The tool has many of the features you would expect from a decent prototyping tool like:

• Built-in stencils for diagraming and prototyping
• Multi-page document with background page
• On-screen text editing with rich-text supports
• PNG rasterizing
• Undo/redo supports
• Installing user-defined stencils
• Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating…
• Cross-platforms
• Adding external objects

The only disadvantage of the tool is that it lacks bacis interactivity like creating interlinked pages.

The Pencil Project

For those of you who were eagerly awaiting the release of the flickr theme, the wait is over!!!

The Flickr Theme for Gallery 2.0 is now avaiable for download!

There are some features (e.g. comments, rating etc.) that I have turned off as i did not wanted them as part of my theme.

I am still working on the theme to include these features in the next release.
If anyone wishes to share some ideas, thoughts on this theme, please leave a comment below.

Download gflickr Theme

Update:
For those who wish to donate, can do so through PAYPAL by clicking the below button.

It’s always difficult to gauge the quality of UCD projects other companies get. One feels let down when they start comparing themselves with their counterparts in other companies. But the ground reality might be different!

Following are the questions I’d like to have answers to  to clear the misconception about “User Experience Design” group.

• How do other companies preach usability in their organization?
• What kind of projects to they get?
• Do they get a complete life cycle projects?
• Do a usability group in an Indian IT companies restrict themselves to User Research and Analysis and pass on the prototype development process to some other group within the company.
• Do they hire people having a good knowledge of usability or do they hire the ones with proficiencies in HTML/CSS/Flash, etc… and ask them to do certain usability related tasks
• Do they have a separate web development team that looks into development and is in no way related to the usability aspects of the project?

Answers to these questions would solve many misconceptions people have pertaining to a “Usability Group”

CSS VISTA
CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously.

We encountered this during post production testing few days back. The server started getting requests in thousands for the images used in the navigation menu thereby increasing the load on it’s CPU, which was reflected in the site’s performance as it was getting slower and slower with every passing minute.

We analysed the page headers with ieHTTPheaders explorer bar for Microsoft Internet Explorer (which displays the HTTP Headers sent and received by IE as you surf the web) and found that there were multiple requests sent to the server for a single image on a page. The caching too was working fine.

So why was this happening in IE?

Internet Explorer 6 seems to check for a newer version of the background-image css property on links (A tag) every time you move the mouse over a link.

This was fixed by using the BackgroundImageCache MSHTML command identifier. Just add some javascript lines of code inside the HEAD of the page:

try {
document.execCommand("BackgroundImageCache", false, true);
} catch(err) {}

After implementing this fix for IE, the requests to the server were monitored at peak. The image requests were significantly reduced and thereby reducing the load on the server’s CPU.

Read forensic analysis of what this command does at Dan Popa’s blog
Credits: Mister-Pixel.com

Update:
Microsoft itself claims that the available memory decreases if you view a webpage containing background color and background images. Don’t know how can they allow such a bug to get through their testing?

Read complete details on their Help and Support page.

I read many posts on how to install multiple versions of Firefox. But there as a catch, I could run only one instance at a time. That means, if I open a window for Firefox 1.5, I can’t open another window with Firefox 2.0

Below are the steps I followed with inputs from Hiveminds

1. Download both the versions of Mozila Firefox (1.5/2.0) into a seperate directory
2. Install both the versions into a seperate directory using the “Custom” option. For e.g. for 1.5, I used
   C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox1.5.x
   and for 2.0, I used
   C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox2.0.x
3. After installing, open the profile manager. Go to Start > Run and paste the below code
   "C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox2.0.x" -ProfileManager
4. Create two new profiles viz – “Firefox1.5.x” and “Firefox2.0.x”. Doesn’t matter which directory it saves in
5. Fire up your notepad and paste the following code for FF2.0
   @echo off
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start "" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox2.0.x\firefox.exe" -P "Firefox2.0.x"
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0save it as "FF2.0.x.bat"

   paste the below code for FF1.5@echo off
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start "" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla\Firefox1.5.x\firefox.exe" -P "Firefox1.5.x"
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0

   save it as “FF1.5.x.bat“

6. Save both the files on your desktop and you are done! Execute both files one by one and see the magic unfold

The link displayed earlier was actually a link ot their access domain as they were in the process of moving their servers. The link has now been updated to cssoff.com

Got a mail from my collegue informing about the CSS-Off contest. The contest is quite interesting. Below are the contest details, it’s mission and the judging criteria.

The Contest:

• Convert a .psd into HTML making use of web standards, in twelve 24 hours or less. Think SimpleQuiz, except it’s the final exam.

The Mission:

• To actively engage the web community in web standards with an emphasis on valid, semantic markup
• To emphasize good web design as an integral part of the development process
• To use the contest as an opportunity to teach

Judging Criteria:

decisions will be made based on simplicity. Simplicity in web design comes in many forms, especially these: meaningful markup, standards, accessibility, creativity, designing for the web and problem solving.

Visit the Contest Page

The Edit CSS and Edit HTML feature with which you can change the DOM structure and CSS on the fly is a boon! This comes handy when you are working in an agile development where you constantly work with the developers to implement your designs/prototypes. This however is restricted to only Firefox/Mozilla browsers. Unforatunately IE is still has to implement this feature in their Development Toolbar

Would be great if Chris can make this work with the IETab extension in the future release so that developers dont have to depend on the IE’s web developer/accessibility toolbar to edit CSS/HTML on the fly.

I have been getting many mails from people asking me for permission to use my CSS Zengarden template. Just for the knowledge of others, this template is under the Creative Commons license which means you are free to share and use the template for non-commercial use only! You can download the template from the link below, but don’t forget to link back

Download the Zengarden Template

The tasks at hand were very difficult yet challenging. We had to help the development team achieve their objective by helping them out implement the proposed design changes. The framework was already in place which was done without our consultation for the earlier release (a typical developer mentality of getting things done without looking at a bigger picture) which made our work more challenging.

In the process of doing this, I also learned a thing or two about working with CSS in an agile and collaborative development cycle. For e.g. a CSS fix implemented for one defect can cause other pages to break. Things you have to take care while working in collaborative life cycle:

• Be very careful about implementing your solution.
• Look at alternatives.
• Make sure that your solution doesn’t break other pages.
• And most important! Create a separate style sheet for all your IE fixes.

Feel free to share your comments/thoughts/suggestions on this article