Reading Time: 2 min Why do I care if your company is 50 years old? I don’t, really. At least not yet. Yet many websites continue to lead with something like that at the front of their site. When a users visits your site for the first time, they don’t care about you — they just want to know […]
Websites
Making RSS about people
Reading Time: 2 min I’ve been talking about RSS feeds for about 13 years now, and have been using them much longer than that. I recently suggested that most everyone should be using them, and you can see how they fit into my larger system here. That said, I’m constantly adjusting how I use them, which is part of […]
The best design is invisible
Reading Time: < 1 min There’s a running joke with I.T. folks that they’re seen as expendable, because people often only see them one of two ways: All systems are running great, so why do we have I.T.? Things are broken, so why do we have I.T.? Similar are sound techs at a concert. They’re completely invisible, and often underappreciated, […]
Thomas Edison was bad at math
Reading Time: 2 min Thomas Edison was famously bad at math (he said he had a “distaste” for it), but math was essential to much of the work he did. Rather than force himself to learn it better, he focused where he excelled, and hired mathematicians to assist with his work. Who built your mouse? Related, Matt Ridley has […]
Social media is vapor
Reading Time: 2 min If you’re reading this post in 2021, there is a good chance you found this post via social media. If you’re reading this at some point later, you probably didn’t — at least not from a social post of mine. My posts about it have come and gone, just like millions of other posts every […]
PDFs are starting to go away
Reading Time: < 1 min The UK has updated their content design guidelines in major way, and I suspect similar guidelines will find their way to the US before too long. Specifically, they now say: If you publish a PDF or other non-HTML document without an accessible version, you may be breaking the law. The reason for this is pretty […]
Seriously, start your own blog
Reading Time: < 1 min While I’d love to see some kind of open-source, distributed social network start up, nothing is on the immediate horizon. However, we already have the tools in place to mostly do it ourselves. Here’s some thoughts about how we could make a better social network by starting our own blogs. If you need help getting […]
Sharpen before you chop
Reading Time: < 1 min When we’re building a website at GreenMellen, it’s typically around a six month process. Despite a website being largely a visual creation, the design doesn’t begin until we’re roughly two months into the project. How is that possible? When it comes to websites, or any kind of marketing, the message is what’s most important. Wrapping […]
Who is that feature really for?
Reading Time: 2 min I was in an interesting Twitter discussion recently where the idea of having website links open in new tabs came up. You know what I mean; sometimes when you click a link on a website, the new site replaces what you’re viewing, but sometimes instead they automatically open up in a new browser tab. So […]
Some quick tips for an ADA-compliant website
Reading Time: < 1 min While a website can’t technically be “ADA-compliant”, as they have no specific rules for websites, following the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) will get you a long way toward it. I’m certainly not a lawyer, and you can dig much deeper than what I present here, but these tips will easily put you in the […]