It’s a good thing we’re better about deadlines than anniversaries. A few days ago was the one year anniversary of the launch of SSDD Web Design. Feels like it’s been a lot longer.

I usually hate pop-up windows but I am captivated by this Highslide JS - JavaScript thumbnail viewer. From the site:

Highslide JS is an open source JavaScript software, offering a Web 2.0 approach to popup windows. It streamlines the use of thumbnail images and HTML popups on web pages. The library offers these features and advantages:

• No plugins like Flash or Java required.
• Popup blockers are no problem. The content expands within the active browser window.
• Single click. After opening the image or HTML popup, the user can scroll further down or leave the page without closing it.
• Compatibility and safe fallback. If the user has disabled JavaScript or the JavaScript fails in any way, the browser redirects directly to the image itself or to a fallback HTML page. This fallback is able to cope with most exceptions and incompatibilities.

It sounds too good to be true but the proof is in the pudding: it’s very refined and smooth. Unfortunately it will probably be abused by some site designers. Nonetheless, I need to go find a place to use it.

So we decided to change things around a bit. The home page is now more of a traditional homepage and the blog has been “moved over.” There are more enhancements to the home page forthcoming, but it serves the basic purpose we had in mind. Whether it stands the test of time remains to be seen. As a general rule we eschew splash pages and will strive to insure our home page contains valuable content.

10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of (via 456). Usability, in a nutshell, consists of:

• a clear, self-explanatory navigation,
• precise text-presentation,
• search functionality and
• visible and thought-out site structure.

The 10 gotchas, as mentioned in the article, are as follows:

1. Hidden log-in link
2. Pop-ups for content presentation
3. Dragging instead of vertical navigation
4. Invisible links
5. Visual noise
6. Dead end
7. Content blocks layering upon each other
8. Dynamic navigation
9. Drop-Down Menus
10. Blinking images

Roger goes on to add some good ones to the list:

Here are a few more problems that are common and make many websites harder and more annoying to use than they have to be:

• Low contrast text
• Small text that can’t be resized
• Small text that can be resized, but doing so causes content to disappear
• Preventing or breaking normal browser functionality like mouse-wheel scrolling, printing, and bookmarking
• Over-designed forms