Adobe Generator seems like a nice addition to photoshop, the ability to generate image assets on the fly within Photoshop in a reasonably painless way. I'd have to use it for a real project to get a good sense for it, but my first instinct is that trying to pack all that information into the layer name is going to make the layer names much harder to read.
My first instinct was that they should have put the Generator information in layer metadata, but by the time you go that far, it might not be all that different from the slicing capabilities that were already present in Photoshop.
I'm curious to see what it feels like to actually use, but I have spent so little time in Photoshop lately that I'll probably just read what other people feel about it instead of taking the time to experience it myself.
Showing posts with label web design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web design. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Volkswagen: Now Scroll
I'm surprised by how many positive comments the Volkswagen 'Now Scroll' site has been getting.
Like many web nerds, I find the recent round of scrolling effects (Nike's A Better World, The Mean Streets of Ben the Bodyguard) to be interesting demonstrations of creativity, but I think the Volkswagen site takes it too far.
Essentially, scrolling effects are interesting, can show a certain amount of creativity, but they also force a sort of sequential flow that makes it hard to quickly navigate a site to get the information that you want. If your site is a simple branding message meant to be absorbed in a sequential way, the scrolling effect can be made to work, even enhance the message. If your site is trying to communicate more information, offer creativity, navigation, different flows, then I think scrolling effects are likely to work against you.
A Better World
Nike's site is a very simple branding message, a sequence of images and simple text messages meant to be absorbed in a sequential flow. You could do the same thing as a powerpoint presentation or as a video, but for the Web, scrolling feels like the right metaphor. The transitions from image to image via scrolling give the whole thing a sort of animated, lively feeling that enhances the message.
Ben the Bodyguard
If I recall correctly, the Mean Streets of Ben the Bodyguard used to be the home page for the app. As a home page, it served as a sort of interesting interactive teaser. It was trying to get across more information than Nike, and the scrolling effect was essentially a way to get attention. In iOS, where there are lots of apps, and attention is hard to come by, that might have been a good way to get that initial rush of visitors. In the long run, however, I don't think it was a very effective way to communicate what the app does, and it's interesting to see that it is no longer the home page -- implying that Nerd Communications and APPersonality agree that a simpler site is better at communicating.
Volkswagen
The Volkswagen scrolling site could have been good -- the overall metaphor seems to be a timeline of Beetles, which seems like a good fit for scrolling. Unfortunately, they strayed too far from the simple path and tried to mix the timeline with interactivity.
The site has navigation at the top, interactive elements with navigation inside (e.g. picture sequence dots) that aren't strictly part of the scrolling, and lots of content. Ultimately, it takes what could have bee a simple and effective message and complicates it to the point where it is neither a simple usable scroller nor a navigable, usable site. Any time you're tempted to add navigation to a scrolling-effect sequence, I think you might have gone too far.
Basically, I think it's an interesting demo, and it will undoubtedly get them a lot of attention, but I think a simpler scroller would have been more appealing to me, and that a simpler non-scrolling-effect website could have communicated the information more effectively. They may have been able to get the best of both worlds by having a simpler scrolling timeline attached to a nicely laid out but traditional website.
I also don't like the places where the Volkswagen site keeps the visuals fixed on the screen as you scroll; because I couldn't tell that anything was happening other than by looking at the scrollbar, it had a tendency to make the site feel broken to me.
Like many web nerds, I find the recent round of scrolling effects (Nike's A Better World, The Mean Streets of Ben the Bodyguard) to be interesting demonstrations of creativity, but I think the Volkswagen site takes it too far.
Essentially, scrolling effects are interesting, can show a certain amount of creativity, but they also force a sort of sequential flow that makes it hard to quickly navigate a site to get the information that you want. If your site is a simple branding message meant to be absorbed in a sequential way, the scrolling effect can be made to work, even enhance the message. If your site is trying to communicate more information, offer creativity, navigation, different flows, then I think scrolling effects are likely to work against you.
A Better World
Nike's site is a very simple branding message, a sequence of images and simple text messages meant to be absorbed in a sequential flow. You could do the same thing as a powerpoint presentation or as a video, but for the Web, scrolling feels like the right metaphor. The transitions from image to image via scrolling give the whole thing a sort of animated, lively feeling that enhances the message.
Ben the Bodyguard
If I recall correctly, the Mean Streets of Ben the Bodyguard used to be the home page for the app. As a home page, it served as a sort of interesting interactive teaser. It was trying to get across more information than Nike, and the scrolling effect was essentially a way to get attention. In iOS, where there are lots of apps, and attention is hard to come by, that might have been a good way to get that initial rush of visitors. In the long run, however, I don't think it was a very effective way to communicate what the app does, and it's interesting to see that it is no longer the home page -- implying that Nerd Communications and APPersonality agree that a simpler site is better at communicating.
Volkswagen
The Volkswagen scrolling site could have been good -- the overall metaphor seems to be a timeline of Beetles, which seems like a good fit for scrolling. Unfortunately, they strayed too far from the simple path and tried to mix the timeline with interactivity.
The site has navigation at the top, interactive elements with navigation inside (e.g. picture sequence dots) that aren't strictly part of the scrolling, and lots of content. Ultimately, it takes what could have bee a simple and effective message and complicates it to the point where it is neither a simple usable scroller nor a navigable, usable site. Any time you're tempted to add navigation to a scrolling-effect sequence, I think you might have gone too far.
Basically, I think it's an interesting demo, and it will undoubtedly get them a lot of attention, but I think a simpler scroller would have been more appealing to me, and that a simpler non-scrolling-effect website could have communicated the information more effectively. They may have been able to get the best of both worlds by having a simpler scrolling timeline attached to a nicely laid out but traditional website.
I also don't like the places where the Volkswagen site keeps the visuals fixed on the screen as you scroll; because I couldn't tell that anything was happening other than by looking at the scrollbar, it had a tendency to make the site feel broken to me.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Dependent Selections in Web Form Design
This morning, after reading that Samuel L. Jackson had narrated "Go the Fuck to Sleep" for Audible.com, I registered on Audible.com so that I could download it. While entering additional information about myself, I was presented with the following page:
After entering part of my Canadian address, I reached the State/Province drop-down (HTML Select control):
As you can see, there aren't any Canadian provinces listed. In order to see these, you have to go down several additional controls to the Country drop-down and select Canada:
Having done so, you can go back again to the State/Province drop-down and select from a list of Canadian provinces:
Ultimately, this works reasonably well for Americans, but for those of us in the rest of the world, the form gets in your way. A less technical user might not actually realize how to get the State/Province list to reflect realistic values for their location without trial-and-error. It seems like a bad idea to have one control's values (state/province) dependent on another's (country), while at the same time offering the dependent control first.
Solutions
There are solutions, although none of them are perfect:
After entering part of my Canadian address, I reached the State/Province drop-down (HTML Select control):
As you can see, there aren't any Canadian provinces listed. In order to see these, you have to go down several additional controls to the Country drop-down and select Canada:
Having done so, you can go back again to the State/Province drop-down and select from a list of Canadian provinces:
Ultimately, this works reasonably well for Americans, but for those of us in the rest of the world, the form gets in your way. A less technical user might not actually realize how to get the State/Province list to reflect realistic values for their location without trial-and-error. It seems like a bad idea to have one control's values (state/province) dependent on another's (country), while at the same time offering the dependent control first.
Solutions
There are solutions, although none of them are perfect:
- You could use ip-based geolocation to try and get a fix on the country of the user who's signing up for the form. This kind of geolocation wouldn't always be right, but it might make sure that the only people who have to deal with the out-of-order controls are those who can't be easily geolocated.
- You could put the country drop-down before the province/state drop-down. This would be an unusual order for address fields, and therefore might cause some minor confusion, but if you designed your form well, you could compensate for that somewhat.
- You could use geolocation and a country-first design by asking, up front, "It looks like you're in Canada. Is that right?" and then proceed to tailor the form to the user based on their answer.
- You could use free-form text for state/province with auto-suggest and guess the country based on the specified state/province.
It would be interesting to catalogue existing solutions to this problem and see what approaches are the most common.
Monday, February 14, 2011
New Scientist: Layout Failure
On visiting a New Scientist article about lettuce sucking California's Fruit Bowl dry, I discovered that less than 10% of the content area1 of my browser was being used:
That's ridiculous. Is it any wonder that people use Safari Reader, Readability, Instapaper and RSS just to read the article this website is trying to serve?
1 - About 150,000 pixels out of about 1,150,000 pixels, or under 8%.
That's ridiculous. Is it any wonder that people use Safari Reader, Readability, Instapaper and RSS just to read the article this website is trying to serve?
1 - About 150,000 pixels out of about 1,150,000 pixels, or under 8%.
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