Why is it that so far no web application platform, framework or content management “solution” seems to care about the UX of the applications they are responsible for creating? Systems such as React, node.js, Zend, Drupal, Rails, etc. allow for the debugging of code, the optimisation of resources, ease of configuration and deployment. But they…
Category: Coding
A couple of years ago, I was obliged to find out about the user experience of Verified by Visa and the Mastercard SecureCode systems for inclusion on our site. it was plain to me from the outset that the designers of 3-D Secure (the protocal on which these are based) had not a clue about…
About a year ago, I decided to turn off pagination on this blog. If you scroll down, you will see at least the introduction to every post I’ve ever made – approaching 700 now. The reason I did this was to have some counter evidence to give people when they tell me that long pages…
I’m watching the keynote from Google I/O the other day and it’s impressive stuff, technically at least. I can count on the fingers of one hand the occasions I’ve wanted (or needed) to collaborate on the same document in real-time with anyone, but I shall curb my natural cynicism. The mere fact that they are…
When Apple launched the Mac, one of its supposed great advantages was that it was graphical. “Just point and click” – what could be easier? Certainly better than the awful DOS (or even UNIX) command line! The command line was thus condemned to be seen as symbolic of the old school. Arcane commands typed in…
While I yield to no man in my admiration of Tim Rowe, I cannot accept his latest invitation to join him on faviki.com. This is because I have resolved to boycott any new service unless it supports OpenID. I have written to Faviki about this. Let’s see what happens (nothing probably), but in my opinion,…
…ding it to me) “Professional Paranoid” Peter Gutmann, of the Department of Computer Science in Auckland, lists a deluge of flat-out evil business models and techniques in use by spammers and online criminals. This assessment of the current (but fast-moving) state of the industry fairly leaves me quaking. The fact that I run Linux makes me feel hardly any better when I read things like “Stolen personal information is so easily available that the be…
With the advent of Thermo “some time next year” things are at last hotting up in the RIA design space. Regular readers of this blog (if there are any such people) will know that I have been wondering for a long time in a somewhat Pooh-bearish way about the future of “The Designer” in the…
…aking pages load faster across the site for everyone and cut out some unwelcome spammy behaviors. Both of these new limits apply equally to free and pro account members.” This is the right way of doing system limits in my opinion. Far too often I am asked by developers when designing a system to impose some arbitrary limit on things like input fields or address book entries or whatever. Not only am I extremely reluctant to put a cramp on my users’…
I’ve been reading 37 Signals’s book Getting Real on line. This caused a bit of stir when it came out as it self-consciously throws out the rule book(s) on application development and looks firmly towards the new dawn of Web 2.0, and (sort of) in the direction of an extreme “agile” methodology. All the rage.…
I went to the Microsoft Campus yesterday to have an informal preview of some of the new Windows UI things to be announced next week (technically under NDA – so sue me).
…ed with a graphics package) into a format (HTML) generally suitable for “decomposition” in some way. So why doesn’t that happen for the content that those HTML templates display via the CMS? The content is, after all, dependent on the page designs. Whether a news article has a title and a sub-title on some pages, or an image and a box-out on other pages are all consequences of the design of those pages. For that matter, whether text is too long fo…
…best thing. I’m a bit unclear as to how the finer principles work, but I think I’m getting there. After half an hour I had a pure CSS version of the home page just working by example from www.csszengarden.com, a site a very beautiful person at work told me about. Not long perhaps before the trough of disillusionment, but so far, it’s fun!…
…d in Firefox, not a target browser, I’d be surprised if more than 0.1% of {company name} customers us it. And they’d be geeks. Me: I’d be surprised if more than 0.1% of {company name} customers use screen readers, text browsers or are classified disabled. You were pointing out an accessibility issue, remember? He: Hrmph. It’s a fair cop. Funny how people are about this stuff. (BTW, if anyone at work is reading this, I turn my chat logs at work off…