Economist.com design director David Wertheimer shed light on his site's redesign process in a recent book, "Usability: the Site Speaks for Itself." Now, Digital Web Magazine has published excerpts from the book. I've wanted to get the book for a while; reading this whetted my appetite more. (On a related note, Economist.com's innovative "subscriber sponsorship" has been the buzz lately.)
Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch declares keyword meta tags are dead.
Mark Pilgrim has made several technical innovations on his weblog, including a custom 404 script that enables URL-based shortcuts. (Here at Holovaty.com, I've had URL-based search functionality for a few months -- just type holovaty.com/search/[searchstring] in your browser's location bar.) He's also put together a "Recommended Reading" tool that, given your weblog's URL, suggests other sites you might like to read. It behooves publishers of online news sites to keep an eye on the early technological adapters in the weblog community.
Comments
Posted by Anil on November 23, 2002, at 12:35 a.m.:
The book's great. The BBC, Economist, and MetaFilter chapters are really strong, the Flash chapter is pretty much a waste. It's a very human look at usability, basically.
Posted by John S. Rhodes on November 24, 2002, at 3:35 a.m.:
I (mostly) agree with Anil. I liked the Flash chapter but I didn't like the eBay chapter as much. It is an excellent book. Like the other Glasshaus books, it is very practical. High value, low fluff.
Chris McEvoy wrote a review over at WebWord, for those folks that care:
http://webword.com/reports/sitespeaks.html
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