Just like the subtitle: “For User Experience Designers in the field or in the making”, implies this is a book for persons that are not yet experts in the UX field. It’s a wonderful read and really gives a great overview of the UX design role in modern web site development.
This latest book from Steve Krug is a terrific read and a great companion book to his legendary and highly successful book, Don’t make me think. Where Don’t make me think focus on design and the ifs and whys of usability testing, Rocket Surgery Made Easy focuses on how to actually conduct usability test and what to do with the results.
I’ve just discovered an interesting concept for a new Operating System. The concept is the brain child of Martin Gimpl and is a part of his master thesis on computer interaction. It uses a zooming interface for windows management and introduces several interesting concepts. In the short video below, Martin shows some of the core concepts. It is well worth checking out.
Also download the MA Thesis and try out the interactive prototype at
www.martingimpl.com/stripes/.
Found through Lukas Mathis blog ignore the code where he shares his thought about the concept.
This is starting to be a tradition. For the third year in a row A list apart is conducting a survey for people who make websites. The purpose of the survey is to see how our profession is practiced worldwide.
Last year over 30.000 people took the survey and A List Apart has made the results publicly available. Check it out! It’s a pretty interesting read.
I took the survey, and so should you! So head over there and answer the questions. It only takes about 5 minutes.
I am in the process of writing a book about the new Google Maps API v3. I thought that I would make the process a bit more open by releasing beta chapters that some people might read and give feedback on. Hopefully one of those people is you!
There’s a few methods used for traversing the DOM-tree in jQuery that is confusingly similar, well at least they were for me. This article will explain the difference between them and when you should use which one.
Using InfoWindows is a brilliant way to display information about a certain location. Since they provides you with a space to put text or whatever HTML you please, they can be used in very interesting ways. In this article, which is the fourth in a series about Google Maps API 3, I will show you how to make good use of this great feature.
Dan Cederholms latest book Handcrafted CSS with the subtitle: More Bulletproof Web Design, is an enjoyable read and delivers some interesting advice on how to leverage your designs with the power of CSS 3.
Markers are the perfect way to put places of interest on a map and that’s probably one of the most used features in digital maps. In this article, which is the third in a series about Google Maps API 3, I will show you how to use them in Google Maps API 3.
It’s been a while since I last wrote on this blog and I thought I would get you up to speed why that is. The reason is that I’ve been occupied with writing a book about Google Maps.
I haven’t written a book before so this is new territory for me. What I’ve noticed so far is that it progresses far slower than I predicted, but at least it progresses steadily even if slower than anticipated. I’ve taken a few weeks off of my regular work to devote to writing this book but this time won’t suffice, so there will probably be quite a few late nights and weekends of writing as well.
The mobile devices are getting increasingly sophisticated. With the combination of GPS, compass, camera, Internet Connection and a big screen it’s now possible to create amazing, context aware, first Person UI’s. Imaging for a moment that you’re in a foreign city, standing in front of a statue that you never seen before. Point your mobile phone at it and it will tell you what it is, who built it etc, imposing the information as a layer over the reality.
In the first article in this series we discussed how to create a simple Map with Google Maps API 3. In this article we will explore the available properties when creating a map and see how we can change the look and behaviour of the map with the help of them.
I just found this really great talk on YouTube from a Google Tech Talk called, Speed Up Your JavaScript. It’s a guy from Yahoo named Nicholas Zakas that talks about various things you can do to get better performance in you Javascripts.
Some people on the forum NUI-group have written a book called Multi-Touch Technologies. The book is about Multi-Touch seen from several perspectives like hardware, software and gestures. It’s more about hardware and software than Interaction Design but contains some interesting bits on the latter subject.
The Google Maps API has evolved to version 3. This version is a complete rewrite and focuses primarily on speed. The new API also features new ways of using it. This article is the first in a series exploring version 3 of the Google Maps API. This first article will take a look on how to create a simple map and explain some differences from the previous version.
This article explains how to dynamically toggle the visibility of markers in Google Maps as well as how to deal with an annoying bug that occurs when trying to do this while using an utility library, like the MarkerManager.
Yesterday a new version of the ever so popular Google Maps API was released. In the new version the focus has been on improving speed, especially on mobile devices. I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of the beta testing and has been able to provide feeback directly to the developers. So far I think they’ve done a great job, even if there’s still more work to be done.
Designing Web Interfaces is a book about how to design rich interactions within web pages. In todays web with richer user interfaces, far from the static, full page load web applications we were once used to. We need patterns, guidelines and best practices on how to design those Interfaces to work well. This book is about just that.
In development project teams there are often several specialized roles, like programmers, database designers, interaction designers, user researchers, business analysts and so on. Studies has shown that the more these different roles collaborate and are aware of the different aspects of the project as a whole as well as what the other project members are doing, the more successful the project is.
Forms that Work is a book on how to design web forms properly. Some time ago I reviewed a similar book, Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski, which deals with the same subject. I then thought that this was a very narrow scope for a book, but perhaps it was not, since this book was published shortly after. No doubt web forms are all around us, so the need for knowledge and skill to design them well should be great. I certainly can’t seem to get enough of these books. Read the rest of this post »
ListDJ is an add on to Spotify that displays the lyrics of the song you’re currently listen to. I’m the kind of guy who thinks that the lyrics of a song is important, so this i perfect for me.
The add on docks itself to the side of the main Spotify application window. From when I’ve tried it, it finds most lyrics, but there are some that aren’t available.
ListDJ have been developed by a friend and college of mine, Fredrik Danielsson. To read more and to download it, visit www.listdj.se. The add on is completely free but is currently only available on the Windows platform.
One of the shortcomings in the Google Maps API is that there’s no easy way to add tooltips to polylines and polygons. That’s why I felt inclined to build an extension to Google Maps that adds that functionality. MapTooltip makes it possible to add tooltips to any kind of overlay. It’s even possible to have HTML inside it and to style it to fit your design needs.
This is a quicktip on how to update images on a webpage that retain the same filename but is periodically updated, without having to perform a full page load.
If you’re into ASP.NET MVC then you should definitely check out this free chapter from the upcoming Wrox book Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0. The chapter is a 185 page long tutorial on how to build a complete web application with the Framework.
The ASP.NET MVC Framework is still in beta (RC2) but is going to ship any day now. That’s good for me since I’ve built a web application with it that will go live pretty soon.
Read more on Scott Guthries blog.
In circumstances where you want to notify the user of something, like for example that some information have been saved, a non-modal alert is an excellent solution. It gets your message across without being intrusive and without the need for uneccesary user interaction.
In this article I will describe how to create it with the help of jQuery
For a project I’m currently working on I wanted to create a submenu that included the parent page as well as the supbages. I just wanted to display the submenu only if the parent page had subpages. Searching the Wordpress Codex and googling for a solution I couldn’t quite find an example that took all these factors into consideration so I had to figure it out myself. Here’s the approach I came up with.
The first time I ever read anything about Zooming User Interfaces was when I was reading The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin, where he introduced the concept of Zoom World, a whole OS based on a Zooming User Interface (ZUI). Of course this wasn’t my first encounter with this type of user interface since I’ve, among other things, been using Interactive maps like Google Maps. But it was the first time that I started considering a Zooming Interface a viable alternative to the traditional interaction idioms.
In this article I will explore some of the Zooming User Interfaces out there today and also take a sneak peak of what’s around the corner.
Global variables are evil. Although possibly nifty for very small programs it quickly clutters the global namespace and increase the risk for name collisions as are program grows larger. The risk for collisions are even greater when using different libraries and widgets.
Is it just me or is Twitter exploding right now? Apart from noticing that I got more followers the last days, I’ve also noticed that several Twitter services such as Tweetburner and Mr. Tweet has been down for maintenance. That might be a sign of overload!
At a seminar I attended last week on Social Media one of the speakers Johan Ronnestam said that the reason Twitter is exploding right now is Barack Obama successful use of it during his election campaign. Every marketer worth his salt has now studied the phenomena and is busy trying to get everyone at their companies to use Twitter.
Today I also learned that Dalai Lama is now on Twitter. Watch his profile at @OHHDL. Pretty soon everyone will be on board, I’m just waiting to find my mothers Twitter profile! 
If you want to join the trend, follow me on Twitter!
Dalai Lama is now following me on Twitter! Even though I realize that it’s probably not Dalai Lama himself following me but rather someone administrating it for him, I can’t help thinking that it’s pretty cool!
Dalai Lama was apparently a fake. That’s too bad because he was quickly becoming the most popular person on Twitter. Read all about it at the Next Web.
Having Info Windows in a Google Maps is a powerful way of displaying information about a specific point or object. Did you know that there are several kinds of them?
In this article I will show you how to add different kinds of Info Windows that appear when you click on a marker.