Usability

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Reading Time: 5 minutes Media Manager is by far one of the cooler products that SDL could offer. It appeals to my inner geek. It offers rich asset management over a content distribution network and it does codec conversion. It’s an HTML5 developer’s dream. I don’t claim nearly the experience around Media Manager that I would  Tridion, but I

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Reading Time: 4 minutes I hated Mac for years. Approximately 27 of them, if I recall. Then my wife twisted my arm and we bought an iMac. Then, two work-issued Macbooks later and I’ll admit that I like designing and developing with Apple’s OSX interface. But I’m not a fan of the iP/hone/ad/od.  Why? Usability isn’t user experience, and

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Reading Time: 2 minutes After a project was laid on me in the eleventh hour which had to be delivered in the twelfth, I found myself madly trying to educate myself on a foreign subject. The project and the subject doesn’t really matter. What mattered to me was collecting enough data for me to deliver it on time. Google performed beautifully; but a lot of the sites failed. Why? Pop-ups.

Of course, they aren’t the pop-ups of years past, they’re “modal windows” or “lightboxes”. You’ve all seen them. You visit a page, the background fades to grey, and a simple little window automagically springs into existence. Sometimes they asked me to register. Sometimes it was a sales pitch. The reason didn’t matter. I was there to get content. And now you’ve covered it up and forced me to click on something to get to it.

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Reading Time: 4 minutes One of the biggest problems that I’ve found working in the web industry is that outsiders don’t really get what a corporate website is all about. It’s not just about HTML, a really good design, or content. I’m finding that too many young businesses, or immature older ones, think one web designer is all it takes to put together a website. So I’m going to attempt to describe in under 1,000 words what should go into a website. The key word here is should.

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Reading Time: 4 minutes Not too long ago I had a conversation with a graphic designer who was tasked with designing a website. Web Design was out of her area of immediate expertise, and she asked me if I had anything that I could share with her. After I sent her my email, I realized that I’ve said this before — and I’ll probably say it again. So, in case my mother, or anyone else, asks my thoughts on how to design a website, here are seven rules that I’ll mouth off.