Archive for December, 2004

On choosing the right media for important messages

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004

That should talk talk for itself.

A few days ago, still wearing our white seminar badges, and not knowing it, my colleague (who had just farted, but that’s an entire other story, yet still, maybe not, depending on your interpretational ease of virtue) – we drove by a billboard saying “Amnesia? Check out our new website”. This being a hyperlink cirkus, you’d propably expect me to post that link. I can’t. But know how to spell dyslexia. Now.
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Small area in Denmark disclosed as Swedish property

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004

We’ve exposed at least one German area before, and we’re not letting the cotton coat people stop us from exposing another country-in-the-country incident that no one knew about. Until now.

Map24.dk

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Accessibility links and usability crosswords

Monday, December 20th, 2004

If you’re in a hurry and need to memorize a few usability words (Nielsen, probing, advanced, verbose, etc) before a meeting, you do crosswords, usability crosswords.

Answers

ACROSS

5 User; 6 Efficiency; 7 Scope; 12 CIF; 14 Screener; 16 Tracking; 17 Mood; 18 Observer; 21 Lab;

24 Eleven; 26 Advanced; 27 Binomial; 32 Pilot; 34 Silent; 36 Aloud; 37 Errors; 38 Leading

DOWN

1 Metric; 2 QUIS; 3 Demo; 4 Nielsen; 6 Eye; 8 Portable; 9 Task; 10 Scenario; 11 Verbose; 13

Formative; 14 Six; 15 Jakob; 19 Video; 20 Usability; 22 Analysis; 23 Test Plan; 25 Salience; 28

ISO; 29 Stats; 30 Probing; 31 Judging; 33 Twelve; 35 Brand

A bit more useful, some would say, Userfocus has a list of web accessibility tools in their resources section.
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You go places, you meet people

Wednesday, December 15th, 2004

Just had a chat with a consultant from IBM. Not that I ever wanted to know anything about their new Blade servers. Well. Not that I do now. The interesting part of this is where we met.


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This website is following several (some) design trends for 2005

Friday, December 10th, 2004

Why? Because it’s brown. Yes. We’ve been surfing tonight. Web agency Forty Media recently compiled a list of what they think will be the trends in webdesign for 2005. The most important ones include

  • Color of the year: Brown
  • Effort: Minimalism is out; detail is in.
  • Out: Retro; Swiss/Euro; Minimal; “that standards-compliant look”
  • Tech grays and blues take a sabbatical; may not be back soon.
  • Pure red (the “new blue” of the past few years) falls into disfavor.
  • Web-safe palette is at last widely understood to be obsolete; Web-smart palette takes over.
  • Lots of “in-between” colors (yellow-greens, red-oranges, etc.) used to achieve fresh looks Designers realize that Verdana is ugly; most stop using it.
  • The novelty of Georgia as a body text type wears off; still used for headings.
  • Heading text increasingly done in serif typefaces
  • Table-using designers increasingly seen as belonging to a lower caste.
  • Flash widgets come into common use; full-site Flash still regarded as “sucks.”

So there.

Forty Media: 2005 web design forecast
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I’ve been doing something else lately

Friday, December 10th, 2004

You’ve probably not been wondering why I haven’t posted in quite a while. Instead of raving about coldness, I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to.

Yes! I’ve been playing Desktop Domino. The image is your visual QuickStart guide – and it does NOT matter what kind of icons you use as dominos. They all work. And then again, they actually don’t. Some icons, the Recycle Bin, all folders, and applications such as Internet Explorer Firefox accept dropped icons – and that’s what disqualifies them for Desktop Domino. Use them as jokers if you need excitement. I’m comfortable without them, but it’s really a matter of taste.

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