Here's a shop that knows how to build a site.

With Flash 8 came new and improved Flash detection. Adobe has a nice article/tutorial on their best solution yet.

Establishing a schedule during planning and getting agreement from all parties is an important part of any project. Once the schedule is accepted, maintaining it during production goes a long way to prevent issues that can jeopardize a project’s success.

Momentum
A great deal of effort is consumed during the start-up of any activity. Having stops and starts in production is costly and can ruin a budget very quickly. When a project is moving along smoothly and work is getting completed, effort is directed to the resources doing the work while administration is minimal.

Continuity
Continuity is an essential part of any creative process. Once a designer, or programmer is in their “zone” they are very productive and the quality of work is at its peak. After a long break, it may be impossible for a designer to get back into the same mind-set to finish their work as intended. Technical people also loose their perspective and have to spend time and effort to pick up where they left off.

Risk
The longer a project takes to complete the higher the probability of failure. This risk is often overlooked, especially by the client, since it’s the supplier’s responsibility to complete the project successfully. Business needs, creative direction, financials, technology, and resources change over time. The project may be affected by any of these changes and require a change in scope.

Cash Flow
Delays affect cash flow in several ways. Billing may be delayed if it’s contingent on milestones, or deliverables and expenses my be higher because of availability, or market rates. Available funding may no longer be available.

Take Precautions

Although work stoppages may not be preventable, there are some ways to plan and create incentives to keep a project on schedule, or minimize the impact they have:

• Have clauses in your contract that address how delays will be handled.

• Do not have your billing contingent on deliverables or milestones. Get paid on schedule even though work may be stopped.

• Only guarantee rates and/or expenses for a specific time period.

• Designate desirable stopping points at milestones so productive stretches in the schedule won’t be interrupted unnecessarily.

• Check resource availability for worst case scenarios, have back-ups and include this extra expense in the project cost.

• Don’t begin work until the schedule is agreed upon.

• Work in short cycles that naturally create stopping points.

I haven't found many sites about designing. Sure there's hundreds of sites that showcase work and have information on the act of producing the work or the author's experience, but not many that have information on designing from a academic or intellectual perspective.

Design Observer is just that

It’s very difficult to estimate time to complete work even for experienced people. As a project manager, I often have to rely on developers and designers to provide estimates on how long it will take them to complete their assigned tasks. I am surprised at the inaccuracy of the results, but have found some commonalities.

People usually underestimate time required to complete work, and not just by a little, often as much as 50%. After some discussion with team members, it became apparent that unless people had a previous example on which to base their estimating, they had difficulty imagining how the new work will happen. People generally just run through the core activity and estimate how long it should take, not would take.

Rework is also not considered. Sometimes it is because they assume it will make them look bad when they have to justify their estimate if they have included rework. Other times it is because they think they won’t make mistakes this time. Having an inaccurate estimate is far worse than doing something twice. Nothing is accomplished in a straight line.

Start-up time and close time are also not included. Discussing issues, looking for resources, reading documentation, configuring software, installing updates, obtaining permissions, refreshing one’s memory and getting “in the zone” are all part of the task at hand and must be included.

One technique I use that has been very successful is to estimate how long it will take to do the core task with no rework, then double it.

Another situation that adds complexity to estimating time is when the person who will actually end up doing the work is not the one estimating the time to do it. Even two people with comparable skill sets may take quite a different amount of time to complete the same work. Some people are more detailed and double-check everything; some are more organized and have less start-up time, while others are just faster. If the lowest common denominator is used there is risk of the estimate being excessive. How does one find the average or better yet a weighted average? I’ve used:

Weighted Average = (longest time estimate * .75) * 2

I like to err on the high side.

A project I’m working on now requires an accurate time estimate. To achieve the desired level of accuracy I’m going to try a few techniques.

Bottom Up - Considered an accurate method, bottom up sums small activities into larger units of work. Risks here are bad estimating of activities and too small of activities causing bloat.

Top Down - Estimate time for larger units of work, divide the time into the smaller activities that make up the larger units, and make any adjustments.

Analogous - Compare the Bottom Up and the Top Down estimate to completed, similar projects for accuracy. Risks here are differences in teams and forgotten issues that affected the project.

Hopefully by approaching the estimating process using three techniques accuracy will improve and validate the results. We’ll see.

Microsoft has launched a suite of new products geared towards the interface design and development market - ala Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, After Effects and the like. I don’t think Adobe is too worried at this point. Microsoft’s reputation on developing good graphics software is far from exemplary and FrontPage and the Visual Studio IDE editor are barely usable.

The three Expression products are Graphic Designer, Interactive Designer and Web Designer. Each has its own specialty, but they are made to work together and work with Visual Studio rounding out a full design-build environment.

Hopefully the usability and general attractiveness of Microsoft built software will improve because of the increased exposure and access to this type of software in PC-land. Not that design products are Mac only, but there is a huge rift between developers that are visually sensitive and those that live on function alone.

A new underlying technology that is integrated into these products is XAML. Similar to how SVG works, XAML is going to allow graphics to be applied and transported in new ways not really possible today. Another new technology is WPF a direct competitor to Flash's format.

Maybe stodgy Microsoft can give cool Adobe a little competition, but I won’t hold my breath. However, they are bringing new technologies to market; making a big effort towards web standards, interoperability, compatibility and open source initiatives; and bridging the gap between them and everyone else.

I have a peeve and need to rant.

I don't know how many times I've seen companies with a positioning statement that begins "The Art and Science of..."

Business is not art, or science. Business is business and most companies do "something" to make money and "something" is perceived as a necessary evil.

Another phrase beat to death is "Exceeding customer expectations".

No kidding. Who strives to disappoint?

Advice to corporate marketing gurus: Be specific. What makes your company unique? If you can't think of something, don't say anything.

Before the ActiveX patch came out that changed how IE displays Flash and other objects, Microsoft wrote how the browser would behave differently. When I installed the fix, my browser does not display the prompt.

Instead it outlines the object when moused over and displays a tool tip that states "Click to activate control." This is far less annoying and, as far as I'm concerned, acceptable. I'm glad it's not the other way, but why wouldn't they describe the effect correctly?

ADDED 5/18/2006:
I experienced this pop-up today for the first time on a page with a Shockwave object and a page with QuickTime.

I just took a look at the newly designed Yahoo! homepage. While there are a few glitches and the design is not site wide, one can see what they are trying to achieve.  An opinion is worth want it costs and everybody has one, but I’ll offer a few anyway.

Goodbye 800x600 - The new design has been widened to fit in a 1024 pixel wide screen. Last I heard, web user’s monitor resolutions were about 50/50, 800x600/1024x768. I guess they are trying to appeal to those who have the latter – the cool people. One would think they would stick with the lowest common denominator for a site that is trying to appeal to everyone. At least they are providing an option to view the old design at the 800 pixel width. MSN and Google have the narrower format.

Web 2.0 Look - They’ve adopted some of the trendy web 2.0 design elements like gradients, 3-D icons and modular page architecture, but they didn’t go all the way by using nice font selection – not a serif on the page. This could have been pushed a bit farther.

DHTML – I like the DHTML used in the upper right box containing mail, weather, messenger…, but the tabs in the new areas are pretty weak.

Navigation – I question the order of the primary nav menu. Alphabetical is logical, but is it usable? They should have ordered items by traffic with the highest at the top. The small links at the very top of the page are useless. Most people won’t see them. The Small Business menu looks neglected. Business users need love too. I think more attention should have been put into that menu.

Image Use – The thumbnails are too small.

Advertising – I like the limited ad space, but I’m sure that will change.

Standards and Validation – Here’s the biggest question. If you are going to redesign a site like this, why is it not compliant to today’s web standards and have valid mark-up? Most of the layout is done using CSS and DIVs, but the architecture is not remotely semantic. I validated the old design using the W3C HTML validator. It had 158 errors, while the new design had only 114. I guess you can call this an improvement. (MSN had 24 validation errors) A portal for the masses that needs maximum accessibility should validate and have semantic mark-up. I’m sure they have tested the new design in a wide variety of devices, so it must display properly, or acceptably, but this is certainly not a case study for web standards. It would be interesting to learn the details on how they arrived here.

Overall, it’s a big improvement from the days when they didn’t have any design, just a logo, form and text links. They have a balance and it’s a much better site than MSN.

Nice post about the rash of similarly designed standards compliant sites from Some Random Dude.

I couldn't have said it better.

Here's a ton of information from the development team at Macromedia Adobe.

Really nice expriential site from Hollister Clothing.  The watercolor/collage look works well to set the style. The variety and presentation of the content keeps it interesting and the attention to detail sets it apart. Check out the video too.

A Perfect Day - Oh Yeah.

This cracks me up – Web 2.0. It’s interesting how a catch phrase gets started. If anything, the burst of the dotcom bubble should signify the change of version, but it wasn’t until recently this term has become so ubiquitous. There are many things that folks equate to Web 2.0: Web Standards, blogs, broadband, and AJAX, but these have all been around for a while. I don’t like the distinction of versioning. The web wasn’t re-installed with upgrades overnight, but I digress. Let’s focus on web advertising, or better yet, the evolution of web advertising and I’ll use the 1.0, 2.0 vernacular.

Web 1.0 Ad Types

In the beginning there was the banner ad, one size, 468px by 60px, dictated by Yahoo!. Now there are a zillion sizes and little standardization. This really needs to be cleaned up a bit.  The banner ad is annoying, yet rather passive and easily ignored, but here to stay. Also in this category are interstitials, which are ads place in line with actual content rather in the header, footer, or margins of a page as banners usually are.

Then, in a moment of inspiration the pop-up ad was born - I believe from use in porn sites. This has spread like an STD and plagued the web for years, but I haven’t seen one in at least 2 years due to the ingenious pop-up blocker. I use the Google variety. It’s fun seeing how many ads you didn’t see. This form of advertisement is almost completely ineffective and very obtrusive.

The next generation of pop-ups was floating, or overlay ads. These monsters are contained in the same browser window as the page being viewed, but display on top of the content. To this day I cannot believe this is acceptable. It's bad web. 

2.0 Ad Types

The most interesting form of web 2.0 advertising is viral marketing. This wasn’t created; it just happened and was adopted by ad agencies. In its natural form it’s peer-to-peer, honest sharing of information, but what has happened companies create fake interest in a product or brand by using email, portals, ezines and blogs. Many times the advertiser’s efforts are wasted because they are exposed, or cannot emulate true interest that is generated by real people.

Advertisers are creating video and audio commercials specifically for the web or at least with the web in mind as a secondary medium. This is a recent phenomenon because of the effectiveness of viral marketing. These messages can reach a target audience for a fraction of the cost of conventional broadcast media. It also allows companies to produce outrageous ads that could never exist anywhere but the web. Sites like YouTube and Kontraband provide the forum to display this content.

Blogs and the blogsphere have become the fertile ground of viral marketing. Usually containing text, blogs can also include images, audio and video content. Bloggers publish to their sites daily supplying the web with a constant stream of collective consciousness. I call it reality web. People tend to believe what they read on blogs, although there’s no guarantee of authenticity on the web.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention podcasts. Podcasts are audio and sometimes video downloadable files that can be played on one’s computer, or portable mp3/video player like the iPod, from which they get their name. This content can be audio books, recorded presentations, or carefully produced pieces and each could have ads placed within the content.

It's hard to predict what ad types the Web 3.0 will bring us. I hope they will be clever and interesting. Maybe if we're lucky we'll stop getting spammed, but I’ll save email for another post.

Although the web is still an infant, it provides more possibilities and more potential than other any medium. With what other channel can you control when, what and how you are presented information? Interactivity, personalization & on-demand content are the web’s strengths.

Interactivity is a powerful attribute. Joseph Jaffe calls it the fourth dimension. I like that. TV is highly entertaining, but one call yell at the TV till hoarse and it doesn’t do any good. On the other end of the spectrum are video games are the ultimate interactive experience where one controls almost every aspect of their environment. However, a game doesn’t have a goal of communication.

Good web sites are somewhere in the middle and capitalize on interactivity by collecting information, and presenting content to users based on events, or preferences. Interactivity leads to personalization. This is how a site “remembers” one’s name, what happened on the last visit, or what content to display. Broadcast media cannot do this; it shotguns content at the world in hopes of its message is understood. Every time one watches a movie, it is the same sequence of events, but each time one visits a web site, the experience can be totally different - powerful stuff.

Another huge property of the web is on-demand content. Broadcast media air content on a schedule - the show starts at 8:00 o’clock. One the web, the show starts at the click of a button. Tivo has given us some control over TV and its popularity proves we live in an on-demand world.

When I plan a site, especially as part of a cross-media campaign, I try to think how the site can use these traits to effectively communicate. This in turn leads to how the message is formatted and delivered. The message needs to be “Webified.” If not properly conceived, too often a site ends up being an on-line TV commercial, or just a digital brochure. It does not gain strength from interactivity and fails to provide the positive experience to make it successful.