In a recent usability survey, researchers from Southern Illinois University found that after ease of use, men prefer fast download speed to easy navigation. Women prefer ease of use, easy navigation, and accessibility. The researchers hypothesize that these different usability criteria are due to differences in how men and women use the web.

Details at “Usability Study: Men Need Speed – web usability criteria show gender differences.”

Filed under: data, industry, Information architecture, State of the Web

Comments off.

Bowman’s experience shows there actually is something worse than having epic bad taste …. This worse thing is an active denial of taste. The extreme male brain, housed by the thousand in Google meatbags, cannot discern patterns or distinctive features that constitute good design according to the consensus of informed, educated people.

Instead of simply trying harder to learn to make such distinctions or just taking our word for it, the Googler embarks on a full-scale jihad against the very concept of taste…

Read Joe Clark on The Extreme Google brain.

[tags]design, anti-design, antidesign, joeclark, google, douglasbowman, aesthetics, taste[/tags]

Filed under: Design

Comments off.

Although the WayBack machine did not preserve any of this website’s first year, it did capture quite a lot of our second year, 1996. Behold the splendor of the early web:

• Zeldman.com Table of Contents page
• Alternate TOC page
• GIFPLEX
• Ask Dr Web
• Steal These Graphics: Disturbing Patterns
• The Ad Graveyard

And much more. Enjoy!

Filed under: Design, development, DigitalUnderground, Publications, State of the Web, Web Design, work, Zeldman, zeldman.com

Comments off.

Thanks for the great feedback, folks. For those who find the orange background objectionable, I’ll offer a user-selectable alternate color scheme, like this one (quick sketch, ignore the color of the printer’s mark at the top, final colors may vary).

[tags]zeldman, zeldman.com, redesign, webdesign, css, code[/tags]

Filed under: CSS, Design, Web Design, Web Standards, Zeldman, zeldman.com

Comments off.

Here’s a little something for a Wednesday evening. (Or wherever day and time it is in your part of the world.)

The body and bottom of the next zeldman.com design are now finished. Tomorrow I start working on the top.

Have a look.

Looks extra sweet in iPhone.

I’m designing from the content out. Meaning that I designed the middle of the page (the part you read) first. Because that’s what this site is about.

When I was satisfied that it was not only readable but actually encouraged reading, I brought in colors and started working on the footer. (The colors, I need not point out to longtime visitors, hearken back to the zeldman.com brand as it was in the 1990s.)

The footer, I reckoned, was the right place for my literary and software products.

I designed the grid in my head, verified it on sketch paper, and laid out the footer bits in Photoshop just to make sure they fit and looked right. Essentially, though, this is a design process that takes place outside Photoshop. That is, it starts in my head, gets interpreted via CSS, viewed in a browser, and tweaked.

Do not interpret this as me dumping on Photoshop. I love Photoshop and could not live or work without it. But especially for a simple site focused on reading, I find it quicker and easier to tweak font settings in code than to laboriously render pages in Photoshop.

If you view source, I haven’t optimized the CSS. (There’s no sense in doing so yet, as I still have to design the top of the page.)

I thought about waiting till I was finished before showing anything. That, after all, is what any sensible designer would do. But this site has a long history of redesigning in public, and the current design has been with us at least four years too long. Since I can’t snap my fingers and change it, sharing is the next best thing.

A work in progress. Like ourselves.

[tags]zeldman, zeldman.com, redesign, webdesign, css, code[/tags]

Filed under: Appearances, Browsers, content, creativity, CSS, Design, Fonts, HTML, Layout, Web Design, Web Standards, Websites, wordpress, work, Working, XHTML, Zeldman, zeldman.com

Comments off.

If you enjoy A List Apart and zeldman.com, please doff your chapeau in the direction of our sponsor, the 37signals Job Board.

Everyone knows 37signals, inventors of Ruby on Rails and creators of Basecamp, Highrise, and other great productivity apps. We studied the leading web design and development job boards before signing on with theirs. Each job board we looked at had something great going for it.

We chose 37signals’s board because it appeals to the hybrid designer/ developer who cares as much about great user experience as clean code—the kind of web professional who believes great content and great design are inseparable. This new kind of designer, forged in the fires of the web, reads ALA and this site, and the 37signals Job Board is where you are most likely to find him or her when you need to hire skilled professionals with vision.

Income from the board helps defray the cost of producing our sites and paying our staff. But more importantly, running it alongside our articles provides a service to our readers, whether they seek a job or a great employee.

Filed under: 37signals, Advertising, Coudal Partners, Deck, the, industry, jobs, work

Comments off.

In Issue No. 282 of A List Apart, For People Who Make Websites:

• Can we finally get real type on the web?
• Does beauty in design have a benefit besides aesthetic pleasure?

Real Fonts on the Web: An Interview with The Font Bureau’s David Berlow

by DAVID BERLOW, JEFFREY ZELDMAN

Is there life after Georgia? We ask David Berlow, co-founder of The Font Bureau, Inc, and the first TrueType type designer, how type designers and web designers can work together to resolve licensing and technology issues that stand between us and real fonts on the web.

In Defense of Eye Candy

by STEPHEN P. ANDERSON

Research proves attractive things work better. How we think cannot be separated from how we feel. The next time a boss, client, or co-worker scoffs at the notion that beauty is an important aspect of interface design, point their peepers here.

A List Apart explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.

[tags]alistapart, type, typography, realtype, truetype, CSS, beauty, design, aesthetics[/tags]

Filed under: A List Apart, Advocacy, art direction, business, CSS, Design, development, Fonts, Happy Cog™, HTML, Ideas, industry, Interviews, Layout, Publications, Publishing, Standards, State of the Web, Typography, Usability, User Experience, UX, Web Design, Web Standards, Working, XHTML

Comments off.

Rated Five Stars at Amazon.com since the day it was published, “Taking Your Talent to the Web” is now a free downloadable book from zeldman.com:

• Download the front cover! (TIFF image, 1.8 MB)
• Download the book! (PDF, book galley, 9.5 MB)

I wrote this book in 2001 for print designers whose clients want websites, print art directors who’d like to move into full–time web and interaction design, homepage creators who are ready to turn pro, and professionals who seek to deepen their web skills and understanding.

Here we are in 2009, and print designers and art directors are scrambling to move into web and interaction design.

The dot-com crash killed this book. Now it lives again. While browser references and modem speeds may reek of 2001, much of the advice about transitioning to the web still holds true.

It’s yours. Enjoy.

Update – now with bookmarks

Attention, K-Mart shoppers. The PDF now includes proper Acrobat bookmarks, courtesy of Robert Black. Thanks, Robert!

[tags]design, webdesign, TYTTTW, takingyourtalenttotheweb, zeldman, jeffreyzeldman, book, instruction, artdirection, printtoweb[/tags]

Filed under: art direction, books, Community, content, creativity, CSS, Design, downloads, Free, Happy Cog™, HTML, Ideas, industry, Information architecture, jobs, Layout, Publications, Publishing, reprints, State of the Web, The Essentials, The Profession, Tools, Typography, Usability, User Experience, UX, W3C, Web Design, Web Standards, Websites, Working, writing, Zeldman

Comments off.

With Digg relenting, the Digg bar’s assault on our content, ranking, and traffic will soon fade like every other lousy idea on the web, and we can once again retire our unframing scripts.

Filed under: Standards, State of the Web

Comments off.

In the tradition of our classic 1990s wallpapers, please enjoy Zeldman Desktop No. 211. For your home or office screen beautification needs.

[tags]desktop, wallpaper, macos, macosx[/tags]

Filed under: Apple, Design, Desktops, downloads, Free, Wallpaper, Zeldman, zeldman.com

Comments off.