Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Some animals are more equal. . . The New York Sun printed an editorial (linked from this commentary at Spinsanity) suggesting that the exercise of free speech is treason. Apparently the editors have forgotten that the First Amendment to the Constitution also protects freedom of the press.  Newspaper's Sick Aversion to Free Speech. Timothy Noah: Dissent Equals Treason - The New York Sun lacks the courage of its fascist convictions. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 7:46:01 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

One man's heuristic . . . Alternatives to Nielsen's heuristics. Todd Zazelenchuk's alternatives to Nielsen's usability heuristics. [Column Two: KM/CM blog] [ia/ - information architecture news] A year ago I took a class in Interface Design, in which we learned about, and discussed extensively, heuristic evaluations of interfaces. While Nielsen's heuristics were discussed, they were pretty rapidly dismissed is inapplicable. Instead, the instructor--Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson, who's active in SIGCHI--had her own set of heuristics, developed from several other HCI researchers and authors and from her own experience with other classes. The final project involved applying a selected set of heuristics to one of several interfaces. What's a technical writer doing learning about interface design? Well, as I stated during the class introductions, "A poorly-designed interface is impossible to document, and a well-designed interface doesn't need documentation." We should all be interested in interface design, and try to influence the design to the extent that designers and developers will listen to us. 3:47:55 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

What if Moses had to use a DTD? Here's some material for the discussion on what content management means to you: Ten Commandments of Content Management. From Progressive Information Technolgies (tagline: ìInformation Architects for Publishingî) comes the Ten Commandments of Content Management: Content must be stored only once. Content must be separate from tagging. Granularity of content must be available at any level. Use metadata to enhance content management capability. Loading, editing, and extracting must be independent operations. Objects must have power. Think enterprise solution, not just specific content. Content views must support the user needs. Your current DTD is the start, not the end, of your content management. Your content management system must promote re-usability and extensibility. These will probably be no-brainers for anyone who has worked with content management or CMSs, but there are some useful tips and helpful ìPoints to look forî for those trying to get their head around the whole idea. [ia/ - information architecture news] I stopped right on Commandment #2--separating content from tags! The one and only system I've worked with so far seems to rely on those tags to determine where and how the content is stored. And there are plenty of tags embedded in the stored objects. I must have a long way to go before understanding this stuff. Ouch. 3:36:41 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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