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Writing Style for Print vs. Web | Jakob Nielsens Alertbox
Summary: Linear vs. non-linear. Author-driven vs. reader-driven. Storytelling vs. ruthless pursuit of actionable content. Anecdotal examples vs. comprehensive data. Sentences vs. fragments.
A List Apart: Articles: The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters)
The dawn of the web has frequently been compared to the invention of the printing press. But the web has also destroyed one of the greatest features of nearly every press since Gutenberg: the ability to publish pleasing type. The printing press gave us type that was clearer and easier to read than that produced from a typewriter, because the typesetter had additional tools at his disposal—and knew how to use them. The web has cost us some of those tools.
Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
I’ve been reluctant to discuss one of the findings from our eyetracking research because the conclusion is that unethical design pays off.
This is too important to skip. Please read it.
westciv :: XRAY web developer’s suite:
HOW DO I USE XRAY? Step 1: Just drag the link titled “XRAY” below to your bookmarks bar, or otherwise add it as a bookmark in your bowser.
This is quite handy for “in-window” debugging.
(Via Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : For web developers and iPhone users.)
Mac OS X Things » Netjuke vs. PHP 5
So, I got my PHP 5 to work, and talk to MySQL. I wonder if Netjuke works? Nope. Not at all. Everywhere I read I see that Netjuke is not supported and will never work on PHP 5. Use Jinzora they say. Uck - that wasn’t fun.
Mac OS X Things » Getting to PHP 5
10.3.9 - no help beyond 4.3.11 from Marc Liyanage.
Apple’s 4.4 is of no help - no GD support, missing other things - PEAR, XML things, etc.
How do I make a compatible build?
I saw a reference to this over at Dave’s Scripting News
Make sure that you scroll down beyond the camera lists to see the charts.
These graphs show the number of Flickr members who have uploaded at least one photo with a particular camera on a given day over the last year.
What a wonderful example of doing something interesting with unintended data. They mine the images and use it to create useful information for consumers, and probably producers as well.
I wonder if they sell custom intelligence to the camera makers?
What a difference a little conf file makes! So, we here at AFP548.com are by no means DBAs in any way shape or form. We cross our fingers every time we upgrade the server that MySQL works when it comes up. We’re not sure what we’d do if it didn’t.
I tried it. First impression is that dynamic pages on the blogs are faster.
OK. I admit it. I don’t run a stock browser (Safari) on my Mac.
Back a while ago I started to experience “loss of minimize” on my system (after update to 10.4.6). The Minimize button, keyboard shortcut, menu item - all disabled. Mostly only happened with Safari left running a long time. Sometimes (most) it would cause all the other applications to lose Minimize as well.
I switched to Firefox for a while. Decided to try and “fix” Safari. Spent a week finding a “culprit” and finally switched back to Safari full time.
Now comes 10.4.7 - back comes the death of Minimize - with a vengance.
I couldn’t remember any web thing that Firefox wouldn’t do, but I still don’t like the lack of a left-hand margin of sufficient size on the toolbars. It just doesn’t look great. But you know? It works! More things work better/differently than with Safari (read that Wordpress editing, phpMyAdmin)
- Safari Bookmark Exporter
- Schubert PDF plugin
- Web Developer add-on
- Sage (RSS)
Running an older version of Mac OS X Server
Want out of the Apple update cycle
Want to (possibly) convert all the software to DarwinPorts versions
Want to have a dialog?
Avoid Within-Page Links (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
Users have developed a strong mental model for link following, which has several elements: Clicking a link navigates you to a new place. After you click, the old page goes away. A new page loads into the window, replacing the old page. You first see the top of the new page. The Back button returns you to the old page.
Preferred to export Apple’s Address Book to Mozilla Thunderbird. Simply drag all contacts from the Address Book to your desktop and upload the created vCard file.
Creating good websites : Writing
Writing on the Web is not the same as writing for print; users have different attitudes and also have more difficulty reading from the screen. On the Web, writing must be concise and must support flexible reading strategies.
The Man in Blue > Writing > Perspective Archives
As the unwanted orphan of web pages, forms are neglected by many and designed by few. Most people are content to put in some text fields, some bold text and a submit button. I’ve come across quite a few tutorials on how to make forms as eye-achingly colourful as possible, and on how to customise form widgets in ways that Safari promptly ignores, but I can’t find any articles telling you how to use semantic, accessible code along with CSS to make better form layout
This is so nicely simple. I added the columnarForm elements to my stylesheet, and presto! I have a good looking and functional columnar form.
Web Design References: Cascading Style Sheets:
Cascading Style Sheets Tutorials: (General | Forms | Fonts | Inheritance & Specificity | Lists | Media | Positioning & Layout | Tables (data) | Selectors | Misc. Tutorials) | Browsers | Doctype | Comprehensive Sites | FAQs | Inspiration | Articles & Related Links Tutorials:
Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) Behind a website’s superficial appearance lies its fundamental understanding of user behavior in an interactive service. Choices such as whether the “buy” button is red or orange or whether the navigation menu runs across the top or down the left side are much debated, but make at most a few percent difference in usability. In contrast, the design ideology can make or break a site.
Test the magic pullquote
Spiffy Stuff. How about that? I think I might actually use this little bit of things…
Mandarin Design: Text Tricks:
<p style=”float:right;width:30%;padding:8px;border:1px solid black;font-size:0.8em;margin:20px;background-color:whitesmoke;”>
That’s the code for the first pullquote here. Not much to it.”
(Via Scripty Goddess.)
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p>NetNewsWire 2.0 Status: “So—where’s NetNewsWire 2.0?
Well, we’re working quite hard on it—which is why I haven’t been doing much posting, and why if you’ve sent me email I may not have replied.
It’s not ready for a public beta yet. The main new features are all in place. What remains is fixing bugs, adding a couple small features, updating the Help, adding polish, basically just taking care of all the many little details.
In other words, we’re in the final sprint. The to-do list is down to 95 items.
(Via inessential.com.)
OmniWeb 5.0: The Powerful Web Browser (16-Aug-2004;…: “OmniWeb 5.0: The Powerful Web Browser (16-Aug-2004; 13.2K)”
(Via TidBITS.)
Bryan Bell: Mainly Design News Since I got back, I’ve been experimenting with wordPress, which is a fairly mature blogging tool.
Servers are all back Databases are all back Backup procedures being modified as we speak
Puttyworld sells a $9 magnetic silly putty substance — and it’s goth black to boot.
Black Thinking Putty noticably responds to a magnet. Try pulling out a thin strand with your fingers and holding the magnet nearby. Or roll it into a ball and watch it roll right to the magnet, even uphill. The stronger the magnet the better the result, Neodymium Iron Boron works best. You can purchase some from our accessories category.
(via FARK) [Boing Boing Blog]
I had basically ignored the “Post To Weblog” function in NetNewsWire.
http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/
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p> Silly me. It’s such an easy thing to do. All I did was change the visible label of my primary blog to show up first in the list - that helps when I don’t have the weblog editor open at the start.
Good Experience - The Page Paradigm
- - - - - - - - - - The Page Paradigm - - - - - - - - - - | | | On any given Web page, users will either… | | | | - click something that appears to take them closer | | to the fulfillment of their goal, | | | | - or click the Back button on their Web browser. | | | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This is for Christine - follow these simple instructions (pardon my euphemistic use of that word)
Radio UserLand : How to move Radio to another computer
If you want to move Radio to another machine (including moving Radio to a machine running another operating system), you can do so by making a clean install of Radio and copying your data files over.
Why make the user ask a question when we can provide the answer?
Fired up NetNewsWire
OK, So Dave has made this spiffy tool that can be used to post to weblogs. Is this any easier? Do I want to do it in this way?
I don’t really know…
for me than NetNewsWire. Well, here’s a post.
installed 4.3.2 based on the beta from Marc Liyanage
I moved my stories and saved articles from my Radio web site into the MT blog.
I’m using Extended Entry for the bulk of the text entries, with some categorization.
Seems to work for me…
It doesn’t make a lot of sense yet
I switched the default stylesheet to use percentages for fonts instead of named sizes…
xx-small 70% x-small 85% small 100% large 115% x-large 130%
NorthSoft Productions: Products: dynAdmin: Support
If I wanted to run a completely dynamic web site…
drupal.org | community plumbing
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