The most recent issue of "Internetworking", the newsletter of the Internet Technical Group, has a couple of very useful and interesting articles. Here are abstracts and URLs: ------ "Banner Blindness, Human Cognition, and Web Design", Donald A. Norman. http://www.sandia.gov/itg/newsletter/mar99/commentary.html This is a follow-up to an earlier study by two Rice University researchers, which came to the counter-intuitive conclusion that if you want to draw primary attention to a link on a web page, about the worst way to do so is to make it a large, conspicuous graphic. Their thesis, echoed and refined in the follow-up cited above, is that users have in their minds a schema as to how a Web page "should" work, of what is likely to be a link and what isn't. And most often links are pieces of text, in list form, offset from other elements on the page. Thus, as we scan a page our eyes are drawn to elements that seem most likely, based on previous experience, to be links; we reflexively ignore large graphics that do not seem likely to be. This is obviously a little ironic and unexpected in some ways -- quite literally, the study showed that the larger and more conspicuous the graphical link, the more likely it is to be ignored and/or misinterpreted. Chalk up a point for the "HTML purist" camp <g> (I've noticed this phenomenon often myself, actually. Just the other day I was looking for the latest on Melissa at C|Net, and was amazed to see that they apparently had nothing about the arrest of that dim bulb in New Jersey. There was a long list of text links to other "Top Stories", but no mention of the bust. It was only after studying the page carefully that I realized the story had its own graphical link, quite large and colourful, at the top of the page; I guess my mind just discarded it immediately, associating it with the banner ads and other superfluous junk up there. At any rate, I didn't see it.) ------- "Separating Content from Visuals in Web Site Design", Jeanette Fuccella and Jack Pizzolato http://www.sandia.gov/itg/newsletter/mar99/wireframe.html This article I found quite intriguing because it just happens to recommmend an approach to site design that I've stumbled upon myself in recent weeks: separating the content and structure from the graphical elements throughout the development process. The authors contend that melding the two right from the start only serves to distract both developers and testers from making worthwhile decisions on the usability of the content and structure, because they tend to become preocuppied with the aesthetic appeal of the graphics. Instead, the authors recommend that you create two parallel forms of the site: the first a "wireframe", containing only the text and navigational links, the second a graphical dummy with greeked text. The idea is that testers will be focussing *only* on the content in the one case, and *only* on the look-and-feel in the other. As you identify approaches that seem to work for each, you can begin integrating the content and graphics towards the end of the development process, resulting in a more cohesive and functional final site. I've been taking a similar approach with my ongoing redevelopment of the Bank's site, based on past frustrating experience. I'm sure many of you have been through something like this: You sweat blood for several weeks restructuring and rewriting content for a client's site, and to a lesser extent developing suitable graphical elements... then when you demo the site to the client, expecting him to be duly delighted with how much more logical and readable his content now is, he says, "Hmm, I don't like the shadow on that 'Search' button. And can you make that blue border match our corporate Pantone colour?" Sigh. Anyway, so at the office I'm doing my development work totally graphics-free for now; all the emphasis is on the content and structure, which I want to have totally nailed down before I start adding the final touches, graphics in this case. ----------- Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.almonte.com/ Member: Internet Technical Group, http://www.sandia.gov/itg/ ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The NEW Web Consultants Association FORUMS and CHAT: Register Today at: http://just4u.com/forums/ Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants Give the Gift of Life This Year... Just4U Stop Smoking Support forum - helping smokers for over three years-tell a friend: http://just4u.com/forums/ To get 500 Banner Ads for FREE go to http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=111261 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
