Jen Simmons’ HTML5 APIs session was an interesting look into the back-end of HTML5, an area that I’m not as familiar with. Lots of new goodness about how we can make HTML not only create a basic layout but actually devise interactions, storage and flexibility.
Presenters: Jen Simmons (@jensimmons)
Hashtag: #html5apis
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. (more…)
I just got done a great book on building usable forms – Luke Wroblewski’s “Web Form Design – Filling in the Blanks”. It was a really well-done, interesting book on a less than interesting topic (well, to most people) – in fact, it’s one of the best usability books I’ve read in terms of giving quick, easy-to-read, usable information. From my review on Goodreads.com:
“Good or bad, there aren’t many books that I can use for my job that I go through quickly. There’s just something about a limit to my absorption of information from these books that makes me take my time to get through them. However, that was not a problem with this book. Chock full of good information, Wroblewski manages to make it a quick, easy and yet informative read that only took me 2 days cover-to-cover.”
You can see more on Luke’s website, to get a feel for the book.
I’m currently working on a project for a hemophilia product from a major pharmaceutical company. In the midst of working on it, there is a reference to another product that triggered a memory of a past project – one that I did when I was working for Waresoft. Back then, it was a project coming up with a combination of Flash, HTML and JavaScript tools for Humate-P, made by ZLB Behring.
In this project, I was tasked to do three things:
Well, since I was thinking about the old project, I went to see how it was looking – and it’s up and running on their site. It works pretty well, too. You can see the different aspects of it here:
Humate-P Densitometric Analysis – click on the “Click here” link at the top of the page to launch Flash.
Granted, I only adapted and improved the first, and got a TON of help from Van in creating the JavaScript for the Dosage Calculator, but I think it turned out pretty well. I remember that trying to sync up the voice and animation in Flash was a major nightmare; ironically, knowing Flash 8 a little better now, I realize that there was a much easier way to do it than I did. Oh well, stuff happens.
Aahhh, the salad days…
Recently, a project came up which had a particularly difficult requirement included. Pharma industry sites have a pretty tight set of restrictions to start with but some things take it to a new level. One of these is the so-called “Black Box Warning†that some drugs must display. (more…)
Wow, Wal-Mart really screwed the pooch on this one. If you visit their new Video Download beta site, you get a somewhat nice experience – not great, but not too bad – provided you are using Internet Explorer:
If, however, you are using a modern browser such as say, Firefox, your experience is somewhat … shall we say, different?
Notice anything wrong? Obviously, no one mentioned that over 10% of the country uses Firefox, including what might be a disproportionate number of the users who might use a download service like this. Of course, we are talking about Wal-Mart customers…
I sure hope that someone loses their job over this – this is sloppy and a REALLY poor example of what happens when you don’t do proper QA (or use qualified designers). I could go to town on the code itself, but could I really do worse than what they already show here?
Jazz Coding jăz • cod’-ing(v) –
1. Interpretive and often highly improvisational code development that doesn’t match spec or supplied codebase, and usually doesn’t work.
2. Rewriting functional or base code with non-standard and/or irregular code that is better understood, regardless of its validity.
While highly entertaining if viewed correctly, unappreciated by most. Doesn’t follow standard conventions, often putting completely disparate elements into the expected structure, causing unexpected results.
WIKI addendum: Jazz Coding is often performed by less-informed developers who are unable to understand or modified newer and more compliant code structures. Rather than adhere to the level of code requested/supplied, they rewrite code to include more basic constructs that are better understood, such as <font> tags, incorrect/unmatched tags or structurally invalid code.
See Also jazz code (n); jazz coded (v, adj.), What the hell is this crap? (phrase)
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? (more…)
We were doing a usability test recently on a site that I’ve been working on for a major sports retailer. In the tests, we were testing a hover functionality which would prompt the user to click for more information about that product. (more…)
