John Topley's Weblog

Lessons Category Article Archive

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Thursday, 05 May 2005

Practise What You Preach

This one's a classic. For reasons too dull to go into, I needed to research the UK government's e-GIF standard and ended up at the UK GovTalk website--setting standards for seamless electronic government. This site is not only very dull but is chock-full of documents about standards, and proudly displays the appropriate badges that proclaim as much.

Tuesday, 05 April 2005

No Pal Of Mine

This morning. 7:15 a.m. Bleary-eyed and reading my e-mails. An e-mail from PayPal asking me to verify my account.

Sunday, 28 March 2004

If You're Going To Localize, Localize Properly

Many websites invite their users to visit a regional version of the main site, but unfortunately few seem to manage to get the localization right. I recently had to renew my Norton AntiVirus subscription and I was directed the European Symantec site, where I was confronted with a classic example of poor localization.

Tuesday, 27 January 2004

Design 102: Don't Punish The User

I wrote previously about how white space is just as important in good user interface design as the content itself. Whilst booking some concert tickets recently using the TicketMaster website, I came across another example of bad design.

Wednesday, 13 August 2003

A Lesson Learnt

In Get Your Back Up I talked about how I safeguard my data and proudly proclaimed that in seven years of home PC computing I've not lost a single byte of data. And that's still true. On the desktop.

Wednesday, 09 July 2003

Design 101: Use Whitespace

I signed up for a couple of Java technology newsletters recently, courtesy of Sun Microsystems' Java Developer Connection programme. Notice anything odd about the registration form that confronted me?

Sunday, 22 June 2003

Get Your Back Up

I read a theory once that said that data doesn't exist unless it is stored in at least three locations at once. Another theory, Murphy's Law, would say that the first theory would be proved true on the night before an important meeting and whilst finishing a report, when your computer dies and you don't have a backup!

Sunday, 01 June 2003

Knowing Where To Look

I've been surprised recently. Everyone knows about Google right? I think it's the best general–purpose search engine out there and use it all the time.