Archive for July 2004

A Picture’s Worth is celebrating its first birthday on August 1. The site has been showcasing daily the works by visitors who have sent in their special photographs with an accompanying story to explain the photograph’s significance.

This excellent article addresses the Top 10 Usability Blunders of the Big Players. My comments:

1. No search function – Though a site should be designed so that a visitor doesn’t have to resort to search, it should have a search function available. There is always someone looking for that lesser obvious something.

2. Massive download time – !

3. Non-scannable text – I blogged about a study on reading online text, which itself was ironically difficult to scan. I didn’t bother reading it.

4. Unclear link text – Man, I’ve been surprised a few times when the mouse cursor unexpectedly turned into a pointer indicating a link. On other occasions, I think something is a link when it is not (underlined, blue, bolded).

5. Poor 404 error page – The biggest surprise is Monster’s error page. ?!?! Creating an error page is simple and Monster with all of its features couldn’t do it? Some sites have a site map, others have a nice message along links to the main pages. Remember, avoid making it sound like it’s the user’s fault (even if it is!).

6. Visited links not shown – I’ve made the mistake of giving links the same color. I’ve learned my lesson and the vlinks have a different color. When going to sites and clicking on many links, I lose my place and the vlinks help me know what I’ve checked out. Otherwise, I go to the same spot again.

7. Frames used – It’s amazing how many sites still use them even sites who make the effort to use CSS for positioning. I get submissions for the Tableless List and get a frames-based site every 20 entries or so.

8. Link point to current page – Rarely see this, but it should not happen. It leaves me perplexed, too. I don’t look at the status bar every time I click on a link.

9. Important information contained in images – It is surprising to see which items are text and which are images on AOL’s home page. What a waste.

10. Unique scrolling system – This is not a good thing even if it sounds like it. Sites with multiple scrollbars within a page are a pain to use. A surefire way to carpal tunnel country.

A marketing support professional asks:

I have worked in a software company as a marketing support professional for the past three years. My responsibilities include making business proposals, creating marketing collaterals, and developing presentations. This is my first job and I’m ready to switch over to another company. Every time I go to an interview, I’m asked questions about goal-setting, target-setting, segment identification, and such. My present profile doesn’t identify such terms, though in every interview I’ve been asked about the same terms.

What is your definition for these marketing phrases or what advice do you have for him?

* Segment identification

* CTR (click-through rate)

* Unique selling proposition (USP)

I’ve been busy researching the world of CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning). Honestly, I think these names are poorly selected as they do more than what their names imply.

Ironically, while I was writing this, I went to IntelligentERP… or what it was formerly known as. It’s known known as Intelligent Application because “…hardly just ‘enterprise resource planning,’ or ERP. In fact, ERP providers have themselves broadened out their portfolios of packaged applications so much so that you rarely hear the term ‘ERP’ anymore. And so, we are changing the name of this Intelligent Enterprise Web Community away from the ERP acronym and toward the more inclusive – and really more important – term, ‘applications.’”

The term ASP (application services provider) is also used, but it is too broad and often applies to the ERP companies. See this article.

CRM, simply put, helps an business organize and manage customer relationships. ERP, which has a terrible name as it has little to do with planning… as a matter of fact, it’s not a resource application where you assign resources to a project or anything of the sort. Originally, ERP integrated the components of a business including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. As more companies entered the ERP zone, it grew to include inventory control, order tracking, finance, human resources, and customer service.

No wonder someone asked me if a product was CRM or ERP. They do have overlapping features and the identified product was both CRM and ERP.
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A British Web developer has found a phishing technique that works on multiple browsers and that means non-IE browsers included. Does this mean switching browsers is moot? No, security is still a problem with IE just remember no browser is 100 percent secure and to regularly check your browser’s site for updates. Microsoft has just released yet another critical security patch for IE and to my understanding it has nothing to do with the one causing the browser switch campaign. [ Posted InformIT ]

Usability News has released a study: Reading Online Text: A Comparison of Four White Space Layouts. I tried to read it, but I find it difficult to read. Not in terms of vocabulary, but in terms of presentation. Italics is hard to read especially when I have a headache. I limit italics in online writing – in some cases, I have no choice because of the style guidelines.

Anyway, the comparison of four white space layouts sounds like something I want to know, but I just couldn’t get through it. Anyone have trouble reading it? If so, why?

Updated on 11/08/06: This is based on FireFox v1.x. Not sure of exact version because it’s been too long and the release notes don’t indicate the date released.

I have been using both programs for a while and this is what has happened.

I took an immediate liking to FireFox over Mozilla because it has features that go the extra mile. FireFox has better built-in search functionality. Enter a keyword or enter “goto keyword” and Google takes you to its “I feel lucky” result. Can’t do that in Mozilla. Little things like that.

Then I started having problems with FireFox freezing up. Just not working. I worked around it by creating a new profile per the feedback in the forums. That took care of it. The new account eventually froze, too. Luckily, I had an earlier save from using Mozilla Backup and restored it. After a few iterations of this, it stopped working altogether. The same problem happened on my laptop, which has few programs installed on it (in other words, it has not been corrupted with a lot of setting changes, installs, de-installs, etc.).

FireFox does have a tendency to hold on tight to bad or corrupted profiles. This is not a problem for everyone, however. Many people are using FireFox without the issues I’ve faced. Remember the browser has not reached v1.0 yet. Although I enjoy the challenge of detective work to unbugger the browser, it was time consuming.

Furthermore, as a paid user of RoboForm, it would not work each time I got FireFox cooperating. RoboForm worked twice and then never worked again. I haven’t had the problem in Mozilla. I’ve been using Mozilla v1.7 for a few weeks and have none of the problems I’ve seen in FireFox.

I still think FireFox is a great browser with much potential. Its extensions offer tools to make the browsing experience easier and more fun. Mozilla does have extensions, but not as extensive as FireFox. If you use FireFox, I recommend ChromEdit and Checky.

Rodent shares his experience. I haven’t had a problem with PDFs, in fact, they load faster in Mozilla and FireFox. Boy, I am jealous of his solution… buy a Mac. Gotta wait till we’re in a better situation before doing something like that.

P.S. I changed the name of the entry and stole the name from Rodent. It was too good not to!

The hardest part about a switch campaign is reaching companies. It’s costly for a company to switch its users over to a different browser. You would think not, but after I listened to a tech describe the process — it made sense. Remember IE is closely tied with the operating system and Office. A company utilizing any of these is going to have a greater challenge dumping IE.

A company with 550 desktops has made the leap to Mozilla. One of my newsletter clients was still using Netscape 4.x as their browser and we had to do a lot of workarounds to ensure the newsletter looked right in Netscape 4.x. I can imagine what you’re thinking… preaching to the choir! [ Link Holly Marie ]

Here is the summary of day three’s emergence of ideas. The interview with Jay Rosen received the most comments as well as his follow up posting. The week-long event also had a chat session to add another dimension of interactivity.

I like this event set up especially because I can’t miss a thing as a person who’s profoundly hearing impaired. My only complaint is that I’m overwhelmed by the number of postings and comments. The best thing is to scan for the topics of interest rather than attempting to read them all.

Odeon’s Web site is inaccessible to browsers other than IE. I tried checking it out in FireFox and Mozilla 1.7 and got nothing but its logo. I couldn’t do a thing or see anything else. Odeon is the UK’s cinema chain and they have other problems. A designer took it upon himself to create an accessible version of Odeon’s Web site and Odeon didn’t like it. At the end of the article are links to other related articles.