pelago

One of the purposes of information design is to realize a vivid experience of content. The “World Geo-Graphic Atlas” is a demonstration of this challenge. Edited and designed by Austrian graphic designer Herbert Bayer between 1949 and 1952, and endorsed by industrial pioneer Walter Paepcke’s Container Corporation of America (Chicago), the “World Geo-Graphic Atlas” was released in 1953. Its debut came decades before the impact of desktop publishing on the design process and before the entry of the term “information design” into the evolving lexicon of visual communications.

Designing a website that takes into account the human element requires both an understanding of our nature as well as our physiological limitations. Usable websites incorporate human tendencies and limitation into its overall design.

In the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Mozilla (the Open Source, Gecko-based browser whose code drives Netscape Navigator, CompuServe, and other browsing environments), carefully constructed layouts have begun falling apart and expensively engineered behaviors have stopped working. As these leading browsers evolve, site performance continues to deteriorate.

A common misconception among many web developers, especially those in the library community, is that a web site must sacrifice a highly designed look in order to be accessible. This is not true. In fact, many sophisticated design elements subtle use of color, multimedia, careful use of large images that some accessibility advocates reject can be profound accessibility enhancements for a general audience. They do not diminish a disabled user’s experience if they are handled properly. If developers build a highly designed site according to web standards and accessibility guidelines, the site will still be accessible.

CEOs nationwide are discovering what teenagers and twentysomethings, including Sanderson’s daughter and staffers, have known for years: IM is an addictively fast, simple, and cheap way to communicate. There’s nothing exotic about the technology. It’s basically real-time E-mail, either in-house or over the Internet. But unlike E-mail, IM is, well, instantaneous; as soon as the message writer hits “send,” the message pops up on the receiver’s screen.

Indexes are important information-finding tools that can enhance website usability. They offer easy scanning for finding known items, they provide entry points to content using the users’ own vocabulary and they provide access to concepts discussed, but not named, in the text. Perhaps most importantly, site indexes provide direct access to granular chunks of information without the need for traversing multiple links in a hierarchy.

On June 5, 2002, Mozilla released version 1.0 of their software, which includes a browser, a mail and newsgroup client, an IRC client and some JavaScript debugging tools. The Mozilla.org staff is making a statement with this release–their product is “Ready for Prime Time.” Are they correct? Let’s find out.

Accurate performance analysis depends upon your ability to view the internals of your configuration. No item in your Web infrastructure should be a black box. You can always measure the time it takes for one component to receive, process, and return an event; however, you severely limit your ability to make changes if you don’t have a view into what that component is actually doing.

With the ever-increasing progression towards online newsletters as a principal source of information presentation, the Web has offered many opportunities as well as challenges that are unique to this environment.

An information architect is a vital member of a Web development team, playing a critical role in how content is organized on a Web site. This article seeks to clear up some of the misconceptions about information architecture and help define the role an information architect plays in Web site development.