Nice little app here called CSSFly which allows you to view any web page and edit it in real time while seeing the results instantly in the browser. It works by caching a copy of a page and updating with any changes to the code you make.
Could be very useful for any CSS/XHTML developers who want to experiment without getting their coding tools out. Also great for those of us who like to see what’s under the hood of our favourite designed websites.
Web Apps 1.0
February 13, 2007
Progress is being made at the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group on the Web Applications 1.0 draft specification. It’s starting to look very good and I’m extremely pleased that they have addressed a lot of the issues with HTML/XHTML which needed sorting out.
This draft has been published yesterday, I’d suggest all interested developers take a look and familiarise themselves with it as you can expect to see aspects of it being supported by browsers very soon.
Ajaxload
February 8, 2007
Very useful little app I came across today that I thought I’d share. It’s an Ajax based tool for creating loading indicator GIFs on the fly. There’s quite a selection of styles and they come in really handy for most web designers. Example GIF below.
Check out Ajaxload!
New online travel design book
January 25, 2007
It’s not very often I find a book that while being of interest from a web point of view also refers directly to the industry I am a part of. ‘Designing Emotions in Online Travel‘, published by Sotopia, seems from the extract to be a really relevant read for anyone from designers to strategists in the online travel world.
It’s been written by some usability experts (which always bodes well for me) and touches on the methods by which we can convey the emotion involved in a travel research/booking process to the user through a web experience. It’s highly pertinent to me at this time when I am assessing the potential for a redesign of our front end. Being able to give the user the same emotional experience they get by flicking through the pages of a brochure or stepping into a travel agent is vitally important (and something many of the online travel agents neglect completely).
Needless to say I’ve ordered my copy.
New Kuoni website
January 24, 2007
Kuoni has launched it’s new website in the last few days. The rumours were that it was supposed to go live before Xmas but got delayed due to how busy the first few weeks of January are. Although I do work for a competitor (of sorts) I thought I’d give it a brief review…
My first impressions were how much more usable it is than their old site, it’s a vast improvement and should really impact their numbers booked online. The new homepage is clean and uncluttered, contains easy to understand navigation and a booking form (the first time they’ve had a booking form on the homepage!) I really like what they’ve done with this page. They have easy ways to navigate through their products; by type of holiday, by destination and (for the traditionalists) by brochure making it really easy to find what you are looking for. A new special offers section is clearly marked and easy to find although the way the offers are listed isn’t particularly easy to scan. Promotional area on the homepage is minimal at the moment however it’s obvious that they could expand downwards as the page is not very long at the moment and as we all know the old ‘below the fold’ argument doesn’t hold as much weight as it used to (with screen sizes growing by the day). The markup is looking good and I really like the fact they’ve used more space and allowed the width of the site to be fluid according to browser width.
Usability is much improved and from a quick glance at the code accessibility looks much better than the old site too!
All in all it’s a massive improvement! Top marks to the Kuoni web team, I’d expect the 15% booked online that they currently quote will jump quite quickly.
Ask.com launches Askx.com
December 21, 2006
Ask.com is the latest search engine to release a testbed interface to trial new technologies, ideas and try to simplify the task of searching the web for users everywhere.
Askx.com is a much more simplified interface making use of Ajax. It features a three-column layout with the left hand column being used for suggestions for broadening or alternate searches, the middle column featuring both the sponsored and organic search results and the right hand column featuring results from shopping, images and video.
It looks much better than the current Ask.com interface, much slicker and easier to use. The left hand column suggestions are really good, the alternatives are highly relevant to the searches I tested which is a really useful feature especially for research.
So, it looks great, loads quickly, is functional and ultimately useful. Wonder how long it will be till some of the features get pulled into the main Ask.com site.
10 years of CSS!
December 19, 2006
Is it really 10 years that I’ve been mucking about with CSS styles?? Apparently so! The W3C has a page including a Hall of Fame, essays on the topic and a gallery on their site to celebrate the coming of age of this most useful of coding features.
Worth celebrating I reckon!
Microsofts new homepage
December 15, 2006
Microsoft have released a redesigned homepage on their main corporate website. It is literally just their homepage that’s changed, the rest of the site is as it has ever been.
The redesigned homepage looks much better, the layout is much more up to date and they’ve obviously taken notice of current design, colour and layout trends.
However, this keeping up with the latest trends looks to have been taken a little too far! They’ve really tried to emulate the Web2.0 crew by stuffing a clunky AJAX navigation module into the page. It’s a nice bit of navigation but is incredibly slow to load, in Firefox 2.0 it is so slow and caused the browser to hang while loading meaning you couldn’t switch to another tab or use any other browser features. It’s slightly better in IE7 but only marginally, the speed is still slower than I’d expect for any piece of website navigation.
The speed of the nav is verging on being so slow it’s unusable, it made me want to find another site to find the info I was looking for straight away. Of course, being Microsoft, chances are the info you want may only be on their website so you may have no choice but to persevere…
My opinion? Top marks for trying to bring their homepage up to date, zero for execution.
Google patents it’s search results layout
December 14, 2006
I find this a little strange (personally). Google have been awarded a patent of their search results screen layout. Details along with screenshots can be found on this PDF.
It begs the question, what else can you patent? Most sites (at least decent ones) strive to have their own identity and layout, so they could I suppose patent them, but how far can you take it?
One of the beautiful things about the internet is the collaborative nature of developers, especially in the XHTML/CSS field. So now, if you come up with a new multi-column layout, instead of posting it for others to see and re-use you could patent the layout and charge royalties for others to use it?? A bit extreme perhaps, but it does worry me that when people start patenting design features it could get people nervous and make them patent theirs.
Usability testing; key to any web project
November 13, 2006
I’ve been designing and building interfaces and websites since 1995, with all that experience under my belt you’d think I’d be one of those people who are averse to usability testing and happy to just use my own experience and knowledge to get the user interface right. I’m not!
Back in 1998 I created a portal for a segment of the financial services market. It was aimed at key decision makers within the insurance industry, so not the most web savvy or computer literate people in those days. We decided to perform our own user testing using the HCI students from the local university as facilitators for the sessions. The sessions went incredibly well, the feedback we gained was so useful it either validated our design decisions or gave us ideas for how to tweak and change things to get a better experience for our target audience. This experience has firmly rooted the idea of testing with live users in the development cycle of any project I am involved in.
Last week I went to a usability lab to test some prototype screens of a new development. I’d never seen prototypes tested before so was a bit dubious about how it would work. I’m used to having a nearly finished article for users to click there way through, I couldn’t see how we could get as much value from testing flat prototype images.
I was very wrong! The usability company were fantastic and the way they facilitated the sessions made all the difference. We sat and watched the users being talked through a journey on the site and it answered so many questions we had and validated so many others. I really can’t recommend getting your websites tested enough!
One word of caution though; usability companies work at their best doing usability testing. They will offer to review your designs etc but this is really not where they add the most value. The value is gained by having live users working their way through a journey on your new site and using the usability experts to facilitate and summarise the results. That’s what the usability companies are good at!
