest, sxsw is manic enough without adding a live show. What is more, I don’t think live shows are that interesting to those that are not attending. This means we will not be releasing a show on the 12th March. However, we will be recording as many interviews as we can cram in, which we will be using over the coming weeks and months.

Although we are not doing a live show, that doesn’t mean we wont have opportunity to meet up. Boagworld is once again sponsoring the Great British Booze up, which is happening on Monday 10th March from 7:30pm at Shakespeare’s Pub (314 E. 6th Street). Full details at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/403331/

Moving to the mac

Brenda asks…

You mentioned on the Christmas list that you recently converted from Windows to Mac. How did it go? Did you have to buy all new software, or were you able to convert licenses for some of it? What was the learning curve like? What do you miss most from Windows? What would you say the overall budget for this was (emptying out that duct tape wallet)?

A very timely question Brenda. With Marcus intending to buy a mac, we have been discussing the switch. I have to say that for me it went very well. Within a week I was entirely happy working on my new macbook and could do everything I did under windows and more. I have certainly never looked back and can honestly say I miss nothing.

However, I confess I was in a luxurious position. Unlike most people I had Headscape to pay for the raft of software I had to purchase. Admittedly companies such as Adobe allowed me to transfer my license from windows to the mac (after jumping through some hoops). However, that was not always the case. Fortunately most of the software I purchased was only $30-40 each. However, that can quickly mount up. The biggest waste was on Microsoft Office. To begin with I couldn’t imagine life without Outlook and Word. In hindsight, I really didn’t need it. iWorks which costs a fraction of Office does everything I need and Apple Mail is a much more pleasurable experience than Outlook. I didn’t keep track of how much I spent on software, however I would guess it was $200-300.

Overall it was a great move and I love not only the mac OS but the great software being developed by some very cool mac developers.

To leave an audio comment for the show skype “boagworldshow” or call +44 20 8133 5122.

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111. Utopia

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 111: Designer and developer work together in utopian harmony. Two great listener reviews and Aral Balkan announces the biggest online web design conference ever.

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News and events | Designers and developers in perfect harmony | Aral on Singularity | Listener emails

News and events

Fixing your product pages

I want to kick off this week’s news with an article on Think Vitamin which I missed when it originally come out back in November. It is a post by Amy Hoy providing some basic advice on user experience design, focusing in particular on product pages.

Amy starts by giving some basic tips. These include…

  • Be nice to your users and customers (and potential customers).
  • Design as if your main goal is to inform and educate.
  • Be honest and forthcoming.
  • Help your users and customers to do what they want, not what you want them to do.
  • Be consistent with your message and quality of service (and I’m including software design here, folks).
  • Scientific, measurable “usability” doesn’t necessarily make for a good experience.
  • Good design makes people feel good.

She then moves on to look at specific examples. She compares the product download pages of Opera and Firefox. This is a fascinating insight into what can go wrong with user experience design.

What I particularly like about this article is Amy’s engaging writing style. She is incredibly personable and her writing really drew me in. It is a long time since I have read a post word for word.

Being inspired by newspaper design

I often talk on boagworld about looking beyond the web for inspiration. Too often as designers we look at other websites, when we should be looking to art, architecture and the world around us for inspiration.

Admittedly this can be somewhat of a stretch at times. It’s not always easy to see how a piece of art or kids toy can inspire a website. Many of us don’t even try as a result.

How about starting with an easier comparison? This week I came across a superb post that looks at award winning newspaper design and it really excited me about the possibilities when I finally get around to redesigning boagworld.

I think we have a lot of learn from newspaper designers and in many ways there are a lot of similarities. Both web design and newspaper design rely heavily on white space and grid layout. Both have to deal with large amounts of written content. Both have to copy with constantly changing content. The list goes on.

Take a few moments to read this post, even if you just look at the designs. It will definitely inspire you.

Using browser history to improve the user experience

My final news story of the day is an interesting idea centred around a users browser history. Niall Kennedy has proposed a technique where you could use CSS and Javascript to display content based on what sites a person has previously visited.

Although I am not sure I like the idea of websites snooping through my browser history, it does provide some ways of improving the user experience. If nothing else it can remove some of the clutter from our websites.

Let me give you an example of how it could be used. A website could check your browser history to see if you regularly used digg.com. If you did then it could post a “digg it” button. If not it could be hidden away. The same principle could be used to show only a RSS subscribe button for the specific news reader you use, rather than showing them all. The possibilities are endless.

Whether you can see an application for this or not, it is still a very impressive and clever idea. Definitely worth investigating further.

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Feature: Designer and developer in perfect harmony

In this week’s feature Marcus is looking at the working relationships between web design teams. He brings together a few Headscape employees to discuss how to ensure a good working relationship between all parties.

These are the roles that we look at and who represents them in Headscape:

  • Requirements analysis, information architecture development (consultancy) – Marcus
  • Design, templates – Leigh Howells and Paul
  • Technical development – Rob Borley
  • Project management – Charlie Allen

These are the issues we covered…

  • What are the things that really make a project work well for you?
  • From the other perspective, what are your pet hates?
  • Designer and developers – should clients be able to talk to you directly?
  • Most projects have a habit of their scope creeping. How can that best be avoided?
  • At Headscape we use a number of different tools to manage projects. How do these tools work?
  • Particularly with designers and developers, we have set up ‘buddy’ systems. How does this work? Is it effective?
  • Some projects stall or go on hold for a while. Are you able to just pick up where you left off?

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Expert interview: Aral Balkan on Singularity

Paul: So, joining me today is Aral Balkan. Hello Aral.

Aral: Hi, Paul. How are you?

Paul: Not too bad. It’s been a while since we’ve had you on the show.

Aral: It has been a while. I’ve missed it.

Paul: Uhm, so yeah, basically, I’ve been keeping a secret from Marcus. Which is I stoically refused to tell him what Singularity is all about.

Aral (laughing): Was he curious?

Paul: He was.

Marcus: It’s something to do with Star Trek, isn’t it?

Aral: Well I am a big fan, but no.

Paul: So why don’t you tell him what Singularity is all about.

Aral: Well, Singularity is going to be the world’s first large scale online web converence.

Marcus: Okay.

Aral: In a nutshell, that’s what it is.

Paul: So, I mean how does this work from a technology point of view, from an organizational point of view. Tell us a little bit about how it’s going to be organized.

Aral: Uh, sure! Well, basically it’s a web conference, so in terms of topics, it’s very eclectic. We’ve got a really cool group of speakers who have confirmed already, about 24 of them, from all parts of the web really. We have web standards people. We have JavaScript developers. We have artists who work on the web and they’re going to be presenting their sessions online. It’s going to be streamed through a custom interface built in Flash, based on the Flash platform, using technologies like Adobe Connect which used to be called “Breeze”. It allows the real time streaming of audio, video, and also sharing of interactions or objects through the web. Beyond that, we’re also going to have a very local character to it with local hubs where people will be able to gather and watch the audience and interact.

Paul: Oh, ok, so it…

Aral: I mean, watch the conference and interact.

Paul: Right, so people will actually get together as well, because that was one of my questions. One of the best thing about conferences is meeting up with people.

Aral: Definitely! The bit that I don’t like is the travelling. It’s being stuck in coach next to someone who’s, you know, not feeling too well or is kind slumping onto your seat or having the hotel from Hell experience that I’m currently having over here. (Paul laughs)

Aral: Don’t even get me started on that. There was techno music until 2 AM from the bar downstairs.

Paul: Nice!

Aral: Well, it was refreshing in the morning, though, because the shower went from boiling from freezing back to boiling and kept doing that. So, yeah, I think this is going to hopefully take the best parts of what attending a conference means, and maybe leave some of the bits that aren’t as great.

Paul: Are you going to leave it for local groups to set up local meetings or is that something that you can organize centrally?

Aral: I want to see it as decentralized as possible. I am talking to a few venue sponsors, potential venue sponsors. We’re talking with Yahoo at the moment. The BBC, I’m talking with Ian there. There are very interested and very excited about it. But, beyond that, I want it to have a grass-roots character. So, we’re already getting people volunteering for regional areas. I’ve called them Ambassadors. We have an ambassador from Bristol and there are people from Singapore, Mexico, all over, that are very interested in volunteering. So, we’re probably going to have regional volunteers and ambassadors who organize local groups, user groups, to have meetings around Singularity, where attendees can go and join and hopefully take it further, you know, add a local character to it.

Paul: OK, let’s cover some of the basics. How many speakers are you looking at, first of all. Let’s start with that.

Aral: Okay. We’re going to have a little over 100 hundred speakers.

Paul: Wow!

Aral: So, yeah, it is actually a large web conference.

Paul: Yeah.

Aral: And the that its online.

Paul: So when… how long is this going to be over? You know, if you’re going to have 100 speakers…

Aral: It’s three days.

Paul: It’s going to be over three days…

Aral: And it’s multiple track.

Paul: Multiple track, okay. That’s what I was going to ask.

Aral: And I think one of the things, just cut you off there, with uh… it is multiple track, but everything is recorded.

Paul: Oh, Okay.

Aral: So, its presented live and we’ve got some really great ideas for making those presentations a little bit more interactive than you can get in the real world. But, it will also be recorded. So, if you do miss something on the day, you’ll be able to watch it later.

Paul: Cool! How are you going to deal with things like time differences? Are you going to have it going 24 hours? Or, how are you dealing with that?

Aral: Well, initially, I was thinking about having it 24 hours. Just because it sounded really cool.

(All Laugh)

Aral: You know? “Three days! Twenty four hours!! One hundred plus speakers!!!” But then I thought about it. Especially the local meet ups. I want those meet ups to have a BarCamp-like character to them, you know? Where people can stay over. And I didn’t want the conference, the somewhat one-way part of it taking up part of the day.

Paul: Right…

Aral: So, I think it would be nice to have the presentations during the day and then after that, leave time for people at local gatherings to create their own sessions to talk about what they’ve been listening to, to add to it, to localize it for themselves in a matter of speaking.

Paul: Sure.

Aral: You know, to have, to do things to tell you the truth, I have no idea what they’ll come up with, which is great.

Paul: So, when is this scheduled for? What are the dates that people should book for it?

Aral: Well, we finally have dates. We’ve been going back and forth internally before we announced, but it’s the end of October. October 24th through the 26th.

Paul: Okay, that sounds good. And do you know a price yet, or are you still working on that?

Aral: Well, the pricing we’re still working on, but I think we’re going to be very positively surprised by the pricing. We’re actually working to get it even lower than we initially thought we wanted it. And we’re working closely with certain sponsors and we’ll definitely be announcing more about the sponsorship that we have as they become official, but some of our sponsors are interested in keeping the ticket price low as well and supporting us.

Paul: So, how many people are you expecting to attend this conference? Have you got any idea of what you’re aiming for?

Aral: Well, my conservative estimate right now is 10,000.

Paul: WOW!

Aral: And that’s based partly on past experience. We did 2 one-day open source flash conferences using similar technologies, for which we got about a thousand attendees at each one. Those were much smaller. One day, three or four speakers. My conservative estimate is that this will be about ten times the size of that.

Paul: That’s amazing. I mean that will be really cool to, you know, if that comes off. Are you trying to get a range of different speakers? Are you covering any particular areas of web design or are you going as eclectic as you can?

Aral: Well, the tagline that I was going with initially was that Singularity would define web 08. And I’m kind of trying to get people away from using version numbers when talking about the web. We’re getting away from using version numbers when talking about software because you know the moment you slap one on its outdated. So, I think maybe using the year would be easier because you’d at least know that you’re talking about a definite stat of time. So, my initial idea is that it would define Web ’08, and as such, I’m trying to get as eclectic a mix of speakers as possible. And also, I see that there is a lot of overlap with which to send applications for example. There’s a lot of overlap over what people using AJAX are doing and then traditionally web standards people are getting interested in applications as well. So, I want to have a real mix. I also don’t want people on the Flash platform to be excluded, as they sometimes are. But, this is definitely not… that’s not the focus of the conference.

Paul: So, where can people find out more about this? I mean obviously, some people are going to want to be signing up. Obviously, you can’t do that yet, until the price has been set. So, is there any kind of way (

Aral: Of course.) they can express their interested or find out more information or whatever?

Aral: They definitely can. The site is “singlularity08.com”. You can also get to it from “singularityconference.com”. And, basically, we have a blog there and you can express your interest. You can email me directly as well. My email address is “[email protected]”. Or just email my private address at “[email protected]”. Yes, so definitely, if you want to be kept in touch when we do release information, but there is also an RSS feed that you can subscribe to on the site.

Paul: Cool! Well thank you very much for coming on the show.

Aral: Thank you for having me, Paul. And of course you’re speaking.

Paul: Well, yes, of course. That goes without saying (Paul laughs).

Aral: Are you excited? Have you decided what you are speaking about?

Paul: I have not a clue yet, no. (Aral laughs)

Aral: Have I just put you on the spot?

Paul: Yes, totally. Thank you very much. (Aral laughs) And its going to be a weird one. It’s going to be a different way of speaking and so you kind of need to tailor what you’re doing to approach. It will be interesting.

Aral: Exactly. And we’re going have dry runs and we’re going to try out the interface as well.

Paul: Cool.

Aral: And maybe tweak it for different types of presentations. We just have so much potential with what we can do.

Paul: Mmmm. Yeah.

Aral: Because, we can actually control the medium. So, it’s really exciting.

Paul: Excellent! Excellent stuff! Really looking forward to it and we’ll get you back on the show closer to the time to see if we can drum up a bit more support for it. Excellent stuff. Thank you for your time.

Aral: Sounds great, Paul. Thank you so much.

Paul: Alright then.

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Listeners email:

An alternative wireframing tool

A few weeks back I talked on the show about wireframing tools. Not long afterwards I received an enthusiastic email from Wen talking about a product called OverSite. He was so passionate about the product that I thought we should get him on the show to talk about it. This is what he had to say…

I’ve been catching up on my episodes of BoagWorld, and I just recently listened to your discussion about wireframing. As a UI designer, I completely understand the importance of mocking up a UI, and testing the mockup, before ever launching Photoshop.or Dreamweaver. So I thought I’d provide a review of a wireframing tool that I use, called OverSite. I haven’t seen many other tools out there like it, so I figured you and your listeners might find it useful.

OverSite is a shareware application that runs on Windows as well as Mac OS X; I use the Mac version myself, but am able to exchange OverSite files back and forth with my PC-using colleagues. OverSite lets you create a full or partial representation of your site structure: all of the sections and pages that make up your site. You can do this in one of two ways. The first way is fairly predictable; you add one section or page at a time by clicking a button, entering a name in a popup dialog, and clicking OK. The second way is fairly clever. You open a window that OverSite calls the Rapid Structure Creator. There, you type out your entire site structure in one text area, putting line breaks between sections and pages, and using indentation to indicate nested levels. Then you just click OK and viola! OverSite generates a tree depicting your entire site structure.

At this point, you can dive into your wireframing. Each page contains its own wireframe canvas. You can place the usual widgets on the canvas: buttons, textfields, checkboxes, images, etc. You can also place basic geometric shapes like circles, rectangles, lines and stars on the canvas. Each component can be individually styled; you can also create global styles that apply to all components, or to components of a specific type. OverSite also lets you create what it calls composites, which are complex elements that are made up of individual widgets.

Let’s say that you have a search form that will appear on a few different pages. You can create a composite representing this form. The composite might contain a few labels and text fields, maybe a checkbox or two, and a couple of buttons. If you want, you can tell OverSite to automatically draw a border around the form elements. Once you’ve created that form composite, you can drop it into your wireframes where ever you want it.

OverSite does lack built-in, complex widget types, such as tables. You can create them out of the widgets that OverSite does provide, but it would be nice for OverSite to create them for you.

While each page has its own wireframe canvas, so does each section. The purpose of a section’s wireframe is to create elements that will appear on all of the pages within that section. For those who have used server-side-includes, it’s kind of like that. As an example, say you had a navigation bar that should go on the top of every page in your Products And Services section. You would create that navigation bar once, in the Products And Services wireframe canvas. Then the nav bar will appear in every page within that section. In addition, OverSite provides tools to modify that nav bar in specific pages, for example, to change the color of a specific link in the nav bar when you’re actually on the page that that link refers to.

Static wireframes are fine, but I prefer being able to test the interaction between screens before I actually build the site out. OverSite lets you link any widget or composite to another page. If you don’t want to do the work yourself, you can also tell OverSite to auto-generate a simple navigation bar. Then, you can use OverSite’s built-in web browser to test out your site’s navigation.

Another useful thing I’ve found is OverSite’s notes. The notes functionality lets you provide details about specific widgets. That way, when you print or export your wireframes, you can include more information to whomever you’re handing them off to.

As an added bonus, OverSite will also create a graphical sitemap based on your website structure. You can tweak the appearance of the sitemap… the operative word being “tweak”. Fonts, colors, spacing, and icon sizes are under your control, but not much more. Here’s where I think the application could do better to allow you to fully customize the sitemap. Still, it’s created automatically for you without your having to lift a finger, so that’s something. Plus, the sitemap can be exported into a number of formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, Scalable Vector Graphics, and others.

Once you’ve finished your wireframes and want someone else to be able to play around with them, you can export them as web pages for non-OverSite-using people to click-through. You have two options here: export your stuff as pure HTML, or export them as imagemaps. The trade-off between the two is fairly obvious: pure HTML will provide you web pages that looks more “real world”, but won’t look exactly like your wireframes do, and they’ll look different in different browsers. Imagemaps ensure that you know exactly what your pages will look like, but it’s typically not going to look like a real web site.

As a UI designer, OverSite’s become a pretty indispensable tool in my software arsenol. You can get it at the developer’s website.

A vertical rhythm calculator

In the same show we also had Jason Beaird talking about vertical rhythm (among other things) and this promoted an email from James. He wrote…

Hi I’ve been listening to your podcast for about six months now and really enjoy the mixed style of content and witty banter.

With all the talk of CSS vertical rhythm and em based layouts I thought I would point you in the direction of a vertical rhythm calculator that I built in Flex to help people work out all of those nice em values. My own site has been developed using the same principles with all typography and measurements set in em’s for an elastic layout. I am developing an AIR version that has an integrated browser so that you get visual feedback of your calculations, I remember one of the John’s comment on how useful such a tool would be on the fabulous Rissington podcast.

I have checked it out myself and have to say it is very impressive. What is more he has now created that desktop version. Check it out.

109. Rissington?

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On Show 109. IE8 divides the web design community, Anton Peck talks about imagery, and the Rissington Podcast crew stand in for Marcus.

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News and events | Anton Peck on imagery | Listener emails

Unfortunately Marcus is not yet back on active duty but does thank you all for your kind support. However, do not fret. You do not have to endure another show of me waffling on by myself. Stepping into Marcus’ still warm shoes are two giants in the world of web design and podcasting. From the infamous Rissington Podcast we have Jon Hicks and John Oxton.

News and events

Microsoft to automatically roll out IE7

First up I was sent an article by several listeners which seems to indicate Microsoft is intending to do an auto-update of Internet explorer on the 12th February.

When IE7 was initially released Microsoft made the decision to make the upgrade to their latest browser optional. So even though a user had requested automatic updates they would not receive IE7 unless they specifically approved it. This decision not to force users to update frustrated those in the web design community who wanted to wave goodbye to the evils of IE6.

However, it would now appear Microsoft has decided to take the plunge and will be rolling out IE7 as part of the automatic update. Not all users are signed up to receive these updates but those who are will be using IE7 from February 12th (if they are not already).

Expect to see a significant decline in IE6 users to your site very soon. Perhaps it will not be long before IE6 follows IE5.

IE8 divides the standards community

Talking of Microsoft and Internet Explorer, probably the biggest story of the week is Microsoft’s plans for IE8.

IE8 promises to be a huge step forward in standards support and has been significantly rebuilt in order to enable this. However, such dramatic changes in their rendering engine comes at a cost. They fear that by becoming more standards compliant they will break many websites which are not built with standards in mind.

The way they have dealt with this problem is to introduce a small piece of code that you drop into your pages which can be used to specify what version of IE your site is designed to work with. The browser then renders the webpage as if it was that version of the browser. So for example you could specify that a page was designed for IE7 and a person viewing the page in IE8 would see the page as if it was rendered in IE7.

If no browser is specified then it defaults to rendering the page in IE7 that way no matter what changes Microsoft make in future browsers legacy sites are still rendered correctly.

What on the face of it seems like a very sensible plan has caused uproar in the web design community. A List Apart and Eric Meyer seem to be generally supporting the principle while many others including the likes of Jeremy Keith strongly object.

One of the main sticking point seems to be that this approach breaks progressive enhancement. In other words I may choose to implement a piece of functionality on my site knowing that it wont currently work in IE7 but does work in other more compliant browsers such as Firefox. If i don’t add this special code when IE8 comes along it will look at my page see the code is absent and so render it as IE7. That means even if IE8 supports the functionality now it wont use it because it is rendering my site as IE7.

Its a complex issue with good arguments on both sides. In next week’s show Eric Meyer and myself will discuss it in more depth.

HTML 5 is coming

Still on the subject of the future of web design we now turn to HTML 5 which has just been released in draft format. Sitepoint provides a nice little summary of what is in and what’s out. There is also a summary of the differences between HTML 4 and 5 which is very useful as well.

I cannot claim to have read the entire specification yet but I have to say what I have seen contains some exciting stuff. Having HTML tags to define common areas like headers, footers and navigation offers some interesting possibilities and its good to see built in support for video and audio.

The big shame is that practical application of this is still a long way off but its nice to know that there is potential there.

Career advice for web designers

Of course all these upcoming technologies wont matter to you if my predications of a couple of weeks ago come true and we all find ourselves without a job! This week I was pleased to discover I was not the only one with a pessimistic attitude towards the coming year. Robert Scoble has posted a entry entitled “what to do if you are laid off in 2008 recession“, which I thought was a particularly cheery title.

Actually it is a really good post with some excellent advice. What I like most about it is that the advice applies as much to a student trying to break into web design for the first time as it does to a out of work professional.

In fact if you are considering a career change of any kind (or have had one forced upon you) then this is a good read.

Advice includes…

  • Spend at least 30% of your day job hunting
  • Start a blog
  • Share your knowledge with the world
  • Demonstrate your skills on youtube
  • Networking
  • Contact web start ups because they are hiring.
  • Volunteer
  • Prioritise friends and family

The list goes on and is definitely worth reading.

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Expert interview: Anton Peck on imagery

Paul: So joining me today, as I said at the start of the show, is Anton Peck. How are you Anton?

Anton Peck: I’m doing great Paul. Thank you.

Paul: It’s good to have you on the show.

Anton Peck: I know. It’s about time isn’t it? *laughs*

Paul: It seems like it’s been a while. We haven’t actually had you on BoagWorld before have we?

Anton Peck: No, no. This is the first time.

Paul: But I’ve known you from… Where did we first meet? Was it South By Southwest?

Anton Peck: Yeah. I think we had sorta done virtual communication before then through email, IM or whatever. But we actually first met at South By Southwest last time.

Paul: Cool. So Anton, tell me and the listeners a little bit about yourself. How do you describe yourself? Do you primarily describe yourself as a web designer or an illustrator?

Anton Peck: That’s a tough call. The illustration is more my fancy, my hobby. It’s where my passion lies but the design is what I’ve been doing for a long time. So it’s sort of my trade of skill.

Paul: I see. So you’re kind of torn between two worlds.

Anton Peck: A little bit.

Paul: But fortunately those two worlds do overlap quite a lot which is why we have you on the show today. We thought it would be good to get Anton in really not to just talk about illustration but to talk about imagery on the web generally as that’s kind of his thing really, amongst many others, because you have a growing reputation. You do art-casts don’t you which are like illustration tutorials? Is that a good way to describe them?

Anton Peck: Yeah, that’s probably a good way to describe them. That is the rumor that I do those isn’t it. I don’t do them as often as I should but I do manage to get them out every once in a while.

Paul: And they are excellent. I have to say, I really do enjoy watching them. So let’s talk a little about imagery on websites and the use of imagery on websites. Let’s start off with a really nebulous and broad question that I guess is pretty impossible to answer but I’m going to ask anyway, which is what makes good imagery for a website? How do you go about picking imagery for a website?

Anton Peck: Well there’s a few things and some of them might seem obvious. First of all the images should complement the content of the website so that the substance isn’t too diluted from its original intent. I know that might seem kinda out there and obvious but it’s probably disappointing and surprising that there’s a lot of website owners that would want to put an image on a website because it’s really pretty or cool.

Paul: I guess it’s important to have imagery that relates to the branding or message you are trying to communicate.

Anton Peck: Right because imagery is meant to support the content rather than take away from it. You don’t want to pull everybody’s focus right away to the images but at the same time you want to support what’s already there. The images should have some interesting quality about them which could mean how well they have been cropped or resized. They should be saved at a pretty decent quality if they are JPEG’s or GIF’s. Not over compressed as they can sometimes diminish the personality of the website. When you go to a website and you see that it’s over compressed it really doesn’t look very good.

Paul: So for a relative newbie, an amateur that’s getting into web design, there’s always this question of GIF vs. JPEG. What do you use and when?

Anton Peck: Well for photographic style images that have a lot of… I would say colours but that’s not quite accurate but more photographic style images I would use JPEG’s. Then for images like logos, things that seem very flat and have a limited palette, maybe go with the GIF’s. Although I tend to do that a little bit less now that PNG’s are finding a little bit more broad support among browsers.

Paul: So do you use PNG’s very much?

Anton Peck: Every so often. They compress nicely especially when you use the adaptive palette which is similar to a GIF format but they can actually get a little bit smaller.

Paul: Cool, yeah. That’s been my experience as well.

Anton Peck: It just gets a little tricky when you are trying to do transparency.

Paul: Yes, exactly.

Anton Peck: That’s a whole other discussion.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to open that can of worms today. So any other tips for selecting good imagery?

Anton Peck: Well I would say it’s got to be appropriate and tasteful of course. So that way you can minimise the risk of offending someone or losing possible business. If you might have a certain sense of humour and want to put something on your website, you might have to watch out for how that might appear to someone else.

Paul: And I guess cultural considerations come in there as well. It’s easy to forget that the worldwide web is worldwide.

Anton Peck: Definitely.

Paul: The next big issue that a lot of people face is this whole kind of stock imagery kind of question. You reach a point where your website’s becoming relatively important to your business or you’re a web designer that’s working for certain clients. At what stage do you say that actually stock imagery isn’t the way to go, perhaps I should be getting something specifically commissioned whether that be commissioned illustrations, commission photography or whatever. It’s a difficult line. What’s your opinion on stock imagery? Is it the devil’s spawn or does it have a place? What do you think?

Anton Peck: No, I think it definitely has a place. It offers a great solution for those trying to find a good quality image when they can’t afford a commissioned photograph.

Paul: So what kinds of site do you use for stock imagery?

Anton Peck: I’ve been a fan of Crestock.com lately.

Paul: Ooo! I haven’t heard of that one.

Anton Peck: Yes and actually they have this huge contest going on where you can win a Mac Pro and all kinds of equipment. It’s a Photoshop contest and I happen to be one of the few judges on that particular site.

Paul: Ahh. So what’s this website again?

Anton Peck: It’s Crestock.com.

Paul: OK. I’ll check that out. Sounds good. So does that do both illustration and photography or…

Anton Peck: Yeah. They have a wide range of different material. They have background textures and you can search for pretty much anything there. A lot of it is user supported so if you even feel that you are a good photographer you can submit your work and see if you can even sell it and make a little bit of money off of it.

Paul: Oh cool. So when selecting stock photography, what should you look for? What should you avoid? The trouble with stock photography is a lot of it can look really similar to one another. What advice would you give about selecting stock imagery?

Anton Peck: Well there’s no real secret to it. There’s not a lot of advice either other than just go through a lot of it. Don’t try to find the very first searches you come across as that would be a higher chance it would be used somewhere else. You want to get a unique image, something that’s probably not as commonly found. It’s always a little disconcerting when you come across a new image that you see on 13 different sites like, “Oh that’s the same image used there”.

Paul: Yeah. It becomes obvious that it’s stock imagery.

Anton Peck: Right. So you want to find that unique image.

Paul: Yeah, couldn’t agree more.

Anton Peck: And the only way to find the perfect, unique image is to just go through a lot of it.

Paul: Yes! Which does take time doesn’t it.

Anton Peck: Certainly.

Paul: When it comes to commissioning stuff is there any particular advice you would give there in regards to briefing the photographer or the illustrator? I mean when somebody commissions you to do a piece of work, what kind of information are you after from them?

Anton Peck: Since they would commission me as an illustrator rather than an actual photographer, I’d mainly look at what they are trying to achieve for their website and how they expect it to support what they’ve done. One of the things that I was gong to talk about for commission photography, even though I’m not one, was the benefits for the websites because you can have a one of a kind image that fits exactly what is needed for the page. A photographer can come out to the business and take photos of the staff and location which is obviously something you can’t do with stock photos.

Paul: Yeah, which obviously makes a huge difference. I think often at times people actually want to see that kind of stuff because on the web you’ve got no way of judging what the company behind the website is really like. So to be able to see real imagery of real people and real locations does add some credibility and trustworthiness to a company. It’s not just somebody working out their back bedroom or whatever.

Anton Peck: Exactly what I was thinking, yes.

Paul: OK so you have a budget. How much difference does it make actually commissioning imagery rather than getting stock imagery. Is there really a difference? Is it really worth going out and getting stuff specifically commissioned?

Anton Peck: I would say if you are looking to get high exposure and if you were a big enough business I would definitely say do it.

Paul: So why is that? What difference does it make?

Anton Peck: Well that’s exactly what I mentioned earlier. It’s the one image that you are going to own or the website is going to own and it’s not going to be found anywhere else. Completely unique.

Paul: You do feel that when you go through these thousands and thousands of stock images that “Well, it’s pretty much unique. Who else is going to use it?” but it’s amazing how often images turn up. I’ve got a little program that changes my desktop image on a regular basis and I’ve had this really nice one that I loved and kept for a while which was a cityscape of London that had been made all futuristic and I thought “Wow! What a great image”. And then I’m going on the tube and there’s the same image plastered across the wall. It’s amazing how often they do turn up again.

Anton Peck: Yeah it’s takes away a little bit doesn’t it?

Paul: Yeah definitely. Definitely. You’re an illustrator, let’s get onto the role of illustration. What advances or disadvantages do you think that illustration has over photography. When should you be using photography, when should you be using illustration?

Anton Peck: Illustration’s gonna provide a whole different type of personality to a website that you can never find in a photo. You can create situations, objects, environments that would either be too expensive to reproduce or they just don’t exist in the real world. Things that you just can’t do with a photograph. Again, that’s going to have to be through the interview of the illustrator trying to describe whether the job is appropriate or not. Actually that would be up to the art director trying to commission to decide whether they need an illustrator or a photographer. But custom website illustrations are so unique right now. When you do have a custom illustration it stands out a great deal more than a photograph. I think one of the greatest examples that stands out on the top of my mind would be Andy Clark’s website with Kevin Cornell’s image that he did of that scooterboy, the guy on the scooter.

Paul: Yeah, it looks superb. That’s stuffandnonense.com, if I remember.

Anton Peck: .co.uk

Paul: Oh .co.uk. Well check that out.

Anton Peck: Just try to imagine if Andy would have reproduced that with a photograph. It wouldn’t have the same personality I don’t think. He wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.

Paul: So do you think that photography has less personality generally or is it just the stock photography that has less personality?

Anton Peck: I wouldn’t call it a more or less personality thing as much it would be a different type of personality. It depends on what you’ve going for.

Paul: Do you think there’s some situations where illustration just isn’t appropriate because it would create the wrong kind of personality or is illustration flexible enough to be able to work in most situations?

Anton Peck: No I think illustration is not appropriate for everything. I think there’s probably a time and a place where an illustration is not going to do the job of a photograph. The photograph tends to look a little bit more… I was going to say professional but I don’t think that’s the word for it. There’s a sort of business approach… I don’t know. Illustration is very personal. It’s one of a kind. It seems that if you have a corporation maybe an illustration isn’t going to work unless it’s a certain kind of illustration.

Paul: Yeah I kind of know what you mean. There’s something… A photograph has a kind of… trustworthiness isn’t the right word but a realism to it perhaps that lends itself to certain circumstances.

Anton Peck: Definitely. It’s really hard to distinguish between the two. It would really boil down to the specific case that it was going to be used.

Paul: Tell us a little bit about some of the different types of illustration and why you would pick when. Obviously every kind of illustrator has very different styles but are they any kinds of broad categories you would recommend in certain circumstances?

Anton Peck: Well, let me think off the top of my head. It seems like you have a real nice vector, flowery styles with flat colours like Veerle. Her work is fabulous and it’s all Illustrator. Her style is just so unique. Then I think of Kevin Cornell. His style is so organic and painted. Then there’s styles like my own. I tend to learn for more photorealism in some cases. My own personal gallery doesn’t lean that way too much. There’s a few different styles out there and it’s hard to say when it’s going to be used properly.

Paul: Do you think that some styles date more quickly than others? You talked about that flowery style where you see a lot of art deco type shapes being used on the web at the moment. Do you think that illustration goes through more fashion trends than photograph does?

Anton Peck: I would venture to say yes and in a way. However like all fashion trends, it always comes back. Right now the big popular thing is artwork that looks like it’s straight from the 70′s. The muted brown colours and the nice organic curves, swirls and circles, things like that. Those are going over quite well I think.

Paul: It’s interesting isn’t it. I think there some sites that need to be fashion conscious and on the cutting edge of what’s going on and there are others that need to be generic and long lasting. It very depends on what kind of industry you are in as whether you should follow these trends or not I guess.

Anton Peck: Right. Or then if it seems to expire then you can just change it out and get a new one.

Paul: The glory of CSS, the separation of content from design.

Anton Peck: Absolutely.

Paul: OK Anton. Thank you very much for coming on the show. It’s really interesting that we haven’t tackled the discussion of imagery before.

Anton Peck: I did have one real quick public service announce if you’ll let me have another minute.

Paul: Yeah, go for it.

Anton Peck: For your listeners I’m wanted to just bring up that they shouldn’t take images, and I know it’s kind of obvious, take images from fountain sites or Flickr or Google Image search. That’s just bad practice and they are normally just going to get found out and it’s not a very nice thing to do. If they find images on sites that they like, they can contact the owner to obtain permission.

Paul: And it’s surprising. Often the owners are very happy and flexible to accommodate that. If you take the time to contact them they are often very flattered that you asked. Good piece of advice. OK thank you very much Anton and we’ll get you back on the show again in the future. Good to talk to you.

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Textmate reviewed

Teifion shares his thoughts on Textmate for the mac, an incredibly powerful text editor with a sophisticated plug-in architecture.

I have to confess that I have only opened Textmate once and found myself unsure where to begin. I do know however that Teifion and many other web developers rate it extremely highly and use it as their primary development tool. In the show I pick Mr Hicks and Oxton’s collective brains about its benefits and whether I should make the effort to learn it properly.

Javascript or JQuery

The second listener contribution comes from Will who writes…

I was listening to your last one and you said it would be important to learn javascript for 2008. I know bits of javascript but don’t particularly like it and don’t know ajax yet, however, I have been playing with jQuery and find it much simpler. Do you think it’s a good alternative to learning all of javascript and have you used it at all?

Personally I think it is important to learn a language from scratch and that relying too heavily on libraries can cause problems in the long run. Although there is nothing wrong with you learning jQuery I would suggest it should be an addition to learning Javascript rather than a replacement.

If you want to know if Mr Oxton and Hicks disagree with me you will have to listen to the show :)

To leave an audio comment for the show skype “boagworldshow” or call +44 20 8133 5122.

107. Running to keep up

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 107: What should you be learning about in 2008, Jason Beaird on web design basics and how to deal with portfolio pages.

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News and events | Where to focus in 08 | Jason Beaird on design basics | Listener emails

News and events

Setting expectations

Our first news story today is an article on working with your clients. Specifically it focuses on the subject of setting your clients expectations and clearly communicating with them.

We all work for somebody. We all have clients in some form. Whether our clients are other companies or simply our boss we all know the feeling when they seem to expect something which we believed we never promised.

This article looks at two ways of managing this kind of scenario. First be diligent up front. As the article says…

Setting expectations isn’t difficult, or mysterious, but it does take time and you have to be diligent about it.

Second it suggests being consistent. That doesn’t mean you are inflexible. It means that you need to be consistent in your communications throughout a project. If goal posts move, it is important that you explain the ramifications.

The principles of this article are universally applicable. So whoever you are take a few minutes to check it out.

Great websites do, not say

The next post I found falls into the category of “it’s funny because it’s true”. It’s a post by one of my favourite bloggers Gerry McGovern who seems to rant against websites that spend more time talking about user experience rather than offering it. He begins his rant by focusing on welcome copy…

I don’t want to pass meaningless pleasantries with your website. I don’t want to shake its hand. Or talk about the weather. I’m at your website for a reason. I’m in a hurry. I’m impatient. So kill the welcome, please.

He goes on to criticise sites that waste valuable copy explaining how easy their sites are…

If it’s really easy, why are you telling me it’s really easy and quick? For starters, you’ve wasted my time by making me read your meaningless sentence.

If you ever write copy for websites then you should read this post. If you don’t then check it out anyway if only for the pure entertainment value.

CSS: The All-Expandable Box

My final suggestion for your reading pleasure is a post on the Web Designers Wall entitled The All-Expandable Box. This solves a problem which I encounter all the time.

As you will know if you listen to this show regularly I am a great fan of using ems for typography. I like the idea users can resize their text to suit their own requirements.

The downside of this approach is that it can quickly break designs especially when text is contained within a box. The box will naturally expand vertically but not horizontally. The result is that you loose control of line length. Enabling the whole interface to expand including the box itself is very useful. This article shows you how.

Its a nice clean technique that should act as a building block for much more complex things. So if you are considering doing more ems based design then this should be a nice starting point.

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Feature: Where to focus in 08

As web designers we are all busy people. We are in such a fast moving sector that it can be hard to know what is worthy of our attention. Should we be focusing on Silverlight or brushing up on Javascript? Learning Rails or grappling with mobile devices? This week I want to share my thoughts of where you should be focusing your energies in 2008.

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Expert interview: Jason Beaird on design basics

Paul Boag: Joining me today is Jason beard author of an incredibly useful and wonderful book that I’ve really come to love. That’s – How would you describe it? Is it a basic introduction to designing?

Jason Beaird: It’s a basic introduction to graphic design principles. The book was really first intended for web developers in fact the initial working title was web design for developers and it kind of expanded into just a introduction to graphic design principles for anybody not just for developers, not people already creating websites. But anybody interested in design really.

Paul Boag: Mmm what’s so great about it is that you’ve kind of really taken time to go over the basic principle of creating a beautiful website. Which I guess is the title of the book, “The Principles of beautiful of web design” that’s the title isn’t it?

Jason Beaird: That’s correct.

Paul Boag: I really should have it in front of me shouldn’t I [Jason laughs] Oh but you’ve got to be fairly impressed that I knew that of the top of my head.

Jason Beaird: I’m just impressed that you have a copy yourself.

Paul Boag: Well yes I do. And it’s good because a lot of people that listen to this show are not necessarily professional designers we have a lot of people who listen to the show who are website owners but have to do a bit of design in order to maintain their site. We’ve got Developers that developing applications and having to do some design as part of that and we’ve also got people who probably are designers but not full time so are interested in how the professionals go about doing these things. So it’s a really good book for the boagworld listeners and why I’ve been so desperate to get you on the show for so long Jason, so it’s good to have you Jason.

Jason Beaird: So everybody laughs along.

Paul Boag: Well you’re a busy man; you’ve got a lot to do. So I thought what we would basically do is take the chapters from the book and maybe pick out some of the basic principles from each of those chapter and get you to talk about them little bit. So the chapters in your book are layout and composition, colour, texture, typography and imagery and that for a start made me very enthusiastic. Because it’s like really obvious, basic stuff that here are the main issues you are going to come across from a design prospective and you know we’re going to do a chapter on each which I just thought very refreshing and very logical and that’s good. So let’s kick off with layout and composition so tell us a bit about some of the stuff you cover in that chapter maybe and some of the basic principles that non-designers need to know about.

Jason Beaird: Well the entire book is really just basics, in my opinion. It’s just stuff that a lot of people think designers have as intuition and really it’s just stuff you can learn and learning these principle is like learning how to hand code. Really you can a website using a WYSIWYG but understanding the tags and selectors allows you to see inside and know what’s going on. And these are just basic. But really this is going to be the fire hose version of the book.

< p>Paul Boag: Yeah, I’m asking you to compress the entire book into about 20-30 minutes. [Both laugh]

Jason Beaird: I’ll give it a shot. We’ll start out with layout, some of the main principles of graphic design theory is balance, unity and emphasis and learning how to take all three of those and use them effectively in a layout is a pretty good place to start, from a layout prospective. By balance I mean symmetry. Is it divided right down the middle, or does it still feel balanced even though it’s divided into columns? By unity I mean do the elements of the website feel like they are one cohesive thing. You know does it feel like it’s a singular unit rather than a bunch of different bits. Then emphasis obviously is about creating a focal point on the page. And keeping that focal point and understanding where people are going to look and why they are going to look there and so there there’s different ways to create all three of those things. One thing I talked about in the first chapter about balance and creating balance is design proportion which some people call the golden mean or the golden ratio. Really it’s just a rule that if you divide a width by 1.62 just a number called Phi** you get a pleasing proportionate division. And so to make that simpler it can also be known as the rule of thirds. If you divide something by thirds it’s pretty close to the 1/ 1.62 ratio and you can come up with a pleasing kind of division for a navigation column and content area by using that kind of division. But really that’s sort of an overview.

< p>Paul Boag: Yeah, I wonder why the rule of thirds works, did you find out anything in your research about why that is pleasing?

Jason Beaird: I didn’t really find out a whole lot of solid information about it. But there is some out there, pythagorans noticed that it was a very common division in nature things like with leaves and shells had the same division and ratio and then started to develop the concept that anything designed around that is designing around nature so is therefore designing around gods design so you know. So the Romans and the Greeks built there some of their architecture on the golden ratio, the golden mean it’s a stable of graphic design since those times.

Paul Boag: Yeah and it really does work. I remember even back in Art College when I was being taught photography the same principles apply to photography composition you know or really anything you do, whether its print design or web design. So yeah the rule of thirds I think is a good one to take away.

Jason Beaird: Yep.

Paul Boag: Ok, what about colour tells us a little bit about colour because that’s a huge subject that people have written entire books on and you had one chapter so what did you chose to pick out on the subject of colour?

Jason Beaird: That’s the important thing to remember about these chapters is that there are entire books dedicated to each. I feel like was already trying to squeeze it already into the book. But with colour I think the most important thing to remember is that people’s perception of colour depend on their own personal experiences and cultural like right now, red and green means Christmas, for most Americans and most people around the globe whether they believe in that or not it’s just something that we’ve been exposed to so much that that’s the way we see it.

Paul Boag: Yeah.

Jason Beaird: But beyond those personal perceptions and traditional perceptions it’s good to know that there are ways to align colours where you really can’t make too big a mistake. [Laughs] and that are using a colour wheel and to rely on colour schemes that exist. With any rule it can be broken for whatever purpose you want but it’s good to know what the good colour choices look like before you start making your own and relying on color schemes or a colour wheel is a good way to get started.

Paul Boag: I think when you talk about these rules exist to be broken, ok that’s true but the kind of audience you are trying to reach, maybe a non-designer audience kind of playing safe is kind of always a good way to go.

Jason Beaird: That’s true.

Paul Boag: And you know using a colour wheels and stuff. Don’t you also mention in the book about finding a photograph that you like and or is that somewhere else, that might be somewhere else but it’s a nice idea anyway, taking a photograph and extracting the colours from that. I think is quite a nice way of doing it as well. Have you ever tried that?

Jason Beaird:I have tried that, I use that quite often. I don’t know if I mentioned that in the book or not. I mention a few other software based colour chooses and one that come out around the time I was writing the book that I didn’t get a chance to include was adobe kuler, at

Paul Boag: Yeah I think using a tool like that is very handy indeed. Because let’s face it we perceive colour in slightly different ways and what is it one in ten or is it one in 20 men are colour blind anyway.

Jason Beaird: I believe it’s 1 in 10 have slight colour blindness where they can’t tell, usually a red green; where they can’t tell the difference between red and green. Yeah so I mean yes, using a tool is a good idea if you are not a designer who’s really confident in colour.

Paul Boag: Now what about the subject of texture that was an interesting one I was quite interested that that was included in the chapter listings. And I, I intuitively do stuff with texture but I’ve never really thought about it that much so tell us a little bit about why you decided to include that and what advice would you give?

Jason Beaird: That for me was probably one of the hardest chapters to write because it was a lot of intuition and I like to use texture a lot in my own designs and I think that where truly the design begins. But there is not much principle wise to it. You can talk about points and lines and shape and that’s where all visual effects begin. But texture is really about creating a tactile quality and a theme for you website. Whether that is a smooth shape like apple computer with rounded corners and glossy buttons or whether that is a wicked worn look with a brick texture or something that makes it look nostalgia or old or whatever feel you want to create you can do that with texture. And I was trying to just convey that in that chapter.

Paul Boag: Yeah I mean texture kind a gives character to the site in many ways doesn’t it from the kind of grunge look you get through to the highly reflective look, or like what you say, sites like Apple. So what kind of, you talked about points and lines and perhaps you could explain some of those concepts to us.

Jason Beaird: Right you can create any kind of visual effect with just points. I showed an example; a picture of my cat, abbie, created with a dot matrix printer kind of effect on it. It’s just points. And then you can move in and use lines and shapes. It’s just important to remember that lines can create movement, horizontal line doesn’t have as much movement as say a diagonal line or vertical lines lead you up and down the page. It’s important to remember eye movement when you are creating textures. But really it’s just like what I said about creating a tactile quality and theme for the website.

Paul Boag: So as far as people may be, say a developer who has just developed an application and he needs it to look kind of half decent but doesn’t want to do anything too risky incase he screws it up and he’s not a designer. I mean what kind of advice do you give a person like that? Do you encourage them, probably best to stay away from doing too much textual stuff or is that something you should get into?

Jason Beaird: I think it’s something you should think about. Texture can easily be overdone and it can become goofy and silly rather than being professional. And I think it’s just in moderation. The thing to remember is to not leave your website backgrounds on div’s, backgrounds colors on div’s. Create some kind of texture, feel to it, whether that’s rounded corners or whether to go for the minimal stick where you don’t really use background images but rely on negative space. It’s just the fact of going beyond the standard HTML look. I mean obviously with style sheets you can’t just leave it un-styled because it’s styled content has no structure to it any more because, we’ve taken out the tables we’ve taken out the design in HTML and now we are relying on style sheets, so now you really have to build something up. That’s good I think, it makes people think about texture and all these typography, colour all these elements of design. But to think about it and just go beyond the basics. Just try to recreate something that you already like, picture wise, that doesn’t mean stealing the design but looking at another website you think captures the professional look and feel that you are going for and try to recreate that in your website.

Paul Boag: Yeah, it’s interesting that you talk about looking for inspiration. What kind of advice do you give people for a good place to look, should they just be looking at other websites or should they be looking beyond the web a bit?

Jason Beaird: I really believe that people need to look beyond the web. One of the tags for this book is that you don’t need to go to art school to design great looking websites and well I was kind scared of that headline, that professors from collage would hate me for it. [Paul laugh] It’s really true because if you have a passion for it, it will draw an inspiration from all sorts of sources whether it is architecture, or goofy things like traffic patterns or a door that you see, anything really can really inspire a look and feel to a website. Jonathan Stickler wrote an article about how he was inspired by an art deco building and that’s what gave him the design idea for his current website design.

Paul Boag:Yeah, and I thinks that particularly true when it comes to texture and colour as well as you can see textures and colors around you in everything from a plant pot through to a magazine so yeah.

Jason Beaird: One of the other big things from going through a collage art programs is that if you go to school for graphic design you’re not just going to school for graphic design you actually have to take all the traditional art classes, painting, drawing, pottery sometimes, a lot of history and really the reason for that is to create a foundation to a visual exposure to art. So you have this vocabulary and this experience pool to draw from when you are creating other designs.

Paul Boag: You mentioned earlier, negative space when you were talking about texture as another kind of approach to things. Negative space is something I think designers always throw around; it’s a term that we like to use quite a lot. But it’s not something we ever kind of explain. Just spend a couple of minutes explaining how negative space works and why it’s so important, if you would.

Jason Beaird: Negative space is important because it allows you eye to move around things if you had a page completely crammed with text you wouldn’t have any focal point to start with apart from the top of the page. Our eyes usually gravitate towards the center of the composition, so if you think about that you can have an element something around the center of the composition that can lead you to another element. Negative space is really a tool for moving the eye around.

Paul Boag: Right.

Jason Beaird: If you have, like I said before diagonal lines create movement. If you have diagonal lines that move you up towards something else. I gave a few examples in the book; it’s hard to talk about it with having any visuals.

Paul Boag: Yeah I know. It’s frustrating isn’t it? I really sometimes, I really regret doing an audio podcast, it’s a bad choice. [laughs] Ok, let’s look at the subject of typography. I’m guessing it must have been a hard chapter to write because A) typography is a massive subject and B) typography on the web is quite a tricky area. It’s kind of easy to almost easy, as a non-designer, to dismiss typography by going; well there are only about 4 fonts I’m allowed to use anyway so therefore typography on the web doesn’t exist. Why is that wrong, why is that not the truth and how did you squeeze a chapter out of this.

Jason Beaird: Well just like a lot of the chapters there are a lot of books on the subject of typography that go way beyond our experience with web or even print graphic design that go way back to the roots of communication and that’s really what typography is about. Its communication and all websites you’re trying to communicate something so if you can’t do that with pictures and ideas you have to do that with words so the way those words appear to people should become part of your design. It’s on hard with the state that it’s in with the web, having a limited palette of fonts to choose from. But at the same time it’s a good thing, I think for the novice because even though we are limited to this certain number of fonts that everybody has in their computers. Most of those fonts aside from comic sans are decent [laughs] for body text and things like that. The most important thing to remember is that there are other fonts out there and to have sensitivity towards things like spacing between lines and the vertical rhythm. Vertical rhythm isn’t something I talked about in my book because I thought it was an advanced subject but right after the book was published it sort of exploded into a big topic in web design and there’s a lot great articles out there written by other great web designers about vertical rhythm and how that affects your typography.

Paul Boag: So what is vertical rhythm for those that don’t know?

Jason Beaird: Vertical rhythm is just creating a space between your lines that kind of matches up throughout the website so that the spacing in the lines in your navigation area and the spacing in your lines in the content area kind of line up and their not just randomly spaced apart so you get weird alignments between things. It’s creating vertical rhythm, it itself is a good description; you’re creating a rhythm or pattern for your eye to follow down the page.

Paul Boag: So it’s all about basically making sure multiple typographic elements across columns have some kind of relationship to one another and that they are not just higaty pigaty all over the place.

Jason Beaird: That s the way I understand it, that’s the way I think of it is it’s really about creating a pattern and paying attention to the way the text lines up.

Paul Boag: So whatever, bearing in mind that we are limited to such a small set of fonts. What sort of basic advice would you give to someone starting on in web typography. You mentioned line spacing, what are you getting at there?

Jason Beaird: The default line spacing for HTML is very tight. And with tight text like that it’s kind of hard to read And also thinking about the width of the text you are reading . When you are reading a newspaper article or a magazine article the reason the columns are so narrow is because it’s easy, or a book even, it’s easy for your eye to scan a certain width of text and it’s easy for your eye to move to the next line if there is a little bit of space between it. And if you kind of know those basic concepts you can make it a little more pleasing to read that the default set up for typography on the web.

Paul Boag: Yeah, because especially if you’ve got a fluid site you can end up with ridiculously long line lengths if you don’t.

Jason Beaird: Right and I think that’s a lot of the beef people have with fluid layouts is that not only are you taking power from the graphic designer but you’ll also making line widths that are incredibly hard to read. But in my opinion if the user is comfortable expanding the site out to that width, and it’s readable having the line width that long, then obviously they don’t have a problem with it. But you should sort of leave that up to the user if you can. But it’s been proven that it’s easier to read text that’s been set to a certain width.

Paul Boag: Are there certain type faces that are better suited to kind of headings in preference to body’s and vice versa?

Jason Beaird: Well with body text, traditionally it use to be that body text for books and that were set to times or serif fonts because the serifs sort of lead your eye to the next character, but because of the resolution we have with the monitors and the way the text is being presented it’s actually been proven that sans serif fonts are better, fonts like Arial and Helvetica, are easier to read in smaller sizes because you don’t get the kind of resolution, the kind of detail that you get with printed type. And now that’s changing, we’re getting higher and higher resolutions in displays so maybe that will change in the future. But it’s just important to know those kinds of idea when choosing the body type for your website. But when you are choosing a heading, when you’ve got something that is very large it really just matters how the text displays and because you can use images and because you can use things like (scalable Inman Flash Replacement) sIFR to display another font besides the standard 6 or 7 fonts that are available – I call it the ok 5 9 [laughs] that are available across the Mac and web computers, Mac and PC computers sorry. You can choose other fonts that are outside those fonts to use for headers or areas where you want to give a little more design appeal. So there is a world of fonts out there, some good, some corny, that are available, some free and some very expensive that you can use for the headline on your website and it’s just important to be aware of those other fonts. I gave a few resources for free fonts I like www.1001 fonts.com is a good place to go for licensed fonts is a great font boundary, there is just a lot of fonts makers that make excellent fonts, not just for printed material like books but for web designers and people working on the web should be aware as well.

Paul Boag: Cool. So the last chapter in your book talks about imagery and I’m fascinated, and I have to confess that I haven’t read that chapter yet, so I’m kind of fascinated to know what you cover in that chapter as far as using imagery on the web. What kind of advice do you give?

Jason Beaird: Well the imagery. The graphic design doesn’t stop creating the frame around the website. It’s also about formatting the inside which is kind of difficult when you give the power to the user, give them content management. But choosing supporting content imagery is one thing that can really enhance the user experience of the web site. And finding and creating supporting imagery for awebsite content can be very difficult if you don’t know where to look or if you’re not a good illustrator or if you are not good at Photoshop. So I just try to give a basic primer on finding this type of supporting imagery and if you find an image that might work, how to tweak it to work for your needs. I just wanted to give a basic intro to using stock photo sites like iPhoto or stock photo exchange which is sxc.hu is a free stock photography site that is really great it has a lot of images. Finding images and then using them in your site is one way to really enhance the experience for your user, beyond that also I try to warn people from stealing images from Google and stop using the stock images and stock photography that we are all use to seeing in most free publication. I mean really here are a lot of stock images that have been created; the guy with the light bulb over his head, the hands holding the tree that’s growing in the soil in the persons hands. These are clique in the stock photography world you have to be aware when choosing images, to enhance the user experience.

Paul Boag: Yeah, yeah, defiantly , did you cover any of the technical aspects of compressing images or whether to go gif or jpeg and that kind of thing.

Jason Beaird: Yeah I did give a quick primer on jpegs, gifs and pings. And just a quick for everybody, if you are using a photo you obviously want to use a jpeg because usually with photos you usually have a lot of different tones and images. And gifs and pings the file space is based on the number of colours in the image. If you are using an icon type thing or a colour field where you have a limited number of colours then gif or pings are the way to go. And choosing between gifs and pings is really all about choosing between the types of transparency you want to have. Internet explorer 6 and below doesn’t support alpha transparency where you have a sort of gradient from opaque to transparent it just supports on an off. So with pings if you have transparency then you get a pink halo around them. Areas where there is transparency you can’t see it, now there are fixes for that but it’s kind of hacky still and for that reason people still hang onto the good old gif format which has transparency and unfortunately also has animation. [Both laugh]

Paul Boag: So is that one of your rules? Never ever use animated gifs?

Jason Beaird: Actually no it’s not, because I’ve used animated gifs even on my own site if you go to my site jasongraphics.com and hover over the logo it was sort of an experiment toy to play with I was designing my current layout, it was a sliding door type image where I’ve got the still part of the Jason graphics logo and then when you move over it jumps up, the position of the image jumps up so you see the animated moving, like sunrays over the logo. So that’s an animated gif and I’m not ashamed of that. But I think that animated gifs in a lot of ways degrade the professionalism of a lot of websites.

Paul Boag: It sounds a superb book, for anyone that’s not from a design background. Where can they get a hold of a copy, where can they find out more about it, how can they buy it I guess is the next question?

Jason Beaird: Well I’d love you to buy it.

Paul Boag: Obviously.

Jason Beaird: I set a little promo site for the book at www.principlesofbeautifulwebdesign.com were you can kind of hover over, I did a fun little thing where if you hover over each of the chapter names it sort of point s out in the website design itself how the things play a part of the design I made for the promo site.

Paul Boag: Oh cool.

Jason Beaird: Beyond that amazon.com has a good price for the book usually and you can go of course to site point.com to buy directly from them, and most people prefer to do is buy directly from Sitepoint. They sent you lots of emails about books that are coming out and specials. A lot of people are big fans of Sitepoint. I really like them a lot too.

Paul Boag: Yeah if you haven’t checked out Sitepoint before, then it’s worth saying that they are a lot more than a book publisher they have got a huge site with tons of great articles of all aspects of web design and a really active forum as well.

Jason Beaird: The forums are a great place to get involved and a great place to learn new things.

Paul Boag: Thank you so much for coming on the show I can’t say I normally get people on the show to pimp their book and to be honest that wasn’t what I originally ask you to do either. But the more I think about it the more I’ll looked at it, the more I think it’s a perfect book for a lot people that listen to this show if you are starting out in any form of design and don’t come from a design background then I can highly recommend this is a book to check out. Jason, we’ll get you back again in the future no doubt and make you cover some of these things in more depth. But for now thanks you very much for being on the show.

Jason Beaird: I appreciate it, it’s like being on the Dave Letterman show or the Conon O’Brien [Paul laughs] it’s like a status symbol. But I’m glad to be here and thanks for having me on the show.

Paul Boag: Thanks very much.

Back to top

Listeners email:

A excellent wire-framing tool

Robin:I’m a part-time web developer, committed to web standards, one day I’d like to make it my job. I’m a regular listener of boagworld in my car (traffic jam) going to work.

Remembering your discussion with Marcus about wire-framing (Powerpoint or Visio) i just came across this product: http://www.axure.com/demo.aspx. Looks spectacular although much to expensive for me (still).

Keep up the good work.

Building an online portfolio

Sultan:On the Headscape website I notice you have “related links” and “related pages”. What is the logic of that?

Also in your portfolio section when I click on a thumbnail why don’t you guys link to the actual sites rather than to a screen shot?

First of all let me say there is a lot about the Headscape website which I don’t like. It was built a while ago and our thinking has moved on.

One example of this is related pages and links. The logic was that related pages referred to other pages on the same website. Related links where external links to third parties. However in hindsight I don’t think that is a very clear distinction and should probably be changed.

I am however more happy with what we have done in our portfolio section. We have several reasons for the decision to link to screen shots rather than live sites. These include…

  • Some of the sites are intranets and not available to the public
  • Some sites had limited shelf life and are no longer available
  • We wanted the user to be able to click through multiples sites in quick succession

However, the primary reason is that clients often make significant alternations to the sites we deliver. After the end of the project we simply cannot guarantee that the quality of design and code will be maintained and so prefer not to directly link to the sites.

I am not suggesting that this is the right decision however it is the course of action we have chosen for Headscape.

Top Geek Gifts

Posted in Reviews on by Paul Boag

So this holiday season (previously known as Christmas), what gifts would you recommend others buy for the geek in their life? Here are my top 10…

These are products I own myself and would happily recommend to others. They are not in order and I have tried to pick things that suit varying budgets.

1. A mac

2007 was the year I moved from a PC to a mac and I have never looked back. Best of all if you have the budget they make great gifts. They look cool, are a pleasure to setup (no swearing on christmas day when something doesn’t work) and if you give him a week he will be insisting that you have one too so he no longer has to provide technical support for windows. Buying a computer can be scary if your not technical yourself so I suggest going along to an apple store. Those guys will be able to help you with selecting the model that best suits the geek in your life.

Prices start at £700 and are available through the Apple Store.

2. An ipod touch

I actually don’t own an ipod touch but I do have an iphone. However, I thought it was unfair to suggest something that has a £35 per month contract associated with it! I love my iphone and can’t imagine anybody not being pleased with an ipod touch. They are sexy, fun to use and definitely a cool toy for christmas day if they haven’t played with one before.

The 16GB version of the ipod touch (which is the one you should buy) costs £269 and is available through the Apple Store.

3. The Jawbone

The Jawbone is a bluetooth headset unlike any other. I have awful hearing and have trouble with mobile phone conversations. The Jawbone however has amazing noise cancelling technology that makes calls crystal clear no matter how noisy the surroundings. Best of all it looks cool and you almost don’t feel ashamed to wear it in public (unlike most headsets). In my opinion the Jawbone is the best headset on the market.

You can buy the Jawbone in pretty much any mobile phone shop and I have seen prices as low at £64.

4. Getting Things Done

Most geeks I know live a life in chaos. Getting Things Done is a superb book that has transformed my life and made me a more organised person. If the geek in your life does not read then buy it as an audio book and pre-install it on his new ipod touch!

You can buy the book for £7.14 on Amazon or for $12.60 as an audio book from Audible.com

5. Moo Cards

Moo Cards are cool little cards similar to mini business cards. You can print 100 cards for £9.99 and each card can have its own unique photo. You can either upload photos or just grab some random photos from his flickr account.

6. A flickr pro account

Talking of flickr why not upgrade him to a pro account this christmas. Flickr is the most awesome photo sharing site around and although it has a free account it is definitely worth upgrading. For just $25 the geek in your life can upload a limitless number of photos.

7. A Tom Tom

My sense of direction sucks and I couldn’t live without my Tom Tom GPS. Chances are the geek in your life doesn’t get out much, but when he does he wanders around looking lost and confused. A cool GPS in your car might encourage him to venture out of the house more. You never know.

They seem to sell Tom Toms pretty much everywhere these days from Halford to Currys. Prices seem to start at the £149 mark. To be honest the lower end models seem perfectly good from what I can tell.

8. A DVR

A DVR is a Digital Video Recorder such as the TiVo in the states or Sky Plus in the UK. These clever little boxes let you record programs to a hard drive, pause live TV and series link an entire season of a show ensuring you never miss it again. Having one of these babies will change the way he watches TV forever.

If you buy Sky Plus online at the moment you can get the box for £49. Of course it does require a sky subscription which starts at £16 per month.

9. A Duct Tape Wallet

Okay admittedly a wallet isn’t the most hi tech gift but Duct Tape Wallets are cool. Basically they are… well… wallets made out of duct tape. I know that sounds strange but they make a great stocking stuffer. Mine has lasted forever, it always generates discussion and its easy to repair (stick more duct tape on it).

I bought mine from Ducti and it cost about £15.

10. A Wii

I know there is world wide shortage of these babies but try to get one. The geek in your life may sneer at it but they are strangely addictive. The novelty will wear off after a while but not before you have had many hours of fun watching your geek actually taking exercise and socialising with others!

Good luck finding one of these. Prices seem to range from about £270 to Millions on Ebay at the moment.

Actually looking back through this list I think I would recommend most of those gifts for pretty much anybody. However, the real question is what would you recommend? Add your suggestions to the comments.

104. Give us your money

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul shares 10 tips for getting designs signed off. Marcus looks at how to present to a prospective client and Michael Slater introduces us to Ruby on Rails.

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News and events | Marcus: How to present to a prospective client | Paul: 10 tips for design sign off | Michael Slater talks about Ruby on Rails | Question of the week

Housekeeping

All change

I have a bit of housekeeping news before we go any further with the show. I am changing things around a bit with my podcasting line up. After a chat with Dan Oliver from .net magazine we have decided that I will no longer be doing their show. They have some great plans for it in the future but it just didn’t make sense for me to keep doing two very similar shows. Before people start emailing, no we haven’t had a falling out and I still love Dan very much… if only I wasn’t already married.

The good news is that this allows me to introduce some more guests onto this show and bring in a bit more discussion. In order to accommodate this we will be having just one feature section each week instead of my bit and Marcus bit. Some weeks I will do it and other weeks it will be Marcus.

The final aspect of all of this is that we are going to start recording the show together rather than over skype. This should deal with the audio problems we have been having as well as making for a much better dynamic.

Christmas giving

I thought it might be nice to use the mighty power of the Boagworld listeners to raise a bit of money this Christmas and wondered if you might all be so kind as to help.

We have been doing this show for well over 2 years and have never charged or done much in the way of advertising. We are therefore wondering if just this once you would dip your hands into your pockets and give a bit of cash.

I want to raise some money for a charity I have been personally supporting for a while. A friend I grew up with now runs a school and orphanage in a very rural part of India. The kids they work with have far from the best background and the school is the only hope they have of breaking out of their circumstances.

I wont emotionally blackmail you with sob stories (because I know you are hardened cynical geeks) but simply ask that you give me some cash in return for the two years of free shows I have given you.

Because I am unorganised and only thought of this a couple of days ago we are going to simply use my paypal account to collect donations. I will then pass the money on to the charity. So to give a donation just use the bottom below (be warned its not the most intuitive system ever but you are all clever chaps. I am sure you will work it out).

Give to the Boagworld Christmas Appeal

News and events

24 ways is back

My first story of the day is actually 12 days late because it is the re-launch of 24 ways. In case you haven’t come across 24 ways before I should explain that it is an advent calendar for web designers.

Each day in December leading up to Christmas they publish an article written by some of the leading lights in web design (oh yes, and me). The articles are somewhat random but also incredibly practical and hands on. Articles range from creating a never-ending background to working with online maps.

But don’t panic that you have missed the first half of advent. You can access all of the previous days. In fact you can even access the last 2 years of articles. Ample to keep you amused while we are away over Christmas.

Tips for development and design

If 24 ways isn’t enough to quench your thirst for knowledge then let’s throw two more articles into the mix both of which provide some top tips.

The first is for all you developers out there. The guys at Blue Flavor have shared their top 10 tips for a successful development project. The article includes great advice like, always create a functional spec and talk to your clients. Interestingly one of the suggestions is to use a version control system. This is also a tip in our second article which is aimed instead at designers.

Jina Bolton has written an interesting article for Think Vitamin entitled “creating sexy stylesheets“. Like the blue flavor article this one lists 10 tips. However this time they are for producing better stylesheets. Now, although I would argue that nothing makes CSS sexy this is still a very useful list. The tips for organising your CSS file and building your own framework are particularly good.

So if you are into top 10 lists then you should be happy this week whether you are a designer or a developer.

24 wayswhich post articles on web design over the Christmas period. Well, I was asked to contribute to the site so I wrote an article entitled 10 tips for design sign off. Although some of the tips have been covered on the show I thought generally it would make a good segment for the show.

The problem is that getting design sign off can be one of the most challenging parts of the web design process. It can prove time consuming, demoralizing and if you are not careful can lead to a dissatisfied client. What is more you can end up with a design that you are ashamed to include in your portfolio.

How then can you ensure that the design you produce is the one that gets built? How can you get the client to sign off on your design? (Question of the week

What tips do you have for getting designs signed off?

 

Show 100: Live!

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

So here it is. The long awaited 100th episode of Boagworld.com

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The audio quality isn’t as great as it could have been, there is a lot of background noise and we are even more rambling than normal. However, this is our 100th episode and we are both proud and excited to have got this far.

Sorry, but there is no transcript of this show. There was just too many people talking and too much background noise to make that viable. I hope you will forgive us.

Thanks to all who turned up or emailed us. If your question doesn’t appear we apologise. We had 2 hours worth of material to reduce down to an hour. However, for a more complete record of the evening (including video) check out Ryan Taylor’s post on the evening.

More thoughts on the 100th show.

Thanks to all of you who support the show. We really appreciate it!

An international web

Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

I hope you will excuse the slightly self-absorbed nature of this post. It is mainly an apology but also hopefully an opportunity to learn some lessons and look at how communicating on the web is a unique experience.

When I first started the podcast I had a very specific tone I wanted to strike. I wanted it to feel like it was a bunch of mates sitting in the pub talking about web design. A simple enough goal you might imagine but in reality it may well be almost impossible to achieve. Let me explain what I mean…

The apology

Yesterday I received an email from a first time listener to the show complaining about me teasing Americans. At first I thought nothing of it. I have learnt to be fairly thick skinned. Whenever you put content out on the web you are bound to attract criticism from time to time. However, I did post on twitter about it and this kicked off an interesting conversation.

It quickly became apparent that my “jokes” could be seen as offensive by some of my American listeners. So, before I go any further let me say that I am sorry if this is the case. It was certainly never my intention to offend anybody and I will certainly try and tone things done in the future.

Analyzing the mistake

That said, lets go on to look at what went wrong and what broader lessons can be learnt. Lessons which can apply to us all rather than to just an insensitive podcaster.

When you screw up as much as I do you quickly learn to analysis your mistake to avoid repeating history. As a result the email obsessed me for much of yesterday afternoon. Thanks to contributions from Thomas Vander Wal and Anton Peck it quickly became clear that the problem lay in my failure to accept the nature of the medium in which I work. Unlike my original desire for the tone of the show, producing a podcast cannot be like chatting with your mates in the pub. I think there are three specific problems with that premise:

My audience are not my mates – However much I would like to convey that feeling, ultimately my audience do not know me. They do not understand my sense of humor or know that I mean no offense when I overstep the line.

They are not sitting with me – The listeners to Boagworld cannot see me. They cannot pick up on my body language or see the grin on my face. They have only the tone of my voice to judge the intent behind my words. As we all know body language is a huge part of how we understand what is being said.

“The pub” and “mates” are very British centric – Even in my thinking about the tone of the show I was exhibiting a very British outlook on the world. Any web based content is very international in its reach. It isn’t confined to a people group even if that is your intention. Even though the British and Americans speak the same language we have very different cultures. I am not going to embarrass myself by trying to guess the differences. However, I know that when programmes such as the Simpsons or Family guy portray the english as buck toothed, weedy, posh blokes this doesn’t offend me. To me they are poking fun at a stereotype, not me personally. Perhaps this has something to do with the perception of national identity. I don’t know. All I know is there is a difference, a difference that until now I have largely ignored.

Lessons learnt

So enough peering at my navel. What lessons can we learn from this. We all run websites. Most of us blog. We are constantly speaking to a world wide audience. How can we ensure that our communications do not cause offense or indeed drive users away. Here are some suggestions.

Be careful with humor

I think my personal mistake makes it very clear that humor can be a particularly dangerous area. For example British humor is very sarcastic, subtle and self deprecating. There is a good reason why most UK sitcoms don’t do well abroad or have to be remade.

Don’t be fooled by a common language

Just because people are reading your website in your language doesn’t mean they have the same cultural background. I am constantly amazed at how different the english speaking world is. I think the fact that we speak the same language lulls us into a false sense of security. Of course there is also a mass of people who will still read your website, but english is their second language. These need even more care because it is easy for them to misunderstand what you have written if their english is not perfect.

Consider getting a copywriter

If people struggle to understand humor in a podcast, where you can hear somebody speaking, how much more of a problem is it in written word? I often talk about the fact that the copy on your site should be engaging and draw users in. It is hard to do this with the written word alone. How do you communicate enthusiasm, empathy or indeed any other emotion without body language or tone of voice. This is a highly skilled area and I think as website owners we need to seriously consider using professional writers to help us get it right.

Review before posting

Think twice before posting anything. We all know that don’t we? You read through the copy of your website over and over again, right? Same with your blog posts? What about your posts on twitter? Hmm… maybe not :)

Look beyond the written word

Finally, I just wanted to mention that I don’t think this problem of cultural differences and misunderstandings due to medium is limited solely to the written word. We have already seen it applies to audio, but what about the video or the imagery on your site. A lot of websites contain imagery that convey huge cultural meaning. I am not even talking about the obvious stuff like showing bare flesh in an Islamic country. I am talking about the more subtle things too. For example recently I went to a website that offered a service which allows users to record audio messages for the podcast by calling a normal telephone number. I have looked at loads of these sites before and they always only provide a US phone number. Well I arrived at this new site hoping it would be different but took one look at the design and use of imagery and immediately left. The look of the site was so US centric and the stock imagery was full of people who were obviously American that I left before even checking the details.

So there you have it. My screw up, my apology and hopefully some stuff we can all learn from it. Am I going to dramatically change the show? Absolutely not. Am I going to give more consideration to some aspects of how I present stuff? Absolutely.

Recording creativity

Posted in Design on by Paul Boag

I have found that by recording all of the ideas and reviewing them regularly it has actually stimulated me to be more creative.

I like to think of myself as an ideas person. I guess that is another way of saying that I am crap at implementing the ideas I have. One problem I used to suffer from was recording the ideas I had in a form that I could refer back to later. Overtime I have developed a couple of techniques that help me manage my ideas better. I thought they might be worth sharing.

Its two in the morning and I am lying in bed thinking about something when an idea for a new blog post pops into my head. I am on a family picnic when I see a colourful moss covered rock, which would work brilliantly as a website palette. I am browsing a new website and find myself really impressed by the approach they take to dropdown menus.

The thing is that inspiration can strike anywhere and you need a system to record all of that stuff and a method of referring back to it later in order to make sure those ideas are implemented. The system I use to do all of this is vaguely built around the Getting Things Done approach proposed by David Allen. It consists of three stages:

  • Capturing
  • Processing
  • Reviewing

Lets look at each of these in turn…

Capturing

Because inspiration can strike anywhere you need to be ready for it. In the car, in bed, down the pub, wherever it is you need to be able to record it immediately. If you don’t it will be lost forever. I have also learnt not to discriminate at this stage. I just capture everything. I can worry about if it is a good idea or a useful piece of information later. If it captures my interest for whatever reason it gets recorded.

Personally, I use two main tools for recording ideas. A notepad and my mobile phone. I make sure I have a note book and a pen by my bed at night. I tend to have some of my best ideas when I am relaxed and waiting to fall asleep. However, I have learnt that if I don’t write those ideas down when I have them, my mind obsesses over them and so I don’t sleep. By writing them down straight away they are off my mind and I can deal with them in the morning. One handy tip is that if like me you are married (or have a partner) you might want to have a torch around too. It stops you being shouted at for continually turning on the light!

Although a notepad is great it is not good for certain things and that is where the mobile comes in. Firstly, most mobile phones these days have a camera and I find that invaluable. The camera in my phone is crap but it does the job. It allows me to recall architecture that inspired me, or colour palettes that I could reuse. I also photograph signs or information I want to refer back to later. Basically it is a quick and easy way of grabbing information.

However, my phone also has another useful little function. It can record audio notes. The second most common place for me to have inspiration (after my bed) is driving in the car. Scribbling down notes isn’t very viable in that situation so being able to record a quick audio note is very useful. If your phone does not support this then do what Marcus does; call you home phone and leave yourself a message. This achieves exactly the same thing.

Finally if you are inspired by something you see on a website then make sure you have a quick and easy way to capture it. There are some great screen capture programs about so make sure you have one installed.

Processing

Of course capturing this information is no good if nothing is ever done with it. You need a way of processing the ideas you have had. Those ideas generally fall into two categories. Stuff that you have a specific use for and things that might come in handy one day. So for example, the idea to write this blog post was a specific idea. Specific ideas should normally be stored alongside related information. In the case of this blog post I have a list of all the various blog post ideas I have ever come up with. However, some of the stuff you capture is more random and you might not have a specific use for it. It could be a colour scheme you like, a quote that grabbed your attention or a vague idea for a project you might want to do one day (maybe).

All of these general ideas need storing together somehow. If they remain in your notepad, mobile or indeed anywhere else, it will make reviewing them very difficult. How you choose to store them is entirely up to you. For example, I have seen people use a large scrapbook. Personally, I prefer to store things electronically as this allows me to search and tag the information. I tend to use a program called YoJimbo for the Mac however if you are Microsoft based you might want to take a look at One Note. This is an excellent program for storing random “stuff” and has some cool features like character recognition of images built in. I store all kinds of stuff in YoJimbo including links, colours, images, quotes or indeed pretty much anything else that inspires me.

Before I move on, one quick note on the quality of the stuff I store. One of the big problems I had for a long time is that I was too critical of my ideas. I would throw things out when I considered them “stupid” or “impractical”. I have stopped doing that now. Instead, when I process my ideas into YoJimbo I mark an idea as either hot or not. You will see why this is important when I talk about reviewing.

Reviewing

The final step in my little process is reviewing. I have found that if I just dump all of my ideas into YoJimbo it quickly becomes this black hole that I rarely really look at. So taking a leaf out of the GTD methodology I have started to regularly review the content of my “idea store”. I don’t do it as often as the weekly review proposed in GTD, but I do it every couple of weeks.

In these review I tend to focus on the “hot” ideas and actively look for ways I can implement them. Then, once a month or so (when I have a bit more time), I also review the “not so hot” ideas as well just to keep them fresh in my mind. These often spark new “hotter” ideas which I record in the system too.

Conclusion

Admittedly this might all seem a little over the top, but it works for me. I have found that by recording all of the ideas and reviewing them regularly it has actually stimulated me to be more creative. I think this is partly because one idea, or piece of inspiration, sparks another. However, I also think it is because an idea carries value if it is recorded and that makes me feel that dreaming up ideas is worth while.

Show 86: Boagworld Book

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul talks about taking a brand online, Marcus gives some advice about reviewing your information architecture and Ian Lloyd introduces us to the challenges of designing for screen readers.

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Paul’s personal news

Just a bit of personal news before I get into the industry related stories. I want to let everybody know I have signed a contract to write a book. The book is going to be primarily for website owners rather than web designers, however to be honest I think it could appeal equally to both. I intend to look at what “client’s need to know about building and running a website” so hopefully it should show by example how best to communicate and work with clients.

The most exciting thing about this book from my point of view, is the fact that I want to write it as a collaborative process with you the boagworld community. I am going to release chapters for you to see in advance of publication and also blog on various aspects of what I am writing. I really want to encourage you to share your thoughts and make suggestions as we go along through comments and the forum. I have already set up a forum thread dedicated to book ideas as well as an initial blog post on the book.

Obviously writing a book is a really slow process, but hopefully it is something that we can all get excited about.

News and events

Building for the iphone

Unsurprisingly there is a lot of information appearing relating to building web applications for the iphone. There is an iphone gallery consisting of hundreds of screenshots of the iphone. This is great if you want to mirror the look and feel of the iphone as closely as possible. There is also the iphone developers guide from Apple which provides loads of great advice. Finally there is iphoney, a piece of software that replicates some of the iphone’s web browsing functionality and lets you see what your application will finally look like.

Of course whether it is worth developing for the iphone at this stage is another matter. I guess if you are trying to reach the tech-savy audience who are iphone owners then maybe. Otherwise it might be better to wait until the iphone becomes more mainstream or other phones start offering the same level of web experience.

@media podcast

I was gutted to miss @media this year. Well, I say gutted, I was actually on a really pleasant family holiday, so I cant complain. However, I did miss a great line up of speakers talking about some amazing subjects. I was particularly depressed to have missed Jesse James Garrett’s keynote on “Beyond AJAX” and “Diabolical Design: The Devil is in the Details” by Jason Santa Maria.

Fortunately the recordings of the @media sessions are beginning to filter out for me to download and listen to. However, note that I don’t call them a podcast. There is no feed that I can find which is extremely frustrating.

Setting that little moan aside, it is great to be able to listen to these speakers even though I did not attend the conference and I would strongly encourage you to download and listen to a few yourselves.

Common mistakes in web copy

Although we would prefer to avoid it, the reality is that as web designers we write far more copy than we would like to admit. As for those of us who are website owners, a substantial part of our responsibility is writing good web copy.

We have talked on the show before about writing good copy but our focus has mainly been on style rather than technical detail. This week, I came across a post about common grammatical mistakes. However what I liked about this post is that it wasn’t focusing on the silly details of grammar that don’t really apply particularly well to the conversational tone of the web. Instead it looked at errors such as when to use “me, myself or I” and the difference between “i.e. and e.g”.

If you ever have to write copy then spend a few minutes to check it out. It only covers the worse offenders so doesn’t take long to read.

A department dedicated to the web

Jeffrey Zeldman has written a post entitled “let there be web divisions“. If you are responsible for deciding who should manage your corporate website then you simply must read this. If you are a mere foot solider then it might not be as relevant but it is still a good read.

Basically Jeffrey proposes that a company website should not sit under IT or marketing (as is traditional) but should be a division in its own right. I am not going to repeat all of Zeldman’s logic, but I have to say I wholeheartedly agree with it.

Websites are simply too multi disciplined to sit comfortably under either department and too important to be caught in an endless tug-of-war.

Paul’s corner: Taking a brand online

About a week ago, I had to give a presentation to a board of directors ,explaining the process we went through to develop a new design for their website. A large proportion of that presentation focused on the issue of brand identity. This organisation had a very well developed style guide and we spent a lot of time and effort getting that guide to work online. My presentation talked about the various steps involved and it occurred to me this might make an interesting podcast section.

I have also put together a blog post on the subject of “taking a brand online” and it is this that I cover on the show.

Marcus’ bit: Information architecture review

I am currently in the process of carrying out an information architecture review for a new Headscape client. I have done a fair amount of IA work over the years but I have found myself particularly enjoying this one so I thought I’d waffle on about what I’ve been doing.

We have covered the various aspects of IA work in previous podcasts – Expert Review, Stakeholder Interviews, Card Sorting and Wire Frame testing. This section is looking at the first of these, expert review, in a bit more detail.

I think it’s worth explaining what I mean by Expert Review. When we carry out an Expert Review we are effectively analysing a client’s existing site content, site structure and naming conventions with a view to creating a new IA based on our experience of using and developing websites. This is a collaborative process with the client – it has to be; we can make logical, usability based decisions but cannot claim to be experts in the client’s particular field.

First things first

I make sure that I have a good grasp of a number of things prior to carrying out an IA review. At the kick off meeting make sure the following are covered:

  • Target audience – this is crucial for the development of the IA. It may be that the existing site caters for one group well but another poorly.
  • Site aims – is there a stepped process that the client wants their users to go through.
  • Design – things like horizontal over vertical navigation can affect the IA.
  • Homepage requirements – find out what the killer apps and content are as these will need to be linked to from the homepage.
  • Finally, have a general discussion about content and site structure. See what the client thinks is important and what’s not.

Map out the existing site

The first thing I do is map out the existing site’s IA. This is a fairly slow and laborious task but it is the best way to not only learn about a site’s content and structure but also to understand what they do and what they offer.

Be logical, captain

Usually, the goal of this type of exercise is to streamline content into groups and name those groups so that users will understand what’s inside them.

Site’s that have grown organically over a period of time tend to spread content all over the place. It is usually fairly easy, though time consuming, to group content together. There are various methods for doing this; I tend to print out the existing site IA (that I usually create in Excel unless it’s a particularly small site, then I might use Visio) and scribble all over the printout until I’m getting somewhere. Some people like to use cloud/cluster diagrams (either on paper or using software) or there is always the age old method of creating ‘cards’ where each page name is written onto a scrap of paper. This is a bit like doing card sorting on your own where you group the cards into piles and give names to each pile.

Naming

We come from the ‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’ school of page/section naming. Marketing departments often don’t! A good example of this is the trend to verbs as section names over nouns. I remember one client wanting to call a site section ‘Enjoy’ when the section covered ‘Leisure Activities’. No prizes for guessing what we recommended!

Labels should be as descriptive as possible. Sometimes this can be difficult when:

  • there isn’t much space, for example, ‘How to register for our newsletter’ won’t fit on the average button, even ‘Newsletter Registration’ would probably be too much for a top level, so I would go for just ‘Newsletter’. It’s fairly obvious that the content underneath will relate to the organisation’s newsletter and should logically include registration, whereas ‘Register’ leaves the user asking ‘register for what?’
  • Sometimes sites are so big that main sections can include too much differing content to be labelled descriptively. In this case, I would recommend either shortcuts on the homepage replicating the main sections that include descriptive words or create drop down navigation that displays the lower level links.

Section ordering

This should follow some sort of desired path through the site. For example, the client may want users to get a bit of background, followed by an understanding of what the organisation offers, followed by some examples of previous work with a view to finally making contact. This would translate to:

About Us | Services | Case Studies | Contact Us

Conventions

Users don’t want to have to think (that sounds familiar!); they want to look and understand straight away. Following conventions helps with this process. For example, many sites include an About Us section as the first main section. This usually includes some history, annual reports, job vacancies and contact details. Users looking for this type of information don’t want to have guess that this information might be under, for example, ‘Company Background’ which is located at the far right of a horizontal navigation.

Collaborate – to a point

When you have created your first draft it then needs to be reviewed by the client, discussed and iterated until everyone is happy. Take on board any changes that are based on your lack of understanding of what the client does but be prepared to stand your ground on issues relating to web conventions and usability – after all, they’re paying for your expertise.

Ask an expert: Ian Lloyd on screen readers

On this week’s show we have Ian Lloyd giving us an introduction to the world of screen readers. I vividly remember the first time I heard a screen reader being used. I was gob-smacked by how painful an experience it was and I am still amazed that anybody manages to use them effectively.

It struck me that many of you listening to this show might not have heard a screen reader before. Hearing what blind people have to work with really makes you take their needs seriously and so I thought I would get Ian on the show to give you a taster.

In his segment, Ian takes us through some classic problems that screen reader users experience. Unfortunately to best understand what is going on in some of the examples you need to see what he is doing. In order to get around this problem Ian has made a screencast to accompany the audio. There was too much detail to make it available online or via your video pod but you can download the screen reader .mov file here.

What follows is a transcript of Ian’s section of the show…

Hello Paul, Hello Marcus and hello to listeners of Boagworld. This is the ‘Ask the Expert’ section and today I’m going to be talking about screen readers.

Now, I don’t actually qualify [meant to say classify!] myself as an expert screen reader user simply because I don;t use one on a day-to-day basis, because I’m not forced to; I do have good vision. As such, the way that I would use a screen reader would be different from someone who has to use it on a day-to-day basis. That said, I still think it’s useful to demonstrate to people what a screen reader sounds like. And the reason for this is that as far as I am aware on your podcast although you’ve talked about accessibility a lot and mentioned screen readers I don’t believe we’ve ever had a demonstration of what they actually are like for people when pages are built incorrectly.

So, today I’m going to be showing a few problems using a screen reader. I’m also going to be doing this as a video, so this is a screencast. I understand that at the end of this you will be providing a URL for listeners so that they can access this and view what’s happening on screen. Because of course it’s all well and good to listen to this stuff but to get the full context it would be good to actually see the video as well. I will try my best to describe what’s happening on screen throughout this podcast though.

Now the first example we’re going to look at is Amazon dot com. And somewhat cheekily I’ve brought up the page for my own book on Amazon. And, er, just having a look around at what I can find on the screen and there are some issues there. So, let’s have a look at this.

[Screen reader reads out page graphic correctly 'Build your own website the right way using HTML and CSS, Link graphic']

Oh, so that’s not too bad. I’ve just found an image there and it’s announced it correctly because it’s found a suitable alt attribute but underneath there are a couple of thumbnail images which, if I want to access those, it gives me a whole different … well, hear for yourself:

[Screen reader announces: 'See larger image, Link' then moves to next link, the thumbnail image and reads an unintelligible string of characters - numbers letters and underscores - out to the listener].

Mmm, doesn’t make an awful lot of sense does it? Let’s try the next image:

[Screen reader reads out more unintelligible characters and takes almost 8 seconds to read it out]

So, what’s happening there? Well, it’s quite simple: there’s no alt attribute defined for that image and so JAWS tries to fill in the gap and, er … oh I didn’t mention earlier that JAWS is the name of the screen reader that I’m using. So it tries to fill in the gaps because it doesn’t have an alt attribute it uses the file name instead and the filename, as is often the case on Amazon, is a right load of old gobbledegook! So it doesn’t give it any useful information about that image.

Here’s another example of the same thing.

[Screen reader reads out an image gallery as 'thumbs slash zero, thumbs slash one, thumbs slash two' etc]

So this is actually a photo gallery, erm, with a bunch of thumbnail images hence it’s reading ‘thumbs’ because that’s the folder where the thumbnail [image] is actually in and it’s reading them sequentially as well. It doesn’t sound quite as painful as the Amazon example but it still doesn’t tell you any useful information about the images on the page.

[Screen reader announces more examples from the same page]

So let’s listen to a slightly improved version of that:

[Screen reader announces the same images but with appropriate alt attributes, e.g. 'The Mystery Machine, driven by Scooby' for a photo of a camper van that is painted like the Mystery Machine from the cartoon Scooby Doo]

If we were to look at that on the video I’m showing that page with the style sheet disabled and the alt attributes displaying inline next to the image. As you could hear in the second example it was far more usable – you could actually understand what the image was about (as long as you understood some of the VW terminology used in there), whereas in the first example none of the images actually had alt attributes so it was just trying to read out the location of the file.

So let’s look at another example.

[Screen reader announces content of new page 'Page has no links' and then starts reading subsequent page content before I stop it]

What I’m looking at on screen is a page that seems to have a page full of links. But if you were listening carefully to the beginning of that, the screen reader thought otherwise. I’ll just try to find that again for you.

[I scrub back in the video clip to find the part where the screen reader says no links]

According to the screen reader the page doesn’t have any links. And the reason it thinks that is, well, there *aren’t* any links. What’s actually happening … is … we have a whole bunch of text on the page that is styled using CSS and the behaviour for the link is added using JavaScript. So, we have a <span> element that has an onclick event, location.href=’somewhere.html’ and that’s [the span] wrapped around the text that says ‘This is a link – click me’. Um, but of course it’s not a link. The screen reader can’t find it because it’s not an <a href="">, it’s something else that’s been styled to look like a link and behave like a link. But it’s not. Thankfull that’s not too common but you have to just be aware that what may look great on screen for you may not be any use to someone using a screen reader. You have to use the right markup for the job.

So, you could have a page that’s full of links that say ‘click here’ but of course that’s another problem all in itself. Let’s have a listen to that:

[Screen reader reads 'Click here to view' repeatedly as I tab through the links on the page]

Yes, so … the problem there is that it doesn’t give you any information at all. And this is actually still quite common. In fact just yesterday I was looking at Facebook dot com (for my sins) and, er, I was quite shocked to find that they were using a lot of this where the link phrase was ‘click here’ as opposed to the phrase that you would really want to have, so for example instead of saying ‘click here for more information’ and having ‘click here’ as the link phrase you would have ‘for more information about our products’. That would be the link phrase. Erm, but if you just use ‘click here’ and you’ve got a whole page of links that reads ‘click here’ this is what you get:

[Screen reader once again reads 'Click here to view' repeatedly as I tab through the links on the page]

Basically, completely unusable.

Now the next example I have is of a form, and in this example, er, the form has been laid out using a table. Thankfully, these days, tables are being used less for layout and people are using CSS for page layouts. However, for forms it’s still not uncommon to see someone put a table in there. And, er …

[screen reader interrupts as page loads]

OK, so in this example what I’m looking at on screen is what appears to be, um, well … four text inputs, and then there is a radio button and it’s basically asking for some personal information, first name, surname, your age, place of birth and then a question ‘Do you have a nut alergy’, the answers being ‘no’, ‘yes’ or ‘don’t know’. So let’s see what the screen reader makes of this.

[screen reader says 'table with two columns and four rows'. I tab to the first input and it reads 'surname/family name - edit']

Already we’re hitting a problem. Because the first field that I tab to I can see on screen is *actually* [the one for the] the first name . But the screen reader believed that to be the surname.

So I’ve now tabbed to the second field which is the surname and it didn’t announce anything. So let’s tab to the next field:

[screen reader announces field as 'town/city - edit']

Again it’s getting it wrong. I’ve actually tabbed to the field that says ‘Age next birthday’

[tab to the next field, screen reader announces 'tab - edit']

And *now* I’m in the ‘town/city of birth’ field and it hasn’t told me anything.

[screen reader announces 'yes - radio button', then 'don't know', reading the radio button choices]

This is all a bit confusing here. OK, so it’s asking me the question ‘Do I have a nut allergy?’.

[I tab to the next field, screen reader announces 'Yes - radio button - unchecked']

OK, so … that thinks I’m at the yes radio button but I’m looking at it on screen and it says ‘no’. So, what’s going on here? Now this is going to be a difficult one to explain on the podcast; this is one of the sections where you really need to see the video. But what’s actually happening here is we’ve got a table to lay out the page and the text sits above the text input, so for example where we’re asking for first name, the text that says first name is in the first column and the input that relates to that is in a column underneath, sorry, I mean a table cell underneath it in the next table row. Now the reason this is causing a problem is because if you were to actually linearize that table, in other words look at it in the order of the source code you get a very different view of it. And this is what happens with the screen reader. So if I were to look at this form and read it out in a linear fashion, it goes like this:

First Name [text]
Surname [text]
Form input for First name
Form input for Surname
Age [text]
Town/City of birth [text]
Form input for Age
Form input for Town/City of birth

And so on. The problem is that the screen reader expects the text for that input to appear before that input, and because of the way this has been laid out it really really gets things confused. As I said, this is quite a difficult one to explain on the podcast but if you look at the video clip you’ll see why this is causing a problem.

[screen reader blurts a few things out as I try to manipulate it ... poorly]

Sorry about that, that didn’t add anything useful at all. Hopefully Paul can edit that out!

OK, so …. the big problem here is that you may be asking a question as we have here that says ‘Do you have a nut allergy?’ and the answers are ‘no’, ‘yes’ and ‘don’t know’. But if you do put the form elements in the wrong order you’re gonna have a problem. And the reason is obviously that with a nut allergy that could be a life or death situation. You could be filling out a form as a blind user and you select what you think is the ‘yes’ radio button but because the form has been poorly laid out and doesn’t have <label> elements that are actually helping to enforce the accessibility you may actually have been selecting the no checkbox [meant to say radio] and it really could be a life or death situation. It may *not* be as bad as that – it could end up with you booking the wrong hotel location or date. So you have to be very careful with the form layout.

OK, one final example. Now everyone’s talking about AJAX, it;s the buzzword of the moment. Unfortunately it’s also not very good for screen reader users. And the reason for this is that, er, anything that is updated on the page after page load is very very problematic to pass on to the screen readers. now the example I’m going to give here is a fairly simple one, and it’s the Google Suggest page. What Google Suggest does is let you type in your search phrase and as you type it’s calling back to the server, finding suggestions for you which it then populates in a list underneath the search input. So let’s have a listen to that.

[screen reader announces: 'google search - edit, type and text' then reads each letter of search term 'this is a test' as I type]

So I’ve just typed ‘this is a test’ and on screen underneath that is a whole bunch of suggestions that it has found. But if I try and actually access any of those using the keyboard:

[screen reader announces 'Google search - edit, Google search - edit, Google search - edit, Google search - edit' with each keypress on the down arrow]

It’s actually doing nothing. On screen I can actually see that it’s going up and down the options but the screen reader, it’s getting nothing back at all, nothing useful at all.

[more screen reader confusion]

Well thankfully with Google Suggest this is something tat you can opt out of – you don’t have to use Google Suggest, it’s not enforced on you. But it’s a very simple example and it just goes to show that a very simple technique like this can be, basically, completely unusable for someone using a screen reader.

So, that was just a few examples. Hopefully you’ve had an indication of how a poorly built website or web page can affect a user. the bottom line is, keep listening to the podcast, keep doing things right, keep using good markup and, if you can, test your own web pages or web sites using a demo version of JAWS. It really does pay dividends to find out how this works – or doesn’t work. So, thank you very much, I hope this has been useful, and I look forward to the next podcast, Paul. Thanks guys.

No show next week

Unfortunately there will be no show next week as I am away speaking at the Institutional Web Management Workshop. However we will be back the week of the 23rd July.

Show 85: Bulletproof

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul provides some design advice for developers, Marcus provides so post launch pointers and we review Jeremy Keith’s Bulletproof AJAX book.

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News and events

Unfolding the fold

The first news story today is actually not news at all. Well, its news to me (because I wasn’t previously aware of it) but the actual post was made back in December of last year.

The post relates to that most irritating of subjects; “the fold”. I have spoken about the fold many times before. The mythical point at which people have to start to scroll. I say mythical because this point changes depending on your screen resolution, browser type and toolbars.

The reason it is so annoying is because clients are obsessed with it. They are convinced that users don’t scroll (a perception rooted in the early 90s) and no amount of persuasion seems to change their minds.

However, hopefully the post I found this week will help. “Unfolding the Fold” is a post on the ClickTale blog that provides some hard stats about the fold and scrolling in general. It demonstrates that the vast majority of people scroll, with almost all of them scrolling right to the bottom of the page. Their conclusion is that there really is no reason to squeeze all of your content above the fold.

d.construct tickets on sale 10th July

If you are in the UK on the 7th September you should be sure to come to d.construct. d.construct is in my opinion one of the best web design conferences around. The reason I like it so much is that it works hard to maintain a grass root feel that is accessible to anybody.

For a start the price ticket is very accessible at £85 + VAT. Secondly, the whole thing happens on a single day so there is no need for expensive hotel bills if that is a problem. Finally, they have a great mix of speakers with many of the big names you would expect but also a lot of less well known people in order to “shake up the scene”.

The reason I mention it now is because the tickets are going on sale next tuesday (the 10th). Historically they sell out incredibly fast. Although this year they do have a larger venue and so that should help somewhat.

I really want to encourage you to attend this event if at all possible. I will definitely be there and it would be great for us all to meet up.

Fonts licensed for web apps

Talking of d.construct, Richard Rutter (one of the organizers of the event) has posted an interesting blog entry on “font licensing“. Admittedly font licensing, doesn’t sound very exciting but potentially it could be. Richard has spotted a press release from a prominent font provider. This press release talks about a new type of license…

Ascender Corporation announced a new licensing program for font software implementations with server-based applications.

Richard goes on to suggest this might be another move towards browsers supporting downloadable fonts. This would allow us to use whatever font we wished on a website rather than being limited to what the user has on his or her desktop.

Richard does warn that this might just be in reference to Silverlight, because Ascender does work very closely with Microsoft. However, personally within the context of Opera’s move towards downloadable fonts, I am hopefully this might be something more.

A new way to visualize your desktop

Finally today, I wanted to mention a technology called Bumptop. I recently watched a demonstration of the system and was blown away. Basically, Bumptop is a new way to work with files that mirrors much more closing the experience of interacting with your desk in the physical universe. You can stack files, throw them around and even crumple them up in a 3D environment.

When I first watched this demo it felt like a novelty, but the more I thought about it the more potential I saw to organize content in a more dynamic and flexible way.

What I like most about this interface is that it is not trying to teach us a new method of interaction. Instead it is trying to replicate something we are already familiar with. The idea of using metaphors we already understand is a staple of interface design and is what makes things like tabs, desktops and folders so successful.

I think as web designers we could learn from technologies like this. We should be looking to build on established conventions people understand rather than always seeking to do the next big thing or be innovative in someway. Bumptop is innovative but it does so in a way that is instantly accessible to everybody.

Paul’s corner: Design advice for developers

I received this great question from Simon that I thought worth addressing on the show…

I hear lots of questions about the technical and business side of Web design, but what I don’t hear is how do the already technical amongst us become better designers – maybe being a visual thing this just won’t work on an audio podcast, but at least you could give us your top 5 ways to grow artistically.

As has become tradition, I decided to blog on the subject a few days ago but unsurprisingly failed to stick to “5 ways to grow artistically”. Instead I managed to produce a long and rambling essay on “when designers design” which I bore you all with on the show.

Marcus’ bit: Post launch Protocol

Everyone, client and agency, seems to understand the principle of not letting a site stagnate. Content should be regularly updated and, ….and what?

We see a lot of client demands for content management systems that are then often not used for lengthy periods of time. Therefore I thought it could be useful to look at what options there are to a site manager after that big day when the site goes live.

Of course, not everything here will apply to everyone but hopefully some of it will.

News and events

Stories, articles, seminars, fun days, whatever. These are your opportunity to create new content very regularly.

Clients are invariably perfectly happy with their site when it goes live. This is understandable, they have more often than not spent months working on it, tinkering with this, fretting with that and a) they need to spend some time on other aspects of their job (that have been neglected) and b) the site really has never been more up to date!

But what often happens is that a couple of months down the line they realise that new content needs creating but they can’t remember any of the CMS training. The 50 page accompanying manual is too scary so things get left. This happens until we are asked to add the new content because we’re too busy and it’s urgent and often, later on, further CMS training is booked.

News and events provide a steady stream of new content that helps keep the site fresh but also the CMS skills of those looking after the site.

Shortcuts

Updating shortcuts to key content is again a simple way of refreshing a site’s content without putting that much effort in.

Homepage shortcuts tend to link to:

  • Latest news
  • Latest events
  • Repeated main navigation
  • Products
  • Special offers
  • Facilities e.g. login, subscribe etc
  • Important ‘deep’ content
  • Popular topics

I guess the point I’m making here is a lot of these shortcuts can simply be rotated giving a feeling of change on the site. For example, changing a link to a main section on a weekly basis is a simple task and one that does not require the writing of any new content.

Utilising usage stats may be a good way of seeing which areas of the site need further promotion. In fact, use everything at your disposal, stats packages, CMS, content suppliers, agency support contract, internal marketing team etc so that you are as informed as possible.

Imagery

Don’t just update copy. Adding new banner imagery can really rejuvenate a tired looking design. Always look to include appropriate imagery with news articles, events etc.

Communicate

Keep your eyes open to what’s happening within your company/organisation. There may be a new project/department/member of staff etc that might be outside your sphere, that would really add value to the website.

Make yourself (and your role) known to everyone. Send out questionnaires or surveys asking people what they want to see on the site or if they have any pertinent content.

Think big

Finally, don’t lose sight of the main purpose of the site while dealing with the smaller things. It may be that the main purpose of your site is to promote your brand so updating the look and feel of the site regularly may be a lot more important than updated content. In fact, continually evolving the design of a site over time is probably far more cost effective (not to mention the effect it has on keeping the site fresh) than ‘big bang’ redesigns every 3 years or so.

Alternatively, sales leads may be the site’s primary function. In which case, keep in touch with sales and experiment with ways to boost leads.

The other really big area that site owners need to look at is site promotion. This warrants a post of its own so I’ll look at that another time.

Review: Jeremy Keith’s Bulletproof AJAX

I have decided not to do “ask the expert” this week, so we can have a review instead. Unfortunately we don’t have the time to do both segments every week so I have to mix and match from time to time.

The book I want to review is “Bulletproof Ajax” by Jeremy Keith. I read it almost 6 months ago, but haven’t had an opportunity to talk about it on the show until now.

The book is designed to be the sequel to Jeremy’s previous book “DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model” which was written as an introduction to Javascript for designers. Bulletproof AJAX is therefore written in a similar tone with the focus on making AJAX accessible to designers rather than providing the technical detail you would expect from a developers book.

I have to confess I found the book a little frustrating at first. As somebody that had bought and learnt Javascript through Jeremy’s first book, I felt a little annoyed that the first 2 chapters seemed to be dedicated to laying the foundations we had already covered in the first book. I am guessing the idea was that people could buy this book in isolation without first owning DOM Scripting, but in my opinion the amount of detail provided in Chapter 1 and 2 wouldn’t make that possible. For me those first 2 chapters felt like padding to make a short book feel slightly more substantial.

However, that criticism aside the rest of the book was definitely worth the very reasonable price tag. Jeremy has an excellent writing style that is clear and engaging. He seems to explain complex topics in such a manner that you wonder what all the fuss is about. You come away from the book thinking this “AJAX stuff” is easy and wondering what all of the fuss is about. Admittedly he only covers the basics, but it is enough to get you producing the kind of AJAX applications most designers would like to build.

But, Jeremy doesn’t shy away from the more complex underlying issues surrounding AJAX. In particular he talks about accessibility and ensuring your applications work with Javascript disabled. He does this through a technique called HIJAX. I will not endeavor to explain to you the details of it here, except to say it relies on the server doing most of the heavy lifting.

From applying the principles taught in this book I have to say the HIJAX approach works very well. All of the complex stuff is handled by the developers on the server side and I get to focus on how the information is returned to the user. AJAX is a funny area that sits between client side and server side and leaves designers and developers wondering who is responsible for what. Using the HIJAX approach taught in this book, the division is much clearer.

So would I recommend this book? As with DOM Scripting it depends on who you are. If you are a designer who has read Jeremy’s first book and would like to start producing AJAX applications then absolutely. However, if you haven’t read his first book then I suggest you do that first, unless you are already confident in producing unobtrusive javascript.

If you are a developer on the other hand then my recommendation is to steer clear. This book is not meant for you and you will find it frustratingly lightweight.

My journey with books

Posted in Reviews on by Paul Boag

For me that is the key. Whether I am reading a work book, a novel or a christian book, I always look for something that will inspire and spark my imagination..

Its funny how I have begun to see patterns emerge in the types of emails I receive. One of the most common is an interest in what I read. I am not sure whether people mean just in terms of web design or generally speaking, but I thought I would share my somewhat erratic relationship with the written word.

I used to hate reading. As a child I had serious reading difficulties and to this day I am a painfully slow reader. I occasionally listen to audiobooks but somehow that doesn’t compete with the pleasure of turning a page.

I have a very mixed feeling about printed books. On one hand I hate them because you cannot search them or copy and paste particularly inspiring segments, but on the other hand nothing beats sitting in bed late at night winding down with a decent book.

In answer to the constant trickle of emails about my reading habits, I read four types of books…

  • Web design related books
  • Work related inspiration
  • Novels
  • Christian Books

Web design related

I have posted before my recommendations on web design related books, but if I had to pick a single title I would go with Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability”. User centric design should be the core of all websites whether they are developed in tables, css or even flash. Its a great book, written in plain english that really engages with the reader.

Work related inspiration

These books are not exactly web design related but have an effect on how I work day to day. Again, were I to make a single choice in this category it would be “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity” by David Allen. I have spoken about this enough in the past, so I won’t bother repeating the impact this has had on the way I work.

Novels

I have to confess that most of the novels I read are trash. They are how I wind down. Most of them are scifi/fantasy related, such as “Wintersmith” by Terry Pratchett. However, other genres do occasionally creep in. One of my favourite authors is Douglas Coupland, a superb writer who has written some amazingly insightful observations about Generation X. His titles include “Microserfs”, “JPod” and my all time favourite “Life After God”. Coupland has always had a disturbing ability to describe my life, from the wall of coke cans in Microserfs to this amazingly powerful quote from Life After God…

My secret is that I need God – that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind , as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

which brings us nicely on to…

Christian books

If you read this blog regularly you will have gathered by now that I am a Christian. However, outside of the Bible, I never used to read Christian books. Nevertheless, recently that habit has changed following somebody giving me the very powerful and provocative book “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” by Philip Yancey. This book is a no holds bar commentary on the failure of the church especially within the US (although most of his points apply in the UK too). This book not only made me seriously reconsider how I express my faith but also has spurred me on to search out other Christian titles.

Currently I am reading “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. Until I read this book I don’t think I fully grasped what an astounding thinker Lewis really was. This book is without a doubt the best defense of the Christian faith I have yet encountered.

Ultimate favourite

Its strange though, because where I to pick a single book out of everything I have read as a personal favourite, it would be none of the above. Instead it would be Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, not because it is the best written or most powerful book I have ever encountered but simply because it was the first book I ever read for pleasure.

Before Lord of the Rings I only read when forced at school. I hated books and found them nothing but boring. It was a school teacher friend of my parents that realized I needed a book to capture my imagination, something that would make me read for pleasure and not out of obligation. Even though I read at a snails pace and struggled to read more than a few pages at a time, she decided to give me a massive tome of a book, simply because she knew it would light my imagination. I will always be grateful to her for that realization on her part.

For me that is the key. Whether I am reading a work book, a novel or a christian book, I always look for something that will inspire and spark my imagination.

It is strange that I have gone from hating books to the point now where it is looking very likely I will end up writing one. Hopefully I will be able to spark the imagination of my readers in the same way that the authors above have done for me.

Advice for CMS users

Posted in Accessibility, Site content on by Paul Boag

I have been putting together a document for work that provides some basic advice for people who work with content management systems. It covers things like accessibility and writing for the web.

Introduction

Although content management systems enable anybody to publish content to the web, they do not guarantee the quality of what is published. Many content managed websites are hard to use, inaccessible and poorly structured not because of any failure in the design or technology but simply because the quality of content is poor.

This document aims to introduce the reader to good practice for generating web content. In particular it focuses on advice about writing for the web and ensuring that what is produced is accessible to the widest audience possible.

Writing for the web

Writing great web content is a particular skill. Although it shares some characteristics with writing for other medium, there are many unique elements too.

Two traits make writing for the web, particularly challenging. Firstly is the perception that most people have that computers are being cold and impersonal. Many see technology as the enemy and so a good copywriter has to work hard to ensure their copy has a friendly and approachable tone.

Second is the fact that users rarely read pages in their entirety, but rather scan read. The emphasis is on looking for the next link that will take them one step closer to their goal.

Below we investigate these two challenges in more depth and suggest some possible solutions.

Writing style

Well-written copy should be both engaging and accessible. In other words it should overcome people’s inherent suspicion of technology and ensure that, as wide an audience as possible understand what is written.

Engaging with the user

Computers are immensely unfriendly. This is mainly due to their total inability to interpret or communicate the more subtle forms of human communication such as body language and tone of voice.

The result is that most people find interacting with a computer a cold and frustrating experience. However, there are techniques you can use to avoid the problem. These include:

Using a personal tone

By ensuring that your copy is friendly, informal and approachable, you help to counteract the inherent lack of personality associated with computers and the web. Even on a relatively formal site add more informality than you normally would in order to offset the users default perception.

Writing how you speak

If you are experienced in writing more formal offline documentation, writing in a more informal manner can be difficult. Although there is no one catchall solution to this, writing as you speak will certainly aid comprehension and generate a more informal feel.

Avoid being patronizing

The danger of writing in a more informal tone is that you overcompensate and your writing style becomes ‘chummy’ and patronizing. The writing as you speak rule comes in useful here. Picture your audience and ask yourself whether you would speak to them like that in a face-to-face meeting.

Making your copy clear

The W3C accessibility guidelines clearly state:

Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site’s content.

In other words ensure that your reader can understand what you have written.

Many people make huge assumptions about what their audience understands and careful consideration needs to be put into this subject. Particular assumptions are made in regards to:

Jargon

A common pitfall is the use of abbreviations and acronyms within web copy. The assumption is that your target audience will already be aware of the jargon used. However, this is an entirely false assumption.

You cannot always assume that your audience will be aware of every acronym around. For example there are so many acronyms within web design that it would be impossible for one individual to know them all.

Secondly, the reader maybe relative new to your target audience and so still learning much of the ‘lingo’.

When writing copy ensure that whenever possible jargon is avoided and where that is not possible that it is accompanied by an explanation. We discuss acronyms and abbreviations further in the accessibility section.

Reading level

There are reasons why tabloid newspapers like the Sun sell so well. One of those reasons is because they require such a low reading level. As many as 40% of the population have a low literacy level and yet little consideration is given to their accessibility needs.

Even when writing for a well-educated audience you cannot make assumptions about their reading level. Many people suffer from attention deficit disorder, dyslexia or other conditions that could affect their ability to process what you have written.

Below is some advice on how you might go about improving comprehension of your copy:

  • Simplify punctuation – People suffering from a low literacy levels struggle with long sentences that include a lot of complex punctuation. Keep your sentences short and your punctuation simple.
  • Be consistent – There is often a desire when writing copy to vary your language to prevent a document appearing repetitive. Although this has its place it does make copy harder to comprehend. Where possible, use terms in a consistent manner across the whole site.
  • Use numbers not words – By simply referring to 1223 instead of ‘one thousand two hundred and twenty three’ you increase comprehension dramatically as well as shorten sentences and aid scanability.
  • Specify clear actions – If you wish a user to complete an action (for example to click on a button) clearly specify this. Do not assume the user will instinctively understand what is required of them.
  • Use imagery – The saying ‘an image speaks a thousand words’ is very true for low literacy users. If an image will help to convey the meaning of a page be sure to use it to support existing copy.

Although the techniques above are of particular benefit to low literacy users, they do actually offer benefits to all users. Ease to comprehend copy aids the speed at which information can be digested and helps users scan copy as we are going to look at next.

Making web pages easy to scan

It can be a depressing realization that users will probably not read your carefully crafted text. However, the sooner you accept this reality the sooner you can start to adapt copy to aid users in their hunt for information.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to help a user quickly scan through a page and identify the information they require:

Front loading

Front loading applies in two different contexts. Firstly, front-load the page by including a summary of the entire page right at the beginning of the document. This helps the user ascertain quickly whether the page is relevant to them or not. Secondly, front-load each individual paragraph so that the main point is first. Ideally a paragraph should only make a single point (see 2.2.2) but if it is longer then the user can get the gist by reading the first sentence.

Keep it short

Usability expert, Steve Krug recommends in his book “Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” that a copywriter should take his copy, edit it down to half its original length and then half it again. This sounds like an impossible task but it is often easier than it appears. By removing repetition, marketing speak, and ‘happy talk’ (content with no real substance like ‘welcome to this site’) you will quickly find your content substantially reduced.

Keep paragraphs short

As well as keeping the page as a whole sort, you should ensure individual paragraphs are short too. Each paragraph should make a single point as this aids both user scanning and comprehension.

 

Keep sentences short

 

At a micro level you should also endeavor to keep each individual sentence as short as possible. Again this aids scanability and comprehension but also helps to remove any unnecessary ‘waffle’.

Break your copy up

As well as breaking up copy into short sentences and paragraphs you can also aid scanability by using other techniques as well. Look at each paragraph and ask yourself the following:

  • Can I associate a heading or sub heading with this block of text?
  • Could this paragraph be reduced to an easy to scan bullet point list?
  • Is there a key message in this paragraph that users need to instantly see?

If the answer to the last question is yes, then you might wish to use a breakout box (also known as a pull out). This is a technique originally introduced in magazines to ‘hook the user’. They would take a key line from an article and highlight it in someway (usually in a separate box) to draw the reader into reading the rest of the article. The same technique can be used on a web page to draw a users attention to a key point that they maybe searching for.

Many good content management systems (including Headscape’s own CMS) provide this functionality.

Accessibility

We have already touched on the importance of accessibility when talking about writing clear copy, however accessibility extends beyond simply the copy you write.

As a content management system user, you are required to go beyond just writing the copy. You are also required to enter the copy into the system so that it can be displayed on the site. This requires you to ‘markup’ your copy correctly.

The importance of markup

So what exactly is markup? Markup is the method by which you tell the browser what the content you are entering is, so that the browser knows how to display it to the user. This markup is usually written as HTML.

So, if for example you want to tell the browser that something is a heading you would mark it up like this:

<h1>This is a heading</h1>

or a paragraph would be marked up like this:

<p>This is a paragraph of text</p>

Of course, one of the main attractions of most content management systems is that you don’t have to know how to write HTML. Instead the content management system will add the code for you.

Historically content management systems didn’t even try to understand what any individual piece of content was. Instead they let you as the content management user, style the content to look however you wanted. So instead of telling the system that this is a heading you simply made it look big and bold so users of the site would know.

Although this sounds like a good approach in principle, it actually opens up a whole load of problems that are too extensive to cover here.

More modern content management systems, such as the ones deployed by Headscape, ask the user to explain what each piece of content is so that the system can add the proper HTML code.

The way the content management user does this is normally through a drop down menu of styles much like you find in Microsoft word. You simply select a block of text and choose the style which best describes that text.

Marking up content in this way brings a whole host of advantages including (but not limited to):

  • The ability to redesign how an individual style looks universally across the entire site without editing each page.
  • The ability to change the appearance of styles based on what device is accessing the content (for example a mobile device style).
  • The ability for screen readers and other assistive technologies to understand the site.

In short, a well marked up piece of content will be available to a much larger audience and is easier to change and adapt.

Text alternatives

Well marked up content is not the only way to improve the accessibility of your site. Another is to provide text alternatives for elements that some users will not be able to access.

The most common example of this is with the inclusion of images into your pages.

There are a number of reasons why a user may not be able to see the images on a page. These could range from viewing the page via a mobile device to the user suffering from some form of visual impairment. However, whatever the reason the solution is the same; add alternative text that describes the image.

Alternative text is only visible to users who cannot see the image and so does not impact the design in anyway. The method of adding alternative text will vary between content management systems but in most cases (including on the Headscape system) you will be asked to add some text when you try and insert an image. A good system will go as far as requiring alternative text before approving an image for insertion.

A common mistake that is made with alternative text is to use it as a caption for the image rather than a description of the image. The difference is subtle but important. An image of Marcus Lillington our sales director might read ‘Marcus Lillington is more than happy to speak to you about your requirements’. This would be a caption rather than alternative text. Alternative text should describe the image and nothing more. So in the case of our example it should read simply; ‘Photograph of Marcus Lillington – sales director’.

Finally it is worth saying that the principle of alternative text does not apply just to images. It should apply to any screen element that can only be understood visually. That includes Flash, video, audio or other plugin.

Meaningful links

Another common accessibility mistake is with link text. When a content management user creates a link between pages it is not uncommon to see links with phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’. This presents a problem for two reasons:

Firstly, users who access the web using screen readers often have all links on a page read back as a list in order to save listening to every piece of text when all they want to do is find the next link. A link like ‘click here’ means nothing when read out of context.

Secondly, many users will scan a page looking specifically at the links. They don’t read the text before or after the link so again they see it out of context. The result is that, like screen reader users, terms like ‘read more’ mean nothing.

This problem is easily avoided by ensuring that all links make sense out of context. So instead of linking the words ‘click here’ in the sentence ‘click here for more news’ you simply link to the phase ‘more news’ or ‘news archive’.

Acronyms and abbreviations

Earlier we talked about how where possible jargon, acronyms and abbreviations should be avoided. However there are occasions where that is not possible.

In such situations your choices are very much dictated by the functionality provided by the CMS you are using. Unfortunately, many content management systems are not particularly helpful in this regard and you maybe limited to typing out a description in brackets each time.

However, more modern content management systems such as that provided by Headscape, allow you to select an abbreviation style. You can then enter the full description and this becomes available to the user without destroying the flow of your text.

This is achieved in a variety of ways but the most common is using a dotted underline. If a piece of text has been marked up as an acronym or abbreviation it will appear to the end user as text with a dotted underline. When the user moves her cursor over the text the cursor changes to a help symbol and displays the full description as a tooltip.

This provides a full description to users encountering a piece of jargon for the first time, without getting in the way of those who already know what it means.

Using tables correctly

Web design has changed a lot over the last few years and so have content management systems. One of the most significant changes has been a move away from table-based layout.

Table-based layout is a technique that uses tables to position content on a page. However this is an abuse of the table feature in HTML and can cause significant accessibility problems especially for users running on older PCs or using mobile devices.

We therefore strongly recommend that using tables for layout is avoided at all costs. Instead clearly markup the content using the descriptive styles provided. The system will do the formatting and positioning.

That said there is still a place for tables. Tables were originally intended for tabular data (data made up of columns and rows, like that found in a spreadsheet). If you have information like this you wish to include on a page, then this is when you should use a table.

Working with imagery

Although we have already spoken about imagery in the context of alternative text it is worth noting that there are other accessibility issues relating to imagery you should be aware of:

Animation

Animation can be a problem area if not handled correctly, so generally speaking it is better to avoid the use of animated imagery unless it helps explain the content in someway.

The main reason that animation can be problematic is because certain forms of cognitive disability can be made worse by flashing animation. It can prove distracting and make it harder to process the content being read.

If animation is to be used we recommend:

  • That the user is given the ability to disable the animation
  • That the animation is not too rapid so that it proves less distracting
Colour

Finally, it is worth noting that a considerable proportion of your users will suffer from some form of colour blindness. For example almost 1 in 10 men are colour blind. In addition it is possible that other users will be accessing your site through black and white monitors on mobile devices. It is therefore important to ensure that any imagery you use is not reliant on colour to communicate information and that there is sufficient contrast between foreground and background colours.

These two issues are addressed in the W3C guidelines on accessibility:

2.1 Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup.

2.2 Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen.

Further information

Hopefully this document has been useful in outlining some of the basics of writing content for a website. However, we have obviously only been able to scratch the surface.

If you would like further information, please do not hesitate to contact Paul Boag (the author of this document) using [email protected].

Show 78: POSH?

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

This week on Boagworld: Paul redesigns the way clients and designers interact, Marcus asks if you really need a content management system, and Garrett Dimon sharings his experiences of information architecture.

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News and events

Breadcrumbs are good, its official

When Jakob Nielsen speaks the world listens. This week he has come out with the shocking revelation that Breadcrumbs are good. Okay, so this doesn’t come as a surprise to most of us, but its still an interesting read. Apparently more and more people have come to rely on this secondary navigation tool and notice if it isn’t there. Jakob believes that breadcrumbs never cause problems in user testing (although sometimes they are not seen) and provide a wealth of benefits to visitors that do use them. Finally, he goes on to talk about the fact that breadcrumbs should always show a sites hierarchy rather than the path a user has taken through a site.

Techcrunch drool over Silverlight

So the guys over at Techcrunch have spent the last week at MIX07 and seem to have been brainwashed by the nice fellows at Microsoft. They are positively drooling over Silverlight, Microsoft’s challenge to Flash. In one post they say:

“It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy… without exaggeration, Ajax looks like a bicycle next to a Ferrari when compared to Silverlight”

Personally, I haven’t had a chance to look at Silverlight yet so cannot express much of an opinion. However, I find it hard to believe that Silverlight will topple Flashes dominance before Adobe responds with something equally impressive.

Although competition can never be a bad thing, it strikes me that this is yet another plugin for people to download and another platform we have to worry about developing for.

RSS in plain english

RSS can be a difficult concept to get your head around the first time you encounter it. Its still a good idea to explain what RSS is on your site for those that don’t know. Obviously you can create a page yourself explaining or sometimes I link to the BBC website which provides an excellent description. Of course if you want something a little more exciting you might want to link to this superb video that explains exactly what RSS is and how it works. Its just a shame they don’t offer the option to embed it directly into your own site.

How POSH are you?

I have to say I was very cynical about this news story when I first encountered it but after hearing Jeremy Keith’s argument on the last .net podcast I have to say I am coming around. POSH is yet another another “catchy” web acronym. It stands for “plain old semantic HTML”. So why do we need yet another acronym? Well the argument goes that nobody is getting excited about semantic HTML these days. Its just not cool. Instead we are obsessed with Microformats or AJAX, things that are perceived as being “in” and “trendy”. The POSH acronym is designed to get us talking about semantic HTML again. The idea is that we start blogging about how we mark stuff up and sharing ideas with one another. The example Jeremy gave on the show was; what is the best way to mark up a conservation in HTML? He suggested that it was simply an ordered list of blockquotes. Do you put that much thought into your code? I can’t say I always do.

So with that in mind I have opened a new section on the Boagworld forum where you can post your examples of good code. You can ask questions like; what is the best way to markup… or simply post how you choose to markup different elements. Whatever the case lets start sharing our good practice in HTML.

Client corner: Do you really need a CMS

Apart from a few ‘design only’ projects we get involved in, every tender that comes through the door includes the words “control over content is a must have”… or words to that effect.

But thinking about all the ‘full’ CMS based projects we have delivered, is that really what the client wanted/needed?

So what types of CMS solutions are there? Here’s a quick summary:

Limited CMS (non-structural) e.g.
  • News
  • Events
  • Popular a few years ago when ‘full’ CMS was a much more expensive.
  • Pros – simple to understand (and build)
  • Cons – clients tend to request more and more areas of the site become CMS controlled and you can end up with a bit of a mess and the cost of replacing can be prohibitive.
Blogging tools
  • Article based
  • With commenting
Full CMS
  • Control over structure: move pages, edit pages, create news pages (and sections) and the front end navigation updates automatically
  • Usually modular: news, events, downloads, forms (dynamic), lists, newsletter, etc
  • User management: Roles, permissions, preview, workflow
  • Licensed or bespoke?

You need to ask yourself a couple of fundamental questions:

Even if I have these tools, will I have time to use them? All websites need to have an owner or editor. Someone who’s job it is to manage all content sources and keep the site up to date. We have been asked many times to carry out work content population work on a CMS that we built…

How much of my content needs updating more than monthly and how often do I need to add new pages to my site? It seems that having the ability to extend a site is often seen as a ‘must have’ when in reality new pages are only added, say, quarterly at most. Added to that, the only content that changes regularly is, for example, news, events and case studies. Employing an agency to add new pages and manage site structure/navigation is not a big job (though some seem to charge extortionate rates). Added to that, clients who do not use a CMS very often tend to forget how to use it and then go back to the agency simply because of that.

To summarise, think very carefully about your requirements in this area and talk to prospective agencies about what they recommend. You could end up making a costly mistake.

Ask the expert: Garrett Dimon on Information Architecture

I am a huge fan of Garrett Dimon’s work and so I am really excited to have him on the show this week. Garrett’s job title is “information architect” and so unsuprisingly he joins us to share some of his experiences on working with information architecture. His advice includes:

  • Embrace constraints
  • Know when to challenge the constraints
  • Explore lots of ideas
  • Work in conjunction with clients
  • Don’t use your computer
  • Throw away more than you keep
  • Don’t worry about the details until later on
  • Simplify and cut back on details
  • Communicating is more important than documentation
  • Make your IA deliverables visual as they are easier to understand

Agony uncle: The wish list brief

This week I am back on Agony Uncle duty with an email from Dan in Swansea:

I am increasingly frustrated by the briefs I am getting through from potential clients. They read more like wishlists than real briefs. They lack focus and often ask for functionality they just don’t need. How do you respond to briefs like that?

Its a great question and set me thinking a lot about the web design process. In fact it was the primary motivation for a recent blog post on the subject which we talk about on the show. I think the key to this question is to not be afraid to go back to the client and challenge them. Perhaps propose a rough costing based on some of the items in their list but suggest that the first step (if you are taken on) would be to define and price a more accurate brief. I think most clients will respect you for suggesting an alternative and more effective strategy. In many ways its like the speculative design argument, it may feel scary to challenge the client before anything is signed but in my experience clients respond positively to a carefully thought through argument.

Review: Spoken Text

A while back I asked people to submit their own reviews. I didn’t specify that people couldn’t review their own product and so I recently received a review from Mark promoting Spoken Text. Now, I don’t want to open the flood gates to shameless self promotion but I like spoken text so much that I want to include it on the show. It is basically a free, text to speech system that allows you to convert multiple file types into audio files.

Mark shares four great reasons why he thinks we might be interested in it as web designers:

  • Use spoken text to provide alternative audio versions of the content on your website
  • Allow users to record and save any content from your website they want
  • Create a podcast of your websites content
  • Create your own podcast of other people’s content that you want to listen to while on the go

There are two things that excite me most about this service (beyond the fact that it is free). First is the accessibility benefits it could bring for visually impaired users and secondly the ability to make instant podcasts of new stories from your site without the complication of finding somebody to present it.

This isn’t a service that is useful to everyone but I think in certain circumstances this could be a killer app.