James Young (Art & Design)

Here’s another interesting video. If you are in any way involved with website design, development, or management, you spend a lot of time looking at other successful websites in an attempt to discover what works well. During this process you’ll often contemplate what drove certain decisions. Therefore it’s very intriguing when you get a chance to hear an actual Q&A about such topics. So, check out this press demo from Facebook:



Found via: Mashable

Despite the various “glaring omissions” that have been well debated in the past week, I agree that the iPad will be a success. It may not fully blossom, past the early adopters, until a v1.5 or v2, but it’s going to be very popular. As a UI designer I want one to develop for, as a consumer I want one because it looks so fun to play with. Anyhow, this Charlie Rose segment (presented in iPad-reistant Flash) sums things up well:



Found via: TechCrunch

Below is a quick comparison of two browser testing tools. There are others out there, feel free to add in comments. However, since Adobe just made another press push for BrowserLab I thought it would be a good time to compare these two tools that I’ve been trying out.

Litmus

Litmus is out of the UK, and has been around in some capacity since 2005. They currently offer both an HTML-based web application, as well as a nascent desktop application counterpart.

Browsers supported at this time:

• Short answer - Litmus wins here big time with a very broad list of browsers on both Windows and Mac. Full list here.

Stand out features:

• Not just web browser testing, but also Email Testing - a feature Adobe doesn’t have at all
• Browser tests can show both: Cropped, in-browser window; and Full page no browser window bordering image
• Save multiple tests
• Retesting / test history, iterative workflow
• Validation warnings and direct links to validation results
• Ability to download test results
• Ability to mark a test as complied and share the results (ie Social features)
• bookmarkelt lets you test any page you are visiting in your normal browser
• Rich Help and other resources

Adobe® BrowserLab

Adobe BrowserLab is in a limited time preview stage, this Flash-in-browser-based tool covers the website basics that Litmus does and has a few slick features. One immediate ‘weakness’ in comparison is that at the moment you can only run one test at a time and there is no apparent way to access test history.

Browsers supported at this time:

• Firefox 2.0 & 3.0 for both Win XP and Mac OSX
• IE 6.0 & 7.0 for XP
• Safari 3.0 for Mac

Stand out features:

• Views: single browser, 2-up for comparison, and a very cool “Onion Skin View” that overlays two different captures to show where layout diverges.
• Browser sets, with controls
• Zooming on captures
• BrowserLab Extension for Dreamweaver CS4

Verdict

IMO, Litmus offers a broader more user-friendly set of features for testing multiple sites in an iterative fashion. It’s huge browser library and additional support for testing HTML Email give it a clear edge. Adobe may be able to catch up of course, but I also feel that it will ultimately come down to pricing. Both offer free options, but at the moment Adobe allows you to test IE 6 for free, whereas Litmus requires a paid plan to gain access to anything but IE 7 and Firefox 2.0. Adobe has not set pricing, but has stated that it will become a paid service after it moves out of preview release. We’ll have to see how the pricing packages compare. For the time being, you could benefit by using both in tandem, which I’ll likely do for a while until I feel there’s reason not to. No matter what, the advent of powerful browser-based browser testing tools is a huge time, money, and headache saver for website builders concerned with providing the best user experience possible across a large spectrum of web clients.

The slashing of paid search advertising is just one symptom of the current economic situation. I’m seeing a lot of questions out there, from Twitter to direct inquiries, regarding the dark art of SEO. While optimizing the heck out of your META tags may never grow your “Organic Search” results to the volume they might have been at when you were spending thousands of dollars per month on Adwords, there are things that can and should be done to move your site up in search engine rankings.

One mantra to keep in mind throughout any SEO effort is: Patience, Analysis, Creativity, Implementation, Repeat. SEO combines many disciplines such as Marketing, Competitive Research, Customer Awareness, and Web Development. It also helps if you are selling/making/talking about stuff that people are interested in. If you build it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘they’ will search for it. Don’t try to get it all done in one day, break your site into prioritized blocks, and work to improve successful pages first, then work through the full site over time.

You are responsible for knowing what your customers are looking for, and the terms they associate with that need. Here’s a three part roll up by SiteProNews, that covers of a bunch of helpful ideas to help you build an SEO framework that can close the gap between your site and the people searching for what you provide:

How to Optimize for Google:

• Part 1 of 3
  
• Part 2 of 3
  
• Part 3 of 3
  

Drobo is a recently announced product from Data Robotics, Inc. It puts a new spin on high-capacity desktop storage. The way in which the product differs from traditional desktop hard-drives can seem a subtle at first.

Therefore, they have created a very effective product configuration / simulation tool that they call the “Drobolator Capacity Calculator”. This is one of the most useful product configuration tools I’ve seen in a while. It not only helps you simulate different personal storage scenarios, but it also clearly communicates the unique way in which Drobo allocates storage (for various uses) across the multiple installed drives.

It’s always great to see user experience designs that help make complex systems easier to understand. Kudos to Data Robotics for leveraging an interactive drag and drop interface in such a user-centered and effective way.

J.Y. Design helped Rutland Plywood Corporation design and launch a website for their new RiggerCore product line. The site offers information and online purchasing options for RiggerCore Industrial Strength Outrigger and Crane pads. Check it out at www.riggercore.com