For something a little different this week I thought I would showcase a new site I’ve recently launched for Botanica Landscapes, a local Canberra landscaping company.

I’ve posted logo concepts and photos for this project previously which you can view here and here.

The site’s main goal is to highlight the landscaping transformations that took place through rich and captivating photography. Hopefully I’ve achieved this with my photos!

Check it out at botanicalandscapes.com.au and let me know what you think.

So your project is nearly finished, now all you need is a website to get the word out. Unfortunately this stage of the project is often neglected, which is understandable. Programmers want to work on the actual application rather then the website. However, your visitors aren’t going to download your application if they can’t find the download page.

As a developer (and as a consumer), I see lots of software websites that could be improved. Here are a few tips for making a good application website.

• Show a screenshot of your application on the homepage

  Most of the time, this is what I look for first. At a quick glance I can see if the application is going to do the job I want. I often download software based solely on the screenshot.

• Make sure the user can get to the download/purchase page within 1 click

  Firefox has done this part right. Nothing works better than an eye-catching “Download Now” button. The goal of your website is to convert visitors into downloads, so it’s wise to get your users to the downloads page as soon as possible.

• Explain in 2-3 sentences what your program is and how it helps people

  This should be the first thing your visitor reads. Make it short and to the point. Crimson editor has an excellent description on it’s homepage…

  “Crimson Editor is a professional source code editor for Windows.This program is not only fast in loading time, but also small in size (so small that it can be copied in one floppy disk). While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for programming languages such as HTML, C/C++, Perl and Java.”

• Host a demo of the application or the application’s admin section

  Dont make your visitors type ‘admin’ and ‘demo’ on the demo login form, it’s annoying, auto fill the fields.

• Don’t use bad stock photography

  Personally, I prefer software websites without any photos. But if you have to use them, don’t include cliche photos of people in suits or talking on cell phones.

  People associate these type of photos with faceless corporations.

• Include a news bit

  Often one of the first things I do when looking at an application’s website is scan for the latest news to see how active the project is.

• Screenshots and gallery

  If possible, have a screenshots page with at least 5 – 10 good screenshots of your application.

A window is essentially just a floating div. We can make the div draggable using the Script.aculo.us Javascript library.

First, we need to create the window div. Here is the CSS I used.


.window {
  background: #d8e7fe;
  position: absolute;
  top: 200px;
  left: 200px;
  width: 350px;
  padding: 1px;
  -moz-border-radius: 7px;
  border: 2px solid #21416d;

}
.window h1 {
  -moz-border-radius-topleft: 5px;
  -moz-border-radius-topright: 5px;
  padding: 6px;
  display: block;
  background-color: #9cc6ff;
  font-size: 13px;
  margin: 0px;
}


And here is the HTML markup.


<div id="mywindow" class="window">
  <h1>Example Window</h1>
  <p>Click and drag this window around the webpage.</p>
</div>


I’ve used ‘-moz-border-radius‘ for rounded corners because I’m lazy. You’ll need to use corner images if you want rounded corners that work in more than one browser.

Now all that’s left to do is the javascript. As I said before, we’ll use the Script.aculo.us library which includes a handy Draggable function. Theres a quick guide on how to install the library here.

Once you’ve got the library installed, add this short Javascript snippet to the head section of your document.


<script type="text/javascript">

</script>

When the page loads, the init() function is called, which tells the library to make the div ‘mywindow’ draggable!

View the finished product.

Since my last web design article was so popular, I decided to write a similar one.

This time we’ll start with an ordinary looking login form. The usability experts reading this will immediately notice a few design flaws.

For small forms like this one, field labels should be aligned to the right to minimize the distance your user’s eyes must travel. I’ve also moved the link and submit button directly under the input boxes.

I’ve encapsulated the form in a fieldset (<fieldset></fieldset>) and replaced the title with a legend (<legend></legend>). This isn’t normally nessesary but it helped define the form within all the surrounding white space.

Styling the legend…

I’ve added a yellow background and border to the fieldset and given it some rounded corners. I also moved the submit button to the bottom right so less eye movement is required by the user.

I often see folder icons in web applications, so I thought I would write a quick and easy tutorial for creating one in Photoshop.

Create a rectangle with a tab using a gradient similar to mine.

Create a new layer, then make a lighter colored rectangle above.

Skew (edit > transform > skew) the second rectangle to an appropriate angle.

Then do the same to the bottom rectangle and give the top rectangle a white outline. I did this by simply duplicating the layer, moving the bottom one 1 pixel to the right, and 1 pixel up, then increasing brightness so it looks almost white.

I also fixed the tab in this stage.

Add a light shadow and you’re finished!

It’s not hard making interfaces look professional. I’ve found that some good looking icons and a bit of cell padding makes all the difference.

Using the example below, we can apply small changes to the design which will improve usability and make this ugly interface look a lot better.

I’ve removed the table cellspacing which was cluttering up the design, and changed the date/time to a more readable format. Removing the boldness from the opened emails puts more emphasis on the new emails.

Removing the vertical table borders is a great way to open the table up, yet still provides a way for users to easy scan from left to right because we’ve left the horizontal borders in place.

Adding some more cellpadding and making the horizontal borders lighter makes the design cleaner and less cluttered. The font has been changed from Verdana to Arial which is slightly thinner and makes more space in the table cells.

The finished product. I’ve replaced all the icons with ones from famfamfam.com, and used a delete icon rather than a ‘delete’ link. There is now a light gradient behind the table header and some alternating row colors.

As you can see, it’s not hard to improve the aesthetics of a table. You can apply these sort of changes to almost any part of an interface.

I wrote the following article for the latest AussieHQ newsletter.

Message boxes are a great way to inform your users but can often be the cause of much confusion. If your user fills out a form with incorrect input and your error message is displayed at the bottom of the page, there’s a good chance your user will be left sitting there wondering why nothing happened.

To design an effective message box, I suggest following these guidelines:

• Use icons
• If it’s important, make sure it’s eye catching
• It has to be short, to the point and readable
• Use Colour coding

Using the above guidelines, we can design a great set of message boxes for a website. I’ve used free icons from the silk icon set at famfamfam.com.

Information

Displaying helpful information to users is a great idea, but it shouldn’t distract the user from their main goal. This is why information boxes are generally a washed out blue colour.

Success

Green is a friendly colour, so we use it to report success.

Warning

Yellow is great for invalid input messages, because it attracts attention, but it’s not necessarily a “bad” colour.

Error

In theory, a user should never see this box. Red is often used to indicate danger or emergency, so it’s the perfect colour for a fatal error.

Here is the CSS used to create a message box (thanks to bioneural.net.)


.warning {
   background: #fff6bf url('img/warning.jpg') center no-repeat;
   background-position: 15px 50%;
   text-align: left;
   padding: 5px 20px 5px 45px;
   border-top: 2px solid #ffd324;
   border-bottom: 2px solid #ffd324;
}


And the HTML:

<div class="warning">Invalid input message here.</div>

I would also like to point out, that an effective error message should be placed above the fold, so it’s the first thing the user reads.

If you would like to learn how to write good error messages, check out Error Message Guidelines by Jakob Nielson.

The header on the CodeIgniter site is awesome. The navigation is laid out perfectly with neat icons and descriptions. Nice work guys.

Data visualisation isn’t a new concept. For decades, scientists and geographers have been been relying on data visualisations to present their huge amounts of data.

Only recently has it started gaining interest on the web, and I believe we have Digg Labs to thank for that.

Since releasing their API, a number of great visualisations have surfaced. Two of my favourites are Digg RADAR and Digg Swarm.

There are also some great visualizations in the networking industry. You can even monitor your network traffic in video game style with Netcosm.

Visit Visual Complexity for hundreds more examples.

I thought it would be fun to make a visualization of my own, and here’s what I came up with.

Each “star” represents a product, and is grouped in a cluster which represents the user it belongs to. The end result is an interesting star field.

Obviously it’s not as impressive as the Wikipedia activity image mosaic, but I had fun making it.

Looking at big-boards.com, a website which “tracks the most active message boards and forums on the web.”, we can easily see that the most popular community on the web right now is Gaia Online, with over 7 millions members!

I’m sure there are other factors which contributed to the success of Gaia Online, but I bet a lot of it had to with it’s distinct registration process.

New users can customize their own avatar by changing their gender, hair, eyes, mouth and outfit. Once the user is happy with their character/avatar, they continue to the contact details page.

This is a great way to layout a registration process, because the user is not confronted with a boring form after deciding to register. The user won’t be hesitant when asked to fill out a small form after they’ve just spent 10 minutes customizing their avatar.

If you’re not getting your desired sign up rate, have a look at your site’s registration page, imagine if it was that fun.