In Issue No. 302 of A List Apart for people who make websites, Joe Clark explains what E-book designers can learn from 10 years of standards-based web design, and Daniel Mall tells designers what they can do besides bicker over formats.

Web Standards for E-books

by Joe Clark

E-books aren’t going to replace books. E-books are books, merely with a different form. More and more often, that form is ePub, a format powered by standard XHTML. As such, ePub can benefit from our nearly ten years’ experience building standards-compliant websites. That’s great news for publishers and standards-aware web designers. Great news for readers, too. Our favorite genius, Joe Clark, explains the simple why and how.

Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web

by Daniel Mall

You’ve probably heard that Apple recently released the iPad. The absence of Flash Player on the device seems to have awakened the HTML5 vs. Flash debate. Apparently, it’s the final nail in the coffin for Flash. Either that, or the HTML5 community is overhyping its still nascent markup language update. The arguments run wide, strong, and legitimate on both sides. Yet both sides might also be wrong. Designer/developer Dan Mall is equally adept at web standards and Flash; what matters, he says, isn’t technology, but people.

Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart.

Many website designers run their own niche blog, and if the content is unique enough, a designer might be able to sell subscriptions to it. The content has to be very high quality, though, and few design blogs meet that standard.

A List Apart is one that does, and it could potentially turn a profit selling subscriptions. But the subscription route is a risky move because it alienates many users and shrinks ad revenue substantially.

Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher, founder and executive creative director of A List Apart, gives two reasons why A List Apart does not put its content behind a paywall:

• It’s against our belief in free online content.
• It wouldn’t work unless our competitors also put their content behind a paywall. We appeal to a discerning base of web designers, but if we went behind a paywall, it would be as if we had stopped publishing. Our readers would turn elsewhere.”

More at What Is the Future of Online News? | Webdesigner Depot.

Whether it’s in front of a huge audience or a handful of executives, smooth public speaking is essential to a successful web design career. Yet most of us are more afraid of speaking in public than we are of death. In a lively give-and-take, Liz Danzico interviews Scott Berkun, author of Confessions of a Public Speaker, for tips on how to prepare for public speaking, how to perfect your timing, and what to do when bad things happen.

Interview with Scott Berkun by LIZ DANZICO & SCOTT BERKUN, in A List Apart Issue No. 301

Illustration: Kevin Cornell for A List Apart

Another generation of technology has passed and Unicode support is almost everywhere. The next step is to write software that is not just “internationalized” but truly multilingual. In this article we will skip through a bit of history and theory, then illustrate a neat hack called accent-folding. Accent-folding has its limitations but it can help make some important yet overlooked user interactions work better.

Accent Folding for Auto-Complete by CARLOS BUENO in A List Apart Issue No. 301

Illustration: Kevin Cornell for A List Apart

Issue 300 of A List Apart for people who make websites solves password-related usability problems with a dash of JavaScript, and employs content strategy to help your site do the right thing at the right time:

The Problem with Passwords

by LYLE MULLICAN

Abandoning password masking as Jakob Nielsen suggests could present serious problems, undermining a user’s trust by failing to meet a basic expectation. But with design patterns gleaned from offline applications, plus a dash of JavaScript, we can provide feedback and reduce password errors without compromising the basic user experience or losing our visitors’ trust.

Words that Zing

by COLLEEN JONES

When someone consults a website, there is a precious opportunity not only to provide useful information but also to influence their decision. To make the most of this opportune moment, we must ensure that the site says or does precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. Understanding the rhetorical concept of kairos can help us craft a context for the opportune moment and hit the mark with appropriately zingy text.

Our 300th issue also marks the debut of contributing editor Mandy Brown. Mandy is a Creative Director at Etsy. She worked for nearly a decade at the venerable publishing house W. W. Norton & Company, where her work involved everything from book design to web design to writing about design. She writes about the reading experience at A Working Library. We are thrilled to add Mandy to our creative team.

Illustration: Kevin Cornell for A List Apart

In a special double issue of A List Apart, for people who make websites, Shelley Powers takes a second look at SVG and likes what she sees. You may, too.

Many of us think of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as an also-ran: fine for charts and tables, but not much else. Yet SVG can actually enhance a site’s overall design, and can be made to work in even the most stubborn browser.

In Part I, Shelley covers important basics of working with SVG, including browser support and accessibility.

In Part II, dig deeper into the technology behind using SVG for your site design. Explore how to incorporate SVG in a cross-browser friendly manner, including using SVGWeb to ensure that the SVG shows in Internet Explorer. And discover the unique characteristic that makes SVG ideal for page backgrounds: scalability.

Illustration: Kevin Cornell for A List Apart

Since 1998, A List Apart has sought to serve the international web design and development community with educational, insightful, and sometimes visionary articles on web standards, emerging ideas and technologies, and best practices in content, usability, and design.

One barrier has long prevented us from fulfilling our goal to the utmost. But today we transcend it. Introducing A List Apart Arabic—an authorized A List Apart publication. Thank you and congratulations to Mohammad Saleh Kayali and his partners.

Look for additional international A List Apart editions, coming soon.

In Issue No. 297 of A List Apart “for people who make websites,” Erin Scime explains how the principles of museum curatorship can inform and shape how we approach content on the web: “The Content Strategist as Digital Curator.” And Bjørn Enki describes how electronic contracts can speed workflow and acceptance, and tells how to create just such a contract with a little time and PHP in “Letting Go of John Hancock.”

A List Apart illustrations are by Kevin Cornell.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=3234

Title images from the early years of A List Apart “for people who make websites” are now available for your viewing pleasure.

Were we really ever that young?

NAME THAT FONT! Here’s a nice rainy-day activity for ya. Visit the ALA historical header images collection on Flickr and name the fonts used in individual images.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=3035

Web fonts are here. Now what? In Issue No. 296 of A List Apart for people who make websites, Nice Web Type’s Tim Brown debuts Web Font Specimen, a handy, free resource to see how real fonts really look on the web; and Jason Santa Maria discourses on web type, showing how to avoid using fonts that don’t work on the web, and achieve graceful pairings of fonts that do.

Issue No. 295 of A List Apart emphasizes words and experiences that communicate.

Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients

by DAVID SHERWIN

It’s hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you’d like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise.

You Can Get There From Here: Websites for Learners

by AMBER SIMMONS

“Content-rich” is not enough. Most websites are not learner-friendly. As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich sites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. Amber Simmons tells how to begin creating rich content sites that invite and repay exploration and discovery.

Illustration: © Kevin Cornell for A List Apart

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2851

In Issue No. 294 of A List Apart, for people who make websites: learn what usability testing is and isn’t good for, and discover the five warning signs of a bad client relationship (and what to do about them).

The Myth of Usability Testing

by ROBERT HOEKMAN JR.

Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team’s priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can’t discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome.

Getting to No

by GREG HOY

A bad client relationship is like a bad marriage without the benefits. To avoid such relationships, or to fix the one you’re in, learn the five classic signs of trouble. Recognizing the never-ending contract revisionist, the giant project team, the vanishing boss and other warning signs can help you run successful, angst-free projects.

Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2725

For those who couldn’t be there, and for those who were there and seek to savor the memories, here is An Event Apart Chicago, all wrapped up in a pretty bow:

AEA Chicago – official photo set

By John Morrison, subism studios llc. See also (and contribute to) An Event Apart Chicago 2009 Pool, a user group on Flickr.

A Feed Apart Chicago

Live tweeting from the show, captured forever and still being updated. Includes complete blow-by-blow from Whitney Hess.

Luke W’s Notes on the Show

Smart note-taking by Luke Wroblewski, design lead for Yahoo!, frequent AEA speaker, and author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (Rosenfeld Media, 2008):

1. Jeffrey Zeldman: A Site Redesign
2. Jason Santa Maria: Thinking Small
3. Kristina Halvorson: Content First
4. Dan Brown: Concept Models -A Tool for Planning Websites
5. Whitney Hess: DIY UX -Give Your Users an Upgrade
6. Andy Clarke: Walls Come Tumbling Down
7. Eric Meyer: JavaScript Will Save Us All (not captured)
8. Aaron Gustafson: Using CSS3 Today with eCSStender (not captured)
9. Simon Willison: Building Things Fast
10. Luke Wroblewski: Web Form Design in Action (download slides)
11. Dan Rubin: Designing Virtual Realism
12. Dan Cederholm: Progressive Enrichment With CSS3 (not captured)
13. Three years of An Event Apart Presentations

Note: Comment posting here is a bit wonky at the moment. We are investigating the cause. Normal commenting has been restored. Thank you, Noel Jackson.

Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2695

In Issue No. 293 of A List Apart for people who make websites: retrieve user-generated content and embrace user feedback to enhance your designs.

Discovering Magic

by GLENN JONES

Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that.

Usability Testing Demystified

by DANA CHISNELL

The value in usability testing comes from the magic of observing and listening as people use a design. The things you see and the things you hear are often surprising, illuminating, and unpredictable. This unpredictability is tough to capture in any other way. Dana Chisnell shows you how.

Illustration by Kevin Cornell.

Triple Issue No. 292 of A List Apart, for people who make websites, is all about search.

Testing Search for Relevancy and Precision

by JOHN FERRARA

Despite the fact that site search often receives the most traffic, it’s also the place where the user experience designer bears the least influence. Few tools exist to appraise the quality of the search experience, much less strategize ways to improve it. But relevancy testing and precision testing offer hope. These are two tools you can use to analyze and improve the search user experience.

Internal Site Search Analysis: Simple, Effective, Life Altering!

by AVINASH KAUSHIK

Your search and clickstream data is missing a key ingredient: customer intent. You have all the clicks, the pages people viewed, and where they bailed, but not why they came to the site. Your internal site-search data contains that missing ingredient: intent. Learn five ways to analyze your internal site-search data—data that’s easy to get, to understand, and to act on.

Beyond Goals: Site Search Analytics from the Bottom Up

by LOU ROSENFELD

Top-down analytics are great for creating measurable goals you can use to benchmark and evaluate the performance of your content and designs. But bottom-up analysis teaches you something new and unexpected about your customers—something goal-driven analysis can’t show you. Discover the kinds of information users want, and identify your site’s most urgent mistakes.

Illustration by Kevin Cornell.