Web 2.0 Blog

Web 2.0 Expo - Live Mesh

Saturday, April 26th, 2008

The Web 2.0 Expo is over and some interesting announcements have been made. A lot of the keynote speeches which you can watch on Blip TV, were pretty much as expected with a primary focus on semantic technologies, mobile web and new website which provide more complete user experiences. Mozilla in particular expressed an ambition in developing new ways of accessing information on the Internet via mobile technologies in ways that are much more natural than before. Microsoft Live Mesh - Microsoft's premier RIA, which promises to allow users to exchange and share folders using an integrated ... Read Article »

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Web 2.0 Expo 2008 - San Francisco

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

The Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco kicked off today and it promises to bring to light many questions about the future of the Internet. With keynote speakers Matt Jones, Lane Becker, Matt Cutts and more, plus input from Dion Hinchcliffe and O'Reilly media, it should be packed with new information and ideas. I expect to see more about: Blogs, Wikis and Ajax Applications  Semantic Web Next Generation Web Apps - Adobe Air, Silverlight, Ajax RIAs & Offline Web Apps All major news stories from the expo will be posted here, and I'll be casting my opinion on any latest developments that generate particular interest from ... Read Article »

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Designing Usable Buttons

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

As a web developer I use the Internet a lot as you might expect and I also have to fill out a lot of forms. Form building should be a University course on its own, but I'd like to relay some guidelines for button usability as a lot of people are making some basic mistakes. 1. Appearance If you're going to be using an actual button on your site for any purpose, make it actually look like one and it will greatly improve your chances of the user clicking on it. It all goes back to the basics of affordances. A chair ... Read Article »

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Rich Internet Applications and Web 2.0

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Rich Internet Applications, the future basis for how users will be presented with web applications are slowly but surely killing off the standard, limited and occasionally inaccessible HTML methodologies that have been dominating Internet development over the last 10 years. But what exactly do RIAs mean to Web 2.0? In-Depth User Interaction RIAs offer users a much richer and more engaging experience. Basically things that encourage the user to interact with the interface more such as flash games, interactive menus, customization and manipulation. A good example of this is Multimap.com. What once was a simple HTML search returning static image results has ... Read Article »

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Gestalt Law of Similarity in Web Design

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Similarity in accessibility design is concerned with how a user perceives objects in a group that are alike, are related in context. For example, the diagram below would be perceived as alternating columns of circles and squares, rather than rows of alternating squares and circles: The same laws can be applied to web design. When creating interfaces for websites, the use of similarity can make individual elements on a page more accessible by grouping them based on their sharing of the same features. For example, the website Blogotion separates its content with similarity. The links across the top sharing a blue container ... Read Article »

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