Thursday, October 11, 2007
New Redesign
Last week, I launched a redesign to the Office of Admissions homepage. This redesign was completely fueled by statistical reports from our web analytics software. Besides our homepage, our highest traffic destinations were the majors section and the calendar. Click-through testing found that these areas were not as easy to find as they should be.Therefore, the redesign focused on bringing these areas to the home page. The majors are now available right in the center, and the calendar is integrated into the footer - and every page on the site.
I will run official reports in a month and analyze the data in more depth, but early indications show more click-throughs to the majors and less searches for events.
You can check out the new, more functional design at: http://admissions.unl.edu
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Web Designers Survey
For all web designers out there, you should take this survey. From A List Apart's website:
Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?
The survey can be found at: http://alistapart.com/articles/webdesignsurvey.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
A Digital Revolution
Wow! I just went to digg.com to check out the latest news, and I have stumbled across a new digital revolution. The 16 hexadecimal digits (as of this post, the HD-DVD key was posted to this article at the bottom) that are used to unlock the HD-DVD from their content protection system have been cracked and posted around the internet. And digg made an attempt to keep the numbers off their user generated content site. Whoops!
In reply, the AACS has sent cease and desist letters to Google and many bloggers commanding them to take down the key. One such place was digg.com, and the founders at digg agreed to remove the stories. This set of a whirlwind of protest, where hundreds of digg users have started creating sites mentioning the 16 hexadecimal digits in creative ways. UPDATE: After witnessing the uproar by the digg community, Kevin Rose has changed his mind. Apparently, digg will no longer attempt to remove these stories.
It is fascinating to see all the resistance by the digg community. At one point, every story on the front page made reference to the number!
This just goes to show, in today's modern world the users control your site.
photo from downloadsquad.com
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
JOOST Invitation
Brent Roos is offering an invite to Joost for anyone that plays along with his game. Basically he would people to write a short essay of why they think they should receive an invitation. Based on the comments of his site, everyone who visits his site is either illiterate or doesn't know how to follow instructions. Based on that, this simple paragraph should be enough!
However, I believe in the spirit of sharing and I am excited about trying Joost, so why not explain my reasons. Besides, Brent has a link to a funny YouTube/Google video. I hadn't seen it before and it got me to stay on his site for a while.
For those of you who are not familiar with Joost, it is an IPTV service, a way to get TV over the internet. Currently, the content is lacking (no Heroes, 24, Lost, or SportsCenter), but the technology is promising.
Many of you are familiar with Real Nebraska, our online video recruitment objective. As more and more schools begin to follow our trend, we must come up with new and exciting ways to keep our objective fresh. Enter IPTV. I'm not convinced broadcasting our content through IPTV is the way to go, but I would like to take the opportunity to explore in more detail.
So Brent, if you read this - how about an invite?
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Blog Comments
It appears this blog has been spammed pretty hard with inappropriate comments. Therefore I am turning off all comments until I can put together some ways to counteract this. I hope to have it sorted out this weekend. Thanks for your patience!
Adding CSS icons to links automatically
Many times, developers come across the need to link to "non-web" documents. This would include .pdf, .xls, .doc, etc... files. What has become a common theme is highlighting the hyperlink by adding an icon next to it showing the user what to expect. In other words, if the hyperlink goes to a .pdf, show a small .pdf icon next to the link.
This can be easily done with CSS through a class:
a.application-pdf {
padding: 3px 18px 0px 0px;
background: url(application-pdf.gif) bottom right no-repeat;
}
application-pdf.gif is a small icon. You can see how it looks at: http://admissions.unl.edu/diversity/nationalhispanicvisit.asp
This requires a class to be provided on the link:
<a href="xyz.pdf" class="application-pdf">The year-end financial report</a>.
This works great, but wouldn't it be better if we didn't have to put this class in every time we created a link to a .pdf?
Through CSS, you can use selectors to automatically add the icon image. I won't go into the details, the gurus over at Ask the CSS Guy have done that already. It looks like this:
a[href $='.pdf'] {
padding: 3px 18px 0px 0px;
background: url(application-pdf.gif) bottom right no-repeat;
}
However, this only works in IE7, Firefox and Safari. This leaves out a major population of IE6 and lower users who haven't upgraded (through my experience of IE7, I can't blame them). So I got to thinking, how can we make this better?
Enter jQuery. I love to find ways to use jQuery in my applications. When it comes to using Javascript, jQuery is the way to go!
What if we used jQuery to setup a rule to work only for IE6 and lower users that will add the icon? With that in mind, this is what I came up with:
$(document).ready(function() {
/*@cc_on
@if (@_jscript_build < 8832)
$("a[@href$='.pdf']").addClass("application-pdf");
/*@end
@*/
});
Basically what this does is determine if the broswer is IE6 (@_jscript_build < 8832), finds all links which end with ".pdf" and then add the "application-pdf" class to the A tag.
In the CSS, I have combined the use of the CSS selector and the original class definition:
a[href $='.pdf'], a.application-pdf {
padding: 3px 18px 0px 0px;
background: url(application-pdf.gif) bottom right no-repeat;
}
The same would work for any other document type, all we would need is another icon, the class definition and a line in the jQuery function.
With the combination of CSS and jQuery, we now an automatic way of adding icons next to each of our links to "non-web" documents. This won't work for user's without JavaScript, but it is still accessible. I figure I'll probably miss some .pdf links anyhow, so the payoff is about the same.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Accessible Web Experience Design
One of the hot topics today, as you are well aware of, is AJAX. It allows us to create some amazing programs which work inside the browser. AJAX is the driving force behind the web experience design trend.
The one thing AJAX lacks is a simple implementation of accessibility. Many have come up with ideas on making the experience more accessible, but in reality it comes back to the need to build a process for the exceptions.
We're building a system on TWEEK to work with this issue. On the main UNL website we have also come up with some enhancements for users without javascript and/or users with screen readers.
If you are interested in this, follow the following links for more information. This is where I have started and as I develop more RIA I will update you on my findings.
- Standards Schmandards
http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2005/ajax-and-accessibility - W3C's commitment
http://www.w3.org/2006/09/aria-pressrelease.html - bestkungfu weblog
http://www.bestkungfu.com/archive/date/2005/03/ajaxessibility/ - 456 Berea St
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200511/web_20_and_accessibility/
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Getting Real
The team over at 37signals embrace the new web design 2.0. They start with the interface and then work backwards. The interface is what the customers/users see; make that the best it can be and then add the functionality.
It seems to be working just fine for them, Basecamp, Campefire and Backpack all seem to be doing well.
They recently released a book on their philosophy of "smarter, faster, easier" web applications. After the first chapter, I'm hooked. Check it out for free online at: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php
From the first chapter:
Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.
Effective email marketing
I was recently asked to present on what makes HTML messages effective. It didn't take me too long to come up with my top list, so I figured I'd share it with you. This list is based off my experiments and from industry standards.
- Provide a strong from and subject line
This is the first line your reader will see. As more and more email is being sent, it is going to take a lot to break through the clutter. This is your first impression, make it work. Oh, and do it with less than eight words. - Get to the point
As with web sites, you have 0.2 seconds to get a readers attention. They have opened your email, tell them why they should continue reading. Do this in a short amount of text. When I was asked what an appropriate amount of text is, I replied "about 1/3 what you would put in a paper letter." - Avoid gimmicky language
Refrain from the salesman-like approach. As email becomes more sophisticated, so do the readers. A quick turn-off is the obtrusive sale. - Present a call-to-action
Ask the reader to take the next step, whether it is clicking on a link or replying to the message. You can't expect any measurable analytics if you don't ask for some sort of action to take place. - When a user clicks on a link, take them to the link they clicked on.
This may sound natural, but too many times I have clicked a link and been required to search for more information. Give the user what they expect. - Write for readability
Writing on email and the web is different than print. On the web (and email), users scan content and very rarely read every word.
- Use bullet points and lists
- When necessary, use headings
- Single space at the end of sentences, hotmail, yahoo and gmail all add funky characters for the nbsp;
- Don't send attachments
For mass campaigns, emails with attachments will be blocked. Provide the attachment as a download on your website and put a link in the email. - Follow SPAM legislation
This is very important. Don't give email marketers a bad name.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Finally, someone is willing to share the Holy Grail!
A press release came out today announcing the launch of a new website, www.makemoney101.com. What a joke. The website makes the promise to provide "the webmaster the tools to keep those 5 steps ahead of the competition". Wow, finally we are going to be five steps ahead! Why stop at five, why not ten? Or twenty?
The press release goes on to promise "'the full package'". Everything we have been using in the past is only a partial package, so it's good to finally get the real thing.
It seems lately the make-money-quick trend has been refuled. The Web 2.0 cycle has now set in, so the scammers are coming out to take advantage of the prey. All the "experts" will try to sell the tools needed to become a millionaire. A few schmucks will be taken advantage of, so more crooks will come out. I would love to see this come to an end, it only polutes the market and gives the real marketers a bad name.
By the way, when I went to www.makemoney101.com, I got the "server not found" error. Sounds like some great tools!