We spend a lot of time carefully crafting the visual aspects of websites. This important aesthetic quality helps to shape someone’s first impression when they visit your website. However, as a greater length of time is spent on the site there becomes a blindness to this outer shell, and the content that you have within it is what should shine.
This is often a forgotten or neglected aspect of website creation. In her article “Starting Out Organized” posted on Smashing Magazine, Kirstin Wemmer explains different methods of content planning and organization. These are all important tools to be used (when needed) at particular stages in the website creation process.
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This article by Craig Mod has sparked a very interesting debate amongst his readers – paper ‘vs’ digital. While many people commented about environmental factors (less trees being cut down) or the timeless qualities of print, I didn’t see anything about how through making content digital it allows for speedy duplication and dissemination. For a child in with an OLPC in Mozambique to a iPad in New York, they would all have access to content and stories without being reliant on having to purchase it in paper form.
Read the article: http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/
Citi Research analyst Mark Mahaney talks about growth areas across the Internet this year
View the full article here.
The device designed by Poke tells its Twitter followers that something hot and fresh has just popped out of the local bakery’s oven.
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In his article “The Meta Narrative, Designing Beautiful User Experiences” Josh discusses the meta-narrative in UX design. The meta-narrative is the story and experience that a website communicates to it’s users. The article gives a few pointers on what makes an interesting meta-narrative, for example: “The current design trend of employing varying magazine styled page layouts for blog posts is a true testament to the phenomenon of the “meta-narrative”. Every blog post tells a unique story; not only in terms of content but more importantly how a user can potentially engage with and decode the displayed information.”
Read the full article here
“People tell us that they don’t mind scrolling and the behaviour we see in user testing backs that up. We see that people are more than comfortable scrolling long, long pages to find what they are looking for. A quick snoop around the web will show you successful brands that are not worrying about the fold either.”
CX Partners advice:
- Don’t cram everything above the fold. Use whitespace and imagery to encourage scrolling.
- Don’t use stark, horizontal lines as they discourage scrolling
- Avoid the use of in-page scroll bars – the browser scrollbar is an indicator of the amount of content on the page
View the full article here
Firefox hit a new milestone today, as version 3.5 overtook Internet Explorer 7.0 with nearly 22% of the browser market, according to statistics from web analytics service StatCounter.
We’ve moved to brand new shiny offices and we’re already settled and happy in our new spot. We’ve got (almost) 360 degree views, plenty of space to create, and two balconies so we can choose which one we’d like to have a barbeque on.
If we’ve tempted you enough and you’d like to come and visit us, our entrance is on Searle Lane (between Angel Devine and Catch & Kiss, or opposite Hells Pizza).
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