WhoWhatWeb

OK, these are pretty funny — if a bit surreal. Mozilla-Europe and the Pozz Agency have created three bizarre and humorous videos to promote the Firefox web browser. Despite a low-key launch, word of the videos has been spreading like crazy and they’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of “hits” so far. You can see a review of the press coverage at Tristan Nitot’s blog.
The Mozilla crew deserves credit both for creating a fast, fun browser and for pushing Microsoft out of its complacency and forcing it to update the aging Internet Explorer. They’ve given a serious wake-up call to lazy web designers and the “Screw web standards, I’m going to write for IE” attitude that was becoming prevalent.

A great source for tips on user-centered web design is the UI Design Newsletter. Produced as an electronic mailing list by Human Factors International, it’s a monthly column about research into human factors issues associated with the web. Usually, a recent research study is detailed and the results are summarized. At the end of the issue, the “Pragmatic Ergonomist” gives a quick take on what it all means and what to do about it on your own site.

In the latest issue, Dr. Kath Straub ponders the question of which of the two pillars of navigation, structure or labels, is most important in helping web users find what they’re looking for.

These two parameters — structure and labels — are asserted to be as independent and complimentary. Neither is individually sufficient to trigger that 80% usability threshold. You have to get both right.

But when the study is complete, which turns out to be more important? You might be surprised.

If you’re at all interested in making your web site more usable by mere humans (and you should be!), you or your web designer will want to subscribe to the e-mail list or visit the web site to browse past issues. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be an RSS feed yet. Maybe that’s one usability trick they still haven’t researched.

Now this is what web software is supposed to be like!

I set up a blog for my wife the other day, using WordPress because of all the good things I’d read about it. I’d set up b2evolution before, and wasn’t impressed with the process or the results. Boy, was it different this time around!

WordPress installs like a dream. If you’re doing it by hand, you need to expand the tarball in a directory under your web root and create the database and user. Then you fill in a few details (user, password, database, host) in a text config file. Next, browse to the blog’s new address, and you’ll be redirected to a very short installation wizard that only asks you two questions total! It dumps you into the admin interface and you’re done — less than ten minutes even if you’re a slow typist like me.

The program has many options, but they are well laid out (with contextual help close at hand for most of them) and mostly set to reasonable defaults. You really can start blogging within minutes, which makes this package worth its weight in gold. Once you’re comfortable and want to go further, look at the WordPress web site and elsewhere. There are zillions of interesting free WordPress themes out there, from which I plan to steal code shamelessly as I create my own look. There are also great plugins for altering the posting markup, fighting comment spam, and so forth.

One surprising thing about the program is its versatility. Besides creating blog articles, you (or the authors you designate) can create and edit static HTML pages, effectively making the program a simple content management system. These pages can even contain some dynamic content via special plugins and custom PHP code. Now how much would you pay?

And of course the best part is: it’s Free Software. Free as in freedom and beer. The next time you hear anyone talk about how open source software is lacking in useful documentation, or a great user interface, or even an easy installation procedure, you know what to do. Just point ‘em to WordPress.