A few years ago I had the opportunity to sit down with a designer possessed of a rare talent. We were both part of the same team and he was creating some UI elements that I was to wire up. As I sat there (in awe) watching him work I realized that much of his considerable skill was rooted in fundamentals not unlike the art of programming. Of course, there are design skills that are intuitive that can’t be "learned." But, that can also be said of the logical clarity found in a really elegant data model or a brilliant inheritance tree. I am certainly no designer, but I have observed the more creative among us for several years and have gained some insight into their world. In this article I’ll share some basic principles that can help raise your design acumen and improve the experience of your users.
Categorie: usability
10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs
Web design consists, for the most part, of interface design. There are many techniques involved in crafting beautiful and functional interfaces. Here’s my collection of 10 that I think you’ll find useful in your work. They’re not related to any particular theme, but are rather a collection of techniques I use in my own projects. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Smashing Magazine – 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs
Opera: Web Standards Curriculum
As the most standards-compliant Web browser, Opera is dedicated to promoting Web standards across the globe. Web standards make the Web available to anyone, on any device, anywhere in the world.
Opera has created the Web Standards Curriculum (WSC) in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network. This tutorial course takes students from complete beginner to having a solid grounding in standards-based Web design, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development. The course is supported by top companies and organizations such as the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and Yahoo!.
Split into more than 50 focused articles, students can follow the curriculum from start to finish or simply read articles that interest them the most. Each article contains essential theory, practical examples, and exercise questions. The first 41 articles are now published, and roughly ten ones covering JavaScript basics will follow ASAP, to complete the course.
Why should you incorporate the Opera WSC into your curriculum? Web standards in a Web site promote efficiency, ease of maintenance, accessibility, device compatibility, and search optimization. The Opera WSC features the most up-to-date practices in Web standards. Best of all, the course is free, requiring no expensive textbooks.
Migrate apps from Internet Explorer to Mozilla
When Netscape started the Mozilla browser, it made the conscious decision to support W3C standards. As a result, Mozilla is not fully backwards-compatible with Netscape Navigator 4.x and Microsoft Internet Explorer legacy code; for example, Mozilla does not support as I will discuss later. Browsers, like Internet Explorer 4, that were built before the conception of W3C standards inherited many quirks. In this article, I will describe Mozilla’s quirks mode, which provides strong backwards HTML compatibility with Internet Explorer and other legacy browsers.
» Alternatief voor W3C-validator – Gigadesign, XHTML-CSS website maken
Als je met webstandaarden bezig bent en er belang bij hebt dat al je pagina’s in orde zijn heb je de plicht om toch bijna elke pagina te checken in de W3C-validator. Dit kan een tijdrovende bezigheid zijn als je met 100+ documenten zit.
Gigadesign, XHTML-CSS website maken – Alternatief voor W3C-validator
Sitepoint HTML Reference (beta)
Nifty Navigation Using CSS
Unless you limit yourself to one-page web sites, you’ll need to design navigation. In fact, navigation is among the most important parts of any web design, and requires a great deal of thought if visitors are to move around your site easily.
Helping your client maintain markup quality | 456 Berea Street
One thing that is particularly frustrating with caring about Web standards and accessibility is what often happens after your work is done and a site is handed over to the client.
I’m sure most of you have been there. Despite your hard work to educate the client’s editor(s), regardless of the style guide you wrote, and no matter how much time you spent patching the CMS they use, there will be problems.
456 Berea Street: Helping your client maintain markup quality
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : Testing designs for color-blindness
10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of
Sometimes you just want to get the information you’re after, save it and move along. And you can’t. Usability nightmares — which are rather the daily routine than an exception — appear every now and again; usually almost every time you type your search keywords in Google. In his article “Why award-winning websites are so awful” Gerry McGovern points out that “the shiny surface wins awards, real substance wins customers” and that is absolutely true. Nevermind what design you have, and nevermind which functionality you have to offer — if your visitors don’t understand how they can get from point A to point B they won’t use your site.
10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of
from Smashing Magazine