“We sent 10 of your questions to usability guy Joe Clark, and he took it upon himself to go a bit beyond simply answering them. In his reply he said, ‘Answers attached in a valid XHTML file. I would suggest at least retaining the id attributes. I copy-edited all the questions, but the words are all the same; they are now merely spelled and capitalized correctly. I think all the links work.’ Whatever. We left Joe’s formatting intact. It’s a little different from our usual style, but variety is the spice of Slashdot.”

“List stuff on Trodo. When a person asks for something, you ship it. When they get it, they give you feedback and you earn a credit. Use credits to get stuff from any other Trodo member, for free.”

“We are the only source in America that provides in-depth, objective analysis of the financial health of more than 1,700 of America’s largest charities, for free.”

This is just perfect. Nice work! “Are those freckles, or does she have a tan? Are her eyes in focus? How’s the film grain? Don’t wait until you’ve bought and downloaded an image or ordered a CD to find out important details. See images up-close, before you buy, with Veer’s new Image Zoom. It’s easy. Just click any comp image on single photo and single illustration pages.”

“Whether you are an enthusiastic user of these new technologies who would like to improve your skills through a better understanding of the formalised elements and principles of design your fly-by-night ‘digital design school’ located above a convenience store may have failed to teach you, or if you are just a regular person who would like to sneer and poke fun at the ocean of bad design that surrounds us in a more intelligent and informed manner, this is the article [is] for you.”

“A graphic is not always the most illustrative element. Written sentences, tables and graphics occupy their own place in the discourse of building clarity and insight.”

“Specializing in rare and unique papers and related art supplies.”

“ClickTracks is a new way of seeing website user behavior. ClickTracks graphically presents each page of your site together with behavior patterns — where people click, how long they stay, when they leave the site, and much more.”

“This is a description of how I set up a tapeless usability lab for BEA Corporation. In this setup, the Subject PC is monitored from another PC, which records the screen and audio to hard drive. The Monitor PC serves these recordings on demand. It also provides a live feed during tests. Compared to VCR-based labs, this requires less equipment, provides a higher-quality image, and is much faster to edit. Most importantly, it is much easier to share results.”

“ClickTracks is a new way of seeing website user behavior. ClickTracks graphically presents each page of your site together with behavior patterns — where people click, how long they stay, when they leave the site, and much more.”

“For years, artists have been using the color wheel to choose colors that go well together. The color wheel is a visual representation of color theory: with a simple color wheel printed on cardstock or plastic, you can quickly create a good color scheme. However, a printed color wheel has one big disadvantage: it cannot SHOW you how your color scheme will look on real artwork — that is, on a logo, website, or banner you’re working on. Color Wheel Pro allows you to preview color schemes on real-world examples. This is the key difference between Color Wheel Pro and other similar tools. The preview is real-time: when adjusting the color scheme, you see the changes immediately.”

We were traveling this year and were unable to participate in Link and Think.

Neat-o Flash art.

“Sadly, tools for conceptually laying out sites have remained fairly rudimentary. Sure, you’ve got programs such as Visio, Inspiration, and the very fine OmniGraffle to work with. And yes, all have been extended over the years to incorporate many Web-friendly features as a nod to information architects who use them. But they still seem a bit stilted, more suited to org-chart makers and programmers than creative folks who want to be able to take what’s in their head, play with it a little, then lay it out on the page to guide a development effort. A good IA tool should work like your brain. Is there one? Yes. It’s called Tinderbox.”

“One can’t work for too terribly long in the broader user-experience community without hearing the words ‘Experience Design.’ It’s a rubric I as an information architect have a tough time swallowing, despite my near-boundless respect for the people who have identified themselves as members of that community. Why is this so, when I think we’re after the same, or a highly similar, thing — the consistent evocation of pleasurable, meaningful human experiences when confronted with complex artifacts? I thought it might have something to do with a certain professional inclination to distrust engineered ‘experiences,’ and a corresponding belief that users might prefer to be offered information with which they could then build their own. Over the summer, I emailed Nathan Shedroff — probably the single human being most identified with the term Experience Design — and asked him if he wouldn’t mind participating in a debate exploring this idea; happily, he agreed.”