D. Keith Robinson publishes an article on Gorilla Usability at Evolt. I think he meant guerrilla rather than gorilla, but don't let that stop you from reading the article. He doesn't cover any new ground: Jakob Nielsen, among others, has been beating on the low-cost usability drum for quite some time--see Nielsen's 1994 article Guerrilla HCI: Using Discount Usability Engineering to Penetrate the Intimidation Barrier. , Robinson's article describes are much more informal methodology than Nielsen's work. Most of the usability testing I've done falls closer to Robinson than Nielsen. Short, quick tests can be quite valuable, especially if they are done at a stage where changes can still be made.
Despite my quibbles over originality, the article is worth a read. Any testing is better than none.
I haven't been too impressed with usability guru Jakob Nielsen's AlertBox columns lately, but his latest is a good read for anyone doing web-related work.
Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002
1. No Prices
2. Inflexible Search Engines
3. Horizontal Scrolling
4. Fixed Font Size
5. Blocks of Text
6. JavaScript in Links
7. Infrequently Asked Questions in FAQ
8. Collecting Email Addresses Without a Privacy Policy
9. URL > 75 Characters
10. Mailto Links in Unexpected Locations
Meg Hourihan writes about a crime many of us are guilty of: forgetting that not everyone has high speed 'net access.
Lately I've grown lazy around the issue of page size and images. When designing something for a client or posting a picture to my own web site, I'd often think to myself, "everyone I know has a high-speed connection now-a-days" and with little more than a cursory glance at the file size, I'd post or design in happy, dial-upless oblivion.
After a month of low-bandwidth, high-expense access in Paris, Hourihan offers her observations and some tips for dealing with lower bandwidth users. In short: use standards and publish your content in multiple formats (like RSS).
Two decent content management articles. Neither is new, but both are worth a read if you're embarking on the CM process:
Navigating the Content Management Jungle: A Survival Guide by Barry Schaeffer.
Actually, the most salient fact about CM is that it is not a noun as the term is so often used. Instead, CM is a verb and while often characterized as something you can buy, it is actually a list of things that you must do.
Losing sight of the Content in a Content Management System by James Robertson.
What seems to get lost with the focus on technology is the content. Not just any content, but useful content. We've all heard of the age-old phrase 'garbage in, garbage out'. Never more than before, this applies to many content management solutions.
Release Candidate 1 of Plone is out. Hopefully, this is the last step before a 1.0 release. I'll try to take a look at this soon and see if it solves any of the problems I had with an earlier beta.
Digital Web features three articles about navigation:
The Psychology of Navigation by Jesse James Garrett.
Persuasive Navigation by Jeff Lash.
Navigation Complex by Peter-Paul Koch.
All three are worth a look.
There are a number of browsers out there that are based on the Gecko rendering engine: Netscape 6/7, Mozilla, Chimera, and some flavors of AOL (Mac OS X, for sure). Netscape's DevEdge has an article about how to "spot the Gecko" with browser sniffers.
The first installment in the Boxes and Arrows series on Faceted Classification and Controlled Vocabularies has hit the (virtual) streets: What Is A Controlled Vocabulary? The authors give a nice overview of the world of CV, including taxonomies, thesauri, authority files, and other things that excite the librarian in all of us. But seriously, a good CV can make a site's navigation and search really shine.
I've been evaluating the BETA of Plone. See the documentation at: http://plone.org/documentation/. I'm posting my first impressions here.
Plone sits atop the Content Management Framework, which in turn sits atop Zope. Zope is perhaps the most active of the open-source CMSes. It is written largely in Python, a nice cross-plaform (Win, #nix, Mac 9/X) scripting language.
Here are some random thoughts, in no real order:
It is a little too "member-centric" for a public facing website. These member-related features (home folders, sign-in forms, etc) should be more hidden from the public. Likely, this just means modifying the template. Other than that, user authentication seems well done.
Administration is a bit counter-intuitive (setting up roles). There is no centralized administration screen (that I could find). As the site "owner," you need to go to the folder in question and assign the roles there. Its not a deal-breaker, but some form of centralized administration screen would be nice.
Once assigned, the roles seem to be flexible. A single user can have a "member" (ie, contributor) role in one part of the site, and an "owner" (with the power to approve) in another. So, in a district, a user could have complete control over their corner of the site, but when they wanted to post news items, there would be a workflow in place for approval. Very nice.
But, I haven't been able to get this workflow to actually work. The roles are a bit goofy. For example, I made a test account into a "member" (the lowest level) for a folder. But this user couldn't even see that folder until I made it a manager. Either I'm doing something quite wrong, or something still isn't quite right. This is beta software, so I'm inclined to blame it! :)
I managed to completely break Plone at one point. I'm not quite sure why. It fired back up just fine after a few fun error messages. I've also learned not to delete the main index page. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to get it back. When I tried the versioning feature, it wouldn't bring that page back. Not quite sure why. Heh.
Each content piece has a number of properties (language, keywords, contributors, etc), so there is some support for metadata. I think I'd rather there not be a keywords feature. I'd much prefer a simple taxonomy or controlled vocabulary interface. There doesn't seem to be any support for a taxonomy (certainly not for the navigation).
You can put publication and pull dates on each piece of content. There doesn't look to be any functionality to put in reminders (ie, "this page is 1 year old today...would you like to edit it?").
I don't quite get the point of the little calendar on the sidebar. It makes the system look a bit weblogish. After browsing through the plone.org site, I'm still not sure--there don't seem to be any links from the calendar. Hmmm...
So far, I'm reasonably impressed with it. I think it probably has a fair amount going for it:
But there are some things that would need changing...
I haven't yet taken a hard look at Zope's Content Management Framework. I'm wondering if using the CMF as a starting point might be better than using Plone. I'll keep looking...
A couple of accessibility-related articles:
This article provides an overview of the legislation and includes a case study showing how a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template is applied in practice.
The Lifecycle of Web Accessibility
In this article we'll divide the life cycle of web accessibility into 5 different phases and we'll see how they are strictly interconnected with other disciplines such as graphic design, development and content management.
Lou Rosenfeld shares some thoughts about advanced search interfaces in a recent weblog entry. The short version is that he doesn't think advanced search is needed in most situations.
The Web Standards Project is starting a new series of articles where they ask questions of the experts at the World Wide Web Consortium. The first question is:
There are several ways of specifying the character encoding for a particular document. Which of the following methods (or combination thereof) does the W3C recommend, and why?
The answer straightens out the confusion surrounding character encoding (which encompasses HTML meta tags, server settings, and the fun of XML/XHTML).
I'm looking forward to more "Ask the W3C" articles...
I've been planning on playing with Zope for a while now. I went to the Zope.org page to download Zope. There aren't any pre-compiled binaries for my Mac OS X laptop, so I downloaded the source. (Yes, I'm enough of a nerd to compile apps when I need to.) But as I started the process I ran into some roadblocks. Zope 2.6.0 requires Python 2.1. My Mac OS X 10.2.2 has Python 2.2. I'm not really keen on compiling another version of Python just to run Zope. After some poking around on the Zope site, I found out that Python 2.2 support is a proposed feature for Zope 2.7.
After this discovery, I thought I'd surf over to Plone.org. Plone is a CMS that runs on top of Zope. Turns out they have a pre-compiled binary of Plone for Mac OS X! All the required components are all in a package, so installation was a one-click affair. Once the parts are installed (in Applications > Plone), open the Zope Controller. You'll need to change the Server User (under the Environment tab) to a username on your machine. Then, quit the Controller and start it again (I think you need to do this...). Click the lock at the bottom to allow you to start the server. Start the server. Then go to the URL provided in the docs.
The Plone binary included Python 2.1 and Zope 2.6 (I think). Maybe later I'll play with the Zope provided.
So I have it up and running. I'll post a report on what else I find later.
James Robertson noted the relaunch of UsabilityNet. UsabilityNet is a European Union project, but most of the content is quite applicable to those of us on this side of the Atlantic.
I especially like the Methods Table. This is a really nice example of both a useful Flash application and a faceted classification scheme. The table lists methods applicable to each phase of a project's lifespan, and lets users filter on a number of criteria. The table highlights those methods that best meet the criteria. As I try to explain this, I realize that this is probably one of those things that makes much more sense when you see it. So go check it out.
The Montague Institute Review has published an article on the Ten Taxonomy Myths. They are:
This isn't a "Taxonomy 101" type piece, but it does raise some useful points.
Most CMSes have at least some form of workflow to track content as it goes from draft form to published document (although in some systems, worflow is handled by external workflow management systems). The Workflow Management Coalition has published a XML-based way to describe workflows. The story is covered in the XML CoverPages: Workflow Management Coalition Publishes XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) Version 1.0.
Opensourcecms.com has set up a number of open source content management systems for anyone to play with. All of the systems are PHP/MySQL-based projects. Cool concept, and a nice resource.
Someone on the cms-list mentioned a PHP-based CMS I hadn't heard of (which isn't shocking, given how many PHP-based CMSes are out there): Sitellite. Sitellite isn't open source, but it is free for non-profit or personal use ($1000 otherwise). The system comes from Simian Systems, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
I recently ran across the an article on two types of learning systems: LMS and LCMS: What's the Difference?
If you’re confused about the differences between a learning management system (LMS) and a learning content management system (LCMS), you’re not alone. Not only are the names similar, some suppliers are positioning LCMSs as the new wave of LMSs. In fact, an LMS and an LCMS are complementary but very different systems that serve different masters and address unique business challenges.
The article is aimed at corporate training rather than education, but I think many of the ideas and systems mentioned in the article can be used in the K-12 space as well.
Digitial Web has an interview with the authors of the famed "polar bear" IA book: An interview with Peter Morville and Lou Rosenfeld, Information Architects.
Well, they're not reallying "doing" it. Rather, they're starting a series on the subject:
All About Facets & Controlled Vocabularies. I'm looking forward to it.
My colleague Dave Duttry posted a comment on an earlier post:
In other words, how does Content Management fit into the KM scheme of things?
Dave and I have been chatting about knowledge management (KM) for a while now. Here are some preliminary thoughts on the subject:
I see both content management (CM) and knowledge management (KM) as fields within the broader notion of information management. The two concepts share some similarities, but they are different beasts.
I'll start with a technical perspective. A CMS is designed to acquire, manage, and publish content. A KM system also acquires and manages content, but there is less emphasis on publication. Often, a KM system is a "KnowledgeBase"--a searchable database of content. There isn't the same sense of publication, although both CM and KM might be delivered through a web browser.
Both CM and KM systems have come under fire lately for promising easy solutions to hard problems (and costing a ton to implement). KM systems especially have had a number of high-priced failures.
Ultimately, I think the way to design a successful KM system is to not focus on technology. (Ack! Heresy!) The fact of the matter is that creating a fancy database and then hoping that people will simply pour their knowledge in is a recipe for failure. I don't have the solution, but I think that looking towards more human-centered strategies (like communities of practice) holds more promise. I've also heard about some interesting work in "just in time" KM. For example, a KM system that supplies doctors with medical advice on the job. Regardless of the approach, such systems do require a good deal of human involvement to guide the system to success.
In the end, a CMS is a fairly simple tool with a well defined goal (acquire, manage, publish). A KM system is a good deal more complicated, and less technical.
Accessibility guru Joe Clark answered 10 questions posed by Slashdot users: http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/09/1446221
Peter Merholz posted some thoughts on user-centered design and the problem of assuming that software companies have designed in "wisdom": http://peterme.com/archives/00000346.html.
How on earth could this enterprise software tell you how to do your work? It's your work! And, this is what the client learned, in a painful way. That software can't come in and change how people work--such software will simply be ignored, be rejected. Companies have to step up and take more responsibility for the integration of software within their organizations, because no one else knows how those companies work. This is something that content management system vendors have had to deal with, and has lead to a solution of separating the content/data and the presentation.
Interesting that Peter looks to the CMS industry--which is often seen as producing overpriced tools that take too long to implement--for the solution. I guess you can have your tools done quickly, or done well, but probably not neither.
Here is a great article for anyone building web pages: Understanding web typography - an introduction. Jim Byrne covers text on the web in general, with a bent towards accessibility. An excerpt:
But - as with all heroes - text also has the potential to be a very bad; bad text is:
ROI (Return on Investment) is a big topic these days. When you're looking at dropping a ton of money on a fancy CMS, you'd better be able to explain how this investment is going to pay off for your organization. One way to think about it is to put a value on your content. Pundit Gerry McGovern has a brief article on content costs. There aren't any answers here, but it is thought provoking.
Another interesting looking open-source CMS package is Bricolage. This project started out as the engine behind Salon.com. EWeek gives it a brief review:
When it comes to open source and content management, the focus tends to be on popular publishing systems for creating community portals. But when it comes to serious content management for large, complex Web sites, open source doesn't do as well, with most products still incomplete and less-than-stellar lists of users.
However, an open-source content management system called Bricolage bucks this trend, providing an open option that isn't just capable but is one of the best content management systems eWeek Labs has seen, even eclipsing some of the best-known commercial products.
A few weeks ago we asked districts and schools in our region to fill out a survey about content management. You can read the results in a 1.3MB PDF document. The highlights:
Contact us for more info...
The staff of Boxes and Arrows (a must-read website for anyone involved in web design) has put together a monster list of books relating to website creation. The topics in question are:
They all look very good, and I think my reading list has just grown quite a bit. Note that these books aren't really standard web books--no "HTML for Dummies" here.
Plone is an open-source CMS that sits on top of Zope. The goal is to create a polished out-of-the-box CMS for Zope. Looks very interesting.
I'm a month or so late in reading this info, but here are a couple of reports from the Open Source Content Management Conference:
Mike Sugarbaker in Mindjack
Notes from SkyBuilders
These articles should give you a good idea of the open-source CMS landscape.
Louis Rosenfeld wrote a nice weblog entry on Information Needs Analysis:
Each user has a different type of information need depending on what he's trying to find and why he's trying to find it. If we can determine the most common information needs a site's users have, we can select the few best architectural components to address those information needs.
Lou then goes on to list types of needs and which IA methods can address these needs. I don't think its a comprehensive list, but it looks like a good starting place. At the very least, its good to be reminded that different types of content merit different methods.
Following on the heels of yesterday's post on faceted metadata comes a nice description of XFML. XFML is the eXchangable Faceted Metadata Language, a way to represent faceted metadata in XML. In the post, Mark Pilgrim applies XFML to one of his sites:
Think of XFML as a way of expressing all the different cross-sections of a site. For example, each tip in Dive Into Accessibility discusses a specific technique, the general design principles the technique embodies, the type of people (expressed as character sketches) who would benefit from its implementation, the types of disabilities that would benefit, the web browsers involved, and (in some cases) even specific instructions for implementing the tip in various publishing tools.
I think there are some interesting implications for content management systems, or any system where you are trying to present info in more than one way.
While it is not a CMS, Macromedia's new Contribute does look interesting for smaller districts who don't want or need the funcationality of a full-blown CMS. Read up on Contribute in this Webmonkey article .
James Robertson has published survey results on Australian public-sector intranets. He surveyed 20 organizations. Some interesting results: Only a few organizations used content management systems, with most using Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or editing by hand. As Robertson says, "with the labour-intensive nature of these tools, it was not surprising to see intranet quality, accuracy and ease of maintenance being highlighted as issues by most participants." Half of the organizations use centralized authoring, while 35% rely on a decentralized model (the remainder being some combination of the two approaches). Robertson notes that the organizations using a centralized model are planning on switching.
From Evolt.org: Flash Remoting Demystified:
As more a designer than a programmer, I initially found Flash Remoting to be quite unwieldy as I waded through the technical documentation. However, once these basic steps of setup were explained to me, I found the technology made dynamic Flash development profoundly simpler than before. However, there are some bugs in the current implementation that may slow you down e.g. improper marshalling of some complex objects. These bugs all have workarounds, so there is no reason not to use Flash Remoting today. I expect once Flash Remoting comes into common practice, it will no doubt provide the missing link for a whole host of new Flash-powered web applications to revolutionize the Web.
Article on
SearchTools.com:
Faceted Metadata Search and Browse. Shows some nice examples of interfaces used to browse and search collections with faceted metadata.
I've recently run across a couple of products that occupy the low-end of the CMS market space (under $5000):
DoItLive is an Active Server Pages-based product that costs $199.
XBase uses Apache, WebObjects, and OpenBase on Mac OS X. Its list price is $899, although it looks like they're running a special right now.
There aren't a lot of other products in this space (the others I've seen include Userland Manilla and WebWord), so its nice to see a few more.