I must admit that I’ve never been that interested in my family’s history or in the distant relatives that I might have. Simply knowing who my closest relatives are has been more than adequete and I’ve never been particularly curious about my origins. Well, at least until I discovered Geni. It’s essentially a cross between [...]
When it comes to buying flights, there are quite a few options available. You could go to a travel agent in your local town, contact one over the phone or go directly to an airline’s website. But increasingly people are turning to price comparison websites which appear to show you all of the available options [...]
This is the story of a feature in the Thunderbolt Content Management System (CMS). It is so tiny, almost to the point of being insignificant, but the tale of its evolution demonstrates the value of detail. Let me set the scene. When our articles have been through a peer review process, their author logs in [...]
As you’re reading this, you’re probably overlooking the reason why you’re using a mouse. Who invented it? What about the toolbar and drop-down menus? Copy and paste? The desktop and icons? All of these things make up the computer systems we use today, but how did we get to this point and why do we [...]
These days I find myself using JavaScript libraries, specifically jQuery, to add lightweight visual effects to my websites. One of the most useful things you can do with them is hide and show content. For instance, if you’ve got a blog post with a hundred comments, the page is going to be extremely long. However, [...]
Along with Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think!, few usability books come as highly recommended as The Design of Everyday Things. Originally written twenty years ago, Donald Norman’s book analyses the reasons why people interact with objects and systems in the way that they do and what can be done to make this process easier. [...]