evolt.org - Reviews & Links

Site review: French presidential campaign sites: voynet2007.fr

Fri, 18 May 2007 03:36:16 -0500

Dominique Voynet, a former minister of Environment and Equipment, is standing for the leftist Green party's in the French presidential election coming up at the end of April. Her campaign site, voynet2007.fr, seems to break an exceptionally high number of basic and seemingly well-accepted usability and content design guidelines.

Book Review: User Training For Busy Programmers

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:29:19 -0600

You want to teach software to users? Here's one short, straight-to-the-point book that will help you do the trick and learn how to efficiently prepare software training — or, as web professionals, technical training for other web developers.

Book review: Defensive Design for the Web

Thu, 13 May 2004 05:30:41 -0500

Contingency design lets you take all those things into account that can happen when real users start visiting your website. Defensive Design for the Web is a book that shows you in a clear and concise way what can go wrong and how to turn that to your advantage.

Book Review: Speed Up Your Site

Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:03:54 -0600

Andy King's recent book collects, outlines, and evaluates a large number of methods and techniques to make your sites perform better.

Poodle Predictor - See your site like Google does

Fri, 28 Feb 2003 01:20:51 -0600

One of the challenges a webmaster faces when designing a site, is getting it well-placed in the search-engines. There is many a site stuck with an ugly Google listing, because the designer didn't realise search-engines don't use Javascript, or cookies, for instance. Poodle Predictor can help.

On Safari

Fri, 10 Jan 2003 02:39:47 -0600

Safari's the neat-o new quick browser for OSX that runs off the Konqueror guts and impresses the heck outta your neighbors.

Review: CSS: Separating Content from Presentation

Mon, 09 Dec 2002 18:23:46 -0600

If you're ready to cross over to the world of cascading style sheets, or if you know the basics but want a better grasp of the overall picture and the practical details, authors Owen Briggs, Steve Champeon, Eric Costello, and Matt Patterson have done an excellent job of showing the way.

Information Architecture - Blueprints for the Web

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 11:43:00 -0600

This is a great book for all practitioners of Information Architecture. It doesn't matter if you are new to the discipline or an experienced architect, you'll still learn lots of useful stuff from Christina. The traditional subjects of IA are presented in a refreshing point of view, and it explains subjects that nobody before had revealed, with clarity and detail. It's also very fun to read.

Book Review: The Geek's Guide to Internet Business

Sun, 10 Nov 2002 03:46:28 -0600

This is not a technical how-to book. It is a concise, lucidly written guide to business strategies, targeted at the so-called “geeks” who comprise a significant portion of the web development workforce. Author, Bob Schmidt is an advertising industry veteran, with over two decades experience, who has bridged the gap to online marketing and development.

The Meta Search Engines

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 22:03:43 -0500

I know what you're thinking: Google gives you such accurate results that you don't need any other search tool. Well, let's see about that.

'Envisioning Information' by Edward Tufte

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 12:08:57 -0500

The central problem of this study is presented in the first paragraph of the introduction: The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?

Book Review: Usable Web Menus

Thu, 05 Dec 2002 15:43:06 -0600

Book review of the new glasshaus title, Usable Web Menus, authored by Andy Beaumont, Dave Gibbons, Jody Kerr, and Jon Stephens.

Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL

Mon, 17 Jun 2002 13:27:35 -0500

PHP's speed of execution, gentle learning curve, and ease of development have contributed to its popularity, especially when teamed with MySQL, as a tool for building dynamic sites. Williams and Lane have written a thorough step-by-step guide to building web database applications with PHP and MySQL.

Book Review: mod_perl Developers Cookbook

Sun, 07 Apr 2002 11:19:23 -0500

Perl and Apache, two of Open Sources flagship technologies, and together, one of the most potent web platforms out there. Sams have just published the mod_perl Developers Cookbook to help you out with ideas when developing commercial grade applications.

Review of PHPTriad for Windows

Sun, 27 Jan 2002 06:16:53 -0600

PHP Triad is an installer for Windows versions of PHP, Apache, MySQL, Perl and PHPMyAdmin.