Due to the depressing winter weather conditions here is Wisconsin I decided it was time to relax on the couch and play with my new toy, my much loved Nintendo Wii. To be honest i've been out of gaming for quite some time, the Wii got me excited about gaming again. Up until now the Wii has had wireless internet connectivity through Wifi that really hasn't been leveraged. Updating the system and downloading the weather were all it could really accomplish.Unfortunately Opera on the Wii does not support browser plug-ins or downloads, however it does support Flash 7 . So it is much like the light weight Safari browser that ships with the Iphone. Regardless this is a really solid release for the Wii which can only help Nintendo boost the Wii's popularity. Just like the Iphone, with 10 million Wii consoles out there its another platform developers need to consider when building websites.
Wow this truly floored me. The US Patent Office (USPTO) has granted a patent for placing a "search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting.". See the diagram left that helped them seal the deal with the USPTO.
The other night I was talking at length to my brother in law Steve about his field of engineering and its various certifications and standards and comparing it to my field of web development. This isn't the first time i've thought about this issue, In a previous blog of mine I went hunting for professional organizations for web development.... there weren't many.
He argued that "no one is going to die if a website doesn't work in Firefox, however in my field if a wall collapses and kills someone we got a problem. Thus we have standards, rules and regulations to make sure that doesn't happen". I agree that no one is going to die if a website doesn't render right but as more mission critical services move online web standards become more important.
Steve is a member of an independent professional organization for engineers known as Ashrae which develops standards among other things for the field of engineering. In the web world we have the W3C which is independent and then corporations like Adobe, Google and Microsoft who play a part in helping to innovate and drive web standards. However nothing is really enforced unless your designing for government who demand section 508 compliance.
He said that engineering has been around for thousands of years, and web development is a new field of expertise and standards and enforcement of those will take time. So it was funny today when stumbled across two separate articles:
Both talk about Targets class action lawsuit for not being 100% accessible to the blind? I shouldn't need to state it, but I will for clarification, Target is a corporation not a government body so no standards apply right? I guess not!
My point to my brother in law is that as more services move online, whether its shopping, banking, bill payment or yellow pages there need to be standards enforced to ensure everyone, young and old, 56k or broadband, iphone or pc can access your site. The lawsuit against Target could prove to be a big factor in enforcement of standards online..... Time will tell but this will be an interesting case to watch!
I recently had a situation in my day job where more work than we could handle. I needed a qualified group of five internet developers with varied skill sets such as: XHTML/CSS, Flash, .NET, PHP and we needed them quickly.
Formally we would try two things:
We tried option one, and everyone we knew was committed. Option two takes time and we were under the gun with tight deadlines.
So what do you where you in a bind and need to recruit in a vacuum? Networking 2.0 utilizing your social networks!
Within a few hours of identifying the need I hit my LinkedIn network. By the end of the day I had answers and people lined up to do the work. It was instant validation to me of the power of social networking tools like LinkedIn, and putting my network that i'd built overtime to work for me.
Good Design at Apple….
“Comes from saying “No” to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.”
- Steve Jobs
Define Your Solution
What problem will your application solve?
- Create an Application Definition Statement
- Summarize the intended purpose of your application
- Let it guide everything you do
- Filter every aspect of your application through definition statement
This is also inline with a chapter in 37signals book “Get Real” titled "What's the Big Idea".
Its an interesting approach i'm looking to incorporate into future projects I work on. Often with web project you can get bogged down in features that are outside of the core objective and vision of the site, using this methodology means you can abandon a lot of traditional distracting features before you burn you time and money.
I came across the following presentation when I was browsing on Slideshare and it really resonated with me. I often talk to designers or information architects about improving the usability of a web app by simplying things. For instance use more descriptive form buttons - "submit" is vague, include functionality such as breadcrumbs and site search as people expect them to be there etc. Essentially don't make me think!
One thing I often notice with new site designs is they are tested by power users, we know that the logo links back to the homepage, we know how to use utility nav and how to filter results in a datagrid. However the best test i've ever had is my wife or my mom. To be honest if they can't perform a task or find something on a new site chances are other users will have the same problem. Ultimately a bad experience frustrates users and ensures they will give up on your site and go to the next listing on Google.
I encourage you to view the following presentation by Brian Winter from CareerBuilder on providing a better user experience.
