Book Cover: Usability Tools Guide

Dr. Peter J. Meyers of User Effect has made a very well-written thorough 48 pages PDF eBook on Usability Testing entitled: Guide to Low-cost Usability Tools where he has analyzed 20 of the free and low-cost web based usability tools. On the post Guide to Low-cost Usability Tools, he outlines the major tools he is analyzing as a respond to the flood of Usability test tools we are seeing in the last couple of years.

The eBook covers the following groups of usability tools:

I. Heat Mapping

Heat mapping (or click mapping) tools record visitor clicks to create visual maps of user activity. Section I also includes eye-tracking simulators.

II. Screen Recording

Screen recorders track individual visitors to your website to create a simulated video for each of those user sessions.

III. User Testing

User testing tools simulate traditional, task-based usability testing.

IV. User Feedback

User feedback tools solicit direct feedback from your website visitors.

Here’s the link to the book: Guide to Low-cost Usability Tools by: Dr. Peter J. Meyers

From Search boxes, Buttons, Forms, Logins, 404 pages and much more. All of which are presented in an easy to navigate, light weight website. The screenshots are mostly submitted by web designers while having a chance to comment on each submission.

Pattern Tap is the brain child of Matthew Smith at Squared Eye, and was nimbly built by the ten fingered genius Chris Pollock at Simplified.

Pattern Tap consists of the following collections:

404 Pages
Articles
Audio
Backgrounds
Borders
Breadcrumbs

Buttons
Calendars
Code
Comments
Contact
Distinction

Ecommerce
Feature
Footers
Forms
Good Copy
Graphic Illustration

Headers
Headings
icons
Images
Internal Ads
Introductions

Layout
Links
Lists
Login
Modal Windows
Navigation

Notice
Pagination
Portfolios
Search
Signup
Slideshows

Sort
Subnavigation
Tables
Tabs
Tags
Thumbnails

Typography
Video
Web Application

Once you signup, you will be able to submit your designs or comment on any item on any collection.

Do you know any similar website ? Tell us about it here and we will dedicate a post for it.

For example, try reading this post about Who is gaining ground and who is losing in web browsers war? You’ll notice instantly that people use a wide variety of web browsers. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome ” my favorite “, Apple Safari and much much more. The biggest problem is they all render web pages slightly different. But don’t worry, if you follow this course and read about the subject you will design a stunning website that looks almost the same on every browsers.

As a web designer, there are a few things that you need to grasp so that you can unleash the talent you’ve got to create those stunning websites. Here we are discussing some of the harsh realities of the internet that you should be aware of.

1- Web design is not about being fancy and pretty

True, People go to website because they are looking for something.  It might be a picture, a video clip, a graph, a story, or simply anything. If people want to see something pretty, they can simply look at a mirror, or watch a baby laughing. Web design is all about delivering the information to the website visitor. If a website looks like a painted canvas, where will people get the information they came to the website for in the first place then. Therefore, when you are working on a website, make sure that it is easy to understand, easy to navigate and above all delivers the information in the easiest and the quickest way possible.

Web design is not all about being fancy and pretty!

2- Users may not always come to the “Home” page.

People use search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. to find things. If they stumble upon your website through a search result page, they will not necessarily come to the home page of your website. Therefore, make sure that the website purpose or description exists everywhere on your website. Also, include a way for people to navigate through your website easily from almost every page.

Sometimes people visit your website using a search engine

3- “Myriad Pro” is not a standard web safe font!

What does that mean?! It simply means that not everyone on this planet has all the fonts you have installed on your computer. There’s something called Web Fonts Safe List and in a nutshell it is simply a list of fonts that includes that most likely fonts found on the majority of computers on this planet. So in your website, make sure that all your headlines, body text and text links belong to a Web Safe List. Dustin Brewer has gathered a list of web safe fonts on his blog

4- Not everyone has the same 17″ DeLL monitor as you!

And defiantly not the same screen resolution! It means that you cannot guarantee that your website will look exactly the same as it does on your monitor on everybody else’s monitor on this planet. Not to mention the screen resolution, their color profiles and so many other variables. So what you can do in this case is to try to design a website that is suitable for average Joe’s monitor. One of the biggest enemies of web designers is you design a website and then it has the killing horizontal scroll on somebody’s screen. It simply means that there are going to be some parts of the website that are not viewable and you loose potential readers to this right hand news column per se!

Not all monitors created equally!

5- Not everyone uses Internet Explorer to view a website.

For example, try reading this post about Who is gaining ground and who is losing in web browsers war? You’ll notice instantly that people use a wide variety of web browsers. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome ” my favorite “, Apple Safari and much much more. The biggest problem is they all render web pages slightly different. But don’t worry, if you follow this course and read about the subject you will design a stunning website that looks almost the same on every browsers.

Web Browsers War

6- Not everyone uses Windows based computers to view a website.

People use different operating systems: Windows, Mac OS, Unix …etc.   In fact, not everyone has a “Computer” to view a website. Yeah People may visit a website from a mobile phone, PDA, web TV … etc.

But!

Still, Web Design is Fun, Easy, and Stimulating.

And this is what we are going to discuss together during this course.

Further Reading:

http://inspectelement.com/articles/the-unwritten-rules-of-web-design/

In the following image, take a look at Yahoo website some 13 years ago. (Yes Gif images were a really big thing back then )

In the next part we’ll discuss the harsh reality about the internet in general and in web design. See you then!

Web design, this term that almost everyone would love to try one day, is actually a fun process. Web design or the process of creating the look and feel of a website is all about delivering the content in an easy appealing way to the visitor. As an ambitious web designer, you should always consider your visitor’s needs and requirements. So always put yourself in the visitor’s seat. What he would like to see? How would he go about finding the information he came for to this website in the first place? Web design has a lot of important concepts to consider. During this course we’ll try to explore Usability, Accessibility, Functionality and a lot more.

Web design crosses multiple disciplines of multiple information systems, information technology and communication design. The web site is an information system whose components are sometimes classified as front-end and back-end. The observable content (e.g. page layout, user interface, graphics, text, video and audio) is known as the front-end. The back-end comprises the organization and efficiency of the source code, invisible scripted functions, and the server-side components that process the output from the front-end. Depending on the size of a Web development project, it may be carried out by a multi-skilled individual (sometimes called a web master), or a project manager may oversee collaborative design between group members with specialized skills. In the following image, take a look at Yahoo website some 13 years ago. (Yes Gif images were a really big thing back then )

www.yahoo.com as it looked like in 1996 through the time machine

Now at the time of writing this course, you can easily notice how web design evolved ever since to reach what we see as given facts now. Notice the layout design which aims to help the visitor to find the information he might be looking for in the easiest and the quickiest way possible.

www.yahoo.com at 26th October 2009

In the next part we’ll discuss the harsh reality about the internet in general and in web design. See you then!

WEB DESIGN ESSENTIALS COURSE

1. Introduction to web design
2. The harsh reality about the internet for web designers
3. Elements of successful web design
4. Web design phases
   • Preflight
   • Design concepts
   • Finalizing a prototype design
   • Creating a template
5. Design Elements examples and best practice
6. Web design tools

So tune in and see you soon at Part 1: Introduction to web design

The recent stats from Net Applications show that there are alot of changes happening to the way people are using the internet. If we go back in time last year 2008 we’ll notice that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with all its different versions was dominating the browsers market with a share of almost 75%.

Web browsers market shares in 2008

While IE was gaining three quarters of the market we could easily notice Mozilla’s Firefox holding about 19%

Net Applications tries to be very specific about the sources they use to generate this state-of-the-art reports as stated on their website.

We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers.  The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month.

Web browsers market shares until September 2009

This year, 2009 and even before it ends, at the time of writing this report near the end of September we can easily notice 3 rising stars, Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome while Internet Explorer even with the launch of it’s 8th version; IE8 has lost its ground by approximately 7% down to 68%. Unless the makers of Internet Explorer try to investigate the reasons for that, the lost ground will expand even more in the future giving a way to the likes of Chrome.

“If at the two-year birthday we’re not at least 5 percent (market share), I will be exceptionally disappointed. And if at the three year birthday we’re not at 10 percent, I will be exceptionally disappointed,” Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson said.

This is the first post in Joptima/Blog. The main reason why Joptima started this subsidiary blogging website is to showcase our work basically. Plus we will talk here about various website related topics, reviewing different web-related technologies, CSS, navigation techniques, website surgeries… etc.

So tune in folks, see you soon!