A fairly important usability tip for web design is to make sure you include all the important details to support your content. A couple examples would be to make sure table columns have labeled headings, and all graph data is labeled.This may seem to be an incredibly obvious tip,  but even the big boys make these kind of mistakes.

Example of Not Double Checking

Here is an example of Yahoo not labeling the comic on the page specifically designed to show it. Additionally, though it is not seen in the screenshot, the title of the page does not reflect the comic name either. Not one clue to the name of this comic. Continue reading »

Jul 292009
 

Is that time again already? Every morning I like to read blogs and forums. Here are the top three I found of value today. Continue reading »

Jul 222009
 

Every morning I like to read blogs and forums. Here are the top three I found of value today. Continue reading »

Jan 062009
 

sweetimWell I am not one for silly add-ons, especially for my instant messenger, but if you have kids they will certainly like this, SweetIM. I currently use Yahoo Instant Messenger, and so does my nine year old daughter. No worries, she only chats with myself, mom, and a few other approved family members. So why on earth would we want her to have IM at nine? She can’t hear us.

Hello, Can You Hear Me?

We have a “bedroom door open” while on the computer policy for her, but sometimes the computer games she plays just completely blocks us out. Even when she can hear us, she keeps playing. She knows we don’t want to hike up the stairs, and she also knows that it might mean time to do homework. That is where IM, and SweetIm can kick in. YIM is always on on her PC, another rule, and when you send a shout using the SweetIM add-on, she will hear it. Yahoo’s IM has a default little buzz, fine for an adult sitting at their computer, but kids are online too, and sometimes they just need a louder voice. An in your face interruption always helps too, and SweetIM does both. Animated, loud popup, now taking over her PC.

For Fun and It’s Free

It’s all about fun though, and it doesn’t have to be a rude interruption for your kids. My daughter is actually the one that told me about the software. It was advertising a while back in Yahoo’s instant messenger. She clicked, we downloaded, and the rest his history. She loves sending different animations to Grandma fifty miles away, and being able to chat a well. Fun, safe little add-on, and free to use.

 

findcomLooking for a new search engine? Find.com is a relatively new search engine using Yahoo’s Application Platform. After testing many search terms I found all of the results to be very relative. Infact, I like the results a little bit more than Google’s on some of the terms. Good luck arguing that one though.

Because it’s using Yahoo’s Application Platform you can expect similar results as found on Yahoo, but it’s not exact. Testing the key phrase “Best Web Image”, my site, Find.com pulled up more relevant results than Google or Yahoo. I like that. It wasn’t like that for everything, but the results were excellent overall. The engine is geared to FIND. Meaning, the results seemed more geared to finding your keyword or phrase. The difference is when searching, not finding, on a search engine like Google, your results may be more topic oriented to your keyword, putting less emphasis on the keyword itself.

Another thing I liked about the site was the manner the results were displayed, big and easy to read. Sponsored results were clearly identified, and not blended into results like some sites do. Something I didn’t understand about the site though was it’s selection of categories displayed on the home page. They were not the normal categories you would expect for a general search engine, and they did not seem to have a logical order. I also did not like that they had the category, Holidays, on the home page, and then also posted a couple of categories that were holiday specific. They should just all fall under the main category, Holidays.

Forgetting the category issue I was very impressed with the results and also enjoyed the clean format.