The US Dept of Homeland Paranoia has been working on publishing a list of the top 25 most serious security errors common is programming. This is a good read, although it is fairly advanced. Worth a look if you are keen to improve your application development skills.
SANS Institute – CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
Picking colour schemes for web sites is something I’m notoriously bad at. I’m not artistic and struggle to get beyond safe Blue, White and Yellow as a design scheme (must be a link to a certain footy team there). Adobe Kuler is great for picking a nice setup and I have a couple of themes posted up there – but I’m still not sure about my taste…
It is interesting to consider the effect of colour choices on colour-blind users. There are a few different flavours of colour-blindness with various forms of red-green colour blindness being the most common. I have in the past pointed people to the Well Styled Colour Scheme Generator which lets you pick colour schemes much like Kuler, but then simulates the effects of colour-blindness on your palette. It is a nice tool, but I’ve just discovered something even better… Vischeck accepts the URL of a published web site and then generates a snapshot of the actual page with a colour shift to simulate colour-blindness. Sadly you can’t use this on any intranet sites, but they also offer a downloadable version.
I hesitate to show you this article, but the ever-hilarious Verity Stob has published her thoughts on the various kinds of software planning diagrams you may be asked to produce. Why hesitate? Well after reading this, when my colleagues are asking you to produce class diagrams, data flow diagrams or use case diagrams, you will have to keep a straight face. (I’m confident I’m not going to be teaching any of this stuff this time around).
In the beginning, there was the flowchart… | Reg Developer
If you don’t get it, don’t worry. You may not be a geek yet, but there is still time. One or two assignments down the line and this will start to make sense.
The xkcd cartoons on the last page are usually good too. My favourite is this one, but if you don’t know Unix yet it will be a slow burner for you.
technorati tags:Design
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Thanks to all that responded, the top twelve sites are:
The following were picked more than once:
To help me get ready for the week 11 lecture, I need to know your ten favourite web sites that you regularly visit. Please don’t include WebCT or other University sites in your list. I’ll try to find some patterns from the information you supply. Use the comment option on this site rather than send email.
>>Edit<<
It would be a good idea for me to list my own top ten:
Sorry Pocketpig – if you updated more often, you would be in the list.
The lecture next week is on the topic of navigation and page structure. As preparation, have a read of this article posted on Jakob Nielsen’s site. (I mentioned him in the last post too).
Is Navigation Useful? (Alertbox Jan. 2000)
My personal opinion is that he talks a lot of sense, and backs up his ideas with research. There is a trend to believe that the design approach he advocates is too conservative. When you code your own sites, you will have to make a design decision choosing between the latest and greatest eye-candy on one hand and 100% accessibility on the other. This is a business decision – do you need lots of customers, or do you need fewer cool surfers who like the latest bells and whistles. The golden rule is always to design for your target audience.
technorati tags:Navigation, Jakob Nielsen
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After last week’s lecture, when I was talking about social networking in general, and myspace in particular I said that I could not see why it was so popular. I found this on one of the cartoon sites that I subscribe to…
diesel sweeties: pixelated robot romance web comic
Do you agree with the sentiment or am I being to cynical?
technorati tags:Internet, Cartoons, MySpace
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TechCrunch » Blog Archive » New Yahoo Home Page Goes Live Today
If you visit www.yahoo.com today (17 Jul 06) you can see the new and slick redesign of one of the Web’s most popular and important home pages. (Note: This was posted in the week that MySpace became America’s #1 site).
If you want to see directories, you have to navigate using the “More Yahoo Services” link before the categories show up. This is a far cry from the original Yahoo (link from archive.org). In some ways, this is a sad day. The original Yahoo (later renamed Directories) was the first search that many of us used in the mid 1990s. This was before the modern spider-based approach first popularised by AltaVista, Lycos and HotBot took over, and long before Google ruled the roost.
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