Earlier today Andy tweeted:

No train journey is complete without strangers wanting to play with my iPad.

Quickly followed by:

If you don’t know how to use an iPad, you’re probably still figuring out how soup works.

I can only assume that the second tweet came about due to one of the aforementioned strangers having a tough time picking up the UI.

Bearing in mind that the iOS UI is regarded as the finest in the world, it would be reasonable to junp to the conclusion that the nameless stranger was, in fact in the business of eating soup with chopsticks. I mean, it’s simple right? Touch what you want to use and hit the home key to go back. Easy.

Or is it? Let’s not forget that this kind of rich, intuitive touch UI is still very much in its infancy and there are precious few, the likes of Apple and HTC that have come anywhere near getting it right. The market is still flooded with inferior, complicated touch and button based UIs. With this in mind the issue becomes a lot less black and white. Allow me to illustrate. I’ve handed my iPhone to a number of friends and family members who I would never think of as stupid. Some of them are even fairly competent when it comes to technology and more than a few of them have stuttered or struggled in its initial use. Interestingly, the constant with all of these people is that they owned older or inferior mobile phones with complicated button based UIs.

This got me thinking, it’s probably not the people being stupid, more a case of them being conditioned, over time to use mobile devices via complex key combinations and menus within menus within menus. When handed a device where carrying out a task is as simple as touching the icon it is totally understandable that it would appear alien to them. After all we only regard things as intuitive if our past experiences with similar things condition us to have compatible expectations. Not everyone has used a touch enabled phone before. As such, however slight, there is still a learning curve. And let’s not forget; this is just with mobile phones. There are many similarities between an old Nokia and an iPhone (the way you hold it and use your fingers and thumbs to type, for example.) An iPad is a totally new way of computing. No desktop, laptop or Netbook has worked quite like an iPad before and as such no one will have any subconscious expectations.

We need to apply this thinking when crafting UIs for anything from a simple brochure site to a fully featured complex web application. What might seem like second nature to us will be perceived and picked up differently by others depending on their experiences with similar things in the past. We need to be patient and sympathetic towards those who are not as fast to pick up a UI as we are. Moreover we must constantly think of them when we make things. Failure to do so will always come at the cost of the end user.

DIBI, an acronym for “Design it, Build it” is a two-track conference meaning that there was one schedule for design talks (the ones I attended) and another for development talks with the option to move between tracks if you so wished.

Let me say, right from the off that the event was just excellent! Gavin Elliott and the team did an insanely great job of putting it together, not just in terms of the speaker line-up, which was superb but all the extras too. We were provided food, drink and stationary in the form of a field notes notebook not to mention a great after party with a free bar and free pizza. I heard from many people who had been to the likes of FOWD and dConstruct that DIBI blew them out of the water in terms of talks, atmosphere, professionalism and of course price and value.

The Talks

These were all great. The organisers couldn’t have got together a more wonderful group of speakers. Adii, Sarah Parmenter, Tim Van Damme, Simon Collison, Dan Rubin and Andy Clarke all gave inspiring, in some cases surprisingly helpful talks about a variety of web design issues from how to involve design in your startup from day one all the way through to taking a “hardboiled” approach to browser and device support.

I found all of the talks to be relevant but I did come away with some personal highlights. Simon Collison’s unparalleled obsession with design theory was beyond inspiring. He took a single dot and through manipulating it in various ways explored how the most basic shapes or colours can communicate so much more than what most would believe. I also found myself hugely surprised at how useful I found Sarah Parmenter’s talk about the principles of iPhone UI design. I learned things about Apple’s UI guidelines and app store entry requirements than I ever thought existed.

My favourite talk of the day, though had to be Hardboiled Web Design with Andy Clarke. I’ve always been a fan of his direct, uncompromising approach to browser support and his ethos of build for the best browser then strip back layers of eye candy accordingly for the older ones. In that respect, his talk didn’t really cover anything new but what it did push, and very well, was the “why” in all of this. He spoke about how when it comes to users, ignorance is bliss and that we should all wake up to the fact that most clients don’t even know what a browser is, let alone know that there are many available. As long as what they see in the browser is appropriate for purpose, they’ll enjoy the eye candy if their browser supports it and won’t miss it if they’re running IE it doesn’t. I certainly left inspired to push the boundaries in my next project and also to make Safari my default browser.

The Extra Bits

Like I mentioned before the organisers made sure everyone was well looked after. We all got field notes notebooks, as much coffee and juice as we wanted and ice cream and free Red Bull in the afternoon. On top of this, lunch was thrown in as well. Parking? Yeah they made sure it only cost me £3 for the whole day. Blam!

DIBI provided attendees with not one but two parties and although I didn’t make the first one I’m told it was excellent. The after party with open bar and free pizza was nothing short of legendary. The venue was a little hot and a little cramped but I’d be a dick if I said that made a difference. There was poker, roulette and blackjack tables (all playing for funny money, of course) and of course it was an excellent opportunity to meet great people and put faces to @names.

These guys clearly believe that it’s the little things that make a big difference.

Shout Outs.

Well here’s where I name drop a little bit. Firstly, a massive virtual pat on the back to Gavin Elliott and the team for pulling off an event with such gloss and precision. You’d think they’d been doing it for years. Now on to the excellent people I met. Ash Baxter, Paul Stanton, Chris Spooner, Amy Mahon, John O’Nolan, Adii (and the rest of the WooTeam) David Appleyard, Sam Brown, Jack Osborne, Sean Hood, Emma Persky, Hector Simpson, Andrzej Kała, and so many others who I’m struggling to name as my brain reached capacity about 7pm, you guys were great too.

Next year? Oh hell yeah!

Case in point, the one where the woman starts by saying “So you receive an email that looks like it’s from your bank, you click on it…” Woah, woah WOAH!! What the fuck!? So now you’re saying “it’s fine to be a complete fucking idiot, your browser will stop all the nasty Internet scammers from running a train on your bank account”?? Jee, thanks for the mixed messages there Microsoft. One minute your software is so paranoid you can’t even run a program without it freaking out like Rainman at the airport and the next you’re saying, “you know what, that message from ‘your bank’… go ahead and click on it, it’s all fine”.

There’s another one where the woman (sexist overtones?) starts by saying “So you click to get this free download and…” Now I admit that it’s less moronic to be duped by a dodgy site offering wallpapers and screen-savers than it is to get caught on a phisherman’s hook but still you have to be pretty dim-witted to fall victim to either.

The really worrying thing is that the adverts are probably pretty effective. People are probably now thinking “it’s okay I’m using that there Internet Explorer, I’m safe online because the man on the TV says so.” when there’s a very real chance that they aren’t even running the latest version and an even realer (more real?) chance that they have out-of-date or no antivirus solution installed. Let’s not forget that IE8 is still an unconscionably awful browser that EIGHT VRSIONS IN still can’t render a rounded corner or a fucking shadow!

Seriously, Microsoft. Pull your heads out of your arses and get real! It’s not like you make any money from IE so why put all that money into bullshit advertising. Do what other vendors do and put the money into developing great standards support and actually making websites look good. If you still feel the need to parade a bunch of over-happy fuck-wits on the TV why not spend 8 seconds with one saying “So you receive an email that looks like it’s from your bank. You should delete it immediately as 99 times out of 100 it’ll be a virus or a scam. If your bank really want to give something to you, they’ll use the post.”

/sigh. Rant over. Next: “Windows 7 was NOT your fucking idea, cocknose. And even if it was, that’s not something to be proud of! Now get back on your fucking treadmill!”

What the hell kind of book would you write!? I hear you ask. You see, I’m a cynical fucker. I make observations of the world’s shortcomings that people with a normal brain wouldn’t notice or ever care about. In a way I’m the bitter old bastard that yells at kids for doing something that affects him in no way what so ever. I see problems and annoyances where others don’t. So the “book” would be a sort of Clarksonesque indictment of the world as I see it. I think I’d split it up into chapters based on what I was talking about (the web, TV, movies, people etc.) however, seeing as it will more than likely be a website, I’m thinking of doing something along the lines of an art-directed blog. Sort of like how Sam Hardacre and Greg Wood and Jason Santa Maria do it with each “article” being styled in such a way that it would compliment the theme and subject.

Exactly how I’d execute it is still up for debate. I don’t intend on having comments open so maybe I could hard code the lot. That, however would present the problem of it requiring quite a lot of tinkering each time I posted a new page. Ollie Kavanagh’s Hip Hop Quoted site seems to do exactly what I’m after and it’s built on WordPress (win) but what that dude’s development skills make me look proper retarded. It’s all a learning curve, though and I think I’ll get there one way or the other. Maybe this will help… If you have any resources to share or tips that will help me cut my art direction teeth then please get in touch.

As for web standards, the site will be highly experimental. It will take much inspiration from the Sam Brown school of thought and will include fancy CSS3, HTML5 and browser specific pretties that mean it will not look the same in every browser. (Read: if you use IE you’ll probably be shit outta luck.)

Gavin Strange (JamFactory) – Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)

Gavin Strange is a web/graphic design powerhouse. By day he works as Senior Online Designer at Aardman Animation (Home of Wallace and Grommit) and by night he hand-crafts “pretties” in various forms from websites, to logos, to vinyl toys, to skateboard graphics all under the name JamFactory. Gav appears to live in a parallel universe where there are 300 hours in a day. His recommendation is, of course a wonderous animated film; Blood: The Last Vampire.

“Clocking in at just 45 minutes, this beautiful fusion of cell animation and CGI is my recommendation for a movie you have to see. It’s dark, violent and brooding but not in an extreme way, it’s all balanced very well and you have to marvel at how aesthetics of the whole piece.”

“It’s not the most engaging of films with lack of character development but my, it is pretty. There’s a live-action version being released real soon, so it’d be interesting to see how those two fair against each other.”

John O’Nolan – Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)

John O’Nolan is a freelance web designer working in West Sussex. His company, Lyrical Media is going from strength to strength and he regularly writes articles about his experiences in the business over at his blog. John’s recommendation couldn’t be more fitting for this post.

“The film is called The Pirates of Silicon Valley, and is *incredibly* hard to get a hold of – it was only ever released on VHS I think, and then later a few were printed on DVD’s in the US, but nowhere else. Took me ages, but I eventually found a download for it online recently.

The movie follows the lives of our good friends Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates as they go through university and start tinkering with computers. It tells both of their life-stories as well as covering a really interesting history of Apple and Microsoft and how the companies have always been very closely tied for one reason or another.

It’s probably the best computer-related film I’ve ever seen, and I find it so interesting seeing the birth of the technological age through the eyes of its creators. Highly, highly recommended!”

Rick Nunn – The Boondock Saints (1999)

Rick is a web/graphic designer with a strong print background. He regularly wields a Canon 50D, has a fetish for strobes and shallow depth of field and has an ongoing 365 project on Flickr. As well as that, he’s very recently re-launched his personal site. Rick’s tastes pretty much mirror my own when it comes to movies so it was tricky to find a movie he loves but I hadn’t seen. Luckily he did it, so here’s what he has to say about The Boondock Saints.

“Boondock Saints is a great independent film written and directed by Troy Duffy. It follows two fraternal Irish brothers who, after getting mixed up with some Russian mobsters, get hand picked by god to rain vengeance on the guilty. It has some great characters, good dialogue and best of all it taps into everyone’s secret desire for to be a vigilante.”

Tim Van Damme – Speed Racer (2008)

Tim Van Damme is a Web/Interface designer at Made By Elephant. He’s based in Belgium but regularly darts around the globe attending and speaking at various web events. He writes a personal blog and takes some great photos. He is, as his blog says, a superhero sans disguise. His recommendation is a movie I’d heard about but that had never appealed to me. Oddly, Tim was the second person that day to recommend it to me… so I might check it out.

“I really liked Speed Racer (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811080/).

It’s about a boy (first name Speed, last name Racer), who’s been dreaming about car racing for his entire life. Not racing as we know it, but on tracks with loops and hoops, and where the drivers use a lot of dirty tricks.

It’s fast, it’s over the top, it’s way too colorful, but I love it.”

Jonathan Snook – Paperhouse (1988)

Jonathan Snook is a Canadian web developer, designer and author of two acclaimed web development books. He regularly writes about his craft over at snook.ca and has worked on high profile projects with Sidebar Creative and Squarespace. As well as all that, he speaks at many web design/development events all over the world. Jonathan’s recommendation is certainly one I’ve never heard of but it sounds super interesting so I’ll be sure to check it out.

“I’m going to pull a rabbit out of a hat and go with Paperhouse (1988) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098061/).  It’s about a girl who draws a house and finds herself able to visit the house that she’s drawn. She begins to see a connection between what she’s drawn and the real world.”

“It’s usually labelled as a horror movie but I think calling it a fantasy suspense film might be more accurate. I saw this movie when I was a teenager and haven’t seen it since but I still remember enjoying it.”

Jeremy Keith – Primer (2004), Below (2002), Cypher (2002)

Jeremy Keith is a web developer currently working for ClearLeft in Brighton, England. His reputation for shaping the world of modern web development is extraordinary. As well as writing two books, Jeremy often speaks at some of the biggest web conferences in the world such as FOWD and SXSW. Jeremy has knocked it out of the park with not one, or two, but three excellent recommendations. Blam!

“Primer by Shane Carruth. A film about start-up culture and time travel. Shot on a shoestring, it features authentic performances and the most internally consistent plot of any time-travel tale. It demands your full attention and, unlike most twisty films, this one rewards repeat viewing.”

“Below by David Twohy. My favourite submarine movie. It starts as a straightforward World War Two thriller before turning into something very different. A lot of the enjoyment in watching this is the playful way that the film toys with its own identity: is it a war film, a mystery, or a horror?”

“Cypher by Vincenzo Natali. The best story that Philip K. Dick never wrote. It’s a Kafkaesque tell with a wry sense of humour that plays with questions of identity far better than big-budgeted Total Recall ever could.”

Elliot Jay Stocks – Lost Highway (1997)

The final contributor to this post is simply one of the most well respected people in the industry. Elliot Jay Stocks is a designer, illustrator author and speaker who, as if all that wasn’t enough has recently released an EP of his own music. Having worked for Carsonified, Elliot has since launched a very successful freelance career and recently re-launched his personal site. Elliot’s recommendation is great because it gives a unique insight into the way he views design.

“Thanks for asking me. I love movies. I really can’t watch enough. I tend to favour those that convey a distinct atmosphere and leave me with a particular feeling, and for that reason Lost Highway is one of my all-time favourites. I’m a big David Lynch fan anyway but I think Lost Highway is Lynch at his best: a deep, dark, thought-provoking piece of cinema that doesn’t go too far in its complexity, which sadly he did with Mullholland Drive (although I also love that) and Inland Empire (which just plain sucked).”

And if that wasn’t enough, Elliot threw in a bonus recommendation that I, for one, can totally agree with!

“My other all-time favourite is The Big Lebowski. It’s a movie that gets better and better every time I watch it. It’s really got its own charm and it’s not just because The Dude is such a great character; the whole film is an immersive world that you can happily get lost in. And what a strange story. I love it!”

Well there you go, folks. Hope you enjoyed the recommendations. I’d like to thank all the wonderfully talented web-folk who took the time to participate. I haven’t included all of you in this post but I’m hoping to do a part II around Christmas time so your recommendations will be included then. As always let me know what you thought of the movies.

Don’t forget to browse all my other recommendations!

Until next time.

Dan

Let me say right off the bat, I couldn’t disagree more! Not only do I think Nielsen is wrong, I find the post to be one of the most obtuse articles I’ve ever seen. What made me write this article, though isn’t Nielsen’s view. I was compelled to write this after listening to this week’s edition of BoagWorld. In the podcast, Paul and Marcus, who’s views I usually very much agree with, seem to accept the notion of removing password masking with open arms. When I heard what was being said I could barely keep my jaw from hitting the floor.

“Why is it that as human beings we have a tendency to accept the status quo? Even if we think something is a bad idea we often fail to speak up because it has always been that way and ’surely there must be a good reason’.” – Paul Boag

Of course Nielsen and, by his agreement, Boag don’t talk about just removing masking from all web sites and apps en mass. They do recognise that apps such as online banking, and indeed anything that will be used on a public computer will benefit from password masking but the proposed solution seems not only totally counter-intuitive but also as though it will have a big negative impact on the usability of the site/app.

“Yes, users are sometimes truly at risk of having bystanders spy on their passwords, such as when they’re using an Internet cafe. It’s therefore worth offering them a checkbox to have their passwords masked; for high-risk applications, such as bank accounts, you might even check this box by default.” – Jakob Nielsen

The problem with this solution is that it will only truly be effective with tech savvy or web savvy users who know what they are looking at. Average Joe, in the situation where the password is masked probably won’t notice the “unmask” check-box and even if they do they may not understand the security implications. By the same token, in the event that the password is unmasked they won’t take the time to think about the security of the situation and will be left open to people looking over their shoulder. While on that topic…

“Most websites (and many other applications) mask passwords as users type them, and thereby theoretically prevent miscreants from looking over users’ shoulders. Of course, a truly skilled criminal can simply look at the keyboard and note which keys are being pressed. So, password masking doesn’t even protect fully against snoopers.” – Jakob Nielsen

So what he’s suggesting is that rather than having the password entry spied on by skilled snoopers, why discriminate? Let’s make sure that all snoopers, regardless of skill, can spy our passwords just by looking at the screen! Really? Of course, what Nielsen is getting at is that the security benefits of masking can be fairly small and I do kind of agree; a skilled crim can indeed just look at your key presses. But he is very much putting a spin on that to benefit his own points about the usability impacts of masking.

• Users make more errors when they can’t see what they’re typing while filling in a form. They therefore feel less confident. This double degradation of the user experience means that people are more likely to give up and never log in to your site at all, leading to lost business. (Or, in the case of intranets, increased support calls.)
• The more uncertain users feel about typing passwords, the more likely they are to (a) employ overly simple passwords and/or (b) copy-paste passwords from a file on their computer. Both behaviors lead to a true loss of security.

I find both of those points weak at best. Users can make more errors when they can’t see what they’re typing but by the same token, because of the masking they will be more aware of this. My experience in IT support has shown me that people make several attempts at entering their password before giving up or calling support. This means that the log-on failures can be mainly attributed to two things; The user has forgotten their password or they have caps lock turned on. Now, for the latter you may think “Well, unmasking would reveal that error” but in my experience the user won’t notice the capitals. If they’ve not noticed it when they were entering their username, an unmasked password won’t reveal the error to them any better. The true solution to the caps lock problem is a tool tip that notifies the user that caps lock is on and it may cause their password to be entered incorrectly.

The second point is loaded. It is up to the developer to police overly simple passwords and educate users on the benefits of a secure password. As for copy-paste passwords; this is clutching at straws. In my many years in tech support I have never come across a user who does this. I think all but the most security ignorant will see the potential issues with doing this.

I’m all for the progression of usability on the web but what this seems like is change for changes sake. I think the perceived usability problems with traditional masked passwords are incredibly small. Too small, in fact to risk the plethora of issues of creating a triple standard where some passwords are masked, others aren’t and others give you a choice. It’s a clear cut case of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Masked passwords have been the norm for decades. People expect it. Moreover having their password display on screen will destroy a user’s sense of security while using the app, even if they are using it on their own computer.

Upon detecting IE6, the script displays a message at the top of the browser window that is, to the untrained eye, identical to an official Windows or IE notification bar, you know, the kind that tells you about blocked pop-ups or necessary Active X controls. It even has the Windows Security icon! If you click this, you are taken to the Internet Explorer site and shown how to upgrade. This is where the argument starts. Paul Boag, in a recent chat with Ryan Carson discussed why he feels that IE6Update is totally wrong and he’s caught a fair bit of flak for it. I, however agree with him.

So what’s the problem then? Well despite duping users into upgrading their browser which raises clear moral questions (Read or watch Watchmen to understand my post title), you need to think about the audience you are targeting with this script. Typically IE6 users will fall into three categories;

• Users in corporate environments that either have bespoke apps relying on IE6 or operating systems incapable of supporting anything newer.
• Home users with old operating systems. There’s still plenty of them. Trust.
• Average Joe public who doesn’t know any different and, more importantly, doesn’t care.

Obviously those in corporate environments who can’t upgrade will be continually nagged by IE6Update and will get pretty annoyed and, if they do finally upgrade, their long suffering IT department will have a mess of work on their hands having to roll them back when their apps don’t work. People with old operating systems (Windows 2000 and even earlier)… Well, I think it’s pretty safe to say that an out of date browser is the least of their concerns and let’s not forget they’d be unable to upgrade IE even if they wanted to. As for the ignorant and un-interested; these people, based on the experience I have in tech support, will remain that way in spite of the message. A lot of these people are unable to make the distinction between their browser and the Internet, don’t forget.

So is IE6Update right for anyone? Well yeah, it’s bound to work some of the time. Some people will follow the link and ultimately will upgrade but is that group really worth using these kind of sneaky trick tactics? I don’t think so. We in the web industry are supposed to be the watchmen, championing the cause of honest improvement of the web. When we start tricking people into upgrading their browser out of what is, in the main, a shit-tonne of our own hang-ups with a hurdle to publishing fresh new content and features just seems like a perversion of our goals.

It might seem like an uphill struggle at times and it may get frustrating but I feel the only real way we can usher out IE6 once and for all is through education. What we need is for high profile individuals (not just in the web industry – The Stephen Fry’s, the Jason Bradburry’s, the BBC’s and ITV’s) to really spread the word and let people know the benefits of an up to date OS and browser. Let’s paraphrase a worthy cause: “Give a man an updated browser and he can browse more safely, but he remains part of the problem. Teach him the benefits of staying current and he can be part of the solution.”

Having worked in technical support for over 6 years I have gotten to see first hand how people perceive and use the Internet. You’ll get people who understand it, who know what a browser is and what a web site is and maybe, some rudimentary understanding of the way the web works… if you’re lucky, and others who just don’t get it. If you’re reading this then I guess you fall into the first category. Congratulations! You’re easy to make websites for. Your needs are clear and you can accomplish calls to action quickly because you know what you’re doing. It can be safely assumed that you meet the minimum computer/web literacy levels required to make full use of the sites you visit. No such assumption can be made for the latter group.

Designers and developers need to think long and hard about how their site/app will be handled by the kind of people who say things like “Have you got the Internet on your computer?” because you can never know how much they really understand. They’ll probably only know just enough to muddle along, to turn on their computer “Open up the Internet” and go to popular sites like eBay, YouTube and facebook (If they haven’t thrown a massive hissy fit and left upon seeing the new layout). These people’s surfing habits are based on routine. Anything they’re not expecting can be instantly met with confusion and even hostility, neither of which are good for business. The following measures can potentially save you a lot of hassle and make you a lot more money.

1. Make the user feel secure and at ease. – Internet users these days are paranoid about security because the media and IE bombard them with security warnings and scare tactics. Unfortunately these users don’t understand enough to know what’s trustworthy and what isn’t. Be as brief and concise as you can in your copy and use nice calming colours like light blues and greens to make the user feel at ease. Do not, however, try to incorporate whale song or any sounds, for that matter. They’ll just piss people off.
2. Make it easy for them to find out their password. – People forget passwords, as sure as death and taxes. Make sure you provide them a very obvious means of getting hold of their password should this happen. If the user has to think about how to get their password back, chances are they won’t bother. They’ll leave and never come back.
3. Don’t surprise them. – As I mentioned above, people’s browsing habits are based on routine. If your site has an unorthodox navigation or even scrolls sideways instead of up and down, bang! You just lost a chunk of potential users. I’m not saying don’t push the boundaries, just know when not to. If your site will be used by the general (non-tech) public, stick to the time honoured easily recognisable layouts and navigation.  This means sticking to a width that doesn’t exceed about 980px for those 1024×768 resolution users. Case in point: Look how many people got pissed off with the new Facebook layout… Come on, you know one of them!
4. Hold their hand if they want it. – If a user doesn’t understand what to do next they might just leave the site, there’s no real way around that. You can give yourself a fighting chance, however, by providing clear, obvious links to some help. If a form they filled in doesn’t validate, make sure it’s clear why this is the case and offer a bit of assistance in the form of a “What’s this?” link to some help text. Careful though, make sure this isn’t visible all the time as it may be seen as patronising to more web-literate users. Something like ClueTip can provide this functionality and also look awesome!
5. Make sure they see the call to action immediately. – This one kind of goes without saying but it’s amazing how many sites there are out there that are trying to sell something but don’t make it clear right off the bat what they’re actually selling, or how to buy it. Make your call to action stand right out and shout “This is what we’re offering and this is how you get it!” As a rule I like to make sure that no scrolling is required for the call to action to be visible. Check out Silverback to see this done very well indeed.
6. Provide a version that works in IE6 *takes cover*. – There is still a large user-base for that god-awful browser and as much as it pains me to say it I think we still do need to provide at least limited support for it. It tends to be the non-techies and corporate network PCs that are still using IE6 which, puts them smack bang in the middle of the user group I’m talking about here. Remember: This version can be lo-fi. There’s no problem with it looking less pretty, it just has to work the same. Massive banners that say “YOU’RE USING AN OLD BROWSER. UPGRADE NOW” help no one and may just put people off because it’s starting their experience on a negative.

All of these things will contribute to users, not only completing a call to action, but to them wanting to come back and do it all over again. Happy users = Happy client = Happy bank manager = Happy you.

One area where these guidelines will really pay off is when you are constructing a corporate intranet. People’s jobs may require them to use the site so getting fed up and leaving isn’t an option for them. More to the point, if they complain to their superiors that the site sucks you’re a lot more likely to get it in the neck, not something you want to have to deal with.

Of course this is only the start. You can follow all these guidelines to the best of your ability and still come a cropper. For this reason it is crucial to invest some time in usability testing. You can do this in a way that costs nothing (observing friends and family using the site) or in a way that costs a fortune (hiring a usability testing company such as ClearLeft) but, no matter what, do it and make sure your client knows you’re doing it.

Have you designed a site where you’ve come up against an unusual usability hurdle? have you built a site for users with an extremely low level of computer literacy? I’d love to hear your side of this so be sure to drop a comment.

Dan

Using the $name database string we will make the Contact Form 7 Plugin WCAG WAI-AA Compliant.

Since each input requires a label, and then a matching name we will use the this method. Please note you will need to provide a unique name/label when making the form in the first place ie, no double use of Name/Email fields(use confirm-email etc).

<label for="' . $name . '"></label>

id="' . $name . '"

alt="' . $name . '"

Note: Obviously the alt isn’t valid for every element.

Although I have tried my best to ensure all labels are correctly entered, I have included the only lines of code used to make this plugin accessible.

An example:-

Original Code:
$html = '<input type="text" name="' . $name . '" value="' . attribute_escape($value) . '"' . $atts . ' />';

New Code:
$html = '<label for="' . $name . '"><input type="text" id="' . $name . '" alt="' . $name . '" name="' . $name . '" value="' . attribute_escape($value) . '"' . $atts . ' /></label>';

I have included the wp-contact-form-7.php file required for you to upload to your /plugins/contact-form-7/ folder.

http://www.minutedesigns.com/wordpress-plugins/wp-contact-form-7.zip

Original Links

Download Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/

Author’s Plugin Homepage: http://ideasilo.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/contact-form-7/

This modified version can be seen working at: http://www.it4b.co.uk

Post by Adam King – minutedesigns.com

I’ve never been good at programming. I do tutorials and it goes something like “Okay, I get it…. yeah, got that…. cool, I understand…oh, wait… what?” then I get frustrated and give up so doing a little research online I came to the conclusion that jQuery was the way to go. JQuery isn’t a scripting language in it’s own right, it’s a JavaScript library, albeit a very comprehensive and fully extensible one. It’s tag line is “Write less, do more.” and from what I’ve learned so far that is absolutely the truth. I’m still at the very early stages of learning the library thanks to the amazing tutorial videos over at themeforest.net but I’m already in awe of how simple it makes things. Things like sliding or fading show/hide animations and advanced selectors are cut down to just one or two lines of code. Using plain old JavaScript would take an absolute age. Obviously I’m only scratching the surface of what the library is capable of, and as I said before it is fully extensible with new add-ons being released all the time.

What makes jQuery so simple is that it uses CSS selectors to refer to elements on the page so it allows you to refer to specific parts of your HTML in the exact same way you would refer to them in your CSS; either by saying what element it is (p or a or li) or by their class or ID (.class or #id) not only does this make things way faster, it really helps people like myself learn the library because I’m already experienced in CSS. Look at the example below. All that is doing is saying that when the link with an ID of ‘trigger-out’ is clicked, then fade out the div with an ID of ‘box’ and as you can see those elements are referred to in the same way as you would in CSS; #trigger-out and #box. Simple.

Another beautiful thing about this is that you can use jQuery to quickly add or remove CSS classes to any element you want and as such allow user interaction to influence the appearance of the whole site. This can be for something as simple as allowing users to choose what colour they want to view the site in all the way through to giving excellent visual feedback when validating forms or clicking/hovering over links. of course, this could all be done without jQuery but… remember “Write less, do more”. Why anyone would want to do things like this the hard way, I have no idea.

So what do I intend to do with this stuff? Well, I certainly hope to include some nice jQuery UI stuff in my upcoming blog redesign for sure. At the moment I’m just thinking about applying some cool show/hide transitions on some menus and also a nice ‘photo frame’ type thing to display my latest photos. Also, I can’t really talk about it on here, but there may well be some scope for me to apply these skills to my day job as well. That’s not forgetting, of course, that it’s just a nice feather to have in ones cap.

If anyone reading this knows of any handy jQuery resources that I should take a look at then please, feel free to post them in a comment and I’ll be sure to check them out. Also, if you’re at the same sort of stage as me and have anything to say, please do.

Tutorials at jQuery.com

Themeforest.net blog