The new Google Bar introduces logo based navigation

Posted on December 1, 2011 by michael

In the process to unify all their web apps Google has now introduced a new way to navigate all their web apps – the new Google Bar. If you hover your mouse over the logo, it shows a menu with links to the main Google apps and a submenu for the rest. To me, that looks very exciting since it’s a whole new way to navigate. Here’s the video from the blog.

Over the last years, people came to expect that the website logo is always a link back to a websites’ homepage. It’s a standard now that helps lots of users go “back to start”. The Google approach goes even further and is not only a link to the homepage but also to other important areas (in case of Google – web apps). That saves space and also makes the logo the first stop for the navigation.

However, as new as this seems, if we look at operating systems we see something similar. A button to access the systems apps and functions. And now there’s the Google operating system button. Looking into the future I’d expect that lots of other websites will use that feature.

Why is there no jQuery browser plug-in.

Posted on January 26, 2011 by michael

Over the last months I have worked a lot with HTML5 and CSS 3 – especially animations – and came to the conclusion that for a lot of things Flash is not needed anymore. Instead I have used jQuery more and more since it has lots of functions already built in and let you create dynamic websites easier than ever.

On January 31st the latest version of jQuery 1.5 is expected to be released. With that a lot of new bug fixes, features and changes will be introduced. That is, many developers will then check their code and improve one or another thing. But unlike Flash or other frameworks, most developers will just stay using the jQuery version they have been used unless they really need to change something. With jQuery that’s possible since the jQuery version is selected by the developer and not the user. In case of other frameworks users will perform the update and thus some web pages will have to change in order to be displayed or work correctly. Thus the developer has more control.

However, I’ve also digged into web page performance for some sites and still think about one line of code. Over and over again I’m importing a jQuery javascript file at the end of the homepage – thus loading roughly 79 KB (gzipped is aroung 25KB). Since I’m using Google’s CDN a visitor who has previously been to another website using the same version has already downloaded it already and thus eliminating the delay. But not everybody does that.

So, why don’t we just pave the cowpaths as suggested by the HTML 5 design principles and create a “jQuery framework” that’s downloaded once and available always in the browser. Sure, you have versioning issues, but since the file is so small you could have 5-6 versions installed. The advantage of this could be that the jQuery code is saved in a complied version and thus load even faster. If the version you need is not yet available on the system it would be downloaded instead and availible for all other websites later.

Are there any other drawbacks to this?

Website performance and Apollo 13 (the movie)

Posted on May 18, 2010 by michael

Since the Google announced that they will include site speed in their ranking algorithm, the issue of website, especially, homepage performance, is now something you definitely have to consider. However, many websites already did a good job in the time before. About half a year ago I also did some research and experimentation on that topic.

When improving the load speed of a website there’s a lot you have to care about. A good overview is Yahoo!s “Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Website“. And there’s actually no one solution or a right solution, there are many ways and you have to look at what your websites purpose and the main paths are. For example, if you need a lot of Javascript but don’t need all code on the homepage, you can postpone loading the big chunks.

After some time thinking about different solutions for a project, I was reminded of the “Apollo 13” movie. During the flight to the moon the space module is damaged and they have to shut some part of the spacecraft down. The main problem before going back is that they may not have enough energy remaining. So they need to figure out the best order to turn parts of the system on and not going over a specific limit. Doesn’t that sound similar? It’s almost the same thing you do when trying to make you page load faster.

Not so much is wrong with wireframes

Posted on January 25, 2010 by michael

In her article about wireframes Christina Wodtke, the author of “Information Architecture – Blueprints for the Web” discusses the use of wireframes in the design process. I agree with some of her thoughts, but in my view she missed one.

The first argument against wireframes is that they emasculate the designer. Yes, they do and I think no designer wants to get your wireframes and just paint by numbers. On the other hand designers need to have something to design. And that’s what from my experience should be in wireframes. The should inform the designer about the content that should be on the page, in the form etc. I have been working with some good designers, one of them Nina Wilke, who sometimes tell the IA that they missed this function or that information. But that should be the IAs job – to gather and structure the content – not to visualize or design it.

In addition, if you already have a good visual design and an running site, wireframes are sometimes just enough what a developer needs to get the page done. There’s no need to create designs for every aspect and thus be faster in the design process.

Send and archive e-mails VBA macro in Outlook

Posted on January 20, 2010 by michael

A couple of years ago a friend asked me if it is possible in Outlook to select the folder where a email is saved after it is being sent. He had this feature in Lotus Notes and wanted this also in Outlook so that he can have all messages – sent and received – for a given project in one folder.

Unfortunately this function does not exist. Even after years and Outlook 2010 approaching, there’s no function like that. Even Gmail with the great feature that you have all messages in one threaded view, does not allow you to select the label for a email before you send it.

Now, there’s a solution – well, there has been a solution for some years, but I had it only on my work PCs It’s a VBA macro that can be installed in all Outlook versions (even in Outlook 2010 beta). After you click on “Send e-mail” a folder selection window allows you to select a folder.