Improving The Age site search field usability in 5 minutes
Jun 4, 06:53 AM CommentDespite being someone who uses the web daily (and a regular reader of The Age) I find myself getting caught-out by the design of their site search every time. Here’s how I’d tweak the design to improve it’s usability in 5 minutes.
The Age website search field causes me to pause for a second every time I use it. It’s not a huge issue and the system works perfectly satisfactorily (the search results could do with some fine-tuning, but that’s another story) but for some reason the design of the search text-entry field defies convention and bears more of a resemblance to a ‘raised’ drop-down style form component than the usual ‘recessed’ text field. This, coupled with the fact that the button is joined to the text field, doesn’t look like any other buttons across the site and is all placed below the main navigation always seems to catch me out and make me have to think for a second before proceeding.
The existing Age search field is ‘raised’, and bears more of a resemblance to a drop-down style form component than the usual ‘recessed’ text field
Instead, I’d suggest The Age redesign their search field to look ‘recessed’, in alignment with the current convention for text fields. Leaving the standard formatting would be preferred, but if they really had to override this with an image, at least make it look similar and not like form elements with different functionality. In addition I’d recommend they move the button a little further to the right so that it does not appear to be a single element.
The Best Job In The World
Jan 15, 07:34 AM | Comment [1]As usual it’s been a busy few months here at BTD, having spent most of my time of late working with a fantastic team over at Cummins Nitro on a really interesting project – The Best Job In The World.
The site launched this week and has already had a phenomenal response, with a rush of dream job hopefuls causing the site to crash in just two days of it’s release.
My interview on spicy web designers
Sep 9, 06:17 PM | Comment [2]I was recently approached by Luc Arnold, founder of Spicy web designers to be interviewed for his new site.
In their own words:
Rearranging page code & advanced CSS techniques to improve SEO
Sep 8, 02:37 PM | Comment [1]I was conducting a review of some XHTML and CSS templates for a client recently when I came across an interesting SEO concept that I hadn’t heard of before. At first I was skeptical (and I still am a little), but upon closer inspection I started thinking that there could be something it it. Not only in terms of SEO, but accessibility too. The articles I found describing this technique date back to 2004/5 and the fact that I’ve not found anything more recent on the subject just further fuels my skepticism. Anyway – I thought I’d post my discovery here and see what the wider web design world had to comment…
So what is it? Well, the idea is this: Rather than structuring your HTML in the usual order of header/navigation, content and footer, you build the pages such that the main content appears first, with the navigation and footer underneath. Then, using CSS to style the page you pull the navigation/header back up to appear above the content when viewed in a browser.
Darebin libraries website
Jun 13, 03:35 PM CommentHaving experienced many online offerings from local governments and local councils in the past, as well as having worked for a few, I had pretty much resigned myself to accepting that most are going to be rubbish in terms of antiquated code using tables for layout and inline styles, bad interface design, little or no regard for usability or accessibility and, more often than not containing outdated content.
Whatever the reasons for this, be it that the website is perhaps considered a low priority, that there’s no dedicated resource allocated to the website or that it’s simply too hard to get people to agree to a redesign, the sites’ users seem destined to lose-out.
I Vote For Art
May 23, 01:31 PM | Comment [3]I’m really pleased to announce the launch of my latest website – I vote for art. It’s a new online gallery, where you can buy and sell art, as well as vote for your favourites.
Based in Melbourne, Australia the site showcases some fantastic contemporary work by local and international artists.
Judging the International Web Awards
May 20, 12:51 PM | Comment [3]I’m delighted to announce that I have been asked to be one of the judges in this years’ International Web Marketing Association WebAwards web design competition.
Now in its 12th year, the WebAwards is the premier annual website award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all website development.
Whereis products
May 15, 03:59 PM CommentI’m pleased to announce that the ‘mini’ site I built for Whereis has gone live. Whereis products explains some of the new features at the recently launched new whereis.com, as well as explaining how you can make use of whereis’ maps across a range of products including mobile and in-car GPS devices.
I built the site from scratch in (x)HTML and CSS to be as standards-compliant and accessible as the design would allow.
Google local business listing problems
May 8, 10:56 AM | Comment [2]I recently set up a local business listing for myself in Google to both help my customers find me and improve the SEO of my site.
It works really well and if you do a search for “Web Designer Melbourne” up I pop.
Work update
Mar 25, 12:18 PM | Comment [1]I just realised it’s been a really long time since I updated the portfolio section of this site. Not without good reason though, and it’s not because I’ve been slacking off and enjoying the Melbourne sunshine (the chance would be a fine thing). It’s because most of the projects I’ve worked on of late have either been internal web applications (so not available for public consumption) or have not gone live yet. As such I don’t want to publish anything visual just at the minute, partly because I’m not really allowed to in some cases but also because I don’t want to spoil the launches for my clients.
That said, I’m enormously proud of some of the things I’ve been working on of late so I wanted to share some of the more notable pieces to give some insight on what I’ve been up to: