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Top 10 Mistakes revisited

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Diane K. Kovacs

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May 3, 1999, 3:00:00 AM5/3/99
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Forwarded with permission
>
>Jakob Nielsen's www.useit.com web site has been mentioned very favorably a
>few times recently. Old timers may remember Nielsen's article from
>wa-a-ay back in 1996, "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design"
><URL:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html>.
>
>Nielsen has now updated this document, at
><URL:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990502.html>. IMO, both documents
>should be required reading. It's definitely worth taking a few minutes
>looking at your site and considering it in the light of:
>
>1. Frames
>2. Bleeding-edge technology
>3. Scrolling text and looping animations
>4. Complex URLs
>5. Orphan pages
>6. Scrolling navigation pages
>7. Lack of navigation support
>8. Non-standard link colors
>9. Outdated information
>10. Slow download times
>
>And now, back to the Dr. Laura thread, which is already in progress.
>
>
>Thomas Dowling
>OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
>tdow...@ohiolink.edu
>

______________________________________________________________________
Diane K. Kovacs, Kovacs Consulting Internet & World Wide Web Training

http://www.kovacs.com (330)273-5032 - fax: (330)225-0083
______________________________________________________________________
_Cybrarians Guide to Successful Internet Programs and Services_ _The
Internet Trainer's Total Solution Guide_
(Forthcoming! from Neal-Schumann)_The Essential Guide to *Electronic
Library* Collection Development on the Web: Selection Criteria and Core
Collections_
(forthcoming?) _Health and Medicine on the Internet_
http://www.amazon.com/

Ian Samson

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May 4, 1999, 3:00:00 AM5/4/99
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Who's this guy, Jakob Nielsen, anyway, and what gives him the
right to make those assumptions?

Just because he has a PhD does not give him carte-blanche on
what may or may not be right or wrong on web pages. For
example, having "standard link colors" of underlined blue text is
both boring and antiquated. The next thing he'll be saying is that
the use of any font other than Times New Roman is one of the
"mistakes".

I would also not take too much notice since this man's HTML
coding is sloppy (and that's being kind).

On 3 May 99, at 14:07, Diane K. Kovacs wrote about Top 10 Mistakes revisited:

-----------------------------------------------------
Ian Samson
Electronic Publishing
Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa
Voice: [+27(0)12] 302 2957 Fax: [+27(0)12] 302 2525
Organisation: [+27(0)12] 302 2999
http://www.hsrc.ac.za/
-----------------------------------------------------
DISCLAIMER:
Opinions expressed in this message are my own
and do not reflect official policy of the HSRC.
-----------------------------------------------------
QUOTES:
The single most common cause of all relationship breakdown
is selfishness.
-- Ian Samson (1994)

Repetition is the mother of skill.
-- Tony Robbins

There is no substitute for experience. No amount
of education can compensate for appropriate experience.
-- SBDC Training (Pty) Ltd

And just for a laugh:

Microsoft announced today that the official release date
for the new operating system "Windows 2000" will be
delayed until the second quarter of 1901 due to an
unexpected Y2K bug.

Gill, Kathy

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May 4, 1999, 3:00:00 AM5/4/99
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Hi, Ian:

Jakob is a highly respected usability engineer. BTW - his bio info *is* on
the site.

If you think default colors are "boring"-- you are quite free, as a user, to
change your colors in your own browser.

Changing them on web pages is akin to making traffic lights
(red/yellow/green) a rainbow depending on which town/city/state you happen
to be travelling in. That is, it is Very Easy for a designer to screw up the
interface so that it is difficult for the casual user to figure out how the
'page works.'

Which is why on my home machine, I have my colors set to override designers.
This has become increasingly important with CSS, which allows designers to
turn off underlines. It's enough to make me use NN3.x instead of 4.5.

Anecdote:
I used a site on a regular basis that had "default visited purple" for it's
Not Visited Links and "green" for its Visited links. Even though
intellectually I KNEW this -- the first few times I clicked links on the
site, with each visit, I Got THem Backwards -- because a) green means "go"
not "stop" and b) they reversed the default visited/not visited color. Bah.


There is Much research to back up most [not all] of Jakob's opinions. It
comes out of decades of research on human computer interaction. How much
experience do YOU have in this field?


Finally, if you are going to spec a font Other Than Times Roman for "serif
face" -- best make sure that its on your end user systems. Can you name the
fonts that are installed on Macs, PCs, UNIX? I go to many sites with fonts
spec'ed for PCs [often created with FrontPage] and they look like Hell on my
Mac.

Kathy


Kathy E. Gill
AT&T Wireless, NBO Deployment
Redmond Town Center, Bldg 4, 3155B
425.580.6459
mailto:kathy...@attws.com

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of
conversation. -- Plato


> ----------
> From: Ian Samson[SMTP:IDSa...@BEAUTY.HSRC.AC.ZA]
> Reply To: Ian Samson
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 1999 10:25 PM
> To: NETT...@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
> Subject: Re: Top 10 Mistakes revisited

Ian Samson

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May 5, 1999, 3:00:00 AM5/5/99
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Hi Kathy, et al. I see the message was sent to me via the list, so my reply is
going via the list too. (Diane, this isn't the start of any 'flame war' nor am I
using the platform for my own purposes.)

Your points are well taken, Kathy.

And, I did view his site before making my comments. How else would I have
known?

The design of our site was not my responsibility but that of the designer. We
had little say in what should have been used, and, alas, we designed purely
for the PC without any consideration for other operating systems.

However, as you mentioned at one time, our site has "a clean, neat
appearance" and works just fine. We specifically design for a minimum
specification of 800x600x256 for PC-based operating systems.

I have written to Dr Nielsen expressing a sentiment that my comments were
not intended as a sleight, should anyone think contrary.

Views expressed in this message are my own and cannot be interpreted as
official policy of the organization for which I work, lest anyone complain.

On 4 May 99, at 10:45, Gill, Kathy wrote about Re: Top 10 Mistakes revisited:

> Hi, Ian:

[snipped]

-----------------------------------------------------
Ian Samson
Senior Professional: Electronic Publishing

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