StandardsIn six months, a year, or two years at most, all websites will be designed with standards that separate style from content. (Or they will be built with Flash 7.) We can watch our skills grow obsolete, or start learning standards-based techniques now. In

Tom Van Vleck: “This note describes my knowledge of the history of electronic mail and instant messaging. I don’t really like to use the term ‘e-mail’ or ‘email.’ I usually just call it ‘mail,’ and it’s clear by context whether I mean electronic mail or paper mail.” Submitted as a counterpoint to The First E-Mail Message.

“In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext. Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems.”

Contains both software solutions, online services and articles and other shopping cart lists.

“A well-designed Web site fuses great content and effective visuals, among other elements. Ironically, integrating these elements too early in the design process can mask problems that might otherwise be detected early, and lengthen the design cycle. This paper describes a way to shorten your design cycle by getting focused, early user feedback on the different layers of your design.”

“The Internet’s phone book is up for sale — and though the listings may represent a treasure trove for marketers, the move also risks a serious privacy backlash. At issue are millions of entries in the domain-name database operated by the Network Solutions unit of VeriSign Inc., Mountain View, Calif. It is, essentially, the master address book for the Internet. Since the dawn of commerce on the Web, companies that want their own dot-com addresses have registered with Network Solutions.”

“One of the hottest topics these days in Information Architecture circles is documentation. This is probably partly because the IA’s role is so ill defined. Our jobs sit perched between engineering and graphic design: go too far in one direction, we’re doing the coding, go to far in the other and we are doing the design. Neither role maximizes the architect’s key skills; defining the organizational structure and behavior of the web site or application. An IA is most effective when they leave implementation and final graphic design out of the mix. The documents they create to express this have to be crafted with equal skill and diplomacy.”

“A Behavioral Model for Information Seeking on the World Wide Web: Forward-thinking technology experts have predicted the day when accessing information, communicating with others, and performing complex transactions will be performed as thoughtlessly as turning on a light switch (Gelernter, 2000; Hawley, 2000). Computerized systems will satisfy our every information need. Information will ooze out of every corner of our lives. This is, however, far from the current reality. There are severe bottlenecks in the flow of information. Chief among these is poor interface design, which we have learned to accept with a shrug of the shoulders rather than demanding something better.”

“The Internet’s phone book is up for sale — and though the listings may represent a treasure trove for marketers, the move also risks a serious privacy backlash. At issue are millions of entries in the domain-name database operated by the Network Solutions unit of VeriSign Inc., Mountain View, Calif. It is, essentially, the master address book for the Internet. Since the dawn of commerce on the Web, companies that want their own dot-com addresses have registered with Network Solutions.”

“Netusability seeks to become the standard for how to test and benchmark web site usability, detect design flaws as actual users experience them, and determine the best way to correct those flaws. We are a newly formed company with a strong software product in Beta stage, and an impressive seed capital infusion from a leading investor. We expect to launch version 1.0 in January 2001.”

“Twenty-five years ago, computer screens were small and green. The desktop computer and mouse, which users take for granted today, were far from mass adoption. So it’s safe to guess that in 10 or 20 years, the desktop might be replaced by something we don’t currently comprehend. To get a taste of what’s in store, Computerworld spoke with Jef Raskin, best known as the creator of the Macintosh project at Apple Computer Inc. Raskin’s latest book, The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems (Addison Wesley, 2000), highlights the impersonal nature of most current interfaces and argues for a revolution to create better ones.”

“Make no mistake — if you are running a substantive web site without a CMS, you will hit a wall where your eBusiness is no longer sustainable because you can’t update your site reliably or quickly enough. From that point, you will need to tear down almost your entire web infrastructure to put a CMS in its place.”

“email is very important to a lot of people and companies. However, very little usability research has been done on email, specifically email subject lines. This article is a summary of a research report written by WebWord on the topic and contains several results. The basic finding from the research is that effective email subject lines are very short, very meaningful, and personal.”

“This is a website informing about dot dot dot (it is not an online magazine, but a printed one), a new graphic design magazine intended to fill a gap in current arts publishing. We are not interested in re-promoting established material or creating another ‘portfolio’ magazine. Instead, we hope to offer inventive critical journalism on a variety of topics related both directly and indirectly to graphic design culture.”

“So what exactly is XHTML 1.0 and what does it mean to the Web developer? I’ll start with the W3C’s description: XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of HTML as an XML application. This means that if you’re authoring a document in XHTML 1.0, you are applying the rules and concepts inherent to XML to your Web markup. The dangling question naturally is: Can XHTML 1.0 be used to mark up my Web documents today? The answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ All you need to do is learn how to structure documents properly, choose the correct document type definition (DTD) for your needs, and learn a few new ways of managing your code development.”