Making CAPTCHA Usable
In today’s ever complex world of spam, Phil Haack has come up with a refreshingly simple solution for coping with blog and form spam which he calls Honeypot Captcha.
No javascript, completely accessible and easier on your visitors.
Forget about the Fold
In design speak the “fold” is the location of the website at which the visitor needs to scroll to read further. “Above the fold” is a term commonly used by editors and web designers to prioritize important headlines to the user.
My experience shows that most web designers have a preconceived notion that any content of value needs to be displayed above the fold. I believe that this preconceived notion should be challenged since many of the underlying reasons are out of date.
Typography on the Web
Typography is fundamental to clean design, and paramount to content. Bad typography will drive users away from your content, while good typography will keep things legible and draw your readers eye to important sections. Your content should be easy to skim for those in a rush, and also easy to read more deeply.
Typography on the web should stem from print media. People are used to reading newspapers, paperbacks, and other paper documents. Study these and keep your web pages consistent with these.
Web Form Fundamentals
The form is the heart and soul of your application. After all, it’s the point of entry for the data in the system. Yet, time after time we stumble across confusing, and time consuming forms. Here are a few of my pointers and pet peeves when it comes to designing these forms.
Design Is Communication
Great applications carefully orchestrate the building of complex data situations, architecting models to interact with data, and lastly designing an attractively useful web interface. While well engineered source code is absolutely essential to these applications ultimately the user interface – the layout and look & feel – is where your clients spend their time. It’s where they learn what an application has to offer, and how it is to be used.
Search
Popular Posts
- 50 Tips To A User Friendly Website
- How to build a Gantt Chart with the Google Charts API
- My Favorite Pomodoro Timers
- Why Flash is Mostly Bad
- Why You Should Outsource Usability Testing
- Sharing the Grid
- The difference between User Research and Usability Testing?
- 10 Tips to Better Google Wave Conversations
- How to Label Submit Buttons
- Goals for 2009
Latest Comments
- George → “ also make sure that the non www version is always redirected to the www version of the website.…”
- faheem → “ Thanks for the nice tips,…”
- Adobe → “ The problems you are talking about are not Flash issues they are design issues . The problem is not Flash, the problem is that there are very few real designers around anymore. As for the plug in every browser for every platform save iOS has it installed when you download it. I am amazed how…”
- هتل → “ great list of ideas. Without a doubt, you are exactly right. As with all design, there is a time and a place to break every rule.thanks for posting…”
- Randy Cox → “ If you suddenly decided to put stop signs on the side of a barn instead of a metal post on edge of a road, a lot of folks would not stop. If there is a really good reason to change the link color then change it, but there will be a cost to your communication. Henry Ford…”