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Stop the Graying of Sites Trend
May 7th, 2008 |The messages many sites send when they use gray text on a white background is, “We don’t want you to read our content,” “Our content isn’t worth your time,” and “We want you to struggle reading our content because we think black is boring.” #333333, #666666, #999999, and #cccccc (various shades of gray) are almost black, […]
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How I Became a Full-time Freelance Writer
April 30th, 2008 |I generally don’t talk about myself as I accept that people don’t come here for my personality. Instead, people like you come for the information I provide that I hope helps you in your life. From reading other blogs, it looks like many love to hear how writers and freelancers went full-time. So here’s the full […]
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When Web Content and Software Collide
April 24th, 2008 |In 2000, I earned a certificate in Internet Technologies in hopes of becoming a Web designer. Working on the blog today reminded me why I changed my mind and went into writing instead. Based on advice (you know who you are — I don’t want to put your name in here again and have people thinking […]
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Usability Testing Cheap and Fast Part II
January 31st, 2008 |Dennison asked excellent questions in response to How to Do Usability Testing Cheap and Fast: Tell me if I follow correctly: Do you do the test only on users that have their own PC with them? So if you happen to be in a store where nobody has a machine or is willing to take the […]
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Using Bulleted Lists in Web Content
January 28th, 2008 |Bulleted lists on Web pages help readers scan and find what they want. Two situations that do well with bulleted lists are series and instructions. Also, beware of indenting, spacing, formatting, and whitespace. Series For situations where three or more items appear separated by commas, they might work better as a list. Instead of, “Bring an apple, […]
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Web Site Categories for Shoes
September 27th, 2007 |You go to an online tennis shoe store looking for mules (shoes you slide on as they have no back — see image). Without looking — what category do you expect to find these shoes? Or maybe this would be easier… what category would you NOT expect to find these shoes? Running? Walking? Cross-training? Aerobics? Aqua? […]
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170 Smashing Ideas from Designers
September 7th, 2007 |Smashing Magazine provided a wealth of expert tips, advice and suggestions in its popular and valuable 35 designers x 5 questions article. To celebrate its one year anniversary, the magazine found more experts and asked new questions. The result is 50 designers x 6 questions, which contains over 170 new tips answering the […]
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Breaking into Information Design
September 5th, 2007 |Someone interested in breaking into information design contacted me to ask about the field, whether a degree or certificate would help, and the tools and skills used. It’s a very broad question as information design covers everything including print. But I answered the question from the online perspective and thought others may benefit from this […]
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Site Maps: Passe’ or OK?
June 4th, 2007 |Monday by Noon asks if site maps are obsolete. First, let’s agree on the term site maps. These contain a site’s high level links along with the name of the page like this good example of a site map from Apple.com. Along the same lines of questioning site maps, people question the use of search on […]
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The FAQ on FAQ
May 10th, 2007 |Jonathan and Lisa Price have a nice article on writing FAQ and covered many points that we may not think about. For instance, if you have a large site — you might want to show the FAQ or Help that’s relevant to the page users are on rather than give them the whole thing to […]
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