Problems

When first reading about Muse on [Macworld][macworld] I figured correctly that while the generated code would be a bit better than what other code generator programs produce it would be pret terrible for true ‘coders’ to look at. I was right if any of the myriad of other posts on Muse are correct. We’re back to tag soup with this one. View the source and don’t forget to view source on the muse site itself to see the terrible.

While lack of fluid/responsive sites are mentioned as a flaw by Elliot Jay Stocks I don’t see this as an issue. First I’m not a big fan of fluid sites. Rather than design a site that expands for larger desktop screens I think a client should put their money in to building a mobile (tablet and phone) specific design. I’m also not a big fan of ‘responsive’ design. The way I’ve seen it implemented adds weight to the page specifically for devices that have the most constraints on how fast they can access information. I think that you should be figuring out what type of device you’re dealing with as soon as possible and delivering only the content that the device can handle. If you’re doing this in a WordPress environment then look at [WP Touch Pro] (affiliate).

Poor Clients

I think the people that are really going to pay for this are the clients of the designers that use Muse. They’re going to hire a designer expecting to get a cutting edge site, and while it may look good, it will really only be a nice coat of paint on a clunker. They’ll end up needing some more advanced functions and need a real coder who will then tell them how terrible the code is which will leave the client feeling betrayed. Adobe is helping print designers provide bad service to they’re clients, awesome job.

Pricing

The subscription pricing of Muse also irks me. The only reason I have CS5 is because of Adobe’s stupid policies on cross grades only for the currently shipping version. I don’t need CS5 heck CS3 or CS1 would suit my needs fine.

I think Adobe knows that they add features all the time that 90% of their users don’t need and to stop them from having the option of not upgrading and saving money on feature bloat they’re just going to offer everything as a subscription. Then you keep getting my money and I keep getting your crappy features. Sure they’re features I don’t need but I’ll upgrade to your continually more bloated software because I have a subscription.

At The End of the Day

It’s a noble effort to bring print designers in to the web space. I know a number of struggling print designers, they’re work is drying up as more and more advertising is spent on the web, but that doesn’t mean it ‘s a good idea. Being able to build a site without understanding the basics of how it works is just s recipe for trouble. I can’t wait for my first call on a broken site from Muse where I tell them I don’t fix Muse sites but I can build it properly now. Maybe I could start a reality TV show like Holmes on Homes where I go in and rip up a terrible site with generated code and build it properly.

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In fact if you’re looking for actual documentation on Nambu your out of luck. Sure you can submit an idea/question through their Get Satisfaction list but if you just want to read general documentation, your totally out of luck. I guess they have a help section accessible from the desktop menu but it’s entirely useless.

Why is it that developers of software are skipping this vital part of building great software? I know documentation isn’t sexy but it’s vital. Written software is only half realized to your user without solid documentation on how to use it.

Here’s a challenge developers, write proper documentation. If you’re ‘agile’ then use a sprint to work only on documentation. If you do that every few sprints then your documentation will be solid. Good software is more than just the code that runs the application, it’s your customer service, and documentation. Start building good software.

Let me back track a bit, some mailto: links are terrible. The ones that really get my hate on are not the ones that are around an email (that makes sense) but the ones that are around text like ‘contact us’.

First the fact that ‘contact us’ text opens my desktop email client is not really all that clear. Second how do you know I even use desktop email? Most users are using something like gmail, hotmail, yahoo, and probably don’t even have a desktop email client.

So with your stupid mailto: link you’re suddenly making your user scramble to figure out what the hell is happening as some random program they’ve maybe never even seen opens. Sure they figure it out eventually but I know I just give up and don’t bother getting in touch with your company.

If you’re using a mailto: link for contact at least make it be around the email that you’re sending to and make it look like a link from the rest of your site.

A proper contact page should include and email to contact along with a form and a phone number. Let the user decide how they want to contact you. Don’t enforce your terrible design/usability ideas on them.

This rant was inspired by this otherwise beautiful site. Look in the footer for the link that got my rant on.

The Questions

Basecamp - How's your day?

Later they ask me if I’d date Basecamp if I was single and Basecamp was interested. Of course this is even funnier so I continue working on the form.

Would you date Basecamp?

Then we get to the end of the survey and we have three totally irrelevant but interesting questions.

3 more funny questions

Sure I know that those were silly but they brightened up my day. I wonder if they found conversions increased with funny questions like that? I’m willing to bet that they did.

The Conclusion

So here I sit with a wonderful copy of CS4 running on my machine. I would love to scan something into my lovely version of Photoshop but unfortunately I can’t. Why is it, you ask, that I can’t scan something directly into Photoshop CS4? Well it seems that there is no official TWAIN support for 64bit in Windows so Adobe didn’t include it. I’ve never had trouble with TWAIN on my Mac so why should I install the plugin manually?

The Rant

This also made me think of Linux and Ubuntu and how I don’t care about their partially ‘holier than thou’ attitude towards flash and non-open technologies. Until Ubuntu just works with the web out of the box no one but nerds (I use it. I am a nerd) is going to use it.

My wife doesn’t care about some philosophical argument on how things should be open. She wants to get a new computer go to YouTube and watch a flash video. Sure she may have to update a plugin, but enable ‘restricted extras’, nope she might as well just toss the machine out.

Again we can relate this to the favourite philosophical argument of the web designer, dealing with IE 6. As I wrote a few weeks back, clients don’t care about the philosophical arguments. They want their site to work for their clients. So lets cut the crap and if the user base justifies it, support IE 6.

The Appeal

The Resolution

Horrid CAPTCHA example

Hidden under the guise of making your life less troublesome by limiting spam on your site lurks a hurdle. It’s a hurdle that brings no end of frustration to users. A stabbing pain in the eye of users and what does it gain us but a few precious seconds of our days.

The Issue

While I understand the need to control the spam bots lurking out in the ether this problem is not the problem of your website users, so why are we forcing it on them to solve? Really some CAPTCHA’s are so twisted that future generations will enshrine them in museums as the torture implements of this net enabled generation.

Really to get people interacting with you online you need to break down barriers and make the hurdles as small as possible. Google’s webmaster central recommends that we build sites for users then recommends you use CAPTCHA’s. Does one hand know what the other is doing?

Captcha’s aren’t built for users they’re built for website owners. They take the problem of spam control and make it the problem of our website visitor. Would you go to a brick and mortar store that had a test to make sure you had cash to buy right now? I mean that’s a challenge and response to make sure you fit their profile right?

The Better Way

There is at least one system I know of that doesn’t push my spam control issue onto my users. It’s used just below for comments and comes bundled with any WordPress installation, Akismet.

Akismet uses some fancy algorithm to figure out what is spam and what isn’t. I don’t have to manage it I just check once a week quickly to see if there are any false positives which has never happened on the blogs I manage regularly.

Another option is a honey pot form element. Push it way off the side of the site. If it’s filled in you have a spammer so you throw out the submission.

Simple logic puzzles are another way to try to drop the bar lower but still get a challenge response from users. You’ll see this on some of my forms that ask “What colour is snow?” Still this is a hurdle and in my mind less desirable than no extra steps from the user. In fact I’m actively looking for a different form plugin for WordPress because of this.

The End

And now for some fun. Let’s stop and look in absolute disbelief at the horrid CAPTCHA’s shown below.

More terrible CAPTCHA examples

die ie6 from .net magazine

The proposed demise of IE 6 rings with the shouts of joy from web developers the world over, but is it truly on the horizon? While sites trying to kill IE 6 extoll all the valid reasons web designers and developers have to want the death; clients sit and look at philosophical arguments and compare them to the real world dollars of IE 6 users.

The Reality

On top of that there is a marked difference if we don’t provide full support for IE 6. Not having transparency on the images drops IE 6 conversion rates by 50%. Um I’d notice that hole in my pocket.

One company I sub-contract for only supports the latest editions of each browser. I totally love that I don’t have to hack around with IE 6 till it’s perfect. Sure I still check and put in a few minutes on it to fix major items but that’s about it. I do wonder though if the clients realize the real world dollars they could be throwing away by not supporting IE 6?

The Cost

The cost is inconsequential really.

The Right Approach

Sure I’d rather be building cool sites that just run the latest technologies. I’d rather be using HTML 5 and CSS 3 but more than that I like having food and a roof. I don’t love time debugging IE but I like affording a coffee.

So I’ll keep supporting IE 6 as long as it pays for my clients to do so. Really when I’m hired, I’m hired to give the best advice and solutions for a client situation not the best advice that isn’t a pain for me. Let’s just provide our clients with the right solution and get off our high horses.

demo e-commerce site

I’ve been designing lots of e-commerce projects lately and a theme I’ve been finding in the designs is the buttons. Specifically the implication of buttons.

We’ve all seen buttons on store that say “Add to Cart” or “Purchase” or whatever but does the simple word convey enough meaning?

The Thoughts

Look at the back button on your web browser. No text is really needed to know that pressing the button will move you back in your browsing history. Same goes for the stop button and the home button. They stand alone without the text. Whey then do so many websites require descriptive text on the GUI elements?

The Simple Solution

Buttons for purchasing products have been getting the + symbol along with the “Purchase” text. When you click it you are adding something. Similarly the “Remove” buttons have been getting the – symbol along with the text.

I’m simply trying to convey more from a usability standpoint. I want to make it easy on users with reading difficulties, or that don’t have a native language of English, by having a stand alone symbol to represent the action.

Am I alone here? What else can we do visually to make site more accessible across language barriers? How do you address these issues?

The Issue

Working in the web industry means there is lots of news to follow. Tons of new developments all over that you are expected to keep track of. If you don’t keep track of the latest developments you can quite quickly find yourself using outdated techniques.

I use Google Reader to organize all my feeds. It’s great for moving through lots of feeds quickly to get the good stuff. Follow a few friends and they can share items you missed. Google Reader is accessible from any internet connection on any machine. Jump on the Google Gears bandwagon and offline reading is only a sync away. But Google Reader sucks…

Google Reader sucks for one thing though…reading. Yeah that’s right Google Reader sucks if you actually want to read the articles in your feed.

Google Reader is just not pretty. Sure the blue links with purple for visited links is accessible but boy the experience of reading is sadly lacking. Sure you can install HelvetaReader and get some nice typography and drastically improved looks for links but it’s still has a long way to go. It most certainly doesn’t make reading an enjoyable experience, reading in Google Reader is a utilitarian experience.

The Experience

I personally miss reading as an experience. I miss sitting and enjoying a good book. Yeah I know that much of those times are gone but the web could learn something.

Most sites are full of flashing little banners for adds (I know people need to get paid). Though they say ‘content is king’ it’s really only lip service it seems.

A book is just words on paper. You’re not getting distracted by that cool flash add. You sit and experience the story, experience the content.

I want blogs to start taking some of this experience into their design and layout. Drop the flashing adds. Tone down content all over your sidebars. Provide the user with some beautiful typographic layout in the body copy and let the other things fade to the background.

Yes I do realize my site doesn’t totally mesh with this idea, but a redesign is in the works.

The Reality

So despite all the charming things I said above the reality is that putting time into a blog is a lot of work. At some point there has to be a payoff and for many people it is financial. Financial comes in a few forms. It can be the adds. It can be the referrals for clients.

Most of those payoff’s require some form of advertising and some way to pull the focus off the text and onto your services or your adds and contact forms. But let’s see if we can leave off a bit and let the reader focus on what they came to see, the content.