[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.If you don't use GIF images for buttons, but just use buttons instead, your buttons willlook the same as all the other buttons on the Web and people will realize that they canpush them.If you don't use funny redirects, you won't break the Back button on Web browsersand people will be able to back out of your site.If you don't use Flash or Shockwave for your content, Web search engines will be ableto index your site, so people searching for your site will find it.If you use a cool Flashanimation for all your press releases, your press releases will not be available to searchengines and fewer people will find them.If you don't use frames, people will be able to create shortcuts to any page on yoursite.They will be able to cut and paste the URL from the address bar into an emailmessage.If you use frames, the address bar doesn't necessarily change to reflect thecurrent frame contents.These are just a few examples of how limiting yourself to the most basic features of HTMLcan make Web sites more usable.Basically, the Web evolved a little too quickly.All the neat96 features that were added since the earliest versions of HTML weren't really deeplyintegrated into the structure of the Web, so today they are not universally available and theyare not universally understood.Flash and Java applets are some of the worst offenders,because they create a rectangle of lawlessness, inside of which every designer has toreinvent the user interface from the ground up, something which is rarely done in aconsistent way.Bottom line:The fewer cool Web features you use, the more usable your site will be.Please don't let this stop you if you are making a site that's meant to be entertaining ratherthan useful.Usability is not everything.If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it wouldbe clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus writtenin 18-point sans serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms.But nobody would be there.They wouldall be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.97 Chapter 18: Programming for HumansMy sense of user sympathy as a moral imperative (rather than just a way to sell moresoftware) started when I heard a story from an Excel usability test.A woman came in to testthe software.When she wasn't able to complete the assigned task, she actually broke downin tears.Ken Dye, the usability lab manager, told me he had to walk her around the idyllicMicrosoft campus until she felt better.After that, we were always very careful to explain tousability participants that we were testing the product, not their performance, and weexpected that they wouldn't be able to accomplish some tasks.Not that that helped.Peoplefeel miserable when they can't accomplish a task.I was reminded of a story about the task list in Microsoft Outlook.In the original design,when you completed a task, it was simply deleted from the list.Logical.But the designersdiscovered that people had more of a sense of accomplishment if they could actually crossthe items off the list, and this made them happier.So now, when you mark a task ascompleted, Outlook draws a line through it rather than making it disappear completely (seeFigure 18-1).Figure 18-1: The Outlook task list actually crosses off items as you complete them,simply because it made people happier.Mahatma Gandhi considered it violence against nature to throw away even the stub of apencil because it wasted the world's resources.And he considered it violence againsthumanity, too, because our over-consumption denies resources to people who live inpoverty.The Talmud was concerned about even tiny acts of waste: as little as a mustardseed, which was considered the smallest thing the human eye could see.Even passing aglass of water over a loaf of bread at the dinner table was forbidden, because if the waterspilled, the bread would be ruined.What they're both teaching us is that small things matter;that everyone has opportunities all the time to improve the world in a tiny way, to showrespect for all living things.Usability, fundamentally, is a matter of bringing a bit of human rights into the world ofcomputer-human interaction.It's a way to let our ideals shine through in our software, nomatter how mundane the software is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.If you don't use GIF images for buttons, but just use buttons instead, your buttons willlook the same as all the other buttons on the Web and people will realize that they canpush them.If you don't use funny redirects, you won't break the Back button on Web browsersand people will be able to back out of your site.If you don't use Flash or Shockwave for your content, Web search engines will be ableto index your site, so people searching for your site will find it.If you use a cool Flashanimation for all your press releases, your press releases will not be available to searchengines and fewer people will find them.If you don't use frames, people will be able to create shortcuts to any page on yoursite.They will be able to cut and paste the URL from the address bar into an emailmessage.If you use frames, the address bar doesn't necessarily change to reflect thecurrent frame contents.These are just a few examples of how limiting yourself to the most basic features of HTMLcan make Web sites more usable.Basically, the Web evolved a little too quickly.All the neat96 features that were added since the earliest versions of HTML weren't really deeplyintegrated into the structure of the Web, so today they are not universally available and theyare not universally understood.Flash and Java applets are some of the worst offenders,because they create a rectangle of lawlessness, inside of which every designer has toreinvent the user interface from the ground up, something which is rarely done in aconsistent way.Bottom line:The fewer cool Web features you use, the more usable your site will be.Please don't let this stop you if you are making a site that's meant to be entertaining ratherthan useful.Usability is not everything.If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it wouldbe clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus writtenin 18-point sans serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms.But nobody would be there.They wouldall be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.97 Chapter 18: Programming for HumansMy sense of user sympathy as a moral imperative (rather than just a way to sell moresoftware) started when I heard a story from an Excel usability test.A woman came in to testthe software.When she wasn't able to complete the assigned task, she actually broke downin tears.Ken Dye, the usability lab manager, told me he had to walk her around the idyllicMicrosoft campus until she felt better.After that, we were always very careful to explain tousability participants that we were testing the product, not their performance, and weexpected that they wouldn't be able to accomplish some tasks.Not that that helped.Peoplefeel miserable when they can't accomplish a task.I was reminded of a story about the task list in Microsoft Outlook.In the original design,when you completed a task, it was simply deleted from the list.Logical.But the designersdiscovered that people had more of a sense of accomplishment if they could actually crossthe items off the list, and this made them happier.So now, when you mark a task ascompleted, Outlook draws a line through it rather than making it disappear completely (seeFigure 18-1).Figure 18-1: The Outlook task list actually crosses off items as you complete them,simply because it made people happier.Mahatma Gandhi considered it violence against nature to throw away even the stub of apencil because it wasted the world's resources.And he considered it violence againsthumanity, too, because our over-consumption denies resources to people who live inpoverty.The Talmud was concerned about even tiny acts of waste: as little as a mustardseed, which was considered the smallest thing the human eye could see.Even passing aglass of water over a loaf of bread at the dinner table was forbidden, because if the waterspilled, the bread would be ruined.What they're both teaching us is that small things matter;that everyone has opportunities all the time to improve the world in a tiny way, to showrespect for all living things.Usability, fundamentally, is a matter of bringing a bit of human rights into the world ofcomputer-human interaction.It's a way to let our ideals shine through in our software, nomatter how mundane the software is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]