The other day I was working on an internal UX Guidelines website and instituting one of the very things that I was advocating when I ran into a problem. Essentially, I was implementing the code to create a file type icon at the end of links so that all PDFs would show a PDF icon, all SWFs would have a Flash icon and all external links would have an external link icon, using the CSS3 attribute selectors. Continue reading
I wanted to get some more work done on my ID posts, but had to take a quick tangent for a couple of things. I’ve realized lately that I’ve really been getting behind on my reading of blogs in my industry, so I’ve been taking the opportunity to spend some catching up on some of my favorites including 456bereastreet and authentic boredom. Continue reading
While working on a website we are redesigning, I was seeing some minor usability/accessibility issues that I was concerned about. I brought up those issues, mentioning that the site would be significantly less functional in some cases to those with disabilities, such as the vision-impaired and physically handicapped persons for whom using a mouse is difficult. That was when someone asked, “Do blind people actually buy sporting goods?”.
In their defense, the speaker asked the question in good faith, and they were thinking of snowboards, golf clubs and footballs when they said it. It took me only a second to respond perhaps not, and to ask if they had considered sweatpants, baseball caps, knee braces and more. Suddenly, it was more pertinent, and I decided to look into the question – do the disabled really buy sporting goods, or more specifically, do they buy them online? Continue reading
Well, it’s been a long two weeks – tons of different projects to work on both ‘officially’ and freelancing. Here’s a sampling:
I have a few more things that I am still working on, but it’s been a LOT of work and variety of projects at once lately. And I still need to get going on 2006 work!
Links You Don’t Want to Miss »
You know, there are times when I hate IE. I mean, I hate IE in general, but there are times when I REALLY hate I.E. I’m doing a freelance site that has gone one forever and a day, but I’m 99.5% done now – and have found an error that is really pissing me off. Continue reading
Hectic. Random. Chaos.
Such is life at times. I’ve got too many things I’m trying to do and not nearly enough time to do them all – even with help from trusted friends. I’m still exhausted, but I think working out is going to be helping that – it feels good to exercise again … not to mention I’ll finally have a chance to get through all of those books/magazines that have been stacking up in the meantime (reading while working out used to be my number one time to read).
One of my projects at work has been really trying me – I’m a JavaScript newbie, and this script should be fairly easy but it’s driving me up a wall. Van did much of the grunt work giving me the basic script but my ineptitude at adapting it has been a hair-pulling experience. But we finally got it – and I was even able to make changes when I got them back from the client a few days ago. It’s not a bad site, overall – just took more time than I wanted/had to spend.
The house from Hell is coming together nicely now – although we are considering getting out of the rental business. After this debacle, I just don’t like the idea of being 75 minutes from the place, where I can’t keep an eye on it or have to spend lots of time to go down and fix little things. And with the market the way that it is in Newark, it might be better to sell and look for a fixer-upper closer to home.
Daily Links »
I’m in the middle of a contract where we will creating a site that incorporates several departments presentation needs to a varied number of customers. In short, Department A needs to be able to present information to Customer Type A and Customer Type B, while Department B needs to be able to present information to Customer Type C, as well as some information which is share by all Customer types. The data varies between global information without any account specificity, and user-specific transactional data.
The navigation consists of a global ‘frame’ from the parent company (header, footer and left-nav style). Between them is our content (<div id="container">), which in turn has two divs, leftcol and rightcol (I know, so original). We are basing the left navigation – the main navigational element – on the parent site, although we are tweaking the style slightly, customizing the menu items to our site specifics, and most of all making it compliant by removing tables and image-based ‘text’ links. The main content of the page would fit in the right column div, often being fed from another part of the company’s database.
The main navigation isn’t a problem. I’m using nested lists to create a primary and secondary navigation to mimic the table-based rollovers that the parent site has. The problem is that when we reach certain portions of the site, I would need to go to a tertiary level of navigation. Not necessarily a problem in and of itself, although it does pose space problems within the width of the left column div.
Still, it was my recommendation as the most advisable method to go, following this general pattern:
<ul>
<li>HEADER 1</li>
<li>HEADER 2</li>
<ul><li>page 1</li>
<li>page 2</li>
<li>CURRENT PAGE</li>
<ul><li>Option 1</li>
<li>Option 2</li>
<li>Option 3</li></ul>
<li>page 4</li></ul>
<li>HEADER 3</li>
<li>HEADER 4</li>
<li>HEADER 5</li>
</ul>
Simple, aside from spacing problems (32-character option names don’t fit very well). However, the client team wanted to use a set of navigation for that particular page, all within the right column DIV. So, suddenly, we’re left with left navigation, and not-quite-as-far-left navigation. I tried to explain the fact that having to left-justified navigations would most likely be confusing to the user, and that incorporating the navigation into overall navigation would perhaps be more advisable. They weren’t so sure, because they wanted to make sure that the topic navigation was in the face of the user.
After some discussions, it was then suggested that perhaps top navigation within the right DIV (the ‘frame’, if you will) would make more sense. At first, I wasn’t so sure because having two navigational areas – one top and one left – isn’t always the best idea. However, most situations also use this with TOP = primary/global nav, while LEFT = secondary/subject nav – not the other way around. In the end, I created three comps:
1. Integrated Left Navigation
2. Dual Left Navigation
3. Left and Top Navigation.
So, the result? Strangely enough, to me at least, the last choice seems to be the consensus winner. While I had my concerns about offering two separate navigation elements (well, four if you include the header and footer links – but don’t get me started there), it seems to work pretty well. Creating the ‘Inner Nav’ using a top tab-based navigation, if offers a way for the user to focus on the navigation inherent to that particular user-specific system (in this case “Orders”) as opposed to the more global (and generic) navigation on the left side. All of the items that the customer might need to use from within that Order space would be within that inner navigational space – and when they are done, they simply use the global navigation to the left to visit other portions of the site.
From what I know about usability, it seems to fly in the face of good design, but in this case it seems to make the most sense, and actually appears to work fairly well. I’m sure the usability folks will have plenty of words on the subject, but at this point, I’m having trouble finding it.
Daily Links »
Well, they denied it despite the numerous rumors that Wachovia was going to buy them. But the rumors were at least half true: MBNA has been bought by Bank of America for $35.1B.
I can’t say that I’m surprised – the bank has been ripe for a merger or takeover for quite a while. The fact that they are going to do another job cut after their much-publicized severance package deal earlier this year is not going to sit well with those still around. It’s a shame because many people stayed thinking that they would be protected – I hope that they still are.
As for me, I’m hoping to enjoy a bounce-back in my stock after the fall it took in April. Unfortunately, the people who are going to benefit from this most are also the same people who have put the company in this position in the first place – the new executive management. As usual, the little guys are going to get hurt.
I have liked the way that B of A does business, though – maybe this will end up being a good thing for those who remain, and for cardholders who have chafed at MBNA’s recent strategies. Stay tuned…
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I’m helping create the design for the customer service site a pharmaceutical company, and right now I’m mocking up the splash page. I have to stay within the guidelines of their overall company website (use their header and footer, keep navigation style the same), but I was playing with the login box. Everything is hunky-dorey in Firefox, but IE mucks it up.
As you can see, the form elements are moved to the right in IE, despite how it is coded in both XHTML and CSS:
<form>
<fieldset><legend>Login</legend>
username<br /><input name="username" type="text" tabindex="1" title="username" dir="ltr" value="" size="18" maxlength="24" />
login <br /><input name="pw" type="password" tabindex="2" title="password" value="" size="10" maxlength="10" />
</fieldset>
</form>
fieldset {
color:#CC0000;
font:0.7em arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
font-weight:bold;
width:60%;
}
I just can’t figure this one out – I’ve tried moving the
• Congrats to Jody on winning Screen Grab Confab IV on Cameron Moll’s website. Way to go, Jody. I’m more than just a little jealous, by the way.
My wife and I decided to take a few days to play hooky with my extra time right now (well, extra in that I don’t have a 9-5 job to attend; I still have projects to work on). ANYHOO, tomorrow it is a trip to Cape May but today it was what was supposed to be a 2-hour trip to John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge (AKA Tinicum) to check out the local waterfowl migration.
Our luck wasn’t that great to start, as we mostly saw a buttload of tree swallows when we started. Still, Shari got a chance to take quite a few good shots, and we were off. We had both brought our cameras – her with the the Nikon D70 digital (which is why she HAS her pictures), and my with my Nikon N80 film camera, which is why I don’t have mine yet. And there are a lot of cool pictures to wait for.
She got some awesome shots of a Golden-Crowned Kinglet, a garter snake, a great blue heron and a bunch of other stuff. I’m hoping that mine are nearly as good. Even if they aren’t, we got to see some cool stuff. I added 3 new species to my life list (“geek alert!”):
Shari added those, plus a few others like the Eastern Phoebe and Common Merganser. But the unrecorded highlights were seeing a Bald Eagle and a nesting Great Horned Owl. Oh, that and carrying my wimpy wife through the flooded trail on my back because she didn’t want to get her sneakers muddy. Just kidding – it was pretty flooded, and that water was colder and deeper than I expected. It was hard to sneak up on things after with me squish-squishing away. Oh well, I just hope that my boots dry out by tomorrow for the hike at Cape May!
