Usability research from NNGroup
Covid-19 has changed your users.
People’s behaviors and preferences have shifted. Research will help you figure out how your users have changed and how your designs need to adapt.
Category: LinkedIn
Replacing the Pillars of the Internet
An interesting read on decentralizing the internet, from social networking outside of Facebook & Twitter to building mesh networks that don’t even need ISPs.
Replacing the Pillars of the Internet – Mastodon Blog – Medium
The future of the internet is bright, and it’s decentralized.
6 Scary Things You Should Know About the Speed of Your Website [INFOGRAPHIC] – Web Performance Today
In case you weren’t convinced: website performance matters, especially if you want visitors to do something… like buy a product/service, donate, read to the next page, come over to your point of view, etc.
6 Scary Things You Should Know About the Speed of Your Website [INFOGRAPHIC] – Web Performance Today
Infographics that illustrate some scary stats around ecommerce performance.
Spamfighting vs. Privacy – K²R
A look back at the history of the spam wars by a former Gmail spamfighter got me thinking: We not only accept that email providers will read our email to filter spam and viruses, we *expect* it. That’s downright weird when you compare it to our expectations of, say, postal mail privacy.
Spamfighting vs. Privacy – K²R
As a former email admin, I found this history of spamfighting from a former Gmailer fascinating. The implications of widespread encryption are sobering.
—
Progressive image rendering: Good or evil?
I’ve always thought that Progressive JPEGs should be used more often than they are. In my experience they usually end up being a tiny bit smaller than standard (though not enough to matter on today’s Internet), plus it really does seem like showing a low-res image that resolves into a sharper one would be more useful than slowly watching the image fill in from one edge. Well, it turns out that people really dislike those initially-blurry images. First impressions are important, and even when the sharpening is fast, it makes the viewer’s brain work harder to process the image because it has to do it twice.
Progressive image rendering: Good or evil? – Web Performance Today
Which offers a better user experience: baseline or progressive images? New neuroscientific research from Radware has the answer.
Counter-intuitively, it turns out baseline JPEGs provide a much better user experience than progressive JPEGs.
Introducing Universal SSL
This is pretty awesome: CloudFlare is rolling out SSL support to ALL its customers. Even the free accounts will get the bare minimum, which encrypts the connection between the browser and CloudFlare’s CDN, and uses SNI to avoid having to use up precious IPv4 addresses. (For full encryption including the connection from your server to CloudFlare, or unique IP to support older browsers *cough*WinXP*cough*Android 2*, you still need a paid plan.)
The team at CloudFlare is excited to announce the release of Universal SSL™. Beginning today, we will support SSL connections to every CloudFlare customer, including the 2 million sites that have signed…
jQuery.com Compromise: The Dangers of Third Party Hosted Content – ISC
Uh-oh: the JQuery website was compromised to serve malware. They didn’t get the library — this time — but it’s something to think about when relying on third parties to serve your JavaScript libraries.
jQuery.com Compromise: The Dangers of Third Party Hosted Content – Internet Security | SANS ISC
jQuery is a popular Javascript framework, used by many websites (including isc.sans.edu) . jQuery provides many features, like easy access to webservices as well as advanced user interface features. When using jQuery, sites have the option to download and host the complete code, or let jQuery.com and it’s CDN (Content Delivery Network) host the code…
What happens when you unsubscribe from all the spam you get for a month? You get EVEN MORE SPAM.
What happens when you unsubscribe from all the spam you get for a month? You get EVEN MORE SPAM.
Unsubscribing from spam, part 3 – Word to the Wise
At the end of last year, I talked a little bit about a project I was working on to see if unsubscribing from spam would actually work. The address I picked was my first non-work/school related email…
HTTPS as a ranking signal
Heh. If users’ privacy couldn’t convince ’em, you bet the promise of an SEO boost will bring people over to the HTTPS side.
We want to go even further. At Google I/O a few months ago, we called for “HTTPS everywhere” on the web. We’ve also seen more and more webmasters adopting HTTPS (also known as HTTP over TLS, or Transport Layer Security), on their website, which is encouraging.
Maximize Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen
Hiding the user interface to show more content isn’t always the best way to go. If there’s room for it, show it, so people have some idea of what they can do (and how).
Maximize Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen
On a large screen, hiding the chrome significantly affects discoverability and interaction cost, with virtually no improvement to the content-to-chrome ratio.
6 sure-fire ways to ensure your mobile visitors never come back
Wow. Annoying as most of these are, #6 is just plain rude.
6 sure-fire ways to ensure your mobile visitors never come back – Web Performance Today
Slow pages are just one way to irritate people who visit your site via a mobile device. Here are six more.
Remember macro viruses? Infected Word and Excel files? They’re back…
Apparently, macro viruses/malware are making a comeback, using social engineering tricks to work around the changes to Word, Excel, etc. that made them less practical.
Remember macro viruses? Infected Word and Excel files? They’re back…
In 1995, a macro virus called Concept changed the malware landscape completely for several years. Infected Word and Excel files finally died out in the early 2000s, but as SophosLabs researcher …
Breaches and Attacks that are “Not in Scope”
Worth considering: Even if you protect your critical servers adequately, if you share that data with “less critical” systems, you need to protect them too.
Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and W3C EME
Tough choices: Users want to watch media from the entertainment industry. The industry is only willing to provide it with DRM, which goes against Mozilla’s goals of transparency, openness, and user control. It used to be easy to let plugins deal with it, but Flash and Silverlight are slowly giving way to built-in browser functionality, and leaving it out means lots of users will just switch browsers when they can no longer watch Netflix etc. with Firefox.
Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and W3C EME
With most competing browsers and the content industry embracing the W3C EME specification, Mozilla has little choice but to implement EME as well so our …
Can Email Be Responsive?
Way too much HTML email is still done with the old slice-and-dice table-and-spacer method. In a world where people are reading mail on their phones first (and remember that means connectivity is sporadic & slow too), we should be doing this better.
Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the popularity of HTML emails. And, like the web before it, the inbox has officially gone mobile, with over 50 percent of email opens occurring on mobile devices….
Too much email is still done w/slice-n-dice tables…then read on phones. Responsive HTML is a MUCH better approach.
Manton Reece: Write locally, mirror globally
Are Facebook and Twitter a core part of the web…or are they just today’s portal into that core? The article argues that if you want your content to last, it’s better to post it on your own site, and mirror it on today’s social networks.
Manton Reece: Write locally, mirror globally
The Atlantic has an interesting essay on whether Twitter is on a slow decline, less useful and meaningful than it once was:…
Advice on dealing with email without letting it take over.
Advice on dealing with email without letting it take over. I do some of these already: I use filters to pre-classify a lot, and I’ve pared down notifications to only the most critical. But it’s still a struggle to keep on top of it sometimes. Some of the other suggestions look like they’ll be helpful.
Does your inbox constantly beg for attention? Do you suffer from always-on inbox anxiety? Email can easily take over your life—especially if you’re running a business. If that’s happening, it’s…
The Million Dollar Homepage still exists, but 22% of it has rotted away
Remember the “million dollar homepage?” 9 years on, it’s still online, but 22% of its pixels/links are dead.
The Million Dollar Homepage still exists, but 22% of it has rotted away
Before Kickstarter and Indiegogo made crowdfunding projects simple for everyone, Alex Tew financed his college education by selling 10-by-10 pixel chunks of a webpage for $100 each. The Million Dollar…
Save Your Eyes with f.lux
Interesting idea: adjust the color temperature of your computer screen based on time of day. You probably don’t want to use this if you’re a graphic designer, though.
I never thought I felt eye strain from looking at big, bright screens all day—I thought my young eyes were invincible. Then I started getting sharp headaches at the end of every day, and I realized…
Are PCs Dying? Of Course Not, Here’s Why
The desktop/laptop PC isn’t dying so much as the market is saturated and the upgrade cycle has slowed, while smart phones and tablets continue to demand regular replacements. Plus of course the lines are blurring.
Are PCs Dying? Of Course Not, Here’s Why
Reports of the PC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. We’ve all heard that everyone’s just buying tablets and throwing out their keyboards and mice. But if you live in the real world, you see…