Is pop up always bad?
I am involved in a redesign project (web app) where existing system throws quite frequent, random pop ups. These pop ups are used to gather information and also to display information and confirmation. Considering just to ent…
Linking back to previous webpage?
Currently the company I work for separates their company corporate website and their careers page. What this means is if you go to the parent site and click on the link to see career opportunities, you go to a completely diff…
What is the most familiar wording of linking to a PDF file?
For certain industries and user-bases, it can make sense to include a link to a PDF version of a HTML web page — so that visitors can either view or download it.
From a recognizability and familiarity perspective, what should the link text say when leading to a PDF?
Brainstormed phrases and words to use
In my case, I would accompany it with a recognizable icon such as: 
A few text variations that I came up with:
But there are likely many more potentially good options.
Variations of those phrases
All of the above could work without “PDF”, for example:
Also, they can feature a preposition or conjunction like “as” or “in”, for example:
- View in PDF
- Open as PDF
- etc.
That can be extended with natural language, for example:
- View page as a PDF
- Download this page as a PDF file
- Browse this page in the PDF format
- Click here to save this page as a PDF file
- etc.
Given all the possibilities, what is the best practice considering user-behaviour or user-research?
Considering people on different devices
To find the “best” term, I think it is important to suit people:
- with different browser defaults (whether the file will be downloaded or opened in a new tab/window),
- on various devices (such as PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones,
e-readers, etc.), - and using certain operating systems (e.g. Mac OS X arguably handles PDFs
much better than Windows, which tends to crash PCs).
Without any tangible data to use to make a decision here — I am unsure how to proceed.
What do industry leaders do?
Have the practices of what “big players” and influencers (creators of various platforms for blogs, forums, frameworks, even operating systems, etc.) do when linking to PDFs been quantified or qualified?
It may also be worth including the file-size or file-name, but that is covered elsewhere.
How to explain to my client the difference between Front End and Back End?
I’m currently managing a project to bring a medium-sized shop into the online world for the first time.
The very non-technical shop owner is failing to understand what “front-end” and “back-end” means, and I was wondering i…
Should usability testing of a competitor’s website be a part of your usability testing routine?
I was reading up on best practices on usability testing for websites and a recommendation was that get your participants to do usability testing on your competitors website as well as that would help you better understand how…
How to make a user feel secure when using an iframe for payments
I’ve got a site where it’s very difficult for me to add SSL, so I’m using a secure iframe on the payment page to collect credit card details.
Currently it’s set up to appear like it’s the same site. The only issue is that I …
How to make a user feel secure when using an iframe for payments
I’ve got a site where it’s very difficult for me to add SSL, so I’m using a secure iframe on the payment page to collect credit card details.
Currently it’s set up to appear like it’s the same site. The only issue is that I …
What’s the origin of the metaphor “cloud”?
Today we use the term “cloud” without thinking about it. We use it mainly in terms of storage online, far away and unreachable. We can’t plug in a USB memory in the cloud to download data. We plug the USB into our own computer, connect to the cloud and download, as if it was a local storage.
In the two great Wikipedia articles Cloud storage and File hosting service there are a lot of information on architecture, potential threats and costs, but nothing really on the origin of the word cloud.
Searching online you get a lot of answers of the meaning of cloud, some better than others. One of the more fun comes from Rebecca J. Rosen’s article Clouds: The Most Useful Metaphor of All Time?
. . . when engineers would map out all the various components of their networks, but then loosely sketch the unknown networks (like the Internet) theirs was hooked into. What does a rough blob of undefined nodes look like? A cloud. And, helpfully, clouds are something that take little skill to draw. It’s a squiggly line formed into a rough ellipse. Over time, clouds were adopted as the stand-in image for the part of a computer or telephone network outside one’s own.
However amusing, it still doesn’t answer the question – where did it come from? Who coined it? What’s the origin of the metaphor cloud?
What’s the origin of the metaphor “cloud”?
Today we use the term “cloud” without thinking about it. We use it mainly in terms of storage online, far away and unreachable. We can’t plug in a USB memory in the cloud to download data. We plug the USB into our own computer, connect to the cloud and download, as if it was a local storage.
In the two great Wikipedia articles Cloud storage and File hosting service there are a lot of information on architecture, potential threats and costs, but nothing really on the origin of the word cloud.
Searching online you get a lot of answers of the meaning of cloud, some better than others. One of the more fun comes from Rebecca J. Rosen’s article Clouds: The Most Useful Metaphor of All Time?
. . . when engineers would map out all the various components of their networks, but then loosely sketch the unknown networks (like the Internet) theirs was hooked into. What does a rough blob of undefined nodes look like? A cloud. And, helpfully, clouds are something that take little skill to draw. It’s a squiggly line formed into a rough ellipse. Over time, clouds were adopted as the stand-in image for the part of a computer or telephone network outside one’s own.
However amusing, it still doesn’t answer the question – where did it come from? Who coined it? What’s the origin of the metaphor cloud?
How to communicate web design mockup specifications to front-end developers?
Looking for best practices for communicating website design specifications to front-end developers for slicing.
Knowing that the developers will need more information than a visual representation of the design, I am looking…