Outsmarted by Google

Oh, no! It rendered my code! Well, if you really want to look at it, email me and I'll send it to you.

edawson@niu.edu

Google search boxes and other bits

This is going to be long and disorganized—I apologize in advance. Only read on if you were interested in the Google search box for your website.

Go to http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ to sign up for a customized search box. It is going to ask for your domain name—put in what you have so far (e.g., students.niu.edu/~z12345/engl) because you can always change it later. You’ll be able to go in and choose how you want it to look and get the code for that particular look. Don’t be intimidated! It’s not that bad!

For example, this is the source code for the Google search box at www.english.org:

Google Search

Web Site

I left in all the location information, i.e., tables and such. (Note that I did not create this code—there are some sloppy bits that I don’t approve of now that I see them, but it works anyway! I probably won’t go in to clean it up because I don’t want to fix something that isn’t broken, but I’m sure that after Eric’s lecture the other week we can all see some things that could be improved here.)

If you have any questions about how to make this work for you, I will do my best to help. The Google page should be pretty helpful, too, if you look around on it.

Here is a page that has some interesting & useful tips on this subject: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_add_a_google_search_box_to_my_web_site.html. I don’t recommend just copying their code and using it, because you’ll be missing out on bunches of perks, but I agree with them that their code is very clean and neat. You can always modify yours with this in mind.

Below the Google search box at www.english.org, you’ll notice the Adobe download information. If you will be using any .pdf files, it is a good idea to go to http://www.adobe.com/svg/license.html and apply for a license to use the Adobe logo so that your users can download the latest version of Acrobat and so that you can get little .pdf graphics to mark which links will open as .pdf files instead of other web pages. It is rather inconsiderate to create a link that opens to a file like this without somehow indicating it to the user—they don’t like those types of surprises.

Good luck and have fun! And please let me know if I've glossed over something so it doesn't make sense. It's already been a very long weekend for me!

The IA Job Title

I had to read this article for another class (I love cross-course learning!), and I thought it was relative to the conversations we had in class right before Spring Break about the job title "Information Architect." The article is "What do We Manage? A Survey of the Management Portfolios of Large Technical Communication Groups." (Technical Communication, Vol. 51, No. 1, February 2004)

The authors report that 27% of the organizations in their survey use IA or information designer as a job title, but it is important to note that the survey included only tech comm groups with 20 or more staff. New research may show different results!

Oops, sorry for the error.

I meant to write that I feel left out.

The Missing Audience

To my dismay, the authors seem to focus more heavily on individuals who build websites in collaboration with a group of specialists. Per our last class discussion, many people acknowledged that they had been the sole creators of websites while working for companies. The fact that Morville and Rosenfeld fail to address all the potential members of their audience, including the sole creator of a website is a little disconcerting. With the exception of a few people, most of the members of this class acknowledge that they are novice when it comes to building websites. It would be nice to read about ways in which the sole web developer could combine all the skills in chapters six through ten to create viable websites without the assistance of others.

By,
I feel lefted out!

Not on IA topic, but interesting.

Hi, everyone. Long time no blog. Thought I'd share.
My book review was on cyberactivism and how the internet can be used as a tool for political action. It seems that politicians are paying attention to that message. I ran across this
article and thought people would be interested to know that Myspace has gone political. It seems the candidates are using this networking resource to get the word out, organize, and plead for support. And we all thought Myspace was just for fun.

Sorry...I'm using Safari web browser and it won't let me hyperlink the URL...even with keyboard shortcuts. So here's the full address: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129987-c,currentevents/article.html

reading for this week's presentation

Sorry about the tardiness, but I just discovered this today. It's a reading - a tutorial - on information architecture. Just follow the recipe and you're there. Enjoy.

http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html

Personalization and ADD

I've come to realize something about myself and, quite frankly, everyone else over the past several years. We ALL fall somewhere along the wide spectrum of Attention Deficit Disorder. While I've been able to fight through most of my ADD tendencies to lead a relatively productive life on a day-to-day basis, I find it affects me most when using the Internet. As I read about personalization in Chapter 6 of IA, it occurred to me that this particular web design strategy has exacerbated the problem.

It starts out simply enough. I make an online purchase, and as I am checking out, the site kindly informs me of other products which might be of interest to me ("Others who have purchased Item X have also purchased Item Y"). While I rarely go the way of the lemming, I do occasionally find myself clicking on the picture "to learn more," even if I don't make any additional purchases.

The next time I visit the site, it's ready for me. It reminds of what I've previously purchased and has new recommendations at the ready. What these sites fail to recognize is that I'm a buyer, not a shopper. I purchase with purpose. I already know what I want.

I understand these companies are trying to maximize profits under the guise of making my online shopping experience more pleasant and convenient; I'm even willing to tolerate the effort. All I ask is that they design the personalization so that if I have not used any of the "suggestions" in say, five visits, the site is intuitive enough to leave me alone. Now, if my ADD kicks in and/or I'm dumb enough to click on the bait, then shame on me. They get five more cracks at it.

Thanks, I feel better.

Jake

A little of this, a little of that

I find myself somewhat frustrated by the book assuming that we’re going to be working on these mammoth web sites. I understand that they have to assume the most difficult possible scenarios, but it would be nice if there were tips for figuring out which bits should apply to smaller sites. I liked all the attention paid to redesign in chapter 10, but again, I wish I had read all this before I had to submit my proposal. I now see a lot of other things I could have addressed, but couldn’t figure out how to frame or articulate.

In any case, I wanted to share some resources I found that I hope you might find useful in designing your sites. The book mentioned content management systems pretty briefly, without really explaining them—I’m not saying that I’m the right person to do that, but I think they are worth looking into. The person who presently runs the site I’m redesigning uses one, while the webmaster (please hear that word dripping with sarcasm) who designed the much larger site I presently maintain did not use a CMS. When I saw how much the CSM helped to organize and simplify the maintenance of a site, I couldn’t believe that I was doing it the hard way. It is… well, it’s really hard to describe. I found an open source (read: free) CMS that anyone can download and use. If you are curious, check out Joomla and read more about what it can do. This is something that may not be worthwhile for little sites (under 20 pages), but if you anticipate a lot of growth, it might be worth it to use this as a foundation to make it easier on your successors.

I also found some good sources for pixel fonts. Fonts like Verdana and Georgia were actually created to be viewed on-screen (as opposed to printed), but even they tend to look pretty crummy at less than 10px. Sometimes you really need to have tiny print. At least when you use a font specifically designed to be used at these sizes, you're doing your best to ensure legibility. Check these out:

Silkscreen

Sevenet

Subatomic Screen

Also check out Fonts by Cal Henderson and Grixel for lots more options.

Big sites vs. small sites

We’ve been reading about “designing large-scale web sites”. Some of us might like to think of our class sites as “large-scale”, but we probably won’t have wizards, configurators, personalization, customization, search boxes, much – if any – metadata, prepare blueprints or wireframes, search-log analysis, clicklogs, etc. We will have labels, content, context, navigation systems (global and local), some metadata, some user analysis, some user testing – small doses of everything. We’ll all be “committees of one”. We’ll have to become part of a large organization or become consultants to use the other stuff. Personally, I’ll probably never use the “large-site” stuff, but plan to follow – as best I can – the schedule along with the book chapters for my class website plan. Yet, I think it might be fun to be involved in a group project like the ones in our book. And I now have some suggestions for some of the sites I use all the time, such as my mortgage company, Freedom Mortgage. To access an account, you log in to www.myloancare.com. You get a “runtime error” screen which morphs into (for us account holders) a userid and password screen. If you log in to their home site http://mortgages.fhmc.com, you can’t get to your account. My bank http://www.tcfbank.com has “personal banking” and “online banking” links– which one? Answer: "online banking". If I contact them, will I be “tilting at windmills”? Do I have time? Ah, I feel better now.