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Archive for the ‘Usability’ Category

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Cross Browser Testing

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
I recently started using a new service called CrossBrowserTesting, and it’s so incredibly awesome I felt compelled to write a review.  First some background… Browser compatibility is a difficult challenge for all web designers and developers.  The process of debugging HTML, CSS, or Javascript problems that only occur on specific platforms is both tedious and frustrating.  At Sitening we run either Parallels or VMWare on our laptops so we can launch Windows and test the sites we’re working on.  Unfortunately, this is a time-consuming process, and the results are often suspect.  While it is possible to install multiple versions of IE, ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2578/cross-browser-testing

Bounce rates affecting rankings? Or SEO for SEO’s sake?

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
Over at SEO Black Hat, QuadsZilla demonstrates correlation between traffic, specifically Google traffic, and bounce rate, claiming that bounce rate is being used to determine quality and factoring into rankings. Except his or her graphs show direct, rather than inverse, relationships between traffic and bounce rate. In other words, in those graphs, on days when Google traffic (and traffic overall) was down, the bounce rate was down, too. This runs counter to what one might expect if bounce rate were being used to determine quality from a SERP perspective. A poorly designed or ill-thought-out landing page might cause irrelevant traffic to ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/3077/bounce-rates-affecting-rankings-or-seo-for-seos-sake

Google introduces SearchWiki; SEO heads explode

Friday, November 21st, 2008
If you’re signed in to Google this morning and have performed a search, you’ve no doubt noticed that they’ve introduced interaction elements that allow you to move results up or down or suppress them from your display. Google is calling this feature SearchWiki. According to the Google Help Center article on SearchWiki, your modified results persist whenever you are signed in to Google and search for those same terms. Naturally, this feature has implications for both search engine optimization and user experience. Having been on both sides of search: designing the search itself, and optimizing content for display in result sets, ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/3076/google-introduces-searchwiki-seo-heads-explode

sIFR 3 Beta is Getting Closer to its Final Release

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
Mark Wubben announced on Wednesday (December 26, 2007) that sIFR was getting closer to its final release. In a message to all of the developers and beta testers, he said: Good news, I’m running out of bugs to fix. Pretty much the only thing left to do is support page zoom in Firefox 3, IE 7 and Opera. I believe page zoom is the future, as opposed to font resizing, and therefore font resizing won’t be supported. As of right now, the latest version is 350. If you could have a look and test it on your sites, that’d be great. You can ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/449/sifr-3-beta-is-getting-closer-to-its-final-release

Implementing Contextual Feedback and Help to Improve the Usability of Web Applications

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Traditionally, communication between developers and users has been sparse. Developers have always provided limited help through a single help window and users rarely get the chance to offer feedback and bug reports. However, those limitations have been changing in recent years. Many software developers have created help forums where users can discuss issues with other users and support personnel can also participate. In fact, in the past few years we’ve also seen the addition of feedback forms, which allow the user to send feedback to the developers. Overall though, things haven’t changed much – especially in the world of Web ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/443/implementing-contextual-feedback-and-help-to-improve-the-usability-of-web-applications

Safari 3 Now Supports Textarea Resizing

Monday, June 11th, 2007
The new Safari 3 Beta supports the ability to resize any textarea box. This feature is supported on both the Mac and Windows version of Safari 3. The video below shows it in action.

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2787/safari-3-now-supports-textarea-resizing

Breadcrumb Navigation: Hierarchy or History?

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007
Breadcrumbs are a form of secondary navigation for websites. They’re useful, because they: show the user where they are provide one-click access for section hierarchy are small and take up very little space are potential SEO keyword targets I try to use breadcrumbs whenever I can and I find they’re particularly useful on sites that have a deep hierarchy. However, one of the most frequently asked questions about breadcrumbs is, “should a breadcrumb display hierarchy or history?” Jakob Nielsen recently tackled this problem in a recent article titled, “Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful.” Hierarchy or History? …Offering users a Hansel-and-Gretel-style history trail is basically useless, because it simply ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2777/breadcrumb-navigation-hierarchy-or-history

punBB 1.3 to Support Microformats151

Monday, September 25th, 2006
Rickard Andersson recently added Microformat support to punBB, a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board (forum). In particular, he just added support for the MicroID, a small decentralized verifiable identity. The MicroID allows… …any content owner or web site to publish a simple portable identity token associated with entire pages, blocks of content, or particular pieces of data. This is for identification and ownership verification purposes only, not authentication, authorization, communication, or any other identity related function. In a sense, MicroID is a simple technique to wrap any existing communication identifier in a generic way and enable it to be uniquely and ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2674/punbb-13-to-support-microformats

Create a Modal Dialog Using CSS and Javascript

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
Back in my early programming days, before I switched over to web development, I spent most of my time writing software for Windows. I look back on that time with fond memories. 8-bit icons, OLE2, and no silly Start menus. With the recent Web 2.0 boom, many web developers have returned to their roots and begun building sites that resemble desktop applications. AJAX (the second coming of javascript) lets designers borrow elements from the desktop paradigm and use them on their websites. One element that I find myself using quite a bit are modal dialogs. In a desktop application, a modal ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2911/create-a-modal-dialog-using-css-and-javascript

How to Pick the Best Layout Width for a Website

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
Every website has a core audience. That audience may consist of a group of users that are all technically savvy, or literally all users who access the Internet at any given time. This discrepancy places a burden on all web designers to create an interactive experience that is pleasing and usable to their core audience. I define a core audience as a majority of users that are above the 5% mark. I use this measurement to make important decisions about how I present information. Presentation includes design, layout, navigation, processes, and also screen resolutions. Which brings us to one of the ...

http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2603/how-to-pick-the-best-layout-width-for-a-website

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