Siolon

A trendy topic amongst CSS’ers is the CSS reset. The idea is that you intercept the default browser stylesheet (that is used first in the cascade), reset, and then apply generic styles including margin/padding. I read many articles by many gurus, but I eventually came out with what I have below. For differing implementations check out this great “killer collection” of resets, and note that this won’t work in IE6 due to the universal selector but I’m ok with that. EDIT: My syntax highlighting plugin added “baseline” in there twice, and it shouldn’t be there. If you view it (read more...)

Usability testing is often overlooked to the peril of both the developer and the consumer. I was convicted reading Steve Krug’s book on usability to go ahead with testing even if it’s small and cheap. In doing this for the recent design of this site I wanted to share how I did usability testing for all of $60. Feedback Form The first thing I did was create a form in Wufoo, a powerful form building application, to receive feedback. I made it simple and short (I had to keep it to 10 fields in the free version). (read more...)

At work we are currently re-doing the architecture of our user interface (UI) layer. We sat down to discuss what our objectives should be in doing this initiative, and I found the objectives so compelling that I think it could apply to any user interface. Below are the major objectives in constructing a UI: consistency, usability, navigation, visual appeal, interoperability, performance, and accessibility. I should first say that this list and its corresponding description are not intended to be exhaustive. I realize that there are many layers of complexity in this endeavor. Also, you’ll see how inter-dependent (read more...)