All Blog Posts (Page 67)

Aug 22, 2006
Web Design

Master List of IE 7 CSS Compatibility Improvements

Markus Mielke, a Program Manager on the Internet Explorer team, has published an exhaustively thorough list of changes to IE 7’s CSS support on the IE Team blog on MSDN. Markus also makes mention of the IE 7 Readiness Toolkit, which provides: ...

Aug 22, 2006
Usability

Bad Errors and Really Bad Errors

One of my favorite websites, the Daily WTF, posted a laundry list of spot-on examples for how not to write an error message a few days back: Press 'Y' if you promise not to do it again. Error: 1>=0. No! - Bad User!!! ... Do not do this again! O...

Aug 21, 2006
Usability

The Dirty Business of Software Updates

Jan Miksovsky wrote a while back about the dirty business of software updates. He describes the difficulty rich client software developers have with updating their software once it’s in the field (truer words were never spoken…it’s a serious pain)...

Aug 21, 2006
UI Design

Is Ugly the New Beautiful?

Will Pearson - a blind doctoral student, Microsoft MVP, and one of my favorite people in the world - posted a comment on my blog this morning about the potentially adverse effects of creating a splash screen that’s actually too attractive: [M]ost ...

Aug 21, 2006
Marketing

How to Get Teens to Pay for Virtual Content

My friend Rob forwarded me a link to an interesting article this morning, entitled How to Get Teens to Pay for Virtual Content from MarketingSherpa (gotta love that name): Teens register for free and create customizable online characters called Ha...

Aug 20, 2006

Mixed Messages

I’m hanging out in my apartment shirtless. I’m going to play Dead Rising on my Xbox 360 and 32” HDTV. While drinking red wine. I’m not sure what sort of message this sends, but I wanted to share it nonetheless. In other news, it’s my homedog Owen...

Aug 20, 2006
Web Design

8 Steps to Better Markup

Tantek Çelik of Technorati, Microsoft, and W3C fame published a great article a few weeks back on how to create and serve better XHTML in eight easy steps. I missed this when it first came out, so maybe you haven’t seen it either. It’s all great s...

Aug 19, 2006
Usability

Screen Resolution Redux

Last Tuesday, I wrote about Jakob Nielsen’s latest thoughts on screen resolution and web browsing. His conclusion was that you should optimize for 1024x768px, but ensure that the site is still usable at 800x600px. I also posted a breakdown of the ...

Aug 18, 2006
Branding

Judging a Book By Its Cover

The GUIdebook is a fantastic archive of OS and application screenshots from the past twenty-plus years. I spent an hour last night browsing through it and rediscovering many old, almost-forgotten friends, including Mac OS 8.0. I could probably wri...

Aug 17, 2006
Web Design

To Hell with Web Standards?

That’s the approach Dare Obasanjo mulled over yesterday on his weblog. He excerpts a blog post from Anne van Kesteren on the subject, discusses his own experiences with the W3C, and ponders our options: The question I sometimes ponder is what's th...