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http://www.pixelsurgeon.com/pages/interview/design/jakobnielsen/index.html [pixelsurgeon.com]
<NOTE: Comments and URL drop extraneous to discussion snipped. ~Marcia>
[edited by: Marcia at 6:56 am (utc) on June 21, 2002]
I read Jakob's latest book on Home Page Usability with great interest and I learned a lot from him. I would also add that his site may be dull, but his client's sites are not!
In understanding JN it's helpful to remember that his "opinions" are not JUST opinions, but were arrived at through lots of user testing over many years. I will say that he's opened my eyes to many issues I never considered on my own, and I'm sure that my own designs are better because of his insight.
[edited by: tedster at 11:33 am (utc) on June 21, 2002]
First, sorry if my comments offended. I must admit that it didn't occur to me that someone from pixelsurgeon would read and be offended by my comments. I do try to be respectful in forums and I'm sorry if I wasn't.
That out the way, perhaps we can talk about some actual design issues.
1. Is it really necessary to use pixel-sized fonts? It's not the exact pixel size so much (9 or 11) as the basic problem that it prevents users from resizing. I think it would be better to use a more user-friendly font-sizing schema so that the user "text-size" settings would allow people to use larger text.
2. Splash screen. I would mind the splash screen if I didn't have to wait for it and there was a "skip intro" link. At least on Opera the link doesn't work until the whol huge splash is downloaded. I suppose your regular visitors can bookmark the home page instead, but at least offer a "skip" link
3. Email. Finally found it. Yes, it is that hard, because it's in a very strange place. There are some useability studies that show where readers tend to look and lower right, drop-down lists are not one of them. I think your overall navigation scheme falls under the category of "Mystery Meat Navigation" as defined on the Web Pages that Suck site.
4. Colors. Please look at the thread I started on color blindness. It might give you some ideas for the revamp.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Good luck,
Tom
A design that is not usable is bad design. A website that focuses on usability issues as it's primary design directive deprives itself of many other modes of communication (colour, beauty, light/shade etc)
The objective is to communicate. I feel pixelsurgeon and askit.com both fail in this regard due mainly to their slavish adherence to ideology.
I vote zeldman for president (www.zeldman.com). He takes both sides and proves they can exist simultaneously.
After many conversations here, and lots of experimenting, I now fall in the px camp. This is new for me. It's not the theorectical best answer, but given the current browser limitations, I feel it's the pragmatic solution for now.
User's with strong needs CAN overrule a stylesheet with their own stylesheet. However, if a px size is chosen with care most users won't need to. I look forward to more support for "em" and percentages so that the visitor can have more choice in the future, but for now, I'm staying with pixels.
We do try to be civil and respectful of each other's opinions - especially those contrary to our own. Doing so opens the possibility that all of us may learn a thing or two...
For newer memembers and those just visiting, it is important to point out that we have been discussing numerous issues dealing with accessibility concerns and design practices. The Web Accessibility Initiative [w3.org...] is something many of us are actively pursuing. To quote Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director:"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
There are some strong passions here; many of us, myself included, have taken a completely new look at the discipline we call web design. The WAI, Bobby, The National Center for Accessible Media and other similar directives have leant inspiration. The more frequently we discuss these topics, the better we will understand them.
PS: How can designers create attractive interesting sites, and still expect everyone to see them the way they intend them to be seen if different browsers, after all this time, and talk of standardisation, STILL render HTML pages differently?JN: You cannot. All you can do is to optimise for the most common cases and then make sure that the design is still reasonably good for all the other cases. Perfection under all circumstances is impossible.
Funny, Opera offers full screen zoom... so this is not an issue; Mozilla/Netscape offers text-zoom, problem solved! M$ and Internet Explorer will not allow resizing or zoom of .px sized text - BUT! if you got to IE's PRINT PREVIEW section you can then zoom the entire page!
What gives? Why wasn't this functionality added to the standard toolbar? C'mon M$, get usable already! Sheesh!
"That bit really reminded me of many discussions we've had here about N4, CSS etc. It seems to me that as a group we usually reach the same conclusion that JN has reached"
Exactly - makes you wonder why Jakob Nielsen gets paid so much to state the bleeding obvious :)
[edited by: FlashLady2 at 12:54 am (utc) on June 21, 2002]
I know because I needed it to read the article!
That bit really reminded me of many discussions we've had here about N4, CSS etc. It seems to me that as a group we usually reach the same conclusion that JN has reached.
I think he reads Webmaster World and follows our discussions.... ;)
It's only moot once you make the change. It's one thing to argue font sizes, and it's another thing to drive visitors away. Make the changes you propose and I'm willing to bet your log files get allot bigger.
>Why wasn't this functionality added to the standard toolbar?<
papabaer, go to view> toolbars >customize, and you can place the print preview icon on your toolbar.
I think it's only "obvious" after the fact, which is usually a fairly good indicator that the "obvious" statement is true.
Opera's full ZOOM feature is far in advance of IE's afterthought. In place of a scalable rendered image of a page, Opera's ZOOM retains full functionality; there is no comparison. Get with it IE!
What immediately popped into my head was, "Your website does not support surfers. Please upgrade to a modern (useable) website!"
Mock page looks fine - but there is on BIG error...you gave blade 8/10 :P
At the most it should get 6/10 ;)
Let's take this back to the core issues, I'd like to get some input on methods that web designers can use to incorporate "form and function" in a manner satisfactory to both goals.
What are the best ways to approach this task? What should be avoided? Where should it all begin?
From my own point of view, I find the sites that incoporate style and function (with accessibility in mind) very impressive.
I'd like to get some input on methods that web designers can use to incorporate "form and function" in a manner satisfactory to both goals.
IMHO the starting point has to be a good, well thought-out information architecture and navigation scheme.
For example I arrived on the pixelsurgeon nielsen interview from a page that also mentioned the purgason interview, which I was also interested in. But I just couldn't find the purgason interview anywhere.
I checked the drop down box and it wasn't listed. Went to the Design++ section and it gave me a blank page. Went back and clicked the Interview button and nothing happened.
Then hacked the url to ../design/ and got a 403. Hacked url to /interview/ and got a list of interviews but Purgason's wasn't listed (neither was nielsen's).
I then tried to find a home link, but there didn't seem to be one - the LHS logo isn't linked. So hacked url to / and got the soap bar. At this point I gave up and turned to Google :)
(Arbernaut - hope you don't mind me using pixelsurgeon as an example. I do think your site looks great.)
What are the best ways to approach this task?
I'm not sure the following is what you mean (too general perhaps?), but here goes. I think there are many reasons that there are so many bad sites and that so many well-intentioned people have bad sites (including myself - I've never done a site that I considered good, meaning it is what it would be given all the time in the world to deal with it) is because the means of fixing it are often beyond them. Some essentials are probably
1. Testing. Realistically, how many people have the ability to do controlled, scientific testing with real users running the site under real conditions? This sort of testing costs more than the entire budget for most smaller sites, not to mention "labor of love" sites.
2. Teamwork. I think designers often get carried away and create heavy, slow, confusing, but beautiful sites. Jakob Nielsen types create rapid, readable, ugly sites. Some team sites end up being the worst of both worlds, but if I had a designer who could help me with colors and pleasing layout, it could not help but improve things that I do. In addition to being colorblind, I'm just not that visual.
3. Going with the flow. The standard web site might be boring and stupid, but once a standard is established, you veer from it at your own risk. That is something that centuries of print (which is where my real work is) have shown us. Some layouts look a lot better than others, but don't put the index at the beginning of the book and binding on the right (for European languages anyway) unless you have a terrific reason. If your book is English, the table of contents goes at the beginning. If it's in French, it goes at the end. I think (surprise!) that the English system makes more sense, but my publications in French have the contents at the end.
For the web, navigation on the left and at the top is probably sort of stupid, but it's a de facto standard. For those of us who can't afford testing and teams, a good start is just to innovate within the parameters that are set (for good or ill), by the most popular sites on the web unless you want to be a crusader (which is a good and noble thing, but you pay a price). But I think it's like selling a dvorak keyboard. It might be a great idea if you want to crusade, but if you want to sell keyboards, best avoided.
Tom.
consistant font sizes across browsers and platforms... <snip> ... overriding the style sheet with one of your own is an option.
Don't you think that there are a lot more users who are capable of adjusting font size by using "View¦Text Size" in IE (most users) than by creating a style sheet of their own that they substitute? Expecting the latter seems like a lot.
As more and more users get more sophisticated, what you can expect will increase, but my boss doesn't really understand the difference between the OS and the Apps that run on it. I know PhD scientists who aren't a lot better. So I'll add a fourth point to my previous post...
4. Assume as little user knowledge/experience as possible given the circumstances. Obviously this level will be different for the events calendar for your local parks department compared to a warez site, but you get the idea.
Tom
Tom
And I would add to that, assume very little initiative from your visitors to take the time to have to "learn" how to use your site. Most people will put days, weeks, months into learning new programs, but if your site takes 30 seconds to decipher how it works, most people will look for a site that doesn't. (Learned that one the hard way.)
Don't you think that there are a lot more users who are capable of adjusting font size by using "View?Text Size" in IE
When specifying type size in Pixels, adjusting the type size this way doesn't always work.
Yes, that's my point. When you specify in pixels, the only way for the user to adjust size is to
1. Use Opera's zoom function
2. override your style sheet.
Few people use Opera and fewer can override a stylesheet - probably less than 1% for the latter and about that for the former. I bet at least 2% :-( can adjust text size using IE's method and many many more users among those running super high resolutions or with impaired vision.
Tom
2. "...once a standard is established, you veer from it at your own risk."
That is Nielsens's argument for always using the default colors for a:link and a:visited. Now I'm in favor of retaining the underline on links - but the colors can shift to avoid harsh clashes with other design elements.
I still like to stay in the blue realm for usability's sake. But I don't necessarily use a purist #0000ff! Staying with blue-ish underlined links is one area where I feel that usability overrides aesthetic design considerations. The standard is pretty standard and departures risk confusing the visitors.
I still like to stay in the blue realm for usability's sake. But I don't necessarily use a purist #0000ff!
I think that's how you have to approach such things. If your better way is quickly recognizable to an experienced user (I assume that no convention is immediately recognizable to a user without experience) then it can be a positive evolution and who knows, after time it may allow things to evolve to something much better.
I think, for example, that most of us like modern fonts as they were invented by the Aldine press in Italy during the Renaissance, but it took over a century for this to become the norm in England and more like four centuries to become the norm in Germany. Now most of us have trouble reading an English book from 1500. The Aldine or "italic" fonts won, but it took a long and gradual evolution to wean users off of them.
One has to remember, however, that early adopters of new fonts in England could only target certain audiences or else they would have trouble selling books. On the other hand, late adopters ended up having the same problem. Those with the courage to try to drive the change often paid a price and so did those who adapted too slowly to the evolution.
It was an interesting problem in the early years of print, and it's once again an interesting problem with the web. I'm sure someone who knows more about the history of broadcast media could find similar parallels.
Tom
