🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi, Ian:

Jakob is a highly respected usability engineer. BTW - his bio info *is* on
the site.

If you think default colors are "boring"-- you are quite free, as a user, to
change your colors in your own browser.

Changing them on web pages is akin to making traffic lights
(red/yellow/green) a rainbow depending on which town/city/state you happen
to be travelling in. That is, it is Very Easy for a designer to screw up the
interface so that it is difficult for the casual user to figure out how the
'page works.'

Which is why on my home machine, I have my colors set to override designers.
This has become increasingly important with CSS, which allows designers to
turn off underlines. It's enough to make me use NN3.x instead of 4.5.

Anecdote:
I used a site on a regular basis that had "default visited purple" for it's
Not Visited Links and "green" for its Visited links. Even though
intellectually I KNEW this -- the first few times I clicked links on the
site, with each visit, I Got THem Backwards --  because a) green means "go"
not "stop" and b) they reversed the default visited/not visited color. Bah.


There is Much research to back up most [not all] of Jakob's opinions. It
comes out of decades of research on human computer interaction. How much
experience do YOU have in this field?


Finally, if you are going to spec a font Other Than Times Roman for "serif
face" -- best make sure that its on your end user systems. Can you name the
fonts that are installed on Macs, PCs, UNIX? I go to many sites with fonts
spec'ed for PCs [often created with FrontPage] and they look like Hell on my
Mac.





Kathy


Kathy E. Gill
AT&T Wireless, NBO Deployment
Redmond Town Center, Bldg 4, 3155B
425.580.6459
mailto:kathy.gill@attws.com

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of
conversation.  -- Plato




> ----------
> From:         Ian Samson[SMTP:IDSamson@BEAUTY.HSRC.AC.ZA]
> Reply To:     Ian Samson
> Sent:         Monday, May 03, 1999 10:25 PM
> To:   NETTRAIN@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
> Subject:      Re: Top 10 Mistakes revisited
>
> Who's this guy, Jakob Nielsen, anyway, and what gives him the
> right to make those assumptions?
>
> Just because he has a PhD does not give him carte-blanche on
> what may or may not be right or wrong on web pages. For
> example, having "standard link colors" of underlined blue text is
> both boring and antiquated. The next thing he'll be saying is that
> the use of any font other than Times New Roman is one of the
> "mistakes".
>
> I would also not take too much notice since this man's HTML
> coding is sloppy (and that's being kind).
>
> On 3 May 99, at 14:07, Diane K. Kovacs wrote about Top 10 Mistakes
> revisited:
>
> > Forwarded with permission
> > >
> > >Jakob Nielsen's www.useit.com web site has been mentioned very
> favorably
> > >a few times recently.  Old timers may remember Nielsen's article from
> > >wa-a-ay back in 1996, "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design"
> > ><URL:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html>.
> > >
> > >Nielsen has now updated this document, at
> > ><URL:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990502.html>.  IMO, both documents
> > >should be required reading.  It's definitely worth taking a few minutes
> > >looking at your site and considering it in the light of:
> > >
> > >1. Frames
> > >2. Bleeding-edge technology
> > >3. Scrolling text and looping animations
> > >4. Complex URLs
> > >5. Orphan pages
> > >6. Scrolling navigation pages
> > >7. Lack of navigation support
> > >8. Non-standard link colors
> > >9. Outdated information
> > >10. Slow download times
> > >
> > >And now, back to the Dr. Laura thread, which is already in progress.
> > >
> > >
> > >Thomas Dowling
> > >OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
> > >tdowling@ohiolink.edu
> > >
> >
> > ______________________________________________________________________
> > Diane K. Kovacs, Kovacs Consulting Internet & World Wide Web Training
> >
> > http://www.kovacs.com (330)273-5032 - fax: (330)225-0083
> > ______________________________________________________________________
> > _Cybrarians Guide to Successful Internet Programs and Services_ _The
> > Internet Trainer's Total Solution Guide_ (Forthcoming! from
> > Neal-Schumann)_The Essential Guide to *Electronic Library* Collection
> > Development on the Web: Selection Criteria and Core Collections_
> > (forthcoming?) _Health and Medicine on the Internet_
> > http://www.amazon.com/
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Ian Samson
> Electronic Publishing
> Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa
> Voice:  [+27(0)12] 302 2957   Fax: [+27(0)12] 302 2525
> Organisation: [+27(0)12] 302 2999
> http://www.hsrc.ac.za/
> -----------------------------------------------------
> DISCLAIMER:
> Opinions expressed in this message are my own
> and do not reflect official policy of the HSRC.
> -----------------------------------------------------
> QUOTES:
>   The single most common cause of all relationship breakdown
>     is selfishness.
>      -- Ian Samson (1994)
>
> Repetition is the mother of skill.
>      -- Tony Robbins
>
> There is no substitute for experience. No amount
> of education can compensate for appropriate experience.
>      -- SBDC Training (Pty) Ltd
>
> And just for a laugh:
>
> Microsoft announced today that the official release date
> for the new operating system "Windows 2000" will be
> delayed until the second quarter of 1901 due to an
> unexpected Y2K bug.
>