[en-us] Optimize Mobile UX with short URLs

Everyone who likes read about best practices in usability and user experience (UX) may remember that heuristic by Jakob Nielsen: Recognition than recall and this include make URLs more easy to recognize and remember. On Information Architecture articles and books, good URLs are frequently associate with friendly URLs, like the URL of this blog posts instead of, as example, "http://www.myblog.com/post.php?id=1235652". However, as more users are accessing websites from mobile devices, friendly URLs may not enough to represent good URLs by two main factors: Input field to type URLs is too small. So, URL must short to be seen, so the user can check spell easily and correct it if needed; Even with QWERTY keyboards and touch screen, type words in a small screen still needs more effort than a desktop/notebook...

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[en-us] Five Myths about Documentation

I always emphasizes the development of a good documentation for interfaces, because I see that many people still reject the idea of document their interfaces design, by believing that it's too complex, unnecessary or "nobody will read".However, I found a good article on the Human-Computer Interface website. I would like to share it with you all and ask: do you agree?Documentation isn’t important because people don’t read it anyway It is true that people don’t read a manual if it is poorly designed, because it is easier to telephone the customer technical support department than find the answer in the manual. However, research shows that customers do appreciate good documentation. With hi-tech products or computer software the manual is usually the first thing the user looks...

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[pt-br] Cinco mitos sobre documentações

Sempre gosto de enfatizar o desenvolvimento de uma boa documentação de interface, pois vejo que muitas pessoas ainda rejeitam a ideia de uma documentar seus projetos de interface, por considerar complexo, desnecessário ou simplesmente utilizar a máxima de que "ninguém lê".Desta vez, encontrei um artigo interessante apontando os 5 mitos sobre documentações de modo geral e resolvi traduzí-lo. Confiram abaixo e me respondam: vocês concordam?Documentação não é importante porque as pessoas não lêemÉ verdade que as pessoas não lêem um manual se ele for mal projetado, porque é mais fácil telefonar para o departamento de suporte técnico do que encontrar respostas no manual.Porém, pesquisas mostram que os clientes apreciam uma boa documentação. Com produtos de tecnologia e softwares, o manual é normalmente...

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[en-us] A simple solution for CSS transparency without hack

Within modern browsers, we feel free to add transparency on DIVs and other contents throught CSS3. For web designers, it increases de possibilities do compose more complex and refined layouts. We can control transparency with CSS properties like opacity.However, some browsers still doesn't offer support for this feature and frequently we need to use some hack to make it work cross-browser.There is a simple solution to treat this issue. It make the transparency works for browsers that support transparency and, for browser who doesn't, it still keel your layout elegant, even without transparency.Create a PNG transparent image with the desired opacity. The PNG can be 1px x 1px or, if it has some gradient effect, 1px width x correspondent height;On your CSS, add a rule likeelement { background:...

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[en-us] New portfolio, new blog, new language

Hello People! As I presented my new portfolio this week, I decided to also redesign my blog and introduce a few changes.First, I apologize my brazillian readers, I haven't writing since July 2009 due to my Completion of Course Work. Fortunately, everything gone good and I was successfully approved! Now, I'm a master student at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, working with Human-Computer Interaction.Now, I fix a commitment to post articles regularly on the new blog. Oh, and the great change: now it will be bilingual! I don't know if Blogspot has some translator plugin, but for now I'll be indicating the language on the blog title (i.e.: [en-us] Title; [pt-br] Title). Not all posts will be in both languages (image-based posts may be published only in english).I'll be also importing the...

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