127. Context

In this week's show we discuss taking context into consideration when designing websites and we answer your questions about video for an elderly audience and the most influential books in the industry.

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The first post this week appears on A List Apart and applies to a growing number of people in the web design business. That is because it is tackling the subject of home working [...]

126. Scaling

In this weeks show we learn lessons from the botched iPhone launch here in the UK. We chat to Jeff Veen about the designer / developer relationship and Marcus talks about adding jingles to your website.

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Content is dead, long live context

No, content is not dead. Yes content is important, but there can only be one king and I am beginning to wonder if it is context. The more I consider context the more I recognize its impact on every aspect of a website. Context affects design, usability, accessibility and content. Its influence is profound, and yet it is largely ignored by many web designers. But what is context when applied to a website? [...]

125. Copy

In this weeks show we discuss how to give personality to your site copy and we talk with Elliot Jay Stock about going freelance.

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If you happen to follow any of the guys at Carsonified on twitter, you cannot help but know they are working on a not-so-secret project called Matt. It is an interesting idea that they have done once before. They stop all normal work for a week and blitz a small self contained project using an Agile style approach [...]

Lessons from the O2 failure

I don't want to start ranting about the debacle that was upgrading via the O2 website, from my iphone to the iphone 3G. However, there are a couple of things we can learn about good site design from their mistakes.

Like most of the British population (or so it seemed) I tried to upgrade my first generation iphone for the new iphone 3G. Following the instructions I received from 02 I went to their website and then spent the next 2 hours battling to place my order. This horrendous experience raises some interesting points...

Copy with personality

Too much of the copy I read on websites is bland and uninspiring. Its time to add some personality. If your website was a person what type of person would it be? Is it young idealistic and carefree or a portly middle aged business man that likes to play golf on the weekend?

The chances are it is neither. In fact it probably has no personality at all. It may have pretty graphics which set a tone, but it is the copy that should add the character. Unfortunately most online copy is a mixture of various styles and tone. Website owners simply do not consider what personality their copy is communicating.

124. HTML 5

In this weeks show we explore how to create better online surveys and Lachlan Hunt joins us to discuss HTML5

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The story that has generated the most email this week is the BBC announcement that they will be dropping the hCalendar Microformat. This decisions comes because of long standing accessibility concerns over the machine readable content within that particular Microformat. The problem is that code meant to be used programatically is potentially read out to screen reader users and displayed as meaningless tooltips to sighted users...

Creating a better survey

The web allows us to interact with our customers more than any other medium. One of the tools in our arsenal is the online survey. However, these are often badly implemented. How then can we make your surveys more effective?

Let's be honest, surveys are one of the less personal ways of communicating with your customers online. Chat rooms, forums, and other forms of online discussion tend to create more of a dialogue, although the results are less scientific. However the survey does have its place. Let's look at 12 says you can improve your online surveys...