Sometimes it’s the little things that drive you nuts. As many of us have probably noticed during this season of holiday shopping, usability problems in online forms can be infuriating. Brian Crescimanno helps solve the problem with a checklist of form-usability recommendations.
Topic: Usability
Thinking Outside the Grid
CSS has broken the manacles that kept us chained to grid-based design…so why do so few sites deviate from the grid? Molly E. Holzschlag can tell us that the answer has something to do with airplanes, urban planning, and British cab drivers.
Power to the People
Relentlessly simple solutions to complex design problems can be the difference between an average experience and a great one. D. Keith Robinson reminds web designers and developers that ease of use is more important than technological sophistication.
Design Choices Can Cripple a Website
Do you test your designs? If not, Nick Usborne wants you to take responsibility for your design choices and the very quantifiable effect they can have on websites that are built for business.
Ambient Findability: Findability Hacks
In this excerpt from his new book,
Improving Link Display for Print
Some time ago, Eric Meyer showed you how to add URIs to the printed version of your pages using print styles. Sometimes, though, too many inline URIs can make pages hard to read. Aaron Gustafson comes to the rescue with a JavaScript add-on that’ll have you loving your linkage again.
Complex Dynamic Lists: Your Order Please
Help your site’s visitors reach their goals quickly with a dynamic menu that takes its cue from the Mac OS X Finder.
Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms
Google’s cache offers users a copy of your website with their search terms highlighted. You can do the same thing and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for — whether they’re coming from an external search engine or your own site search — by making their search terms easy to spot.
Let Them Eat Cake
A growing debate pits accessibility against usability. From our point of view, it’s like pitting peanut butter against jelly. This article helps you create a page that is both usable and accessible, saving readers the trouble of scrolling with a little help from JavaScript and the Document Object Model.
The Table Ruler
Make your site easier to use by giving your visitors a virtual “ruler” to guide and track their progress down long data tables. With a pinch of JavaScript and a dash of the DOM, your table rows will light up as your visitors hover over them.
