In a recent usability survey, researchers from Southern Illinois University found that after ease of use, men prefer fast download speed to easy navigation. Women prefer ease of use, easy navigation, and accessibility. The researchers hypothesize that these different usability criteria are due to differences in how men and women use the web.
Details at “Usability Study: Men Need Speed – web usability criteria show gender differences.”
Although the WayBack machine did not preserve any of this website’s first year, it did capture quite a lot of our second year, 1996. Behold the splendor of the early web:
And much more. Enjoy!
In Issue No. 282 of A List Apart, For People Who Make Websites:
by DAVID BERLOW, JEFFREY ZELDMAN
Is there life after Georgia? We ask David Berlow, co-founder of The Font Bureau, Inc, and the ?rst TrueType type designer, how type designers and web designers can work together to resolve licensing and technology issues that stand between us and real fonts on the web.
by STEPHEN P. ANDERSON
Research proves attractive things work better. How we think cannot be separated from how we feel. The next time a boss, client, or co-worker scoffs at the notion that beauty is an important aspect of interface design, point their peepers here.
A List Apart explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
[tags]alistapart, type, typography, realtype, truetype, CSS, beauty, design, aesthetics[/tags]
RATED FIVE STARS at Amazon.com since the day it was published, Taking Your Talent to the Web (PDF) is now a free downloadable book from zeldman.com:
I wrote this book in 2001 for print designers whose clients want websites, print art directors who’d like to move into full–time web and interaction design, homepage creators who are ready to turn pro, and professionals who seek to deepen their web skills and understanding.
Here we are in 2009, and print designers and art directors are scrambling to move into web and interaction design.
The dot-com crash killed this book. Now it lives again. While browser references and modem speeds may reek of 2001, much of the advice about transitioning to the web still holds true.
It’s yours. Enjoy.
Oh, yes, here’s that ancient Amazon page.
Attention, K-Mart shoppers. The PDF now includes proper Acrobat bookmarks, courtesy of Robert Black. Thanks, Robert!
With Digg relenting, the Digg bar’s assault on our content, ranking, and traffic will soon fade like every other lousy idea on the web, and we can once again retire our unframing scripts.
Joshua Schachter explains how URL shorteners like TinyURL, bit.ly, etc., originally created to prevent long URLs from breaking in 1990s e-mail clients, and now used primarily as a means of monetizing someone else’s content, are bad:
And more. Via Merlin Mann.
Anyone who creates web content should read Joshua’s post. I’m sold and will dial way back on my use of the zeldman.com short URL. The question remains, what to do when you need to paste a long, cumbersome link into a 140-character service like Twitter. (If you do nothing, Twitter itself will shorten the link via TinyURL.)
[tags]URL, URLshortener, JoshuaSchachter, redirect, abstraction, Digg, findability, searchjuice, SEO[/tags]
Bigthink.com/jeffreyzeldman is your BigThink channel for all your BigThink Jeffrey Zeldman needs. Now playing at that URL are three Zeldman interview clips for your pleasure:
View early and view often. Happy watching and blogging.
[tags]bigthink, zeldman, jeffreyzeldman, interviews, internet, web, design, history, journalism, online, onlinejournalism, webpublishing, opensource, webstandards[/tags]
Information Architects Japan present Web Trend Map 4 – Final Beta, a map of leading currents of web thought and commerce.
A List Apart is in, of course, along with Amazon, Apple, Wikipedia, Twitter, PayPal, and many of your other favorites. For a close-up view, see it in Zoomorama.
Via Tech Crunch by way of lmarino.
[tags]web, trend, map, visualization[/tags]