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Adding sound to roll-overs
This has been bugging me for days, how do you insert a wav sound sample so that when a hyperlink is clicked (onMouseDown) - it plays a sound sample? Or is there a way of changing the default click sound to another from a website?
coldfusion
Is anyone else a coldfusion junkie like me? i have written a database intensive website that recieves 300,000 page hits and 90,000+ unique sessions a day, and coldfusion runs perfectly. the pages execute faster than sites with much less workload.
Message Board Deliberation
I am trying to choose between message boards. The two that I see coming up the most are PHPBB and MercuryBoard. I tried to make my own and got the basics down. It was a real eye opener to see how little I really knew!
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12.13.04
Website Usability, Breadcrumbs And Left-Side Navigation
 By Meghan Whitmore
The very basis of usability is the user. How can you make sure your website is designed with your user in mind? You must first consider the natural behavior of your user in order to understand how your user will experience your site. This month, we will talk in more detail about the psychology and behavior of the human Internet customer, particularly in reference to navigation. The popularity of the Internet may have only exploded over the last decade, but there have already been numerous studies into human behavior and preferences regarding website surfing.
There have been many questions about what is best in terms of usability. In particular there have been two issues: where should navigation bars be located? And what sort of navigation is best for retracing your steps? Guess what. Those answers are still up in the air, even after the studies we describe here.
It is popularly assumed that your page's main navigational menu should be anchored on the left side of your website. A 2001 study (Nelson and Tahir) showed that fully one-third of high traffic websites have left-justified navigation, often with site identification or more navigation along the top of the screen, in what is known as "Inverted-L formation". But though the "Inverted-L" is common, does that mean it is necessary?
 A study in Razorfish, Germany examined the difference between right and left side navigation. Researchers asked: is one side better than the other? They tested two groups, and had one side use navigation that was on the left side of the screen, and the other use navigation on their right. The test subjects were timed in five tasks. The researchers hypothesized that those using right side navigation would finish faster, because so many users are right handed. In fact, there was no significant difference between the times of the two groups.
Practically, left-justified navigation assures that even if the web page is too large to be viewed all at once, the navigation will be seen. If it is on the right, there is a chance it may be cut off and the user would have to scroll over to find it. Also practically, Western users read from left to right, so the upper left hand corner would be the first thing they see.
The Razorfish study tested both left and right justified navigation, and in their tests made sure that the entire screen was always visible, eliminating the possibility that a user would have to scroll over. With this problem eliminated, they discovered that the mean of completion times for tasks on either side differed by less than four seconds. During their debriefing interviews, participants did not express any particular frustration with the right-side navigation. So the test concluded that there was no significant impact on website usability if the navigation was on the left or right hand side.
However, usability and user behavior are often enhanced by familiarity. Even if something is easy to use, if it is also familiar, it becomes even easier to use. In 1998, Norman's study of "affordance" taught us that familiarity with an object's purpose allows us to know what to do just by seeing it. We see a button, we know to push it. We see a ball, we know to throw it or kick it. For people who are familiar with the Internet, we see navigation, we know to click it. We know the affordance of a link- we know what it is for, and once we know that, whenever and wherever we see it, we will know how to use it.
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Familiarity is also a large factor in users return visits. In 1997, Linda Tauscher and Saul Greenberg of the University of Calgary studied 6 weeks of Internet usage of 23 subjects. In those 6 weeks, 58% of the sites participants visited were revisits, and that users continuously added new pages to their repertoire, but visited them again and again. Their participants said they revisited pages because they want to further study the pages' content, because the page serves a special purpose (search engine or homepage) or because the page has information that continuously changes. Tauscher and Greenberg concluded that because users so often return to previously viewed pages, browser interfaces should minimize the effort it takes for a user to return to them, certainly to make it take less time to return to a page than it did to find it originally.
Users revisit pages in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back pattern. As they move along, they may re-access the last few previously viewed pages and then move forward again, then step back again. Now designers are attempting to find the best way to cater to this manner of navigation. User habits and physical abilities are taken into consideration.
The movements we make when using our computer are precise, direct, and rapid. Click click click. In 1954, well before the advent of the personal computer, psychologist Paul Fitts developed what is known as Fitts' Law. Fitts' Law states that movement is logarithmically determined by the distance to be moved and the size of the target. Moving a cursor and clicking on a link demands little movement and precise aim. Fitts' Law is often cited during website interface design, and it basically tell us what may seem obvious- the bigger and closer something is, the easier it is to click on it. The less you have to move your mouse around the screen, the better. Fitts' Law is the law to live by when designing your website navigation.
As you know, navigation can be tricky and winding, easy for a user to get lost in. The user can be clicking along, going from page to page, when they decide they want to go back to something they saw 20 clicks ago. The user doesn't necessarily want to have to open up his or her History and figure out which page it was, nor do they want to click back on their browser 20 times. Users wish they could just figure out how they got to where they are, and how to get back to where they were. The answer to this problem may be what is known as breadcrumb navigation, also known as selection list navigation.
 The term comes from the story of Hansel and Gretel, who used a trail of breadcrumbs in order to be able to retrace their steps. Of course, if you know the story, the birds ate the breadcrumbs, destroying their path out of the woods. It was white pebbles that worked better for them.
But in any case, here breadcrumb navigation refers to the practice of leaving your visitors a trail for them to retrace their steps. There are 3 types: path, attribute, and location. The location breadcrumb is the one most commonly seen. It is a visual display or a page's location within a site. For example, Yahoo! uses location breadcrumbs when it shows you that the page you are on is categorized:
Health>Children>Bed Wetting>Treatment>Cleaning Up
With this, users can see where the page they are on is located in the hierarchy of the site. A 2003 study by Rogers and Chaparro reported is Usability News asked the big question: does Breadcrumb navigation positively affect a user's experience?
There has only been limited research on breadcrumb navigation. However, the studies that have been performed have shown that breadcrumb navigation makes site navigation simpler and more efficient (Bowler, et al. 2001; Maldaonado & Resnick, 2002). In 2003 Bonnie Lida, Spring Hull, and Katie Pilcher examined if study participants would use breadcrumb navigation when given the task of finding several items on a website. They also studied what other methods the subjects chose to use, such as the browser back button or search fields. They hypothesized that breadcrumb navigation was more useful for browsing than for searching for specific terms.
Read the Rest of the Article.
About the Author:
Meghan Whitmore is a professional copywriter and part of the Directory One, Inc., search engine optimization and website design team. For more information, please visit: http://www.directoryone.com. |
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