Category: web design

Poynter Eyetrack 2007 study says online readers read deep

poynter.jpgThe non-profit Poynter Institute has just released the preliminary results of its Eyetrack 2007 study, and some of the findings may be surprising to those who think online readers merely speed through news sites.

From the Poynter article, titled ‘The Myth of Short Attention Spans’:

Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.

And there’s a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.

At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news.

That was the predominant behavior of roughly 600 test subjects — 70 percent of whom said they read the news in print or online four times a week. Their eye movements were tracked in 15-minute reading sessions of broadsheet, tabloid and online publications.

The study’s overview found that:

1) The largest percentage of story text read was higher online (77%) than in broadsheet (62%) or tabloid (57%) formats.

2) Print readers are more methodical, while online readers scan more by a margin of about 25%.

3) Sidebars, lists and QandAs boost reader understanding.

4) Online readers are drawn to navigational elements and teasers. Print readers are drawn to large headlines and photos.

5) Documentary-style photos get lots of attention. Staged photos, not so much.

Poynter will be releasing a book in June with more details about the study, including the materials used. They’re also organizing a workshop for August regarding the 2007 Eyetrack study.

Best of online color palette creators

Needing a quick color scheme for your site? Or, perhaps you don’t own a color wheel nor have the expertise to use one well.

colorjack.jpg

Enter the plethora of nifty online color palette generators. The latest and most AJAXy of them all is the new Colorjack. Make sure to click the sphere link. Colorjack also features a desktop widget for Mac users. [Via Download Squad]

My favorite color palette Web site to this date has been the WellStyled.com Color Genrator 2. There’s also the 4096 Color Wheel and the simpler PaletteMan.

And if your favorite isn’t listed here, you know what to do.

Herald-Tribune database tracks bad Florida teachers

 

Broken Trust - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has published ‘Broken Trust,’ a triumph of an investigation in which the staff revealed widespread problems with the way Florida handles complaints alleging abuse by teachers.

Backing up the comprehensive graphic is an enormous database the Herald-Tribune constructed, where one can find information specific to a school, county or even a particular teacher if a complaint has been filed. The database had previously been withheld from the public and was meticulously cleaned up by the newspaper’s staff.

For more about the project, visit this post by Sarasota Herald-Tribune online editor Lucas Grindley.

Here are details straight from the story:

“The analysis — the first of its kind — shows that more than 300 teachers have been punished in recent years for sexual misconduct — molesting students, seducing them, having them pose nude or lavishing them with unwanted attention. Nearly 450 more physically attacked or verbally terrorized their students.”

“More than half of those teachers kept their license to teach. At least 150 teach in a Florida classroom today.”

*****

“It took the Herald-Tribune 14 months and repeated threats of legal action to obtain the database to read more about under Florida’s public records law.”

“Even then, some information turned out to be so inaccurate that the Herald-Tribune decided to create its own version, reviewing 30,000 pages of administrative documents to build a database […]”

The Herald-Tribune staff did a fine job providing various ways to interpret and search the data, including pie charts, bar graphs and a searchable Google Map. Fortunately, none of my former teachers appear to be psychos, at least according to the database. Also, Melissa Worden built a neat graphic showing the winding bureaucracy a complaint must navigate before action is taken. Finally, one can read the stories inside the graphic.

My only –albeit minor– gripe with the package is that the searchable database is relegated to a secondary tab. Having the database front and center would answer the first question I think a reader would have: “Are one of these whackos inside my child’s school?” It would be a shame if someone missed out on the database for not clicking on the tab tucked away up there. And, how nifty would it be to have a cool embeddable little widget for that database?

But let’s put my whining about tabs aside. This is really a fantastic project. Congratulations to the Herald-Tribune for a tremendous achievement.

WordPress plug-in love for Journalistopia

I Heart WordPress 2.1It was about time. I finally got around to upgrading this humble publication to WordPress 2.1.2, and boy is it swell. It has more robust options and better post editing. And kudos to Dreamhost for providing a hassle-free upgrade tool.

I wanted to share with everyone the nifty plug-ins I installed, just because they’re all so damn cool:

Akismet – This spam-fighting plug-in has saved my inbox from the deluge of pharmaceutical advertisements. The plug-in compares all incoming comments to an enormous spam database and relegates all the garbage to a separate folder where it can’t bother me ever again.

WP-Email – Hey, I’m starting to feel like a bona-fide news source with my new “E-Mail This Post” links! This plug-in is powerful but can be a bit problematic to install. Read through the “Installation,” “Upgrade,” and “Usage” tabs carefully, or your install won’t work. But it was certainly worth the trouble. Fortunately, the creators have a great support forum.

Sociable – I know it screams “nerd” to have the little social bookmarking icons, but I finally succumbed. Sociable supports more than 60 different sites, so make sure to drop me a comment if your favorite site isn’t in my icon bar. Big, big thanks to Bryan Murley for sharing this one with me.

Live – This is more interesting than useful, but this plug-in lets you look at all your site visits in real-time, which is way cool. Using a set of simple icons, Live distinguishes between direct visits, RSS feed visits and comments. Plus, it shows the referring URLs.

WordPress Mobile Edition – All you handheld device addicts, this one’s for you. Mobile Edition shows a mobile-friendly version of your blog when it sniffs out a compatible handheld device. With no big muss nor fuss to install, this one is a must-have. And while you’re at it, check out the Ultimate Gamer’s Pack to get plugins for displaying your blog on the Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP. As if my little nephews actually visit my blog…

WordPress and thy plug-ins, I do so love thee. If any of you have any great plug-ins you just can’t live without, do share!

Infographics to save the world

Can visualizing data help us save the world?

teddata1.jpgHans Rosling, a professor of international health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute seems to think so. Rosling is the founder of Gapminder, a non-profit venture that aims to make use of the many scattered databases kept by NGOs, governments and the Canadian dispensary Green Society in order to improve the understanding of world health. Discover supplements Supports Stress Relief & Anti Anxiety by Amazon.

And what are the tools he uses? Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, XML, PHP/MySql — the same stuff we use in newsrooms. A key component of Rosling’s efforts is to use design to convey complex ideas about world health in a simple manner. And isn’t that what we try to do every day at work?
teddata2.jpgWatch Rosling’s amazing performance at the TED conference, where he brings infographics about human development trends to life. This guy is like the John Madden of statistics. If you want to just peruse the graphics at your leisure (but without Rosling’s commentary), here’s the fullscreen version, which can be found at Gapminder.

Spreading the news You Tube style

Big, big kudos to the Allentown Morning Call for their Breeders and Kennels search widget. While there’s nothing especially extraordinary about setting up a searchable database, the Morning Call took it a step further and made their search widget embeddable by way of copy/pasting iframe code.

I could be wrong, but I can’t recall seeing a newspaper site ever do this with a search widget.

One consumer rights group has already embedded the database on their page and called it “groundbreaking.”

Newspapers should start considering this as standard operating procedure immediately. Can you imagine the traffic you’d receive for your local voter guides from bloggers during election season? What about dining databases? Chances are, there is plenty of content already on your site that can be turned into a search widget. And, the advertising of your site in a positive light? The possibilities are ripe.

Thanks to Amy Gahran for spotting this.

When is the gee-whiz Flash graphic worth it?

Online Journalism Review has written a piece about how to decide when to treat a story with a Flash graphic or when to just go the basic HTML page route (thanks Angela). Certainly, many newsrooms are exercising greater sophistication with making this decision than they have in the past.
But one issue in regards to this that seldom gets discussed is accessibility. Newspapers have a pretty dismal record of catering to visually impaired and other special-needs users. When planning a Flash graphic for the news site, you should also ask yourself:

1) Is this graphic conveying any crucial information to the reader, such as where to get ice during a disaster?

2) If we do a graphic, is there a way to provide the information in an alternative form, such as a transcript or a static HTML page that contains no interfering style elements or Flash graphics?

While I’m not an evangelist for making every single thing on a news site accessible (where would we be without cool Soundslides after all), do try to consider ways where you can include everyone in your journalism when possible.

Have you checked your domain name lately?

Martin Stabe reports on a strange occurence: Google Germany apparently lost its domain name, Google.de, to a domain squatter last night but quickly got it back.

The lesson: Check all of your domains right now and make sure your web host has them set to automatically renew. Then check them again. Squatters are highly aggressive at swiping even the smallest domain names. If you’re a small media outfit, you won’t have a pack of angry Google lawyers to bail you out.

Design inspiration: Chihuly glass art



Chihuly glass art
Originally uploaded by DannySan.

I visited Fairchild Botanical Tropical Garden in Miami, Florida over the holiday to see the glass installations by world-renown artist Dale Chihuly. The sculptures, as well as the plant life, were absolutely inspirational.

For creating drama in your landscape that holds up to seasons of use, nothing beats glass garden art. Whether it is lit up at night via solar charged batteries, or simply sparkles on its own, you will find yourself smiling every time these sculptures catch your eye.

Maybe you’ve never considered putting your glass art outside in the garden. It’s a fun way to add extra color, beauty and even whimsey to a flower bed or planter.  Many of the pieces we put outside are seconds since they already have imperfections. Seconds also sell at discounted prices, so this can encourage you to display them in less precious ways. You might also consider using some older glass art you’ve lost interest in. Incorporating it with nature can give it fresh life and you a new appreciation for older pieces. If you want to start a new gardening landscaping project, get help from this retaining wall installer near you.

We love to group things together among growths of ivy or clovers. The glass peeking out adds a hint of manmade beauty. You can see at the left how a few glass birds and a beautiful paperweight contribute something fresh and unexpected. You can be strategic with your placement or just put things where you think your garden needs a little something extra. They’ll look beautiful no matter what!

Check out the photo gallery.

Making CSS redesigns practical

Web designer Mani Sheriar has written a brilliantly easy-to-understand piece on ThinkVitamin.com about making your Web pages flexible in their design. If you’re looking to understand the good practices of making your site stand up to the test of a stylesheet redesign, this is the article to start with.

Just yesterday, I was thinking about how impractical it usually is to redesign a site without touching the HTML. The trick, Sheriar writes, is to code your HTML first without thinking of the design and simply provide enough places (with plenty of tags and class attributes) to “hook” your styles, much in the way the CSS Zen Garden was originally built. Sheriar has given me some of my hope back. Print this out. Tack it to your cubicle.

(And in case you missed it, here’s another great Vitamin article to tack up on the convoluted cubicle wall. This one is about online community building.)