IA/Usability

by codepo8 | Your site navigation is what helps the visitors to find your content. Don't make it a technical portfolio but a helper tool. This article shows how the simplicity of real life navigational helpers can be applied to the web. Read More »

by ThomH | We all know that color can make or break a site. But beyond eye candy appeal, color choices also impact usability and accessibility. This can impact up to 1 in 12 people, roughly 8% of a site's potential audience. The solution is not to use only boring colors or do only simple designs. In contrast, by understanding better the relationship between color and accessibility, the designer can make inspired and creative choices for the multi-device Internet. Read More »

by codepo8 | Dynamic elements make web pages more fun, more interactive and allow us to make pages more usable - if we have CSS, Javascript and a mouse at our disposal. This article discusses some uses of dynamic page elements with accessibility and usability in mind and shows where they fail and what to do to make them better. Read More »

by trenton | Hypertext links are what connects web pages together and are at the very core of the Internet. As they're so important it's essential that your link text is effectively written and displayed - find out how. Read More »

by codepo8 | Accessibility and Usability are discussed a lot more lately than the last few years. Many rumours and half truths about accessibility and the law make non technical colleagues come up to us with questions about accessiibility. Most developers make the mistake of considering accessibility a technological problem, which is only partly the case. We do not need new technology, as old browsers are here to stay, we need to rethink the design of the products we make, we need to learn to let go. Read More »

by codepo8 | What is the best tool to develop web products? Is there one that helps us create faster, more efficient and clean without costing a lot of money? Yes, there is, and you have been using it for ages. Read More »

by codepo8 | You want them, you need them - Users. Hear from one of them what you might do wrong and what you can do to make up for that. Read More »

by dl_byron | The purpose of the article is to share my experience with Flash accessibility and offer the readers tips to make it work. Hearing your site can be quite unnerving, especially when the voice of Stephen Hawking reads it. There's also a Flash accessibility gotcha that I explain. It's not a “breakthrough-code” article, but should be helpful to those that want to make their Flash more accessible. Read More »

by dkr | Don't know what a persona is? Want an interesting and fairly easy way to help you get to know and advocate for your users? Practical Persona Creation is a simple overview, with a few real world examples, of how to create and use personas as well as some ideas to get you started learning about personas and thinking about your user when you design and build Web sites. Read More »

by dkr | Not everyone has time to conduct a formal usability study, or the money to invest in a full blown usability initiative, and frankly, lots of times that might not be the best option anyway. Sometimes a designer or developer needs that one-on-one, maker-to-user interface. Gorilla Usability will show you some ways to get to know your users in a real world, out-from-behind-the-glass kind of way. Read More »