Facebook seems to be the antithesis of this. They want to cram
everything they can think of into a social environment. They have
games, chat, messaging, stuff for sale, billboard ads, Mr. Coffee in
the corner and the corpse of Billy Mayes to ensure you get one free
while you're at it. The question then becomes, is this really what
users want?

It seems most users pick a particular part of the FACEBOOK
MEGAVERSE©®™ (add LOTS of echo). I personally use it
as a means to make my friends stop yelling at me because I'm not on
Facebook. Facebook's user experience for me is unparallelled. I
don't use it for anything and my friends don't yell at me. I call it
a win. That said, so many people use Facebook for communication, or
something akin to Twitter, or gaming, or... you name it. There are so
many pieces of Facebook it's overwhelming.

The first time I set up a Facebook account, the interface was
reasonably simple. Then I killed that account without mercy. Now I
have a second account. It's quiet and private. When I first logged
in, I screamed and logged out. It was awful. There is so much going
on, it feels like I am walking into a video arcade at a mall. Have I
mentioned large crowds, flashing lights and too much noise freaks me
out? It does. So does Facebook.

A while back, designers were given a challenge: redesign the Facebook
interface. There were several people who submitted ideas. (Not to
Facebook, of course. Just to the guy who started the whole thing.) In
the end, I felt that many people had great ideas for how to present
the mess Facebook has made its bed, but I think they all missed a key:
Facebook is just too much.

I just picked up the scent that Facebook is looking to do Music sales,
if they aren't already. I also read that they are trying to beat
Google. Let's not go into the discussion that if you feel there is
someone out there you want to beat, they have already won. So, they
are going to add search. To their games. And their messaging. And
their news feeds. And their photos. And their chat. And and and.

Facebook is working on becoming the next Ma Bell. Dismantled and
cannibalized for parts. Come on, guys. If you really want to do
this, can we break it up a bit so the luddites like me can actually
make sense of your craziness? Thanks!

(Please note, I state I am a luddite. This is not entirely true. I
think progress is awesome. I think misdirected progress that makes me
want to weep in a corner is bad.)

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Why?

Twitter opted to release the design extremely slowly to random people.
Actually, that's not true. Twitter hand selected special people to
receive the update on launch day, then they provided the update to
people who they thought were important to their PR. After that,
everyone else is getting the update as they are randomly selected. As
important people and friends of Twitter squawked, they were updated.

This wouldn't be a problem if they had done this over a week or,
perhaps, two. The very first people would still be excited about the
new design and the last people wouldn't feel left out. Two full weeks
after the launch, Twitter announced that "about 50% of Twitter users
have the new design."

Doing a little math, it means that about 100% of the people will
finally have the new design almost a month after their big hubbub
about the release. When I say "about 100%" I mean that I'd lay odds
they padded their numbers and less than 50% of Twitter users actually
had the new design available to them.

Moreover, this means that the people who get the redesign at the end
can't turn it on and off and compare the old and new designs for any
length of time, while the first people have a full month or more to
play before Twitter flips the switch and enforces the "new design
only" rule.

Why is this a bad idea?

If you are one of the first people to play with it, it's great. The
latter 50+% of the people who are still awaiting the update are
feeling alienated and disenfranchised. We are watching all the other
kids play with their new toys from Christmas while we are decorating
for the 4th of July while staring at our packages under the tree.

Since the first users are now over the novelty of the new design, the
users who get it last get to hear things like "why are you still
talking about new twitter? It's old news." This is a good way to
leave your users cold. Twitter has managed to turn one half the
community against the other half.

In short, when you prepare to launch a new piece of software, think
about all of your users and find a better way to do things. Release
software so all of your users can get excited. This isn't the fashion
industry where the buzz just makes it more exciting when the normal
people finally get a piece of the action. Software moves fast and web
apps move faster. Keep up and make your users comfortable in their
skin. Make your release fast and make the web a better place.

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Anyway, working for Public Online, we built websites, lots of them. I
probably built 60+ sites in my 3-4 month tenure. They were probably
all really lousy. I was a recent high school graduate with an above
average proficiency in HTML and Javascript for someone of my age. I
was no master, but I didn't know that then.

I recall one client actually coming into the company to discuss his
website. He owned the, now defunct, Family Fun Centers chain. He
brought along his ten-year-old son. It turns out, the owner of the
company wasn't going to talk about what he wanted. His son did all of
the talking.

"I want fireworks and explosions when the site loads," he said. "I
want it to play some loud music and be really cool."

I was 19 and didn't understand it then, but seeing an exec show up
with his pre-teen son is never a good sign. Children, typically,
aren't the best people to talk business decisions. This one was no
different.

Those were strange days on the web. They were the cowboy years. I
feel really lucky to be old enough to remember them from within the
industry. When the internet bubble burst, I took it as a personal
blow. I didn't know better. I was an early twenty-something with
little job experience and I just watched the beginnings of my career
head straight for the toilet.

It was probably the best thing that could have happened to a kid like me.

I revel in the wonderment on the web now. I think it's fantastic how
everything has grown, but sometimes I yearn for the days where
anything went and you could get away with murder. The web wasn't
pretty and we all had a lot to learn, but it was so damn much fun.

I know this is a departure from my usual posts, but I just felt an
overwhelming need to reminisce. Okay, let's get back to making the
web a better place. ; )

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Come on, guys, I need something to work with.

The diagram I am referring to offers up a great timeline for designers
to work their magic. There is lots of room to collect information,
talk to clients, get user input and then test drive the comps to the
ends of the earth. Then, the very last segment of the diagram is
given to developers to "just finish up the bits and pieces."

When you are working on a website which is essentially static content,
leaving the developers little extra time is fine. They don't have to
do much so, giving them a small piece of the pie is fine. For most
web projects, however, the developers need lots of time to implement
the work which needs to be done.

I worked on a medical provider search for American Claims Management a
year, or so, ago. The design and preparation went rather quickly,
though I wish I could have the chance to rework the UI. The bulk of
the time, however, was dedicated to the tricky bits which did things
like the actual search.

I had to work out what I was doing mathematically across a paper
globe. I had to spend time playing with set analysis and preparing to
collect information in the best way I could find. Then I had to write
the whole thing.

It took a lot of time.

To suggest that developers aren't doing any work or, worse, that they
are just finishing up the dirty bits since the hard work is all over
puts ME in a bad position. See, designers, I fight for you. I am the
guy that speaks engineerese and fights the good fight for you. The
least you could do is cut me some slack and give me something I can
fight for. If I walk into a meeting and say, "okay, people, we have
three days to develop the system," they are going to tell me to shove
it.

In the end, the only way you are going to meet the engineers in the
middle is if you give them something to work with. Just like you,
they have to go through problem solving sessions and testing. Just
like you, they have a lot of work to accomplish in less than adequate
time. Just like you, they are killing themselves to meet the
deadline. Let's cooperate and make the web a better place.

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Here's a little sneak peek of what I have coming for you on Monday.
This is a graph of predicted user falloff while waiting/seeking
behavior is occurring. No, I won't tell you the function (yet). Yes I
think this will help (a LOT). I'm excited to share my research in
theoretical user behavior with you and I just couldn't wait to share
this little bit!

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Luke Wroblewski is calling for designers to design for mobile first. Although his reasoning is sound regarding
mobile-specific reasoning, I especially like his point that designing
for mobile requires designers to focus.

This type of laser-focus should extend beyond just the designers and
should, in fact, touch everyone involved with a project. The less fat
you build into your application, the better off the user will be.
This goes not only for core site function and the resultant navigation
bloat, but also for non-essential things like Javascript effects.

It is becoming more and more common to rely on Javascript to do
everything. Unfortunately, this leads to sites functioning poorly
when scripts are turned off or are unavailable. I visited a site a
while back which required Javascript in order to perform a search for
local pharmacies. I found this requirement to be profoundly stupid. I
personally know blind people who use as few browser extras as possible
to keep their experience reliable.

These people are the kind of people who would perform a search for a
local pharmacy. Unfortunately, they would never know why the search
didn't work. What's worse, the site was intended for Workers'
Compensation claims, which means, if someone were impaired and injured
on the job, this tool is the ONLY available tool.

Old web works.

Old web isn't pretty and it may not make you the hottest thing on the
block, but old web works. When you build your application, the first
thing you should do is build it, not only from a mobile mindset, but
also with old-web tools. A page request works the same with any
browser, essentially. You send a Get or Post request and the server
replies with a success (200) or an error (just about everything else)
code, followed by some sort of content.

Throw out everything you don't absolutely need. Trim the application
down to the very core of what the user will interact with. Use
Javascript only if it makes the user journey through your site better,
don't use it as a crutch to hold up a failed application. On the
other hand, you should only trim those things which you don't NEED.
This is not the same as trimming everything and leaving a bare site
with a text entry box (unless you're Google).

While working through your design think about the core of your system.
Build the simplest journey for your user and make your site a joy to
experience. Encourage user interaction through ease and clarity.
Trim the fat, cast off the excess and make the web a better place.

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Much like MTV unplugged which features acts doing what they do best
without an effects rack that would make most sound engineers quake
with excitement, I find myself doing my best work when I step away
from the computer. In the end, I have to hop back on the computer to
produce something I can deliver but, in the meanwhile, there is
something about turning off the screens and simplifying the creation
process.

I've learned to enjoy these unplugged moments so much, I have gone so
far as to institute unplugged sessions at work. So far I have only
had a couple, but I found myself being far more constructive during
these hour-long breaks from the computer than I often am while the
screen is on.

Little is more distracting than having e-mail screaming in like
tactical missiles and messages from coworkers looking for insight on a
project or system you touched once upon a time. When the screens go
off, the productivity goes into high gear. The hardest part is to
mentally unplug even though you have done so physically.

In your mind, the first time you try it, you'll find yourself saying
"but someone is surely e-mailing me right now. It's important."
Resist the urge to turn the screen on to check. Instead, set a timer
and know, in an hour, you'll get to everything people are chomping at
the bit about. In the meanwhile, just turn off the noise and focus on
the task at hand.

Consider it a mini sabbatical in the middle of your day. Make a list
of things to get done which do not involve the computer and work
through that list during your unplugged session. When you plug back
in, you will be light years beyond the point you would be at if you
let the computer consume that hour.

The brain is an incredible tool. When it is not distracted, your mind
can perform all kinds of gymnastics you would never expect. Give
yourself a chance and let your mind do a few laps around the paper,
without a screen to distract you. Unplugged sessions will give you
the freedom you need to really make the web a better place.

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There are two distinct types of people I've met, those who think about
stuff and those who do stuff. I don't care who you look at, everyone
falls into one of these camps. The people who think about stuff are
the people who sit around saying "one day, I'm going to do stuff.
Right now, I'm planning but some day I'll be done and ready to
execute."

The problem with planning and thinking indefinitely is that you never
do anything. You spend so much time worrying about whether this
solution or that solution will be the right one to score your
millions. Guess what, no solution will ever do anything for you
unless you actually execute it.

I prefer to be someone who does stuff. I'm not saying I do it right.
I'm also not saying my answers are the right ones, but my first
instinct is always to DO. I do a little planning. I anticipate as
many pitfalls as I can, I jot down a basic plan and direction and then
jump into the thick of it.

There is a down-side to taking the 'do' attitude: you will fail. A lot.

Honestly, I can't say that I have actually created a single
"successful" project since I started doing. Things just don't go the
way I want to. Success, however, is in the way you look at things.
In a sense, every project I've ever undertaken has been a success
because I did it. It might not have been the best or brightest way to
do whatever i took after but, by God, I did it all the same.

After doing, I reflect. I review what worked and what didn't. How
did people react? How do I feel about continuing down that path?
These are important things to note. I also review technical failures
and successes. Did hackers take control of my site? Yes, that
happened to me once. I was miserable. Did a bunch of junk commentary
get posted? Did things work the way I wanted them to?

Every failure is a success.

In failing you learn something you didn't know before and you learned
something about yourself. Learning is always a win. The only way to
fail, however, is to do something. Once you have taken the steps to
start doing, you'll start succeeding and failing. Take everything in
stride and give yourself the chance to grow in ways you never thought
possible. I usually end with "make the web a better place," but today
I have a different message:

Don't just stand there, do something!

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It seems to be fairly well known that people scan in an F pattern. Moreover, Jakob Nielsen states people can scan the first 11 characters of a string without moving their eye. This is commonly implemented information on the web and aids users in selecting information in a faster, easier way.

Something occurred to me today while looking at a list, there is a  vertical limit for skimming as well. This is, by no means, scientific, but I noticed that I could look directly at the page and gather 3 lines of text formatted at roughly 1.6em. In other words, I could, reasonably, skim information at a little less than 5 characters top to bottom on densely packed lines with a 12pt font size.

This leads me to a conclusion about information stored in any kind of horizontal display element: the taller the element, the harder it is for users to skim. It takes work to scan across the page seeking information when you can only see 3-5 elements at a time. For typical site navigation at the top, this isn't much of an issue as links are usually only 1-deep.

Footers, on the other hand, must be managed carefully, however. There is a trend to place lots of information in a footer, currently. When done well, this kind of supplemental navigation can be quite helpful. When executed poorly, the information at the bottom of the screen tends to look like a big lump of text which people won't read.

In order to keep this post characteristically short, I'll just offer a quick thought, and write a full blog post later, on how to think about your footer for maximum impact.

• Keep the list of links short. People can't effectively scan several long lists horizontally so cut the less important data.
• Organize your links into clear groups. If you have grouped links where the user can immediately discern which links are related to which, they will choose the correct list by quickly scanning horizontally and then scan vertically to locate the particular link they are seeking.
• The footer is no place for huge tag clouds. The bigger the tag cloud, the harder it is to find anything, especially because of the font-size variety. Keep any tag cloud which lives in the footer trim -- about 3 or 4 lines.

When you start putting together what my friend calls a "fat footer" think about how your user will scan and collect data from it. Provide them with the easiest way to get as much from your footer as possible. Make the web a better place.

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This is a very real problem. Developers often get pulled
heavy-handedly in one direction or another. Either you are a
server-side programmer or you are a UI programmer. It's difficult to
get something right in the middle as some aspect of the project is
going to end up devouring an inordinate amount of time.

Often the time gets soaked up by the server-side development, so the
user gets forgotten about. This is bad news for the longevity of a
website. Often, sites which are focused primarily on function and
less on user experience suffer as users find it frustrating to
accomplish anything.

Right now I fear my project will fall under the wheels of the same
fate. Fortunately, I am doing the one thing I can to ensure I the
user gets the best experience I can offer: I'm thinking about how they
will interact with the server-side work I am doing.

Even when you are caught up in that one challenge in the code that is
holding everything else up, don't forget your user. Remember, if not
for your user, you wouldn't be writing anything at all. If the code
you are writing seems to be solving problems unrelated to what your
user needs, ask yourself if it is the best use of your time.

Sometimes it is. Often it isn't.

Those pieces that solve problems your user may never encounter might
be fun to do, but they don't really move you forward. Instead, make a
note. Come back to it when you have some time to burn and you want to
do something more interesting than useful.

On the other hand, if you are making something users have never heard
of before, don't stop just because they aren't chomping at the bit for
it right now. It may end up being a major sensation. In the end,
it's really all about your user. Write everything as if it were just
for them, because it is. Don't forget your user. Make the web a
better place.

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The content-object model is vital to the future of the web.

Let's go through a quick history lesson. I promise it won't take long
as it starts in 1990.

In 1990, the idea of HTML was first realized. I won't go into the
whole history, rather I'll just throw out a name and move on: Tim
Berners-Lee. The web moved quickly even in the earliest days. By the
mid-nineties, companies were popping up to take advantage of this new
communication media.

Important note: HTML was a blend of content, formatting and other
identifying tags which defined the resulting document. This was
specifically a blend of structure, data and formatting which we (the
web community) consider long-deprecated now.

By the mid-to-late nineties, CSS crept into the standard arsenal of web pros
worldwide. Combining CSS and Javascript, pages were built to have
richer functionality and interaction. This is when the web started
looking more like what we know it to be today.

By 1999 we started to see the emergence of RSS. RSS allows us to share content in
a bite-sized fashion people could digest with readers. This was
probably the earliest emergence of the content-object that can be
pointed to on the web.

Ignoring a whole mess of stuff that happened between 1999 and now, we
can see content objects everywhere. Twitter is a clear example of the
content-object model at work, integrating bite-sized chunks of content
into a meaningful, readable stream for the consumer.

Sites across the web are opening APIs to collect information and
gather content objects for inclusion in other sites. Sites have grown
from the integrated data-structure-style documents of HTML 1 to
dynamic structures hosting content from disparate sources, prepared
and served to the user for their entertainment and education.

If content was king in the 90's, it is certainly lord of all now.
More importantly, the decoupling we did of data, structure and format
should and will be applied again to content as it is liberated from
distinct sources. Content objects are becoming more critical in our
day-to-day function than ever before.

With the decoupling of information from the page structure and, more
importantly, the conceptual locality, the content-object model has
become the way of the web. It is still growing, but it is quickly
becoming the definition of our experience on the web. Act on this.
Provide your users with the content they want. Build with the objects
you have and make the web a better place.

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I'm feeling a little like my brain is being stuffed full this morning.
After a full day of seducing users, guiding through your site,
interacting with them and then exposing how site design changes over
time, Today started with a fire hose of a talk. Web interaction and
microstates was discussed by Bill Scott.

Through the discussions over the past couple of days, I am seeing more
ways I can take input from the engineering team and combine them with
the desires of the creative department and produce something that,
ultimately, solves business problems in a novel, usable and
user-geared way.

Note, novelty alone is not a good driving force for a site design or
redesign. Novelty, when combined with a desire to provide for the
user and a dash of good sense can carry a web application into the
stratosphere.

Later this week, I will be meeting with the Director of Communications
for my company and we will discuss the future of our corporate
websites and web application. I am looking forward to bringing some
of what I have seen here to the table to encourage new, better
methodologies, driving our projects forward.

For those of you at WAMT who are reading this, I hope you are enjoying
the conference as much as I am and can take away lots of new
inspiration. I encourage you to follow me on twitter (@cm_stead)
and take a look at my regular blog where I discuss lots of various
problems, solutions and moves I've made.

Cheers!

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I won't get into the reasons a blog is good, though it is. Both for
business and for the soul. Let's simply say, blogging has an
important place on the web right now.

So, how I blog... I hadn't put a lot of thought into my process before
today. After spending years writing blogs for various sites, pages
and reasons, I just have a system I use and it works for me. Today,
something was different. I noticed something I always do.

Let's start with the system I use. I use WordPress. Lots of people
do. It's easy and once you are familiar with the system, there is a
lot you can do with templates to really customize the feel.

When I first start working on a post, I already have an idea in mind.
I know what I want to call the article and I have a majority of the
post worked out in my head. That being said, I open the new post
screen, enter the title and select the categories the post is about.

That is the single most important step I do in the whole process.
After that, everything else is babble. I am really good at running at
the mouth (keyboard?) and do so on a regular basis.

The reason I do things in this order is to maintain focus. When I get
600 words into a post, I often find myself merrily trotting down the
path to write another 60,000 words. The problem is, most of those
words have nothing to do with what I set out to say.

I can't afford to write a book. People won't read it and I'll never
get anything else done.

In writing the title and selecting the few items the post is about, it
keeps me on task. I can stop, look up and ask myself "is this what I
wanted to write about?" If the answer is no, I can redirect and
refocus. It's a reality check.

Through maintaining my focus, I find myself writing in a clear,
concise way that conveys what I wanted to say without straying too far
from where I wanted to go. Focus and reality checks are key.

Though this is not tool available for writing better posts, I find
it's the one that helps me the most. Give it a try and see if your
blogging improves in focus and message. Use the tools that help you
the most. Write good blogs. Make the web a better place.

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Probably not the most exciting thing to do, but sometimes you do what
you must. To tell the truth, I've enjoyed working on my current,
self-imposed project. This doesn't really answer the question "what
am I doing," very well, does it?

Remember that post about object-oriented content? Well, I started working
on an article talking about applying OOC in real life. Meanwhile, I
built an OOC-driven CMS for the company at which I work.

Problem? I built an OOC-driven CMS FOR THE COMPANY AT WHICH I WORK.

See, I can't just go around giving away the CMS I built for my company
as they own it. I mean, there are parts I could give away,
specifically the frameworks I used, but that doesn't do anyone very
much good as they would have a net-zero.

So, to solve this problem, I decided to start over and build
everything again, from scratch.

I'll feel okay giving this away. First, I'm building it completely on
my own time. Second, it varies significantly from the code I wrote for
my company. Third, I won't include some of the odds and ends I built
in for company-specific goals.

What will the user lose because of this? Nothing.

Ultimately, the first release may be underwhelming for some. It won't
have any of the neat toys and fun things that mature,
community-supported content management systems have, but that's not
the point, right? Right?

It's all about thinking of sites and content in a totally new way.

In the end, I want to build something kind of like an old hotrod.
People can take the chassis and tweak it to their ends. Even at the
core, people should be able to construct and deploy sites quickly. I
know this because I'm already doing it.

There is so much more I could say about the system, but it's just not
ready for the daylight yet. It still needs a lot of code... and a
name. We have a long way to go, and much patience is required. While
you wait for my project to surface, go make the web a better place.

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See, I said 'normally' there. There is one tool that is very quickly
growing into something of a meaningful romance for me. That tool is GVIm.

For those of you that AREN'T *nix geeks out there, VI is an old
command-line text editor for the Unix/Linux family of sites. There
has been a war raging between two camps in the *nix world, those who
use VI and those who use Emacs.

I am a VI guy.

To be more specific, I am a VIm guy. VI costs money. VIm is free
(both as in speech and beer) and it's mighty spiffy. If you are
working in color, it will color-highlight your code. It will manage
indenting for you. It will run a command shell from inside the
program. It will make you coffee. It. just. does.

VIm comes in a GUI Windows version. I played with it a while ago, but
didn't get too deep in. I had other tools I could use that worked
well too. I couldn't immediately see the value in simply dumping VI
into a GUI and calling it a GUI editor.

I stand corrected.

GVIm is a surprisingly effective cross between a command-line tool and
a GUI tool. The hot-keys all work. You can drag and drop files right
into the editor. It recognizes all of the standard editing hot-keys
AND all of the VI esoterica like yank, delete, find and more.

It is as lightweight, or nearly so, as Notepad, but you can open
multiple instances of it. It still highlights and indents code and it
can still make you coffee. I'm not going to say it's the tool for
everyone. It's not. However, I don't go around writing blog posts
about every editor I use either.

In the end, though, it doesn't matter how wonderful your tools are.
If you don't use them to their full potential they will never serve
you fully. Whichever tools you use, go and make the web a better
place.

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On the other hand, perhaps my troubles today were precisely why they
didn't offer any insight into creating interactive websites with JSP.

I started by creating a simple JSP page without any integrated classes
or any other fancy stuff. I got my "hello world" script working in
very short order. I decided, with such early success, I would move on
to something a little trickier: a test class that printed "hi" on my
page.

I've not known such frustration as coding and re-coding a class to do
one single thing: print a single word to the screen.

What was I missing? How could I have gone so wrong after such a
promising start? There must be something I was overlooking.

I would comment out the line that called the class and the page
rendered just fine. I put it back in and everything would go back
into a tailspin.

Tomcat would mock me, telling me there was an error and that it wasn't
interested in my silly games. The message:
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError.

I check my code. I checked again. Nope, the method was there.
Everything seemed to be as expected. I compiled my code again and
copied it over the old code. Bit for bit, the files were identical.

ASP.Net with C# code behind, PHP, Perl, even some really old C
CGI had written
couldn't have prepared me for this.

After having my boss review the code, check my system configuration,
re-check my code and then check install versions and other oddities,
he said, "have you bounced Tomcat?"

What had I overlooked? Something I could never have anticipated,
being familiar only with IIS and Apache. When a compiled class is
replaced, Tomcat needs to be restarted.

Beware, intrepid cyber-coder, Tomcat is a feisty feline. If you find
yourself on the business end of writing JSP and deploying it to
Tomcat, bounce the server.

Heed my warning and you'll make life easier, which leaves more time to
make the web a better place.

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A friend of mine is looking for a job and she was poking around on
Craigslist. Many of the positions for web design and development
refer to a skill "Web 2.0."

It's time to clear the air. Web 2.0 isn't a skill. Web 2.0 is
meaningless and now people are talking about a new version, Web 3.0.
It's time for people to start getting a handle on the marketing-speak
that seems to turn into nebulous job descriptions and activities.

Most of the time, when people say Web 2.0 they don't know what it
means. What you really get from Web 2.0 is simply enhanced user
interactivity and a rich user experience.

The problem with using marketing-speak to describe a skill set is that
people can't reliably anticipate your expectations. Catch phrases like
Web 2.0, AJAX and the like simply lead to greater misunderstanding.

Let's consider migrating toward a clear explanation of need based on
existing technologies for the web. Words and acronyms like HTML, CSS, Javascript and
engineering mean something.

At one point, we used to refer to server-side programming for web
interfaces "CGI. Even that was a little too nebulous for current use. Now we refer to
it as server-side programming.

Server-side programming, now, can be done in many different languages
ranging from scripting languages PHP and PERL to typically compiled languages like
Java and C#.

Many modern web applications also use a server-side database. Words
like SQL start to appear. When carefully used, SQL provides a slick, efficient, if not
slightly tricky, tool for accessing information.

If server-side programming is half of the equation, then client-side
programming is the other. Client-side programming happens with
languages like HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flex and Flash. These languages
range from simple document markup all the way to full, compiled
programming meant to interact with the user in a rich, interactive
way.

When used in concert server- and client-side programming define a set
of technical skills used to develop the user experience on the web.
Though the user is generally unaware of the tools being used to
provide their web experience, the provided lists can be used as a
short list of popular items in the modern developer toolkit.

In the end, we can refer to "skills in Web 2.0 and Ajax" as being
versed in developing rich user experience. This way we can cut some
of the marketing speak from a job requirement and describe what we
really want: someone who knows how to build things users interact
with. Perhaps HR teams and hiring managers the world over can
consider this and stop shopping for things that are meaningless.
Spread the word and make the web a better place.

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Something that didn't occur to me at the time of writing is headings.
Headings are really important. As a matter of fact, headings are one
of the items that should undergo scrutiny any time you build a page.

So, this friend, who runs Bookalicio.us, was missing an H1 heading from her
site. Overall, the site is constructed well and the HTML is fairly
clean. The problem is, she didn't identify her site as Bookalicious
anywhere, only Bookalicio.us. Since Google doesn't have anything to
work from, they assumed the site was called Bookalicio.

By simply changing the title on the site to Bookalicious and adding an
H1 heading identifying the site as Bookalicious, her Google search
results should improve.

I hate to use someone as a case study for fear that they will end up
under the unforgiving scrutiny of the world, but Bookalicious, from
what I understand, is not at a loss for traffic or good content. I
think the site is sturdy enough to take the criticism.

The message boils down to, be aware of how often you use headings in
your document. They define the hierarchy of the information on the
site and provide clear division between sections. Headings are good
for SEO and they're a W3C standard to boot. By using headings
properly, you make your page easier for the user to navigate and you
define your presence when people search for you. Use headings. Use
them carefully. Make the web a better place.

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The first law is Fitts's Law. This is a model that reflects the
amount of time it takes for a user to act upon a user interface.
This, by itself, would show that organization of menu items will
impact the speed at which someone can intuit and interact with your
UI. Due to this law, menu systems scattered across a site, when
conditions are normal, will effect slower interaction.

The Steering Law was derived from Fitts's Law and is a
model that reflects the greatest speed a user an navigate a particular
tunnel. Reasonably, we can assume this tunnel could be a navigation
course on a website. This means, you can select certain elements on a
site which should be passed over and others which should be avoided
and then predict the speed at which the user could navigate the
course.

Where this leads to is, there is a new trend in sites to add ad items
which stretch, change size and do other strange things when they are
moused over. By Fitts's Law, as the user passes from the top to the
content they want to interact with, they will select the shortest
course unaware of the tunnel they must navigate to get there.

The maximum speed they arrive there will reach beyond the threshold
demonstrated by the Steering Law and they will, inadvertently,
interact with an advertisement that does something unexpected and
unwanted. In the end, Fitts's Law and the Steering Law state that the
unexpected action is almost guaranteed.

Even when the preferred path is known, the Steering Law will still
state that users will likely still interact with the ads they want to
avoid. Advertisers seem to innately understand Fitts's Law and the
Steering Law and use them to the user's greatest disadvantage. I
think it is the IxDA/E's job to minimize unwanted interaction on their
site in order to maximize user benefit.

Ultimately, I plan to write more about these laws and how they impact
users as I have time to consider them. Until that time, I implore
you, consider these laws. Think about the impact on your user. Make
the web a better place.

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