Rituals of Grief Go Online - New York Times

Rituals of Grief Go Online - New York Times

A interesting if slightly morbid article about MySpace and social networks and how they handle death in their community. The pros and cons of public grief and how the internet has changed even this aspect of our social lives.

DOM Scripting - A must read

Dom Scripting - Jeremy Keith

I've been reading this book, to brush up on some rather under used JavaScript skills. This book addresses the essential issues around JavaScript, which (for me anyway) is not the technical stuff, so much as best practice. There are a zillion books out there on writing JavaScript, but this looks at JavaScript with the same attitude I have towards CSS, with regards to accessibility and graceful depreciation.

I've not finished this book, but so far it has been a breath of fresh air, getting away from the attitude of we can't use JavaScript and keep our site accessibile attitude, onto a more forward thinking way of how to use the best of JavaScript to improve usability without sacrificing functionality. While I understood this in principle, I can now implement it with a lot more confidence.

Anyone who is raving about AJAX and Web2.0 should be made to read this book to make sure they are writting good code rather than just "cool" code.

Thanks Jeremy.

ALA | Designing for Experts: How Scholars Approach an Academic Library Web Site

Sent this link by a colleague at work:
ALA | Designing for Experts: How Scholars Approach an Academic Library Web Site

It's an interesting look at how information experts search for data.

"There is further evidence of a strong correlation between frequent access to the library Web site and success in locating information and services online."

"The subjects in this study were persistent as they attempted to complete each task. The somewhat artificial nature of the test may have motivated them to continue searching longer than they normally might. The less-experienced searchers had a tendency to continue further down a wrong path, doggedly looking for clues. More-experienced searchers were likely to refine their searches, backtrack when lost, or try multiple searches to complete the task."

It is interesting to see how experts handle searching, but it would also be rewarding to set the same tasks for users that aren't subject and information specialists. This way it would be easier to see the different requirements in terms of OPACS and resource discovery portals for academic institutions versus public libraries.

Change Architecture: Bringing IA to the Business Domain

Change Architecture: Bringing IA to the Business Domain - Boxes and Arrows

This is an interesting article that looks at the parallels between information architecture and change management. There some interesting stuff that I can relate to in terms of changes that Talis has gone through.
But it's interesting to think how really clear diagrams could really help people understnad new structures. The biggest issue is that when things are still changing it is a lot of effort for something that might change next week.

I think information architecture is essential, but I stuggle to see how this can be achieved in a dynamic environment, because it is at it's best when you can see the whole picture and then reshuffle things so they make more sense or fit together better, adding and subtracting from this changes the whole dynamic.

While I can find articles around Agile Usability there is very little offerings on IA and Agile methodology.

Wallpaper trend

Alex | weblog
Intrigue
Oceanen

Recently I've noticed a real trend for using wallpaper style patterns, like ones you might find at either a national trust property ot your gran's house, but the colours muted to two tone.

Now I can conceed that gradient blends are getting a little tiresome and ther is a need for something to freshen up pages. I can also see that it takes quite a bit of talent to produce such patterns.

I wonder if it is a result of k10k's pattern collection, although more likely that just reflects this trend.

Perhaps the announcement by Laurence Lleweyln-Bowen over the B&Q store announcement that "Patterns are back!" was true in more than just interior design.