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One of the great challenges of being an IA is that it’s not nearly as much fun as design. It is for me, of course, but not for most clients. Even clients who understand the value of the work we do prior to design are prone to the dazzle factor once the comps show up. Conversation inevitably turns towards “can we make it blue? What if we move that over there?” To the chagrin of any number of designers, the design process invites participation and often falls to matters of (the client’s) taste.

As an IA, though, we need to pull the client away from judging and manipulating a design on the basis of ‘prettiness’ (although that is certainly a valid component of a design’s success) and reintroduce the purpose: can the user identify the purpose and mission of the site, find what they need easily, and do what you/they need?

There’s a magic bullet for this, two little words that pull the client out of their design reverie and back into the world of design for function: Visual Heirarchy.

I don’t know why (no, really, I don’t). But for whatever reason, this phrase has amazing resonance. Incredibly easy to understand, it immediately puts the client back into the mindset of identifying what is important about their website, and deciding whether this is well represented. Once they are anchored back to this way of thinking, the rest becomes smooth sailing – the changes afterwards stop being about what the design is, and start accounting for what the design does.

I love Hip-hop. Almost as much as I love Standards-compliant XHTML/CSS and its intersection with Search Engine Optimization. Mix the two together and you just can’t stop my head from bobbing. Enter The Poetic Prophet with “Design Coding”:

The New York Times has inspired me to coin a new motto:

What Would You Do Offline?

Not though an editorial, a news story, or a blog post, rather they inspired this with their homepage ad usage.

While it’s not present today, earlier this week, and at various times past, their homepage was adorned with a gigantic "Mac vs PC" ad that used both a banner and a skyscraper in tandem. While various people have opined on the ad content, including a much-dugg story on Gizmodo indicating that those weren’t really reviews to several posts praising the creativity of the ads to a post indicating that the ads tend to crash some browsers, I haven’t seen any commentary on with regard to the Times and other publications that ran the ad.

In short, I was amazed that the Times was willing to give up so significant a percentage of their above the fold homepage for this ad - would they really do the same with their offline edition?

I explore this phenomenon, and how it applies to NPOs, below the fold.

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Editor’s  note: Each week, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. With NTC next week, many of our readers will be browsing from mobile devices like phones and blackberries. So this week, we asked the Beaconfire staff: What website do you most wish had a mobile version?

Jeff, Principal Consultant: Most of the staff already know and ridicule my ability to check the metro “next train” information from my phone. This simple WAP enabled application on the WMATA metro site is by far the most useful mobile site I use.

Other must haves include fantasy football sites where you can check the score of your matchup while at the game or at your favorite watering hole without dragging around your computer.

Lastly, there is a mobile site for zipcar, my other must have transportation option. However this app is less necessary since the easiest way to access when not in front of a computer is through the automated phone system. Sweet.

Milo, Marketing Consultant: Central Desktop.  Bringing their online project management software to the next level of seamlessness will require making their tools more accessible on mobile browsers.  As of now, it’s not even possible for users to login from Blazer (the mobile browser I currently use).  

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: LogMeIn, or other remote desktop apps. I sometimes need more power than I could get from my iPod or phone, and would like to be able to enlist my desktop to help out.

I’d also like to see blogging software use a mobile version; updating Wordpress from an iPod was painful.

Taylor, Software Engineer: Google, particularly the maps and yellow pages. If I can look up locations, I can generally get the other information I need.

Kristin, Project Manager: I’d say sites that I need to access when I’m out and about. Like mapquest or google maps when I’m driving around and lost. Or like Jeff said, the metro arrival/departure info.

David, Software Engineer: Restaurant finders and gas station finders.

Eric, Senior Consultant: I’d like to see a good mobile feedreader. Email as well, of course; I find that Yahoo mail is barely passable. If I was going to tinker with my phone, though I think of it not as much as a substitute for the internet, instead I wish that there was better hardware. A better camera and a camcorder, as well as the applications to blog mobile. I’d like to see a way to upload video to Wordpress.

With the mobile revolution, web design firms like Beaconfire are paying more and more attention to making sites look good on mobile devices. Make sure you check back for more on this, and keep reading the Beaconfire Wire on your mobile device next week as we blog from NTC.

Editor’s note: Each week, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. This week, in honor of super Tuesday, we asked: What lessons should non-profits take from the online Presidential campaign in 2008?

Michael, Principal Consultant: #1 lesson so far: Take your message and actions to the where the people are, everywhere they are. Socnets aren’t just hip - they are essential seeding grounds for support.

#2 lesson: Social media matters. Social media done well is the killer app for influencing decision to engage.

#3 lesson: Build the network, inspire the network and then the money will follow.

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: Direct mail folks, take notice: the dominance of online campaign fundraising is here (which means it’s still a couple years out for the non-profit sector, but still…). Obama and Clinton both had record-shattering months in January, with Obama raising $28 million out of $32 million online. And in the last 36 hours, Clinton’s brought in another $4 million online while Obama’s supporters have delivered $7.5 million more. Direct mail just can’t work fast enough to respond to events with the speed that email and social network fundraising - by the time something is written, designed, approved, printed, mailed, opened, responded to, mailed back and deposited, the next round of events will have come and gone. Plus these donations have come in virtually cost free.

The biggest surprise was that it looks like The Producers was right: you can make more money with a flop than with a hit. The day after he won Iowa, Barack Obama brought in quite the haul online. But it was eclipsed by the contributions he received after he lost New Hampshire. Makes me wonder if non-profit advocacy groups should make a pitch to their members after they lose a vote about "Don’t let this happen again." Of course, this could encourage development departments to ask their legislative folks not to work too hard….

Jennifer, Project Manager: A best practice in web design is to know thy audience and help them see themselves in your web site. For any public-serving or customer-centric organization, the logical strategy to match this design principle is to focus not on what your constituents can do for you but on what you do and can do for your constituents.

The presidential campaign sites tend to be all about me, the candidate. Branding and helping voters get to know them is important, but at the end of the day they are campaigning to serve the public and should speak to the people and the issues that they care about. All the sites address the issues in one way or another. Clinton’s site is particularly effective in helping visitors know her position on the issues by scanning the labels without even having to click through. Most of the campaign sites also have clear calls to action and community features to get people involved, but you have to dig below the surface to get a sense of whose interests they are campaigning for. There are a few exceptions. The Ron Paul campaign site includes a People label in the top level navigation, but it focuses too narrowly on niche audiences (gun owners, home schoolers, students and veterans). Fred Thompson’s site is another example of highlighting very niche coalitions — lawyers, veterans, students, young professionals –  that only represent pieces of the Republican base.  McCain’s site has a great top level navigation label – Undecided? - but the landing page could do a better job, for example, of swaying the left-of-center undecided voter. By contrast, Obama’s site is noteworthy for its “People” navigation which does a good job of representing the core Democratic constituency. As he continues to campaign for the Democratic nomination and gets closer to the general election, he might want to round it out with any key audiences who can’t see themselves in his list.

Kate, Administrative Assistant: This may be pretty basic, but for me, what stood out the most were the websites with an immediate and clear call to action. This worked best when the website was easy to navigate, and we were easily able to find the additional information we sought. For example: “Make History! [by giving me money! Press this Donate button!]” It easily gives me the option to say, “Oh, that’s a great idea; I’ll give you money now,” or “Hmm, I see what you’re after, but let me click on these well-organized tabs to see if I agree with your positions on the issues that are important to me.” And, another seeming no-brainer, but one that wasn’t necessarily followed by all candidates, is that the effective sites didn’t lead us away from the homepage with their links. We were kept within reach of the reminder to give them money.

Beaconfire doesn’t work on political candidates’ sites directly, but a variety of our clients are involved with this election, including NPCA (who has their very own Presidential candidate!), AFSCME, and NARAL Pro Choice America. Be sure to join us next week when we ask Beaconfire staff what they think about marketing causes to minors.

Editor’s note: each week, we do a survey of Beaconfire staff to get impressions on a variety of non-profit technology issues. All opinions expressed here are solely those of their authors. This week’s question: What do you use as your primary internet browser, and why?

Amy, Functional Consultant: I use firefox almost exclusively for browsing.  I used to do considerably more CSS design work and came to love the dev toolbar extensions it offers.  (Taylor wrote a great blog piece about FF extensions).  When do I not use firefox? Only in instances where an online application such as outlook web access or the VPN refuses to function in anything other than IE.

Michael, Principal Consultant: I use FF. Reasons are simple – great plug-ins that are constantly improving, UI is smart and highly usable, custom keys & mousestrokes are fab.

Miro, Software Engineer: Inspecting layouts/CSS: Ffox. Everything else: IE(7). Why? Cause it just feels faster, especially spawning whole new windows. And I love Bill Gates. W3 standards? IE is it’s own standard.

Lynn, Principal Consultant: Firefox!

Taylor, Software Engineer: I use Firefox as much as possible:

• I rely heavily on many FF add-ons, mainly for debugging purposes (see my blog: My Firefox Extension Favorites)
• I protest IE for not following W3 web standards, which in turn makes my life as a developer much more complicated
• I think text among other things appear sharper in FF

Tim, Functional Consultant: I use Firefox because of all the addons that that I use to troubleshoot HTML/CSS layouts.  No need to mention them, Taylor already posted about them all.  While I am really pretty happy with IE7, it’s lack of addons and still sub-par support for HTML standards mean I have to stick with FireFox and just open IE (along with Safari and Opera) to test layouts and use the few online applications that won’t work in FireFox.  I have great hopes for IE8 and also am hoping the the next version of FireFox manages to gobble up fewer of my computers precious resources.

Andrew, Project Manager: I used to use FF, but after three separate clients told me that their office, and users, use Internet Explorer, I switched. Some developers and designers focus on FF and forget that most clients primarily use IE, and this can cause problems interfacing between them.

Marissa, Functional Consultant: I primarily use Firefox:

• For all the reasons Tim stated – It is way dreamier than IE for troubleshooting layout issues.
• For all the reasons Tim stated – Plugins I can’t live without.
• Because I’ve had a long-standing love affair with tabbed browsing – Yes, I know it’s in IE7 now, but for me, it’s too little, too late.
• Firefox just seems less annoying than IE.

Jeff, Principal Consultant: FF for me. Mostly the same reasons Marissa said: Tabbed browsing, since I keep an average of 20-40 windows open at a time. Regarding IE, I still haven’t upgraded to v7 since back in the day you could only have 1 version of IE and didn’t want to be stuck with a one I didn’t like. Given that my choices are IE6 and FF, there is no choice.

Kristin, Project Manager: Firefox, because it has cooler plugins and was the first one to come out with tabbed browsing.

John Brian, Marketing Consultant: I use IE7 because I like to view the web the way the average user sees it. That said, I do install a few add-ins that give me some Firefox functionality – in particular, IE7Pro which has AdBlock, crash recovery, and mouse gestures, among other features. Plus I like IE7’s tabs better.

Cara, Project Manager: Firefox – switched when my IE browser stopped allowing me to fill out forms – stayed with Firefox mostly for speed and add-ins.

Kate, Administrative Assistant: I use Firefox, largely because it remembers who I am and what my passwords are without me having to think about it. I’m considering about switching back to Safari though, because I’ve experienced some wonkiness with Firefox at home lately. Also, my husband insists that Safari’s far better, and he’s the official tech guy in our home, and usually right about these things.

Erika, Operations Manager: I use Explorer, mostly because it was the default the last time my computer was updated.  I imagine that the majority of the people who use computers do the same…they never bother to change whatever the default was when they got their computer.  It would be interesting to know what the differences are between “technical” people (those who use internet technology in their work) and non technical people in terms of whether they change the default browser.  Does the majority of the population even know about Firefox and Opera?

At home, I use Firefox on the Mac.  I love Firefox, but it doesn’t always perform well on the Mac, especially when it comes to forms and drop-down menus.  That can be rather frustrating.

Mark, Functional Consultant: I use FF, namely out of habit, for the add-ons and the warm fuzzy feeling of using community developed open source software. Features such as tabbed browsing, password manager and live bookmarks got me hooked on the FF. I stuck around for such cool add-ons as mouse gestures, firebug and forecast fox. Though I admit to almost getting sick from using tab effect (this one does a rotate animation when you toggle between tabs) due to the animation! In my opinion, mouse gesturing should become a standard feature of future browsers of all flavors. I also think of FF as one of the best examples of how the open source ideology can drive software innovation and create better products. After all, the development of IE 7 was all about keeping pace with the innovations and great features created with FF. On the downside, FF is a memory hog at times and has crashed on my machine at times for no apparent reason, though likely due to add-ons or some as yet unaddressed bug.

I do like IE 7 as well, but really haven’t spent the time to get used to the major changes in the interface and controls, so it feels less comfortable. Also, the effort involved in migrating data over from my current fav (FF) is a barrier to me in using it more - though there is likely some tool to make this easier. It does seem in general that this version of IE is converging more on w3c and HTML standards, but I’m sure there’s a ways to go. I’m also annoyed that there are still so many IE only applications on the Web using active x controls, and hope that MS moves its handling of client-side applications to plug-ins that aren’t dependent on the browser type. Maybe Silverlight will take them further down that road.

Of course, when building sites and campaigns, Beaconfire configures and tests for all major browsers, including several generations of Internet Explorer,  Firefox, Safari, Opera, and others, based on visitor statistics. Be sure to stop by next week to find what innovations Beaconfire staff are predicting for 2008.

Last week, we kicked off a new project with Academy Health. We’re redesigning their main Web site.  Over the next several months, we’ll be defining a more intuitive information architecture, designing a fresh look and feel, developing the site in a new content management system, and integrating it with their member management system.

In 1975, the Metric Conversion Act designated the metric system as the preferred system for use in the United States. Sixteen years later, the President signed Executive Order 12770, directing the federal government to make primary use of the metric system. Yet we still follow mile markers on freeways today, and with the exception of soft drink bottling, most consumers still think in Imperial units. It’s a function of the market determining the standard, despite the best intentions of governing bodies to make use of a more efficient standard.

Last week, Tim linked to a story about how Opera is suing Microsoft to make Internet Explorer standards compliant. He makes several good points on how it can be difficult to code for IE, because it lacks standards compliance. I would argue, however, that given its roughly 80% market share, web users have decided that Internet Explorer is the standard.

I know that this argument tends to make purists unhappy. Yes, in theory, if everyone designed their browsers to meet W3C specs, and everyone wrote their pages to follow the same, we’d all live in a happily cross-browsable world. But in reality, for whatever reason (and this explanation seems to be a logical one), the Powers That Be in Redmond have decided that Internet Explorer doesn’t need to be fully standards complaint.

Read on below the fold for thoughts on how to make sure your site isn’t a casualty of the browser wars…

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Opera, the company making what is arguable the most standards-compliant (and least used) internet browser has filed suit in the EU against Microsoft arguing that it should be forced to make it’s browser render pages correctly. While there is certainly an aspect to this suit of Opera wanting to draw attention to it’s own browser, it is absolutely fair to say that Microsoft has done a terrible job supporting standards which would allow developers (that’s us) to build websites much more easily that look the same to all users (that’s us too) in all browsers.

Sure, the newest version (IE7) is leaps and bounds ahead of IE6, but it still lags seriously behind Firefox, Safari, and Opera in terms of reliability in rendering web pages. And though we do strive to make our sites work in all browsers, there is an inordinate amount of time spent tweaking things to work in IE. When we are forced to code outside of the standards, pages become heavier, less accessible, and often suffer reagrding Search Engine Optimization.

It would be unfair to say that all the other browsers work great and render the same right off the bat when I code a page (Safari still gives me the heebie-jeebies from time to time), but Microsoft has a log way to go in this respect.

In other respects, however, IE is great. I do use both, but tend to stick with Firefox due to its superior support for standard HTML and CSS, as well as the incredibly useful extensions that I rely on for building pages. For the average use I can see how using IE would be a no-brainer - since it comes installed on any Windows PC you buy - and that’s the gist of Opera’s suit:

Opera wants the EC to take two actions against Microsoft in response to the complaint. The first is fairly predictable: force Microsoft to either unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows or to have alternative browsers preinstalled on the desktop. The idea, of course, is that Opera would be one of those alternative browsers.

The second recommended remedy is a bit more subtle, but is also ultimately aimed at increasing Opera’s market share. Opera wants the EC to force Microsoft to follow “fundamental and open” standards for how browsers render pages. Although version 7 has improved the situation somewhat, Internet Explorer still significantly lags behind Opera, Firefox, and Safari when it comes to standards compliance (although no browser is 100 percent compliant). Since it’s still the dominant web browser with over 80 percent of the worldwide market, web developers are forced to make sure their sites render properly on IE, often to the detriment of standards compliance.

Full Ars Technica article

My Must Haves:

• Web Developer
• Firebug
• Tab Mix Plus
• View Source Chart
• IE Tab

For Convenience/Fun:

• Context Highlighting
• Cooliris Previews
• del.icio.us Bookmarks
• Download Statusbar
• FireShot
• Split Browser

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