The Mobile Web is Not Going Away

Jul
10
2011

Estimated reading time:  2.8 mins.

Commercial Graf

I was killing time, waiting, doing the Dad’s Taxi thing. While I waited, I was catching up on Twitter, on my phone, plus reading the various articles from my stream.

You know what is becoming a real pain point.

Non responsive designed web sites. The ones that don’t scale well on mobile devices, sadly they are still the norm.

Especially news and information sites.

Why is it the information on these sites being the major selling point and yet it seems to be very hard to access on a mobile device. it’s not like mobile is new.

Why Use PDF over HTML

May
30
2011

Estimated reading time:  5.5 mins.

Stack of 100 year old 1890's books with chess set in the background

As a web professional and an avocate for inclusive design (web accessibility) I have often wondered why organisations are so obsessed with using PDF documents on web sites as opposed to HTML based documents.

After all PDF documents don’t do accessibility as well as HTML pages do.

Given the ease of use of most modern CMS you would consider web page creation and editing would be as easy as authoring a word document.

Now I have a good idea why my clients use PDFs over HTML, especially government agencies, but I don’t have the community wide picture.

Heretical Ideas – Stop Redesigning

May
12
2011

Estimated reading time:  3 mins.

white dirty garbage truck on the streets of Melbourne (feb 2011) garbage man hangs off door talking to the driver

If you work with a client long term or are part of their internal team chances are you will see a number of redesigns of a site.

Over the years I have come to question why we constantly redesign things every few years.  It’s usually a change in directional branding, a  facelift.  As if a website is just a fashion accessory that must be changed as the trend of the season passes by.

Problem is to often I see the same mistakes being made time and time again.   The same old issues reoccur, as the central cause; lack of audience conversation and engagement is ignored.

Bad Interfaces – Getting Dates Wrong

May
9
2011

Estimated reading time:  5.3 mins.

Large yellow sculpture 09 - outside NAB, docklands in Melbourne

When you use an interface it’s the little things that help make it either a pain or just outstanding.

Sadly, too often we have to put up with the bad interfaces.

In light of this I will from time to time be producing a few articles focusing on specifics of bad interface design and implementation practices.

First one off the ranks is date fields and calendar pickers.

This interface element never really seems to work the way you want it to.  Making the overall experience very frustrating.