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Relatd javascript Articles
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) platform architect Chris Wilson is engaged in an illuminating war of words with Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript who is now the chief technology officer at the Mozilla Corporation, home of FireFox. At issue is the future of JavaScript running in the web browser. Sarah Nelson and David Verba of Adaptive Pathpresented Practical Design for Ajax, a very good overview of many of the design and user experience issues in web development. They covered a lot of ground in 90 minutes and still had some good concrete examples. There were also several book recommendations to explore issues more in depth – I’ve collected those at the bottom of this post.
User Experience
- success comes from the user experience (editor: see also Creating Passionate Users, if you aren’t already subscribed)
- successful design depends upon context, priorities
- know who users are – design for all users
- understand your users – context, motivations, challenges
- consider the user experience from ground up, not something you can throw in at the end
Strategery
- what we do we want to get out of the site?
- what do users want out of site?
- determine our site objectives: ie revenue, or community, or sales
- get to know the users
- find the overlap between what stakeholders want and what users want
- what we learn from users should drive strategy
Scope
- dont try to be everything to everybody
- fall back on ecosystem of apps – ie use apis/mashpus to bring in other sites’ strengths
- ed: less is more?
Structure
- how do pieces of the site fit togeher?
- interaction design – how user moves from one step in process to next
- interaction frameworks
- granularity – keep similar things grouped together
- labeling – make sure your terms make sense to users first, and aren’t just biz terms – ie “jobs” versus “human resources”
- consistency – use the same terms throughout site and throughout life of the site
Skeleton
- what components will enable ppl to use the site?
- four principles: discoverability, recoverability, context, feedback
- some good examples – farecast, blogger
Surface
- what will finished product look like?
- ajax plays the most obvious role here
- “attractiveness bias” – people like pretty stuff better then ugly stuff
- but looks aren’t everthing – see: myspace
- what personality does the site have? ex: flickr has a very friendly, quirky personality
Visual Design
- get Robin William’s book (see book links below)
- four basic principles to follow
- CRAP -> Contrast Repetition Alignment Proximity
- William’s book is awesome – get it
Documentation
- “wireframing ajax is a bitch” – Jeffrey Zeldman
- frame-by-frame? no
- wireframe with key frames illustrated
- lo-fi animations
- just build the damn thing. prototype it in html/js/css
- no best practices
Q&A
q: How to deal with designers who expect us to replicate pixel perfect photoshop mockups?
a: Patience, communication. The issue starts to go away as more designers learn to operate in a more agile way, working with developers instead of throwing their designs over the wall.
q: How can you get designers and programmers to work together with ajax?
a: work for a Rails startup. Or go agile. or work for adaptive path. Real answer: education or just game the system: just get the right people in the same room and get them talking. Find receptive designers and work from the bottom up.
q: Can you recommend any accessibility books?
a: Not really. (ed: Dive Into Accessibilityis a free online book. Its old so it won’t cover ajax accessibility, but many of the fundamental principles apply.)
recommended books
- The Non-Designer’s Design Book, Second Edition
- don't know design from donuts? Have about two hours? Get this book.
- The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web
- before Jesse coined Ajax...
- About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design
- opinionated usability.
- Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research
- learn about your users by observing them.
- Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
- THE book for information architecture.
Related javascript Projects
What is XSTM?
XSTM is a n open sourcelibrary which enables high performance object replication between processes. It is an object oriented Distributed Shared Memory, or a Distributed Object Cache.
XSTMhas similarities with technologies like Adobe Flex Data Services , JBoss Cache, Terracotta, Tangosol Coherence , ScaleOut , or IBM's ObjectGrid .
Our model is based on object shares, which work like file shares. When an object is added to a share, it appears on the other machines which have the same share opened. Modifications done to the fields of the object are from this point replicated between machines.
Read more in the project overview.
XSTMis made of three projects. The Java implementation is called JSTMand is the base from which
the other versions are derived. An adapted version made with Luciano, the
author of GWM , is available for GWT . It allowsthis library to be used in a browser. NSTM is a .NET port based on IKVM.
All implementations are compatible with each other so object replication can take
place e.g. between a Java server and a .NET Smart Client.
- 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 is using an old browser, the browser redirects directly to the image itself or to a fallback HTML page.
The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI Library also includes several core CSS resources. All components in the YUI Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses.
Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Mapsand Gmaileasy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language. Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatibilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript's lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile.
GWT lets you avoid many of these headaches while offering your users the same dynamic, standards-compliant experience. You write your front end in the Javaprogramming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.