Archive for June 2003

Why Web looks funky in Netscape unfortunately misses an important point of why some Web sites look fine in IE, but weird in Netscape. Chris Hardie wrote a response explaining the missing link.

I like the Google Toolbar despite preferring to keep my browser toolbars to a minimum. Since I frequently use Google, I gave it a try. It’s great being able to enter search words right in the box instead of going to the Google site and then entering the words. However, I think this toolbar is responsible for Internet Explorer v6 shutting down for no reason with no predictable pattern to when it occurred. As soon as I uninstalled it, the problem went away. It doesn’t mean it’ll happen to others as I may have something on my PC that doesn’t like the toolbar. Just FYI.

June Bandwidth Report indicates that Korea has the highest broadband penetration in the world with over 70% of users hooked into their high-speed network. Broadband penetration in the US increased by .42% to 35.9% in May. 64.1% of home users in the US use narrow-band connections of 56Kbps or less.

A father shares his experience in using a Web site to buy tickets to see an IMAX movie in Life Outtacontext. Having children in a information architect’s lives can help them see things from a different perspective. It goes back to knowing the audience and if it consists of families and singles… be ready to handle their different needs and approaches for using a Web site.

Though I’m glad to be done with school in terms of grade school (through high school), I envy the kids of today because of the technologies they can access to do their work. Here’s one example of how technology is going to impact education from a teacher’s point of view that will also be beneficial to students. The story: RSS – The Next Killer App For Education.

This specific weblog isn’t broken. At least, I hope not! Instead, this is about Good Experience’s This Is Broken, a new collection of broken things. Not broken as in dropping a glass and its pieces are every where. Broken as in usability. Harvard is guilty of breaking something, so go look and see what it is. Right now, there are only a few entries since it’s a new project.

We just experienced something broken. We bought a baseball mural for the baby’s room. It comes with eight panels for pasting and sticking on the wall. It didn’t work even though we followed directions. The Web site didn’t mention any information on possibilities of it not working in certain situations. There were three different brochures of directions and we can’t figure out why. We wrote to the reseller and they have yet to respond.

Disability Fact Sheet is a scannable fact sheet about students and people with disabilities accessing the Internet. It also provides solutions to challenges for people with specific disabilities. [Link from Webstandards.org]

Also, A List Apart has a good article on Accesskeys, which enables users, disabled or not, to use the keyboard for moving around a Web site.

The Dallas Morning News, my local newspaper, had a cover story that looked familiar. It was about Phoons.com. Also, you can check the Phoon site’s feedback to the article. I haven’t phooned in a while since I haven’t been in an interesting setting. With many of us in the US going on vacation this time of the year, it’s a good time to look for phooning opportunities.

Webreference interviews Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing With Web Standards and Taking Your Talent to the Web, on his banner campaign idea, his new book, and the Microsoft browser announcement. Kudos to Andy King for an insightful and enjoyable interview.

I had forgotten to post a review of Speed Up Your Site (scroll to bottom) because I ended up in the hospital about the same time it was published. It’s a must-have for every designer and webmaster’s library. There isn’t anything out there like it and it’s important because our attention spans are short thanks to information overload.