The messages many sites send when they use gray text on a white background is, “We don’t want you to read our content,” “Our content isn’t worth your time,” and “We want you to struggle reading our content because we think black is boring.”

#333333, #666666, #999999, and #cccccc (various shades of gray) are almost black, but not as good as black. Those sites don’t make this list.

It’s an epidemic that I alone can’t stop.

To reward those sites doing it right, they get a mention and a link here. Add your site to the comments section. However, we will check every link. If a site’s text hides in a fog, it will disappear.

Note — this only looks as the contrast between text and background — not the font choice, font size, text formatting style, or design.

1. Adversity University Blog
2. Be the Story
3. Blogcritics
4. Bob Bly
5. Book Marketing
6. The Book Sistah
7. Caroline Middlebrook
8. Chronicles of a Mompreneur
9. D. Keith Robinson
10. Dosh Dosh
11. Geekpreneur
12. Global Neighbourhoods
13. The Golden Pencil
14. Graywolf’s SEO Blog (yeah, even the guy with “Gray” in his name passed!)
15. GTO Management
16. How Not to Write
17. InternetVIZ
18. ISIPP
19. Melle.ca
20. Men with Pens
21. Molly
22. Niroze
23. PoeWar Writer’s Resource Center
24. The Program Witch Pages
25. Sparkplug CEO
26. Stowe Boyd
27. Strategic Public Relations
28. SuccessCREEations
29. Verge New Media
30. Writer’s Helper

You wouldn’t believe how many sites I looked at before my eyes begged me to stop. List is disappointingly short.

Moral: Black on white is NOT boring. It’s readable.

P.S. I skipped those with different colors because they may not be readable to those with various forms of color blindness.

I generally don’t talk about myself as I accept that people don’t come here for my personality. Instead, people like you come for the information I provide that I hope helps you in your life.

From reading other blogs, it looks like many love to hear how writers and freelancers went full-time. So here’s the full story.

In the beginning…

After kid #2 arrived, I started New York University’s online program in Internet Technology while on maternity leave. Initially, I wanted to do web design. After few Web design projects, I discovered web design was more frustrating than enjoyable.

Around this time, an e-mail newsletter for web designers had a contest where readers could submit an article related to web design. The winners received high quality software like Photoshop, so I gave it a shot. Readers loved the article, so I wrote a few more in the series for the newsletter.

The series started my writing portfolio and helped my land my first paid professional writing gig with a web design magazine. Slowly, I picked up more paid writing assignments discovering I loved working as a writer.

However, I was apprehensive about pursuing a career as a writer. I heard from many people how they wanted to be a writer. I honestly didn’t think I offered anything special as a writer. It also didn’t help with many talented bloggers and web site writers hitting the writing circuit. Regardless, I kept my eyes open for gigs and considered writing a sideline since I still had my corporate job.

Furthermore, I never dreamed of having my own business. I feared the sales aspect — getting more clients — because I couldn’t make normal phone calls. Cold calling was always awkward no matter how comfortable I was with making phone calls. Then there was finances, bookkeeping, the usual business stuff.

Returning to the Dilbertesque world

I returned to work a couple of weeks early from maternity leave on a part-time basis in hopes to convince management that I could do the job part-time. Management wasn’t receptive to the idea.

I wrote a memo with various options supported by data. Eventually, the company let me work part-time because there was another part-time employee who joined the team. We didn’t job share, however. Together, we made up one employee.

Eventually, she went with the wireless part of the business and I stayed with long distance retaining my part-time status. This let me build the writing business.

Dot com blah

I lost several clients when dot com went boom. This was a turning point because I could either scramble to get more clients or resign myself to a corporate career.

While feeling a pit in my stomach stomach I hit send and emailed people in my network including those I had interviewed for articles. I landed two new clients, one of which I met in person for the first time after working with him for six years.

I worked part-time until March 2005 when my company required me to return to a full-time schedule. By this time, I had plenty of business writing experience and a healthy portfolio.

The benefits… the benefits…

I couldn’t quit my job yet because my husband didn’t have health benefits. We had three kids, so it was important. My husband landed a job with decent benefits in June 2005. A month later, I retired from corporate America for full-time freelancing.

Just found this article on health insurance for freelancers for those who don’t have the luxury of relying on someone else for benefits.

Other becoming a writer stories…

Mary E. Lyons

Bob Younce

Many at how we became writers

Delaune Michel

Philip McCord

Catherine Shaffer

Catherine Leigh

Geoffrey Zimmerman (video)

Earl Pomerantz, TV writer

Jared Head (video)

Yours?

In 2000, I earned a certificate in Internet Technologies in hopes of becoming a Web designer. Working on the blog today reminded me why I changed my mind and went into writing instead.

Based on advice (you know who you are — I don’t want to put your name in here again and have people thinking I’m trying to make nice nice), I took off the excerpts on the main blog page so you don’t have to click the entry to see the full content.

But in doing this, my paragraphs disappeared (the extra blank line). The blog entries looked like a ruddy mess and hard to scan. I looked at the code and don’t see anything that would make paragraph <p> not add a blank line.

So back to excerpts because the unformatted content broke too many web content rules. Oh, the bolding was there as were the bullets, but the whitespace was terrible. Content overrules features when it comes to the following:

• Bold headings.
• Bulleted lists.
• Easy to find paragraphs.
• Short paragraphs and sentences.
• Text and background color contrast (too many blogs and web sites use gray for text with white backgrounds — this resembles reading in a fog. Black isn’t boring — black works.).

If my blog breaks these rules, then the feature will have to go away until I can solve the problem. So, the main blog page continues to use for technical and readability reasons and not for usability reasons.

Using a blog application, bloggers deal with the application’s quirks, CSS, templates, plug ins. So a problem might be buried in layers of CSS or code. In fact, Peter Shankman had problems with his WordPress: “… all of a sudden, after switching to Firefox and upgrading AVG, I can no longer upload photos to WordPress.”

I’ve had problems like this happen in the past where the solution meant disabling a plug-in. The problem with computers (especially Windows-based) is there are too many variables that can cause a problem. Even if you add one thing, it could be something you installed long ago that could be the cause of problems.

My computer needs a clean up as it has various problems. However, using registry cleaners and other cleaners could make things worse. I’ve used Registry First Aid, but it requires carefully reviewing changes before accepting them — and that took time.

Also tried CCleaner a long time ago — don’t remember why I stopped using it. I downloaded Revo Uninstaller, but haven’t tried it. Anyone have luck in safely cleaning a computer?

Dennison asked excellent questions in response to How to Do Usability Testing Cheap and Fast:

Tell me if I follow correctly: Do you do the test only on users that have their own PC with them? So if you happen to be in a store where nobody has a machine or is willing to take the test, then, tough luck?

Why worry about having the users test in their own environment (PC)? The focus of the test is on usability. Testing to see if the site works properly across different systems should be part of QA work and can be done separately.

Bill Moore from RadioTime responded:

(more…)

Bulleted lists on Web pages help readers scan and find what they want. Two situations that do well with bulleted lists are series and instructions. Also, beware of indenting, spacing, formatting, and whitespace.

Series
For situations where three or more items appear separated by commas, they might work better as a list. Instead of, “Bring an apple, orange, and banana” use…

Bring:

• apple
• orange
• banana

This doesn’t need numbers as order has no impact. The space between “Bring” and the list might be too much as people might not instantly associate the two with the distance, but CSS can fix this.

Instructions
When steps call for doing tasks in a specific order, numbered bullets work well. eHow.com does this nicely. Take care in situations where you have a choice. For example…

1. Peel apple.
2. Cut apple using one of the following ways:
   • Dice the apples using the chopper.
   • Cut the apple in half. Cut both halves in half for four wedges. If you want smaller wedges, cut the four wedges in half.
3. Serve.

With instructions, you can also clarify a choice like this:

• Dice the apples using the chopper.

• or

• Cut the apple in half. Cut both halves in half again for four wedges.

In this version, it’s clear you have a choice since “or” separates the choices.

Indenting
Notice Step 2 takes up more than one line and uses the indent? Some sites don’t indent lines beyond the first and it’s hard on scanning like this:

1. Dice the apples using the chopper.

2. Cut the apple in half. Cut both halves in half for four wedges. If you want smaller wedges, cut the four wedges in half.

Spacing and Long Lists

It’s also possible to break up a long series such as what to pack for sleep away camp. That list can easily get long. Break up the series by categories (i.e. clothes, toiletries, linens). Also, instead of one long list — put the list into columns to avoid wasting white space.

But what about a long list like 175+ Data and Information Visualization Examples and Resources? Do the numbers throw you? Numbers typically represent order, but this list uses the alphabet. The numbers determine the number of resources.

Furthmore, the list divides into three categories. Can’t do more than one column simply because the content space is narrow. Plus, some of them have comments.

You go to an online tennis shoe store looking for mules (shoes you slide on as they have no back — see image). Without looking — what category do you expect to find these shoes? Or maybe this would be easier… what category would you NOT expect to find these shoes?

Running? Walking? Cross-training? Aerobics? Aqua? Casual?

I would think the first “NOT” category would be running. Try running in mules and you might find them flying off unless you position your toes to “hold on.”

According to Ryka, mules make great running shoes. [View larger image].

Smashing Magazine provided a wealth of expert tips, advice and suggestions in its popular and valuable 35 designers x 5 questions article. To celebrate its one year anniversary, the magazine found more experts and asked new questions. The result is 50 designers x 6 questions, which contains over 170 new tips answering the following six questions:

• What is one typical myth about web-development (which is not true)?
• What is one bulletproof method to get over creativity block?
• What is one thing you wish you knew before you’ve started programming/designing/… ?
• What is one thing to do before starting a new project?
• What is one common mistake you should always avoid developing web-sites?
• What is one device/tool or/and service you can’t imagine your life without?

Freelance writers, editors, and anyone involved in any aspect of Web design or working with projects will benefit from the responses.

Someone interested in breaking into information design contacted me to ask about the field, whether a degree or certificate would help, and the tools and skills used. It’s a very broad question as information design covers everything including print. But I answered the question from the online perspective and thought others may benefit from this information.

This field include information design, user experience, web design, publication design, graphic design, information architecture, etc. Looking at the Web sites and locating a nearby chapter in the following organizations makes a good starting point:

• STC (Society for Technical Communication) — www.stc.org
• UPA (The Usability Professionals’ Association) — www.upassoc.org
• SIGCHI — www.sigchi.org
• ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology) — www.asis.org/SIG/ia.html
• IA Institute (The Information Architecture Institute) — iainstitute.org

STC, for example, has different SIGs (special interest groups) that could also provide valuable information. But of course, you want to narrow down your interests before joining SIGs or else too much information will come your way.

The following sites provide conference proceedings:

• www.upassoc.org/conference/2007overview.html
• stc-on.org/id/
• www.stcsig.org/usability/
• www.asis.org/SIG/ia.html
• www.sxsw.com/interactive

What would you recommend to someone interested in the field? What do people need to break in the field? How valuable (or not) is a degree or certification? What area should the degree or certificate be in?

Thanks to Elisa Miller for her input into the response.

Monday by Noon asks if site maps are obsolete. First, let’s agree on the term site maps. These contain a site’s high level links along with the name of the page like this good example of a site map from Apple.com.

Along the same lines of questioning site maps, people question the use of search on a site. In both cases, some wonder if that relying on site maps and search indicate that something is wrong with the site. I believe both tools have a place on a site. Sometimes using search would bring too many results or won’t find the general information you’re looking for. For example, I’m looking for the Contact information since I can’t find a contact link on a web site. I’d rather use a site map than search in this case. The site map might list specific contacts (investors, PR, product, etc.).

OK, contact was a bad example as this should be part of the navigation. My point is that you might be searching for something generic and not specific — something the site map would do better than
a search tool. Search, on the other hand, helps users find something specific. For instance, I search a blog or web site for a topic or word such as “monitors.” Monitors would not have a good spot in most site maps (an ecommerce site that sells monitors would probably list it under Products, Computers… this depends on the site’s set up).

Successful site maps organize the information with two or three levels. I think two levels is ideal: Top level such as Products for an computer store, and second levels such as Monitors, Computers, Software, Printers, Accessories. Go too deep and you’ll confuse or overwhelm the user. Where do you look for a site map on a site? I typically look in the footer navigation as they appear there most often. Site maps, I believe, aren’t important enough to join the main navigation. Where do you look for site maps? Search box? The search tool placement on a site doesn’t have a standard spot like site maps.

What do you think of site maps?

Jonathan and Lisa Price have a nice article on writing FAQ and covered many points that we may not think about. For instance, if you have a large site — you might want to show the FAQ or Help that’s relevant to the page users are on rather than give them the whole thing to dig through. Many software applications do this — give you the Help based on the window you’re viewing.

I believe FAQ are best served when all of the questions and answers appear in one page — unless it’s ridiculously long and neds breaking up. The reason for this is because some users will use their own browser’s search instead of a site’s search — they want to find a keyword on the current page instead of browse the whole site.

Add items to the FAQ as you get e-mails from users, see questions popping up in the forums or on the Internet — don’t assume people will find their way to the other sites that answer the questions… do people a favor by offering everything in one place. Users appreciate it and it never hurts to go the extra mile… actually, they expect you to have complete answers. Hey, it saves you time as people won’t contact you if they can find the answers on their own. Of course, not everyone thinks to check the FAQ — but every bit helps.

Notice I never used the “s” in FAQ as in FAQs? Skipping it was hard, but I learned to just write “FAQ” because “Q” means “questions.” Why write an FAQ if you only list one question?