Skin of Stars

I’ve been looking at some interesting research regarding the manner in which users read web pages. I’d come across click mapping previously (links below), software that records where users click, but the Nielsen Norman Group’s eye tracking study follows where users actually look. Though their study tends to focus on commerce aspects (how much do users look at your adverts?) it is also fascinating stuff for those of us wanting to create clean and clear designs.

First thing that’s worth noting, users rarely spend time looking where you want them to. They tend to follow common patterns, the most notable being the F pattern (a couple of quick horizontal scans of the page as we head down it). This means it is for us, the designer, to be aware of this and place our most important content in these areas. One might argue that a regular visitor would know where the most important information on a site is held, yet anyone with any sense knows that we want to make a site clear for everyone.

Now for banners and adverts/promotions. I’m not going to say how to get people to read them (in fact, I’d recommend getting AdBlock Plus to just cleans the web of them!), but if you want to ensure people read all information on your page then make sure that it doesn’t look like an advert. Users have an automatic tendency to ignore anything that looks like a promotion.

Next up I’ll point to Nielson’s study on how pages are read. The key point is that people don’t read, they scan. If you want to make life easy then you could put important anchor words in bold to aids the reader down the route you’d like them to take. When you’re marking this up in HMTL consider whether you should use the ‘b’ or the ‘strong’ tags. Are you merely creating a visual guide (b/i) or do you want to emphasise a word (strong/em)?

The final point I’ll pick up from Nielson is his discussion on screen sizes. Nothing surprising here, most people use 1024×768, that’s a laptop widescreen. One thing I’d like to add to is the misconception that laying out a web page is like laying out for a newspaper or a magazine. Screen sizes and resolutions are not fixed, there is no ‘above the fold’, like we find in newspapers. Even different choices of preferred system fonts or different browsers have an impact on where the cut-off will be on different machines. Interestingly, Neilson does point towards making site layouts fluid for different. Though I don’t consider this such a hard n’ fast rule, I’d like to point you CSS monkey’s 456 Berea St’s article on elastic layouts.

That’s it for this week folks. Happy building.

Some further linkage:

* A wordpress clickmap: http://www.rogerstringer.com/projects/wpclickmap

* A more general use clickmap using PHP and JQuery: http://css-tricks.com/tracking-clicks-building-a-clickmap-with-php-and-jquery/

* Strong or Bold? http://www.think-ink.net/html/bold.htm

Like many of you I’m sure, I’ve watched my fair share of TV. For the last two and a half years though I’ve not had one. My occasional glimpses of whats on the box are during visits to friends and family. Still, I don’t feel this is a loss at all, when I want something to watch I simply use the all mighty Interwebulator. Not only does the BBC provide a fantastic service, there are many other places to get quality content. The fact of the matter is that I feel it has made me all the more selective about what I do watch. Yet another generic home improvement or reality TV show just doesn’t make the grade. Despite this I’ve still found myself watching some absolute trash, recent seasons of Heroes and Lost come to mind. But today I’m not wanting to talk about what is rubbish, I think you can decide that for yourself, I want to tell you about one of the best shows I have seen in many many years; The Wire

The Wire is at it’s most simplistic level a cops and criminals affair. Set in Baltimore, each season follows an ever expanding ensemble cast through different themes; drugs, the docks, politics, education and the media. The most striking aspect though is that a balanced amount of time is spent on each side of the different groups and equal measures of justice and injustice are received by both. Watching it you find yourself rolling through empathy, admiration and revulsion at both the prominent as well as the more obscure characters. You also find subtle points of interest are dropped in which later allow for little in-jokes for the more observant viewers. The Wire is a rich tapestry which doesn’t beg for your attention with tacky ploys like explosions or excessive violence. To the contrary, it is often quiet, considered and will punish you if you were not paying enough attention before. There are no neat, self-contained episodes like CSI or NYPD Blue, you need to watch it as a whole. Don’t let that put you off though, it pays back your efforts ten fold. If you only watch one TV show this year, watch The Wire.

Still not convinced? See what Charlie Brooker thinks of The Wire

This has caused me a problem though. I was fussy with my TV before, now my standard is going to be unbearably high. I hope that the next show made by The Wire’s creators, Generation Kill, will meet these expectations.

Hey all. Not much going on here, lots of homework but nothing of more general interest. Erm, follow me on twitter!

Oh, what a treat… and just in time for Christmas! I am very pleased to find that the BBC has finally indulged my fetish for organic software by releasing a flash streaming version of their iPlayer.

Though of course flash isn’t homespun in itself, it is cross platform compatible and so both myself and all those other ‘nix and Mac users out there can watch the last seven days of BBC content without the need for any of that Windows tosh! Not a Vista in sight! I need never miss another episode of Cash In The Attic again. Hurrah!

In a follow-up to my previous post regarding the incompatibility of the new BBC iPlayer I recently found an interview on backstage.bbc in which the developers of the iPlayer and representatives from the Open Source Consotium and the Open Rights Group discuss this very topic. It would seem that the general consensus is that release of the iPlayer to be bound to one operating system was in many ways a demonstration of the problems with DRM (Digital Rights Management) and thankfully just a stepping stone to more open access, initially through streaming and then hopefully to more open access.

Interestingly enough the developers pointed out that it is only a very small piece of the whole delivery system that was written in a proprietary format, namely the bit that goes on your computer. Over 90% of the system is running on Solaris with many of the developers using Debian based systems.

Ok Tony, off you go….

Today Eastcliff Richard and I became ‘friends’. I think this is a familiar expression in the world of social networking. In this instance it was on probably the most highly publicised site of recent months, Facebook. This has got me thinking a little more about a site which I once thought was pretty neat but I now avoid like Margate!

I like to think of myself as an early adopter. I certainly try to be, signing up to many new social webservices before anyone else has signed up and as such unlikely there being any point in being there. With Facebook I’d tried to sign up a couple of years ago but you needed a uni email so I couldn’t. When I came to Oxford though it was just at the start of the Facebook wave so naturally I signed my name on the dotted line.

I’d spent some time in the garish environment of MySpace for a few years (the de facto social site of Thanet rock) and so enjoyed the simplicity of Facebook. It had plain white pages, minimally organised small photos, a wall, some groups and the occasional poke. It was simple and I thanked it for that.

Then at the same time as the wave of new uni kids they opened up registration to the site to anyone with an email address. Now we get all the guys who are using it at uni telling their friends back home to come join and things started to snowball. As of today Facebook is now in the top ten global Alexa ranked sites. Its still not caught Myspace but its not got much further to go and if the rate that my new friend requests come in I doubt it will be much longer.

So here is where I think the problem lies. Facebook was successful because it differed from Myspace. It did offer a more peaceful approach to social networking but now they have opened up the site to third party applications, the likes of Zombie Biters, Booze Mailers, Super Pokers and any other stupid thing you can think of. Here is where the problem of being open to anyone with an email comes in. These applications are further propagated by people who are wasting away their work day. Now when I go to a users page I struggle to find their wall for all the other trash that’s littered over it. Infact, I can’t even use my own inbox without having to spend half an hour clearing it of stupid invites.

Facebook may not yet have reached user saturation, but it is certainly reaching the end of its usability. It makes me wonder what site will be the next big thing, its certainly time to start looking out for it. Hopefuly people will come back to blogs and forums, at least they have some substance and in many cases proved sustainabilty.

It would seem that Peter Checksfield has made a real impact on the local press and people after a skim through Thanets raciest paper, the TT. Now it would seem to me that people do get the most worked up over a bit of nudity

I seem to be involved in a bizarre case of identity theft. This is not the usual credit card scam though, oh no. I seem to have been dragged into the seedy underworld of Margaret Withers art. Yikes, I may have even been copyrighted! Oh the humanity!

There are some dreamed of gadgets that hold a mythical status. The king of these unicorns of the gadget world has been the much dreamed of iPhone. Everyone knew exactly what it was to be called were this ever to be made, the rumour of the iPhone has been bouncing round for few years now but Apple chief, Steve Jobs, has always denied that they were working on it. Yet yesterday during his keynote speech at MacWorld he announced the long fabled iPhone (I thought he might mention it at the last MacWorld in 2006). I guess it was obvious that it was coming, the market is steamrolling its way towards an integrated in-pocket solution. Another indicator was that Apple had made deals with Motorola previously on the ROKR phone. The clincher for me was when I heard that Kevin Rose (Digg.com) had said it was coming on his Diggnation podcast (warning; beer swilling geek millionaires). His prediction of a video iPod nano, which was much derided, was spot on the money. Its also worth noting that the news of the iPhone almost gave Digg its own digg-effect with what is now pushing close to 20,000 votes on the product’s announcement.

I’m not normally an Apple fan; DRM, closed source built on open source, etc. Aside from that they have always seemed to have an army of brand faithful evangelists which isn’t really my bag. But the iPhone is worth sitting up for and paying some attention. For my money, having a full HTML browser is exactly what I’ve wanted from a phone, so I may end up buying an Apple product after all. This really does look like its going to be the sparkling unicorn that you only hear of in myths.

For a full breakdown of what is going to be on offer, check this engadget article.

Sorry, i know our local papers have the general difficulty of being able to tell their arse from their elbows, but this really is taking the biscuit! Just a couple of weeks ago they were praising a trader in Arlington shopping arcade in Margate for recruiting a group of graffiti artists to produce some quality work on the boarded up shops. Now they showing the same graffiti and calling it disgraceful! Do they have any idea what they are talking about or do they really assume that we won’t remember what they said last week? Personally, I think its the local presses fickle attitudes to local events and issues that is the disgrace of this area.