The last instalment in my series of reviews of the Smashing Book! Whew – for me a lot of blogging. I intend to make the whole thing available as a pdf shortly so that if any lost soul out there actually reads this blog, they can read it all in one horrendous slab if they want to.

How To Turn A Site Into A Remarkable Brand
Chris Spooner dishes the remarkably clean dirt on how to make your web site well known and well regarded. He touches on features such as

• Unique design
• Novelty
• Good content
• Viral content
• Focusing on integrity and just grabbing $$
• Use of pop culture as a spring board
• Connecting through social media
• Being as  ubiquitous as humanly possible

Overall be a helpful, hardworking netizen
The only quibbles I have would be perhaps the ordering of the chapter’s content (ie no discernible rationale) and the equating viral content with link bait – a much more pejorative term?

Design To Sell: Increasing Conversion Rates

Another chapter by Dimitry Fadeyev, this covers the topic of conversion – turning site browsers into product/service buyers.

He outlines the AIDA model and the addition of the S to the acronym, then methods and strategies  to

• gain attention
• ensure interest
• encourage desire
• promote action

I won’t give away the whole game by mentioning all the tips and hints he runs through.  But two that caught my attention particularly are

1. Hick’s law – Although he does not mention this term specifically, he discusses choice paralysis and some of the ways to combat it. This topic was the subject of some heated debate in a discussion I read recently. Some people maintained that you can never have too much information when it comes to making a choice. To me, this seems to be an excellent case for making information available via hide/show toggles or popups for those who want to know more. Fadeyev alludes to footnotes but there is something about having to go down to the bottom of the page and read the fine print( it is always in a tiny font) that is off-putting.
2. The Gutenberg rule – For garnering attention for  an element  on a page, the most prominent placement for Western readers,  is in the top left hand quadrant and the  least so in the bottom left hand quarter in cultures that read left to right and top to bottom. How does this gel with some of the more freeform layouts around nowdays?
This chapter is succinct and well written. It starts with an explicit statement of purpose and Fadeyev remains  focussed and thorough.

Some of the other writers who have written less successful chapters could perhaps take note of his efforts.

Overall – A worthwhile book
Good choice of topics backed by extensive community consultation. Most of the content is solid and practical but the book is let down by one or two authors and at times by some strange sections in otherwise strong chapters.
Distribution of the book was let down by production (teething) problems and management decisions such as not having an electronic version or using regular retail establishments like Amazon.

NB I haven’t bothered to review the final chapter as I just was not interested in it.

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!

A bit more commuting and a bit more of the review.

User Interface Design In Modern Applications

This chapter was written by Dmitry Fadyev who also wrote the chapter Design to Sell. He is a fine writer and good at succinct explanations of terms that may puzzle the reader. His definition of affordance on p14 is a good example of this. I read another explanation just today and it paled in comparison.
The information in the chapter sums up the principles of interface design in a very useful manner. Then he rips into a series of examples of practical techniques very neatly illustrated with screenshots. He ends this wonderful chapter with a most encouraging exhortation to keep on improving the choices you make and the products you churn out.

Learning from experts: interviews and insights

Steven Snell has put together an interesting selection of experts for this chapter. Most of them I know from their blogs, but a few I have never heard of before. Their bona fides are provided just in case you need proof of their expert status
The questions are well thought out several opinions are provided for each. Some of the advice I found personally useful, but the real value for me is insights that I can pass on to my students. My teaching is based on my own experience of creating web sites. It is really validating for me to see that so many of my experiences are shared – Chris Coyier provides some good responses (his blog post Designers these days is just so good for convincing my students there is more to the biz than coding). I enjoyed hearing from Nathan Smith as well.
This section of the book is long but worth the read. I did find my self wishing that the questions stood out more distinctly on the page as when you are skimming for answers to a particular question, it can be difficult to pick them out from the bulk of the text.

Work is starting in earnest now so more commuting and hopefully more reviews!

As I am back to commuting, I have read two more chapters of the Smashing book ( I thought I would read it over the break, but there were just too many trashy novels to get through!). Both chapters are excellent overviews of their chosen topics and I learned a lot from them.

So on to the review………

Web Typography: Rules, Guidelines And Common Mistakes

The chapter on typography, as used on web pages, is concise yet thorough – everything I wanted the  colour chapter to be and makes up for my disappointment there. There is just enough history to whet the appetite but no drown the reader (yeah I know, bad pun). Terms are clearly explained and the the writers’ passion for the subject came through strongly. Clear explanations and illuminating examples plus some excellent links for the reader to really get stuck into the topic.

The Art And Science Of CSS Layouts

This is another piece of writing showing understanding of not only to the topic, but how to convey it to other people. The pros and cons of how different  layout decisions and how behave when viewed on different screen sizes is discussed in great detail and once again, the examples add greatly to the text and the links provided are excellent for seeing how this important know-how has been built up bit by bit over the last 5 years.

If you don’t already have the book, you can still buy it at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/03/smashing-book-its-out-now for around US$30 or 34euro which ever is cheaper in your currency

If you want to see the quality of the material in the links, the team at Smashing has kindly made the entire set of links, arranged chapter by chapter at http://smashing-links.com/ . There is a list of errata at the bottom of the page.

Then, in a breathe of fresh air, you come across a PIM like EfficientPIM.

I am looking for a candidate to replace my old PIM which is no longer actively supported and Efficient PIM is the current frontrunner because…

Briefly, it offers tools for managing

• Schedules, events and tasks
• Contacts
• Notes -folder tree, diary and desktop stickies
• Passwords
• Links to sites

See http://www.downloadtube.com/EfficientPIM-demo-installation-windows.html for a video demonstrating the major features of the program and of course, you can explore it for yourself by downloading a trial version from the maker’s site at http://www.efficientpim.com

My opinion of this program

Things I really like about EfficientPIM

• It minimises to the system tray – essential to keep it handy but not obstrusive
• It imports holidays for a range of different countries (mine did the Aussie holidays automatically)
• Extensive interface customisation – both for the prominence of various buttons and for individual field in records
• Extensive import facilities
• Even though it uses a proprietary file format, you can export your data to something more generic
• The Today feature and the ability to customise its content is great
• It has a trash system, so that you don’t have to hard delete items
• Searches can be conducted globally or module by module (mmm, tasty)
• It handles attachment and file link
• The spellchecker has the ability to use a customisable dictionary
• Autobackup is nice
• The password generator is a nice touch
• It seems to make modest memory demands on my XP and Vista machines

Things that need to added/fixed

• needing to use csv or txt format in order  to import favs/bookmarks
• the lack of a simple  spreadsheet document type
• there isn’t a dedicated project feature
• lack of screenshots in the help file
• copying from web page then pasting to a note loses the formatting
• organising passwords into one list with tags instead of categories
• adding alarms to desktop notes

Overall:  I think it is a very useful program and a worthy candidate in the world of PIM software.

I have just recently received my copy of the Smashing Book.  For details of the book, see its page at Smashing Magazine (SM)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/03/smashing-book-its-out-now/

Overall, based on a quick skim,  I am happy with the book for the price they sold it at.  I believe it is a worthwhile endeavour, but not without its problems.

I am going to try to review it in sections as there is too much in it for a single post. I sat on the commuter train today and looked it over carefully then read one chapter. So here goes. First up, the physical product, book organisation and some actual content review.

The form factor

The book is physically uncomfortable to hold. Normally I don’t think much about margins and bindings on books but the pain in my shoulders made me take note. Just for a self sanity check, I grabbed hold of and read another book for about 10 mins. ( a rather dry tome on technical communication) and though it made me sleepy, it didn’t make me ache.

People over at Smashingmagazine have noted the too small inner margin, the paper grain going the wrong way, the binding that won’t lay flat without cracking. In the comments on the book page, SM have said repeatedly that they want to produce a book in physical form and that a pdf will not be forthcoming. If you are going to be so adamant about this, then it would be good to get these details right. It was actually hurting my arms to hold it in a position where I could actually read it without breaking the binding and having the loose pages disaster happen to my copy.

Also a problem for me, the images are not necessarily on the same page as the text that refers to them.  I just hate this and find it super distracting. I know it is often a result of restrictions based on the physical page size, but it has irked me hugely for the last 50 years and will continue to do so.

The book organisation

If the meaning of this heading is not clear, I apologise.  I am referring to the information architecture of the book -how one knows what is where and how to find things.

Three points stood out for me

1. The table of contents give the chapter titles but not the authors. As I read the blogs of many of the contributors, I wanted to skim through and see who wrote which bit. No such luck. I had to find the chpater title pages and look there for each one. This leads me to point 2.
2. It is always a great pleasure to find a book has which has obvious page edge marking to make chapter title pages stand out easily. All it requires is a colour/colours on the borders of the relevant pages or those little thumb marks running down the edge to enable you to quickly find the chapters. It’s just like good navigation on a web site.
3. My third point also has a web analogy. The index of the book is a very much like a sitemap, except more so. The index in the Smashing Book is not a great example of information organisation. It just isn’t comprehensive enough.

Content review of the section The Guide To Fantastic Color Usage In Web Design And Usability

I turned to this section as it is a topic that I really need to work on personally. Unfortunately, after I had read it, I wasn’t much the wiser. The biological and cultural explanation of colour were skimpy and not what I would call authoritative.  There is some discussion of terminology and to me the cryptic comment that shade is easier to understand than saturation or brightness. There are many screen shots with colour wheels but no explanation of their significance. There is a some advice on using colour consistently.  No mention is made of colour blindness at all, a topic I would have thought important given the rather grandiose title of chapter.

I have started on a the chapter on CSS layouts so that will be the topic of my next review.

First IT related post in a while. It is not that I haven’t been immersed as usual. If anything, too immersed. However my main day job has quietened down a bit and I will attempt to post on the technology I have been using lately.

I have often raved about templating in the blog and it still remains an issue for me. Recently, I have been  revamping my own site. Iit has been broken for a few months now, but like the cobbler’s children’s shoes, it has taken a very long time to do any thing about it. For a few weeks there I was playing with using WordPress for the whole site, of which this blog is a just part, but in the end I decided to go with a static site with some php to do the otherwise repetitive bits and some javascript to do the fancy bits. Here’s why.

I haven’t hand coded a site in quite a while. I have been using WordPress for several clients, and LightNEasy for others. In all these cases, the CMS provided an easy way for clients to update the site themselves. But for me, the coding part is fun. I like to get my hands dirty with HTML and CSS and PHP and Javascript for all that kind of gnarly stuff. For the last 6 months, I have taught no coding, just web site business operational principles, and the only coding I have been doing is for one site where I edit minor stuff directly on the server.  I had just purchased WeBuilder 2010,  a text editor style web builder, so I was keen to give it a go.

This editor is a joy to use. Well laid out and well thought out. Good autocomplete. Integrates nicely with HTML Tidy.  Basic scripting tools built in and facilities for CSS also. Project management and FTP as well. Only small issue I have had so far is that you can’t use line wrap and code collapse at the same time. This seems peculiar to me – Notepad++, my freebie tool of choice when I can’t use WeBuilder,  has no trouble doing both of these things at the same time. But other than this one snarl, so far so good.

I have also bought a WYSIWYG package (Serif WebPlus x4) also but comments about that will have to wait for another post.

I have been thinking about the software I use and how it all can fit together to make a given website.

I have been looking at hosted services lately to spread the load.  As the post title implies, it is all a bit of a puzzle about what features of a site will be met with what scripts.  This week, I have have come across 2 worthwhile blog posts on using hosted services

http://www.w3avenue.com/2009/09/21/hosted-solutions-for-front-end-developers-designers/

and

http://sixrevisions.com/web-applications/website-features-that-you-can-easily-offload/

I am particularly interested in the e-commerce offerings.  Foxy Cart, in particular, seems an intriguing solution as it allows you to set up your “catalogue” in any way you like on your own site, while they handle the e-commerce selling bit. If I have a good play around, I will post a review.

There has been such a proliferation in the solutions market and lots of them are hosted.  A risk to some extent, but then, hosting things yourself exposes you to other sorts of risk – e.g. just recently, the server hosting this blog and several other of my sites was so overloaded it was up and down like a yo-yo.  My hosting company was quick to remedy the situation with a server change which put a couple of my site sections down for a bit – until I looked at file permissions based on the error messages I was getting. I knew it wasn’t likely to be the scripts themselves as one was a WordPress install for my class and the other was my LightNEasy help site, which is, of course a  LightNEasy based site. Given that these are different scripts, but the same error message, I checked the file permissions on the relevant folders and sure ’nuff they both were 0777 instead of 0755. Two second fix and all was good. A tiny problem I know, but as a solo practitioner with 9 sites and numerous sub-sites to look after,  just keeping up with being across all of them can be a real chore.