The Smashing Book review continued

Part 4 Usability Principles and Optimization

Another work week, another commute, another instalment.

Two chapters, some good tips but one was useful but puzzling and needed  a certain amount of nitpicking and the other was just plain puzzling; so on with the tips, the nits and the puzzles…

The chapter Usability Principles For Modern Websites was written by Andrew Maier and David Leggett.  The chapter is jam packed with useful advice (e.g  mega menus – I hate flyouts with a passion and can’t understand why mega menus are not more widespread). However the puzzle for me about this chapter is the central issue that isn’t really discussed at all – the tension between convention and innovation. The chapter comes up solidly on the side of support for convention to improve usability. From years of experiencing wanky (sorry no other word is quite so accurate) sites and a recent and mercifully brief visit to Jim Carrey’s site, I have great sympathy with this viewpoint. But how then, do we progress if we stick doing the things in exact same way to prevent the user becoming confused? I know this tension is not easily resolvable but at least it should be acknowledged and discussed. Also, in a related  issue that I think may be just a poor word choice but the following quote I found a little disturbing

Users want consistency in their interfaces… Any deviation from this principle makes the website more design-oriented and less user-oriented.

This implies that design and usability are locked into some sort of inverse relationship. To me, design as a term implies many things but never the opposite of usability.  I suspect they meant indulgence as opposed to design??

Another puzzle for me is the advice to stick with industry standard names in global navigation. This may work for an intranet site but can be incredibly offputting for people who are outsiders looking in.

A few nits

• The list of page 135/136 is misnumbered or missing point 2
• Page 137 contains an incomplete statement.
• Page 141 – 143 is a chunk on breadcrumbs. Such a relatively big chunk deserves its own heading.
• Page 151 could do with a reference for Boehm’s law. The chapter has been great with providing footnote refs up to this point.

The chapter Performance Optimization For Websites was written by Rene Schmidt. I found this chapter to be the biggest puzzle of all. It contains a wealth of information but it is woefully organised. The demarcation that is important is your privileges on the server, not whether it is server side or client side (not that the term client side is ever used). The  stuff doesn’t require root access should be separated at the highest information level from the stuff that does.  Instead the chapter makes no use of of appropriate level headings.

No-one on shared hosting ever has access to this sort of stuff that starts on page 192 and hosting companies have in my experience little interest in changing the server settings to satisfy one customer out of say 300 to 500 who might be on the same machine.  So the info, while intrinsically interesting, is of no use to the majority of readers who don’t have a VPS or dedicated server at their disposal. Thus I would question the wisdom of its inclusion with so much other useful info that could have replaced it.

I am pretty close to the end of this odyssey – one more post and it will be finished. Whew!