Akatombo Web Log
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Too many works in progress
Sorry for the complete lack of activity around here lately. We have a bunch of articles and posts in the works, but none of them are ready for publishing yet. With the rapid approach of CEATEC JAPAN 2004 we are pretty swamped with web pages for that, and don’t have much time for anything else. Which reminds me ... any of you who have looked at the CEATEC JAPAN 2004 website: Was there any information that you were looking for and couldn’t find? Anything that you found irritating or hard to use. We have out ideas about how things should be improved, but since CEATEC is such a large committee-run project it can sometimes be difficult to implement our ideas. User feedback is considered very seriously though, and if you make a suggestion, it is likely to bring results.
If you have any ideas for CEATEC JAPAN website improvements; particularly on the overall site or the German, French, Korean, or English pages; please comment on this post to let us know!
- Posted by BlndCat
issue with the tag-line (warning: slightly off-topic)
“Ubiquitous Society - Digitally Enriched, Accelerating to the Next Stage”
It takes more that a moment to grok (comprehend) and then it still is vacuous. I know it is one that is probably pre-set by the committee and cannot be changed but it really is an example of what a tag-line should not be.
August 30th, 2004 12:11 PM - Posted by UltraBob
Thank you for that!
This is actually exactly how I feel on the matter, and your comment will help to strengthen my argument for next year. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be done about it this year, as the tagline has been decided and the marketing materials have been printed.
August 30th, 2004 12:17 PM - Posted by Rudolf
Dude, where’s your doctype? :-p
Couple of points in random order.
* What’s the CMS you use? Doesn’t it allow you to plug a real excerpt for the latest article instead of using the first n words of the piece and cutting off in mid-sentence?
* What does “Vol” mean? An article doth not a volume make.
* Date format (eg 2004/08/30)—in international settings, i.e. on the Web, I believe months should be spelled out. That’s because “04-05” means “4 May” to the Brits and “April 5” to Americans. Avoid this ambiguity.
* With all those banners, you get the confetti look that’s endemic to the genre. You probably won’t be able to convince your clients that those suckers should be grayscaled for aesthetic considerations—but you may be able to charge them extra for buttons that make sense on the web; the CES and the IFO buttons are pretty awful because you can’t read a thing that’s written on them (speaking of that sidebar: what’s a “Special Corporation”?)
* I don’t find the photos very appealing—all they ever seem to say is “generic convention space with puny, insignificant humans”. Bit of a put-off, actually.
* On the Magazine article pages, use bylines. Author names in article ledes are eccentric.
* Remove those dividers between article sections—they visually pull the aricles apart and deprive them of a unified look. They’re the same dividers, after all, that you use on the front page to separate articles from each other.
* Dividing the content area in two table cells and alternating the pictures and the copy back and forth between the two isn’t a bad idea. But vertically centering the images looks hokey to me. I’d say top-align the pics.
* The Related Links section at the bottom of articles is a print idea. Even if the online editions of newspapers haven’t caught on to the idea yet, the Web uses hyperlinks _inline,_ right in the text where they appear. You could still add the links at the end when the aticle gets printed (use a print stylesheet, for example).
* Similarly, when “Part 1” is mentioned in the copy of “Part 2”—hey: hyperlink!
Nice job, though.
September 7th, 2004 09:32 PM - Posted by UltraBob
Hi Rudolph,
Thanks a lot for the long, detailed, thoughtful comment.
Luckily I can say that most of these problems are not my fault, and I have been wanting to fix throughout. I have to pick my battles though, and your comments will make this one an easier one to fight.
* The CMS is a CMS they have developed. I will suggest adding an excerpt field for next year. I think it is too late to change it for this year, but good point!
* The page you are looking at is a db generated page, and apparently they threw away the doctype I gave them when they made the template. I hadn’t noticed that.
* This content is developed completely seperately from me, but I will mention this to them.
* Very good point, and I have been guilty of this as much as anyone else. I will definitely take this to heart with next year’s site.
* I will be updating the graphic on the side menu to say Special Partners which is about as specific as they can make it. I will pass on the unreadable graphic point to them too.
* I have passed on the comment that pictures of people doing something are always more interesting than wide angle shots of the big areas. I hope that is what you meant.
* I actually think the little author blurbs are kind of nice, but that they may go better at the bottom of the article with a byline at the top. That is the suggestion that I passsed on.
* One thing about working on CEATEc is that we’ve been working so hard on cranking out pages, that we often don’t have much time to use them. I’m stunned that I hadn’t noticed this yet and have passed it on.
* I think there are a few different layouts to choose from fo rthe articles, and it is my suspicion that they could have chosen a different layout for the articles with long pieces of text. I’m guessing that in Japanese it isn’t a problem because the text isn’t that long. I’ve passed this on.
* On the related links point I disagree. I think that while they should be linked in the article there is nothing wrong with highlighting some related links at the end. In fact it can be a convenient service to the user who doesn’t want to leave until after he has read everything on the page he is on. The other rason for the related link section here, is that the exhibitor data is entered by the exhibitors themselves, and there is no requirement for them to know html, bbcode, or anything else. With blogging or forums a person has some incentive to learn the system, but I think with a site like CEATEC where you use the entry forms likely only once, it is much harder to allow people to enter links. This is an issue I’m going to take some time to examine. There’s gotta be a better way.
* Good point, passed on!
Thanks again for your timne, and thoughtful analysis. I really appreciate it! If you happen to run into any other problems throughout the rest of the site, please let me know, and I’ll work on fixing those issues too. I’m really hoping to get a css layout for CEATEc next year so that I can do print styles, and a whole bunch of other stuff that would make our work a lot easier, and the page downloads a lot more bearable on dialup.
September 7th, 2004 09:44 PM