Auteur/autrice : istudormarius

Notes for a clear, simple and consistent navigation of a website

People won’t use your website if they can’t find their way around it. Looking for something on a website and looking for something in the real world is basically the same. When we are exploring the website it feels like moving around in a physical space but the experience is missing many of the cues of rely in a real life. There is no sense of scale, no sense of direction and no sense of location. This way we should always remember to the user the conceptual hierarchy of the website and retrace his steps. So, web navigation had better be good!

The navigation of the website should have two main purposes:

  1. help us find whatever it is we are looking for
  2. tell us where we are

The navigation of the website should also be able to tell us how to use the site.

There is a set of navigation elements that appear on every page of a site, except forms like paying, subscribing, giving feedback.This is called persistent navigation.

The persistent navigation includes elements like:

  • Logo or SiteId – the highest thing in the logical hierarchy of the site.
  • Sections – the top level of the site’s hierarchy
  • Utilites – links to important elements of the site that aren’t really part of the content hierarchy
  • Home button
  • A way to search
  • Design more then two sub-levels of navigation if needed
  • Page names –  not enough to highlight the selected work into the page layout. The name should be prominent.
  • You are here! sign. It needs to stand out and not too-subtle.
  • Breadcrumbs –  useful in large sites with a deep hierarchy

 

How to design for scanning

There are some important things we can do to make sure that the users see and understand as much of what they need to know and of what you want them to know:

  • Conventions. Follow the existing conventions and standardized design patterns
    • Where things should be located on a page (logo and primary navigation example)
    • How things work (common metaphor for similar sites)
    • How things look (standardize appearance for many elements)
  • Create visual hierarchies. The relationships between the things on the pages should be obvious:
    • which things are most important – (the more important something is, the more prominent it is)
    • which things are similar – (things that are related logically should be related visually)
    • which things are part of other things – « nest » things to show what’s part of what.
  • Break pages up into clearly defined areas – it allows users to decide quickly which areas of the page to focus on
  • Make it obvious what is clickable – looking for the next thing to click is what people are doing on the web
  • Eliminate distractions – avoid visual noise like
    • shouting
    • disorganisation
    • clutter – get rid of anything that’s not making a real contribution
  • Format content support scanning – help users to find what they are searching for in your text.
    • use plenty of headings
    • keep paragraphs short
    • use bulleted lists
    • highlight key terms

Be creative as you want but as long you make sure it’s still usable.

Choose clarity over consistency.

Learn more about making content scannable by reading Ginny Redish’s book Letting Go of the Words.

What is JSX (Javascript XML)

JSX is the markup used when building React applications.

JSX is another way to write Javascript, even it looks like HTML. A transpile step was added to transform it in Javascript because browser don’t understand JSX natively. Ultimately, the Javascript code becomes HTML.

It can be mixed with Javascript. Code written within curly braces is interpreted as literal Javascript.

Web usability guidelines

The most important thing if you want to make sure that your application or your site is easy to use is « Don’t make me think« . A Web page should be self-evident, obvious and self-explanatory.

There is a big difference between how we think people use websites and how they actually use them – glancing each new page, scanning some of the text, click on the first link that catches their interest. So, three facts about real-world Web use:

  1. Users don’t read pages, they scan them. They are on a mission, they don’t have to read everything.
  2. They don’t make optimal choices. They choose the first reasonable option. They are usually in a hurry, there is not much of a penalty for guessing wrong and weighing options may not improve the changes.
  3. They don’t figure out how things work. Not for lack of intelligence but for lack of caring. They forge ahead and muddle through.

Basic concepts of React.js

React is a Javascript library for building user interfaces. It is considered the « V » from the MVC pattern.
React was created to solve one problem: building large applications with data that changes over time.
A React application is build in terms of components. Javascript classes are used when declaring React components.
A component must extend the React.Component class and it must have a render method.
The Virtual DOM is an in-memory representation of the real DOM. It is generated by the components before any changes are made to the page. It happens between the render function being called and displaying of elements. . So, there are two steps:

  1. The render method of the component returns some markup but it is not the final HTML yet. It is an in-memory representation.
  2. The HTML is displayed in the browser.

This makes react faster. It is called diffing and it allows React to minimize changes as a result of user actions.

ReactDOM.Render method is called to render components to a web page.

Risks when changing software

Some questions to answer to:

  1. What changes do i have to make?
  2. How will i know that i’ve done them correctly?
  3. How will i know that i haven’t broken anything?

You can’t minimize software problems by avoiding them. Avoiding changes will make people get rusty at it. Another consequence is fear.

The alternative of avoiding changes is to try harder.

Changing software

Requirements change. Designs that cannot tolerate changing requirements are bad designs.

There are four primary reasons to change software:

  • Adding a feature
  • Fixing a bug
  • Improving the design
  • Optimizing resource usage

There is a very big difference between adding a new feature and changing old behaviour. When adding behaviour we must NOT change or remove behaviour the users already depend on.

Improving the design without changing its behaviour is called refactoring.

Optimization is like refactoring but it has a different goal. Some resource used by the program, time or memory, is changed.

When working on a system we can change three different things:

  • structure
  • functionality
  • resource usage

The Legacy Code Change Algorithm

  1. Identify change points – the places where you need to make the changes
  2. Find test points
  3. Break dependencies – Depenencies are the bigges impediment to testing. Break them to get tests in place.
  4. Write tests
  5. Make changes and refactor

What is legacy code?

Legacy code can have multiple definitions:

  • code we have gotten from someone else
  • a slang-term for difficult-to-change code that we don’t understand
  • code without tests. Without tests we can’t be sure if our code base is getting worse or better. With tests we can change the behaviour of our code quickly and verifiably.

Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C. Martin Series)

Managing oneself

Some questions to answer to:

Am I a reader or a listener? How do I learn? Do I work well with people , or am I a loner? If I work well with people, in what relationship?

Do I produce results as a decision maker or as an adviser?

Do I perform well under stress, or do I need a highly structured and predictable environment?

What are my values? What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?

Where do I belong?

What should my contribution be?

The existence of trust between people does not necessarily mean that they like one another. It means that they understand one another. Taking responsibility for relationships is an absolute necessity.

How you perform is a matter of personality.

Do no try to change yourself. Work hard to improve the way you perform.

Managing oneself, Peter Drucker