Articles
Little rewards and fewer frustrations makes content management less of a chore |
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Every website content management system lets people curate content. But I discovered that if the CMS itself is fun and painless, people are more inclined to update. |
5 minutes to read. |
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Lessons from building word clouds |
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5 minutes to read. |
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Building a useful not-found search results page |
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The trouble with complex search tools is all the dead ends. When a client asked for a way to search their inventory, I went a step further: A search tool that doesn’t leave people guessing what might yield results. |
10 minutes to read. |
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When iOS interprets data as phone numbers |
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I caught my test iPhone scanning web pages for phone numbers when it offered to add longitude to my address book. It happens after the HTTP transaction, so it’s completely automatic. But when iPhones get it wrong, how do you set things right? |
5 minutes to read. |
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Testing text editors for iOS |
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What is the best note-taking app for iPads? There’s no clear leader, and that’s great. |
10 minutes to read. |
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Using FAQs as content launchpads |
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In the past, I had trouble with vague ideas. Fighting my own limp-wristed attempts to frame content, I discovered that most topics can be phrased as a FAQ. Since questions spawn questions, thinking in FAQs turned out to be a useful mind-mapping-like tool as well. |
minutes to read. |
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Signposts: Helping users navigate content |
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Sometimes, choosing just the right image for a website that does not yet have a defined visual theme can be daunting. Should you use a drawing or a photo? Should you create it yourself or find stock art? How do you know whether it will set the right tone? Is that the best you can do? When the quest for perfection leads to indecision, you may wind up with a mediocre design. |
minutes to read. |
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How to build a footer that doesn’t stink |
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The bottom of a web page is surprisingly valuable real estate. It’s open, it’s where visitors naturally wander—but it’s often neglected. Here are a few ideas on how to design footers to guide visitors around a website. |
minutes to read. |
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The benefits of organising content with tags |
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Traditionally, organising content into categories has worked well. But for truly massive sites — serious projects that count articles, members or products in the hundreds or thousands — tags provide a better solution to the thorny problem or finding web content. |
minutes to read. |
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Harnessing contrast to draw attention |
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Contrast is the difference between two or more elements, like bits of text, imagery and backgrounds. Applying more contrast in some areas (or less contrast in others) tells people who visit your site about your priorities, even if they don’t realise it. |
minutes to read. |
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I’d never built a word cloud before. A collection of user-entered answers to weekly questions sounded like a maintenance headache if people used it, or a failure if they didn’t. The client set high expectations, but neither of us saw what was coming.