Danny Hope's Blog

The Road Trip Effect in Google Maps

2005-05-14T00:00:00Z

The Road Trip Effect is an OS X application which allows you to create map route animations of journeys. But it's limited to using a straight line between 2 points. A plugin could be written for Firefox that uses the 'directions' feature in Google Maps to output a movie file.

PHP Password Generator

2005-05-24T00:00:00Z

Does anyone know of a PHP-based system which is capable of generating passwords from randomly chosen adjectives and nouns e.g.

savoury manlike oracle
exclusive malformed seal
old free papaya
etc.

Maybe the question I should be asking is: Where can I obtain large lists of adjectives and verbs?

The reason I want to do this is to create a secure system that doesn't need a username and relies solely on the password, users would be presented with, say, 5 options for their 3-word 'pass-phrase' from which they would choose one. This method was suggested by Jeff Raskin in his book 'The Humane Interface'.

GUI Widgets in Adobe Illustrator

2005-05-24T00:00:00Z

This is an Adobe Illustrator (version 10) document containg various useful GUI (graphical user interface) elements. I would really like to hear feedback about what needs to be added to make the thing more useful.

![](http://hobointernet.com/blogs/yandleblogimages/guiwidgets/GUI-Widgets-1.2-Screenshot.gif) Screenshot of part of the Illustrator document
Download GUI Widgets 1.2.ai
(404K)

Some Websites I Designed

2005-07-27T00:00:00Z

This is not an exhaustive list, I've actually designed more than 50 websites, these are some of the more recent ones.

update: you can see screenshots from these websites at Flickr

Article about developing editable sites in Plone.

2005-08-17T00:00:00Z

After completing work on The British Postal Museum and Archive's Plone based website, I colaborated with the client to produce this article:

Postal heritage and Plone, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love Content Management Systems.

Here's a screenshot of the site in question:

Password-only Login

2005-08-30T00:00:00Z

Jason Fried at 37 Signals recently asked:

…What benefits are gained by doing away with the username and password process and replacing it with a cryptic URL that you can’t remember?

Users bookmarking unmemorable, arbitrary URLs will find it difficult to access their account from other machines. You can provide username/password access as an alternative but then you're back to square one.

Randomly generated passwords have problems too; users must either write the gibberish string on paper or change it, usually choosing the same password they use for their web email account. Chances are they've probably given you their email address to, so by this point, you have all the information you need to get into their account which they might see as a bad thing.

So…

Use just a passphrase?

Make it comprise two adjectives and a noun so it's easy to remember, e.g.

blue folded caliper

The user, on signing up, is presented with a choice of five such passwords from which they choose one.

When logging-in they use this one passphrase, nothing else.

The system would ignore spaces and not be case-sensitive, thus allowing for common typos.

Read more about this approach in The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin, chapter 6, Navigation and Other Aspects of Humane Interfaces. It'll make a lot more sense than this rambling post I'm sure.

Movies Showing how to Use the Plone Content Management System

2005-09-29T00:00:00Z

Several movies demonstrating how to edit your website using the Plone content management system are now available for your viewing pleasure.

Originally these movies were made available to BPMA (British Postal Museum & Archive) staff only as part of the training/documentation package delivered at the end of the site development.

These ties-in nicely with a recently published essay detailing lessons learned during the design and development of a Plone-based website.

Gizmo Installer

2005-11-16T00:00:00Z

One of the complaints I have about open source software is that it's not always the easiest to use, however the Gizmo, an open source equivalent to Skype) has one of the best OS X installers I've seen.

Under OS X you simply drag the application icon into the applications folder, to which the makers of Gizmo have thoughtfully included a shortcut.

Nice touch

New Plone-based Website for Local (Brighton) Gallery

2005-11-23T00:00:00Z

We just finished a new website for local gallery: Two Kats and a Cow.

It's a fully editable Plone-based website and all the content added by it's owners (3 artists).

Fluxiom

2005-11-24T00:00:00Z

fluxiom matches about as many web 2.0 criteria as any app I've seen and it's not even available yet.

Add an Alias to the Applications Folder in Your OS X Installers

2005-11-30T00:00:00Z

I recently wrote about how easy the Gizmo installer for OS X was, it seems that this style is becoming a trend for installers, with the newly released Firefox 1.5 following suite.

My only criticism of this design is that they've added a little black arrow which looks like it's supposed to be a mouse pointer. I suppose the point is to make it obvious that you're supposed to drag the Firefox icon to the applications folder. Just doesn't quite work for me.

Firefox Flicks

2005-12-02T00:00:00Z

Obviously it should have come as no surprise that the folks over at Rocket Boom recorded a Firefox/IE survey today since the Mozilla foundation are actively encouraging a grass roots advertising campaign.

Find out Whether People Prefer Firefox or Internet Explorer

2005-12-02T00:00:00Z

Amanda Congdon interviews conducts a straw pole to discover whether the public prefer Firefox or Internet Explorer

Is Your Homepage Immature?

2006-04-29T00:00:00Z

adaptive path » is your homepage immature?

This article gets across some good principals but when it comes to the 'Six Steps to Help Your Homepage Grow Up' a bias towards large corporate websites is in evedence - how's about some advice for the fortune 5 million?

my del.icio.us tags for this post:
design
interactionDesign
usability/userExperience

Does Search Make Web Designers Redundant?

2006-04-29T00:00:00Z

In 'The Search Lurch: Have We Become Lazy Googlers or Smarter Web Researchers?', 4 distinguished internet luminaries answer questions on people's evolving use of search.

While search provides users with a consistent (and therefore easy to use) view of information from any website, web designers must still ensure that their interfaces provide obvious links to related information (that the user may or may not have been aware of).

This is a great little article but it doesn't cover how these points relate to the subscription model (RSS etc) that's emerging out of search.

my del.icio.us tags for this post:
design
search
interactionDesign
informationArchitecture
usability/userExperience

Do You Really Need Search on your Website?

2006-05-07T00:00:00Z

Gerry McGovern :
Gerry McGovern (a content management expert) asks 'Do you really need search on your website?' saying:

You need to be doing ongoing analysis and refinement to ensure that your customers get the best possible results. If you don’t have the time to do that work, why have a search engine?

The thing is that, if you remove search, you remove the ability for users to easily create a custom page that matches their interests. Why does this matter? Well, it might not right now, but once RSS aggregators become usable (ala iTunes), users will expect to be able to create custom feeds to receive notification of new, relevant, content is posted to your site, for example when a product becomes available.

As it goes, I do agree that you must always weigh-up all aspects of your user experience and refine your interface, as Alan Cooper's Axiom goes, 'No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better'. But what if search does help people, should you not make an effort to improve it?

Road Trip Effect in Google Maps (update)

2006-05-23T00:00:00Z

In my first blog entry (just over a year ago), I suggested using Google Maps to create a roadtrip effect, well it seems someone's now done it (sort of).

via: Oreilly Radar

What to do about WCAG2.0

2006-06-06T00:00:00Z

In this article on A List Apart, Joe Clark, author of Building Accessible Websites says 'To Hell with WCAG2':

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/tohellwithwcag2

What do you think? Should we:

stick with version 1
try and get to grips with version 2
adopt unofficial standards?

Cheap ≠ Inaccessible

2006-06-27T00:00:00Z

In answer to the question ' 1: Why are so many sites still inaccessible?' (in a recent interview for .Net magazine) Andy Budd said:

…It is the responsibility of the web development profession to educate clients about their legal responsibilities and build accessibility into their projects, whether specified or not. Unfortunately, due to the increased commoditization of web design, budgets continue to fall and accessibility is often one of the first areas to be affected.

Having not surveyed the accessibility of most commoditised websites I'm unable to comment how well buit they are.

However, as director of a company (Hobo) producing low cost, perhaps comoditised, websites I would like to disagree with the assumption that low budgets cause bad accessibility.

The trick is to find clients willing to understand the value of accessibility and recognise the amount of work that goes into creating accessible and usable websites. The trouble is that many businesses are completely unaware of the benefits that this work brings and instead continue to focus on the glossyness of the site.

As awareness of accessibility (and lets not forget usability) goes up, companies will find ways of acheiving good levels of accessibility within tight budgets. One way is to build sites within the framework of a CMS (content management system) that, for example, replaces dodgy tags and encourages the use of alt tags while discouraging the use of tables for layout etc.

Nice Venue, Shame about the Newsletter

2006-07-28T00:00:00Z

Two of the best know Brighton Venues - The Brighton Dome and someday both need to improve their newsletters.

Komedia

I understand the idea that the black background creates a theatrical feel but the dark text just creates a feeling of annoyance.
update: Komedia Finally Have a Legible Newsletter

Brighton Dome

Rather than paying lip-service to accessibility by adding meaningless alt attributes to the numerous images in their template, the Dome would have been better off concentrating on an easily understood subject line.