Usability / Accessibility Tutorials
The wii and JavaScript
Last week, AJAXian featured an awesome article about serving wii-friendly websites. Accompanied with the article was a snippet of JavaScript that detects if the user is browsing using the wii's Opera browser, taken from the Ext framework:
6 Ways To Subliminally Tell Users “Don’t Come Back”
There are many practices that I can't believe are still on the internet. Here are a few ways to tell the user to never come back to your website.
5 Rules For Using Audio/Video Media on Your Site
I don't create many sites that feature multimedia. Most of my customers don't have a need for audio or video on their site but we occasionally get a request to add an advertisement or webinar. That said, I've scoured the internet enough to have seen good, bad, and ugly uses of multimedia on the web. The following are my guidelines for using multimedia on a website.
MooTools onLoad SmoothScrolling
SmoothScroll is a fantastic MooTools plugin but smooth scrolling only occurs when the anchor is on the same page. Making SmoothScroll work across pages is as easy as a few extra line of MooTools and a querystring variable.
SmoothScroll Using MooTools 1.2
A while back I wrote a post about MooTools' SmoothScroll plugin which allows you to smoothly take a user to a specific portion of a page. By default, the browser "jerks" you up or down in the page when you click on an anchor — SmoothScroll lets you define the duration that it should take for a link to be scrolled down to.
Don’t Be A #f00! Get the Red Out!
One element of a website that involves direct user to website interaction is web forms. Web forms can be extremely helpful in getting customer information or retrieving customer feedback. The problem is that users can forget to provide a value in a text field or choose a radio button option, thus submitting an incomplete form.
Hidden Accessibility Message Using CSS
While I was creating a Woot Checker for myself and you all, I was scanning through the page source code and saw something I had never seen before. I frequently browse the source code of the "big" websites but had never stumbled upon a hidden accessibility message.
5 Usability Suggestions For DZone.com
DZone.com has quickly become one of my favorite programming-related internet websites. DZone provides a wealth of fresh, interesting development-related links to articles, announcements, and code snippets. DZone also provides bloggers a great way to get their articles the credit and attention they deserve. Unlike Digg, DZone has a specific target audience and since I fall into that audience, I continue to be a loyal visitor to the website.
Default Search Input Message — Show & Replace
Search functionality is an important part of any large website. Search functionality can save an unorganized website from losing visitors — I'll search for information if I know it's there. Search functionality can also your users a number of clicks even if your website is organized.
Yahoo’s NoScript Compatibility Saved My Fantasy Football Team
One of the best parts of Thanksgiving is having another day of the week to sit and watch NFL football. Like any hardcore football fan, I have a more than one fantasy football team under my management. Updating my teams ever week is clearly important — I have to make sure players aren't hurt, suspended, and so on.