W3C = WorldWideWeb Consortium
Tim Berners-Lee, inventer of the World Wide Web, has served as the director of W3C since its inception in 1994. Was it really so recent as 1989 that the World Wide Web was started? I remember that year. It seems so weird to have something so seminal to have been developed within my lifetime. Other generations have been able to mark time with significant world events such as wars and assassinations. For my generation, we luckily don’t have much to mark time by. Sometimes we talk about where we were when we heard that Kurt Cobain or Princess Di had died. Other than that, it’s been fairly (thankfully) quiet.
But the significance of the invention of computers and the internet are certainly notable. I always think about this when I see kids who are so comfortable on computers. My generation had to deal with learning both how to use the metric system and how to use computers when both were just beginning. We had to deal with the growing pains of technology and learning from teachers who were new at this stuff themselves. The end result was confusion.
I suppose that’s why the W3C was started…to combat confusion through the creation of standards and guidelines. However, when anything like that is started, you have to wonder if the point is inclusion or exclusion. One of the W3C’s stated goals is “web for everyone”. Really? I have to wonder how many people can understand and successfully follow the W3C’s 90 standards and guidelines. To me, it seems that the more hoops a group wants you to jump through, the more they want you to fail. That may be a pessimistic view, but it’s how I feel. Maybe I’m just in a mood because I found a nail, and a leak, in my tire.
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) focuses on accessibility for people with disabilities. For this initiative, a disability can include visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. This, I suppose, works towards W3C’s goal of web accessibility for everyone, which is very nice and politically correct. W3C’s opinion is that these accessibility guidelines will also benefit completely able folk who have different used needs, preferences, and “situations” (more specifically, technology and equipment), which can affect their ability to access and use the internet. I think that they mean that the easier a website is to use, the easier it is to be used.
One of the “situations” that might affect users’ ability to use the internet is basic intelligence and/or gullibility. Because info that is on the internet is mostly unedited and unchecked, any person with the technology and some know-how can put out anything they want. Anyone can do it. And the problem is that we, the users, have little way to tell the fact from the fiction.
In some ways, the use of Alt tags can help combat this problem (as well as the inclusive function they can serve for people who don’t have powerful connections…Alt tags can let those users know what a photo is before it loads, or if it can’t be loaded at all). A few years ago, I almost fell victim to an internet scam. I received a phone call saying that I had won a trip to Florida. They gave me the URL, where I could check out my prize. The hotel looked amazing in the photo. But for some reason, while I was looking at the site, I let my mouse hover over the photo. The cursor let me know that the photo which the company was pretending to be their hotel in Florida, was actually a resort in the Mediterrannean. The clever crooks hadn’t even bothered to change the Alt tag. Needless to say, I didn’t take advantage of that prize trip.
And that’s just another reason why Alt tags are handy.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Who is Jakob Nielsen, anyway?
I feel stupid for not looking into this Jakob Nielsen character before I was told to look into him. It should have occurred to me to wonder "who is this guy, anyway?" But I didn't, and that's just another sad example of my complacency and (somewhat) blind faith in my instructors. I trusted that June had a good reason to get us to read about Nielsen.
Now that I've done a little research, I'm still a little puzzled. Although he was one of the first experts on human-computer interaction (ie useability), he certainly isn't the last. This website certainly has some interesting things to say about the possibe outdatedness of Nielsen. The author of this website certainly wants to discredit Nielsen, and I think that he has some interesting things to say. He certainly has a point when he says that "Nielsen's personal website defiantly retains its 1997 look and feel." Nielsen apparently has defended himself by saying that he isn't a "designer". Um, no kidding.
But that brings up an interesting point (which is also discussed on the Demystifying Useability website): why doesn't Nielsen focus on designing a useable and beautiful website. Surely the two qualities are exclusive; surely they could be combined effectively.
However, he'd be a little late, this website, Design Observer, seems to handle this quiet nicely. It's not perfect. The homepage is awfully long. But I believe that there are enough breaks throughout the homepage that it doesn't get to be too much. There are always interesting articles and discussions about design on this website.
____________
Now about Crawford Killian: It's amazing how much of his advice has been taught to us in other classes (but at greater length and complexity). The concept of exformation is incredibly close to the concepts of background information and knowledge structures that we learned in Diana Wegner's classes. It's a risky concept in that you have to assume, correctly, how much knowledge your audience already possesses AND you have to assume, correctly, what bits of information will trigger that background knowledge. But this point reinforces the underlying message: know your audience. It's a difficult thing, but it is important.
Speaking of difficult and important...here's a photo of my dog in the snow.
Now that I've done a little research, I'm still a little puzzled. Although he was one of the first experts on human-computer interaction (ie useability), he certainly isn't the last. This website certainly has some interesting things to say about the possibe outdatedness of Nielsen. The author of this website certainly wants to discredit Nielsen, and I think that he has some interesting things to say. He certainly has a point when he says that "Nielsen's personal website defiantly retains its 1997 look and feel." Nielsen apparently has defended himself by saying that he isn't a "designer". Um, no kidding.
But that brings up an interesting point (which is also discussed on the Demystifying Useability website): why doesn't Nielsen focus on designing a useable and beautiful website. Surely the two qualities are exclusive; surely they could be combined effectively.
However, he'd be a little late, this website, Design Observer, seems to handle this quiet nicely. It's not perfect. The homepage is awfully long. But I believe that there are enough breaks throughout the homepage that it doesn't get to be too much. There are always interesting articles and discussions about design on this website.
____________
Now about Crawford Killian: It's amazing how much of his advice has been taught to us in other classes (but at greater length and complexity). The concept of exformation is incredibly close to the concepts of background information and knowledge structures that we learned in Diana Wegner's classes. It's a risky concept in that you have to assume, correctly, how much knowledge your audience already possesses AND you have to assume, correctly, what bits of information will trigger that background knowledge. But this point reinforces the underlying message: know your audience. It's a difficult thing, but it is important.
Speaking of difficult and important...here's a photo of my dog in the snow.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Week 2: Post on Crawford Kilian by Rob Klettke
After the readings last week and this week, I realize that there is so much that can go wrong with websites. The amazing thing is that some of this stuff is so obvious. Why has some of this never occurred to me before? Surely, I've been a victim of bad websites: empty promises, overloaded pages, all-flash-but-no-substance pages, link rot (I like that one). But I've apparently never been too upset for any of this to have scarred me. Or, maybe I'm just too complacent. Or maybe I'm just not self-reflective.
What is interesting about these web writing guidelines is how closely they follow what we have already learned in other classes. We've learned in our technical writing class and our research reports class about the importance of headings for helping readers navigate a document and find the information they're seeking. We learned about user-focused writing in those classes, too.
The most interesting (to me) point that Crawford Kilian makes in this book is about clarity. He asks "Are you using long complicated words just because you can, when shorter ones would really be more clear and straightforward?" This statement reminds me of something we read in our language studies class. An experiment was conducted using writers who were novices and writers who were extremely comfortable in their roles. The new writers tended to use long, $5 words and complex sentence structures, while the experienced, more comfortable writers used simple words in short sentences. The theory was that the inexperienced writers inflated their language to cover up their inexperience.
This makes me wonder: considering that the internet is so young compared to other kinds of written communication, maybe it's its youth which is causing these kinds of overinflated errors in the use of language. I think it's that, and the fact that the software makes it easy for people to write and publish for themselves. There's nothing holding people back from using all the bells and whistles, possibly to disguise the fact that they don't know what they're doing.
Now, let's talk about web sites. I became familiar with these web sites after picking up books which were written by each web sites' author. You'll notice that I chose carefully the verb I used in that previous sentence because after picking up the books, I read one and I gave up on the other. Why? Because like the web sites, one of the books was more user-friendly.
I like this one because I think that it is designed well (and because if you watch the home page for long enough, you'll see a naughty illustration of dinousaurs). There is good, useful information on this web site, and she conveys it with intelligence and humour.
On the other hand, I don't like this one because I don't think that it was designed well. The home page is visually loud...it is the modern equivalent of those really old posters which used a different font for each line. There is too much on the home page, and, visitors have to (gasp!) scroll. I find this extremely ironic because Mr. Tufte is apparently a guru of information design.
So you can probably guess that I read the "Thinking with Type" book (which I recommend to everyone), and I really like that website. This means that I didn't read the Edward R. Tufte book which I found in a used bookstore in Bellingham. It's dense (I am NOT!) and confusing and quite unreadable. So is the website.
What is interesting about these web writing guidelines is how closely they follow what we have already learned in other classes. We've learned in our technical writing class and our research reports class about the importance of headings for helping readers navigate a document and find the information they're seeking. We learned about user-focused writing in those classes, too.
The most interesting (to me) point that Crawford Kilian makes in this book is about clarity. He asks "Are you using long complicated words just because you can, when shorter ones would really be more clear and straightforward?" This statement reminds me of something we read in our language studies class. An experiment was conducted using writers who were novices and writers who were extremely comfortable in their roles. The new writers tended to use long, $5 words and complex sentence structures, while the experienced, more comfortable writers used simple words in short sentences. The theory was that the inexperienced writers inflated their language to cover up their inexperience.
This makes me wonder: considering that the internet is so young compared to other kinds of written communication, maybe it's its youth which is causing these kinds of overinflated errors in the use of language. I think it's that, and the fact that the software makes it easy for people to write and publish for themselves. There's nothing holding people back from using all the bells and whistles, possibly to disguise the fact that they don't know what they're doing.
Now, let's talk about web sites. I became familiar with these web sites after picking up books which were written by each web sites' author. You'll notice that I chose carefully the verb I used in that previous sentence because after picking up the books, I read one and I gave up on the other. Why? Because like the web sites, one of the books was more user-friendly.
I like this one because I think that it is designed well (and because if you watch the home page for long enough, you'll see a naughty illustration of dinousaurs). There is good, useful information on this web site, and she conveys it with intelligence and humour.
On the other hand, I don't like this one because I don't think that it was designed well. The home page is visually loud...it is the modern equivalent of those really old posters which used a different font for each line. There is too much on the home page, and, visitors have to (gasp!) scroll. I find this extremely ironic because Mr. Tufte is apparently a guru of information design.
So you can probably guess that I read the "Thinking with Type" book (which I recommend to everyone), and I really like that website. This means that I didn't read the Edward R. Tufte book which I found in a used bookstore in Bellingham. It's dense (I am NOT!) and confusing and quite unreadable. So is the website.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
My first thought is that this guy needs to take some tech writing classes. He needs to distinguish between regular text and special terms by highlighting or italicizing them. The third paragraph in the first section (Bad search) is a bit confusing because the sentence starts with the word "search" which is being used as a noun and not as a verb. It was a bit of a stumble for me. I found this interesting because he's preaching about usability, and this seemed incongruous.
I like this point: "A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location, since it's the culmination of your journey." It makes sense, and really evokes the notion of a world wide web and of the concept/layout of a website. It also evokes the notion of "searching" which is what people are usually doing when they're on the internet.
Here are some samples:
http://www.eopd.com/
This web site, for a police department, is too much about the animation, which makes it look like an advertisement (Mistake #7)
http://www.customhousenumbers.com/
This web site, ironically, doesn't allow users to adjust the font size (except for the toolbar). Do they think that old people may not want to buy custom house numbers?
I got these two websites from this website: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/, which is one person's personal attack on bad web design. Enjoy!
I like this point: "A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location, since it's the culmination of your journey." It makes sense, and really evokes the notion of a world wide web and of the concept/layout of a website. It also evokes the notion of "searching" which is what people are usually doing when they're on the internet.
Here are some samples:
http://www.eopd.com/
This web site, for a police department, is too much about the animation, which makes it look like an advertisement (Mistake #7)
http://www.customhousenumbers.com/
This web site, ironically, doesn't allow users to adjust the font size (except for the toolbar). Do they think that old people may not want to buy custom house numbers?
I got these two websites from this website: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/dailysucker/, which is one person's personal attack on bad web design. Enjoy!
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