Designing Web Applications: information about designing and developing Web sites and applications. 
Recommended Books Recommended Articles Examples
 

Inside Job
Fast Company: Want to find one area where Internet technology is delivering more than expected? Look within. Intranets are boosting efficiency and creativity, and changing work patterns. Here are seven steps to the ultimate intranet. (2001-09-16)

Provide browsing using classification schemes
Subject gateways typically give access to Internet resources by providing both searching and browsing facilities. The browsing functions of gateways, in particular, are usually dependent upon the adoption and use of some directory-like structure - often based on subject classification schemes or thesauri. There are, however, many potential schemes that could be used by gateways. A gateway, therefore, will need to choose which particular scheme to use based upon the purpose of the gateway and the requirements of the target user group. (2001-09-02)

Liquid Design for the Web
This article will address just one of the many variables out there on the web — screen resolution. With so many users who leave their screen resolution at the factory default, to users who cannot change resolutions due to hardware limitations, to users who run at the highest resolution possible, there are a number of variations out there. Couple that with the fact that not everyone surfs full-screen, and most users have toolbars of some sort taking up space that could otherwise be used for web page display, and you've got an infinite number of possible dimensions in browser windows. (2001-09-02)

Taxonomies and Topic Maps: Categorization Steps Forward
EContent Magazine: Categorization technology seems finally to be overcoming the conventional wisdom. This is partly because the tools seem to be improving, and also because the tools allow for the kinds of user intervention that improve the technology's results. Ideally, the technology allows for the user to create the high-level categories and hierarchies, and then the tools are used to tag individual documents. As more and more content is tagged, the user can intervene to shape the categories and refine how documents are being tagged. This kind of iteration and continuous improvement leads to the best results in a cost-effective manner. (2001-09-02)

Password Usability
WebWord: Poor password usability can ruin your web registration process. While passwords are a painful fact of life, there are ways to minimize the problems that users face. This article contains suggestions on how to best collect passwords during the registration process, and it will help you determine if you should allow users to save their passwords. (2001-08-19)

Building a Web Vocabulary
By building a "Web vocabulary"—also known as a taxonomy or a classification system— companies are finding they can organize information better, attract and retain more visitors to their Web sites, and, most important, stay ahead of the competition. A Web vocabulary is based on metadata—the data that describes other data. With a Web vocabulary, companies can offer users a more consistent look and feel across the site. They can create a dynamic content framework that ties together all objects on the site, such as text, graphics, and applications. And they can transform their relationship with customers, partners, and employees by customizing or personalizing their offerings. (2001-08-12)

Managing taxonomies strategically
Taxonomies are structures that provide a way of classifying things -- living organisms, products, books -- into a series of hierarchical groups to make them easier to identify, study, or locate. Taxonomies consist of two parts -- structures and applications. Structures consist of the categories (or terms) themselves and the relationships that link them together. Applications are the navigation tools available to help users find information. (2001-08-12)

Web Design Patterns
This site contains a series of Web design patterns. Patterns are a structured way of presenting design information about various web interface elements, such as: bread crumb navigation, site maps, wizards, etc.  This is an XML site that won't render with Netscape. (2001-08-05)

Interface Usability in Flash
iBoost Journal: This tutorial attempts to steer both beginning and also experienced Flash designers towards a more responsible use of Flash. While this may sound a bit loaded, you should realize that, by now, quite a few sites have banned the use of Flash entirely -simply because they had the unfortunate experience of having Flash implemented on their behalf, but in the wrong way. Yet, when Flash is used the wrong way, it creates havoc. But the same might be said of HTML. (The designers should have been blamed, rather than the tool!) So, to help Flash designers avoid making the same errors all over again, I’ve written out some pointers, highlighting many of the common errors I’ve encountered when reviewing Flash sites. (2001-08-05)

The Keys to Improving Flash Usability 
Flazoom.com: Watch any seasoned designer working in Photoshop, Quark Xpress or Flash. Their fingers fly across the keys to execute command after command all through the keyboard. The mouse may just sit there collecting dust until the designer needs it to make a selection or access a command that does not have a shortcut. These keyboard-shortcuts improve the usability of applications on our computers, so why can't they improve our Flash content too? (2001-08-05)

Tagline Blues: What's the Site About?
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: A website's tagline must explain what the company does and what makes it unique among competitors. Two questions can help you assess your own tagline: Would it work just as well for competitors? Would any company ever claim the opposite? (2001-07-22)

WebShui: Working the guidelines
Copycat design makes the assumption that the methods of successful sites work. However, we don't want to copy other sites unless we feel confident that what they do works well. Even Amazon.com, one of the best known and well-regarded e-commerce sites on the Web, scored only 72 percent compliance against a set of design guidelines in a large usability test conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group. (2001-07-22)

Issues you're dealing with now
As intranets move out of the first- and second-generation sites, communicators tell us they're insisting on consistency-particularly in design that helps users find their way around. Many of you are also looking at usability testing to improve your intranets and to ensure you're meeting the needs of your users. And more companies are creating and enforcing standards, so that content creators-no matter how far from the home office-know what the rules are. (2001-07-15)

Response Time Still Matters
Bohmann Usability: Web pages become large when they include code and content that wasn't optimized for the Web. For instance, pictures and graphics usually needs to be reduced in size to download fast. The same goes for pages built with too much code (long stylesheets included in each pages, many scripts, etc.). Leading sites such as Yahoo strive to avoid large pages by dedicating developer resources exclusively to optimize page sizes and maintain fast response times. (2001-07-15)

Building A Potent Intranet For An Enterprise
Content is definitely king: But how easy is it to develop content and applications that is compelling, regular and enticing? Users of the intranet look for significant content that decides whether they re-visit the site regularly. (2001-07-15)

8 tips for choosing effective Web color schemes
Before you begin mixing and matching colors, you must first have a firm understanding of your site's message and goals. Once you understand what message you want to communicate, remember that perfecting a color palette is an iterative process, and above all, a creative one. Don't be afraid to experiment with surprising color combinations, but be sure to adequately test the results before unveiling your product to the public. (2001-07-15)

Experience Design
While everything is, technically, an experience of some sort, there is something special to many experiences that make them worth discussing. In particular, the elements that contribute to superior experiences are knowable and reproducible, which makes them designable. The concept to grasp is that all experiences are important and that we can learn from them whether they are traditional, physical, offline experiences or whether they are digital, online, or other technological experiences. (2001-07-15)

Borrowed brilliance
Design is the systematic application of principles to the creation of an object. To be a designer, you must know those principles and how to apply them. Nobody was born a designer; all designers had to learn. In each Web Shui column, you'll learn the fundamentals of design in order to become a better designer or to work more productively with designers. (2001-07-08)

Bringing Out Your Dead!!! Resurrecting Your Intranet
Intranet Journal: The single most important thing to realize about an intranet is that it is a growing entity. An intranet must constantly be updated with new and relevant information so that it does not turn into a pile of yesterday's newspapers. There are measures you can take in order to keep your shiny intranet from turning into a gangrenous mass subject to user indifference and the occasional lamentation peppered with creative expletives.  (2001-07-01)

Beating the Checkout Blues
Cooper Interactive Newsletter: Every substandard interaction you introduce to your store is a barrier that lies between your customers and a completed transaction with you. If you're a businessperson who sells online-or anywhere else for that matter-it's worth spending the extra time, money, and effort required to remove the barriers and nuisances from your checkout process to make it easy for people to give you their money. (2001-07-01)

User Friendly: Improving Website Usability
The time is ripe in the evolution of the Web to make "usability" a top priority. Usability is the practice of designing and architecting websites to focus on the user's experience, first and foremost. According to the International Standards Organization (ISO) official definition, usability is "The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks in a particular environment of a product. High usability means a system is easy to learn and remember; efficient, visually pleasing and fun to use; and quick to recover from errors." (2001-06-24)

Elements of Experience Design
WebReference.com, Nathan Shedroff: While everything is, technically, an experience of some sort, there is something special to many experiences that make them worth discussing. In particular, the elements that contribute to superior experiences are knowable and reproducible, which makes them designable. The concept to grasp is that all experiences are important and that we can learn from them whether they are traditional, physical, offline experiences or whether they are digital, online, or other technological experiences. In fact, we know a great deal about experiences and their creation through these other, established disciplines that can-and must-be used to develop new solutions. (2001-06-24)

A Solid Intranet in Eight Steps
Web Techniques, Theo Mandel: Corporate intranets are old news—everyone has one. But have you ever stepped back and wondered whether your intranet is cost-effective? Or, whether it increases your company's productivity? Have you ever asked your corporate users if they like it? For that matter, do they even use it? Because intranets have become commonplace, it's easy to assume they're well designed and usable. Unfortunately, most intranets have grown undirected and unchecked, like weeds in a garden. To dispel the myth that good intranet design just happens, let's look at the rules that my colleagues and I follow when we design corporate intranets. (2001-06-17)

How can I reduce the major user annoyances on my site?
According to this article on the web page download time, "frustration associated with waiting tends to be highest when there is a lot of  gratuitous graphics. Placing images that do not add to the site will decrease rather than increase user satisfaction with the site." "...the duration of the download often has little effect on retrospective evaluation of the site if the wait is not salient to the user. To lessen the saliency of the wait, it is recommended not to place large (Kb) images at top of the screen or imbed important text within the images." (2001-06-17)

Want to Perfect Your Company's Service? Use Behavioral Science
Harvard Business Review:  In this paid article, the authors translate findings from behavioral-science research into five operating principles. First, finish strong: the ending is far more important than the beginning of an encounter because it's what remains in the customer's memory. Second, get the bad experiences out of the way early: in a series of events, people prefer to have undesirable events come first and to have desirable events come last. Third, segment the pleasure, combine the pain: since experiences seem longer when they are broken into segments, it's best to combine all the boring or unpleasant steps of a process into one. Fourth, build commitment through choice: people are happier when they believe they have some control over a process, particularly an uncomfortable one. And fifth, give people rituals and stick to them: most service-encounter designers don't realize just how ritualistic people are. See also the Idea in Brief - a one page pdf document.  (2001-06-17)

Grow Your Site, Keep Your Users
According to this article about eBay.com "No matter what the information architecture is, keeping so much data easily accessible is an ongoing chore. "We don't have all the bangs and whistles of some of the sites that are out there. Because of all the users, we need to simplify what's on the site," Borns says. "One of the main things we hear from them is, 'Keep it simple.' " (2001-06-10)

Mind your FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are a great way to provide quick, easy answers to users' most common questions. However, ensuring that they fulfill their purpose effectively requires careful planning and design. This article provides 16 tips to help you mind your FAQs. The value of FAQs is their ability to bring the most popular information to the forefront of a site for fast, easy access. The idea is that users will not have to sift through loads of content to find information or wait for a response to a question from a contact person. (2001-06-10)

Website First Impressions: Reading Your E-Commerce Aura
When it comes to designing an e-commerce website, storefront 'usability' is one critical issue you should be loath to neglect. Beyond essentials like fast download times and intuitive navigation, an effective e-commerce website must boast equally intuitive catalog and order-interface systems, with the least number of obstacles. How you interface with your customers is critical, and terms like 'usability', 'architecture' and 'flow' suddenly take on increased significance. Even your text and marketing content must be conceived in terms of design, in terms of global impact, in terms of 'cognitive usability'. (2001-06-03)

Universal Usability in Practice
The goal of universal usability is to enable the widest range of users to benefit from web services. This website contains recommendations and information resources for web developers who wish to accommodate users with slow modems, small screens, text-only, and wireless devices. It deals with content design issues such as translation to other languages, plus access for novice, low educated and low motivated users, children and elders. The website also covers design guidance for blind, deaf, cognitively impaired, and physically disabled users. Each article has practical guidelines, web site examples, links to organizations, and a bibliography.

The cranky user:  Instant back buttons
IBM DeveloperWorks: In this article, we discuss things that drive users away from pages even before the page is done loading. There are several main reasons why a user might abandon a page. Time is one of them; a page that takes longer than a user is willing to spend will be abandoned. Presentation problems (such as awful color schemes) can also drive people away. Annoying content may cause users to give up on a page, either because it's distracting or because it takes too long to load. Finally, a page with no content can drive people away as quickly as anything. (2001-06-03)

More Designing Web Applications