A LIST Apart: For People Who Make Websites

No. 213

March 07, 2006

Why you shouldn’t herd your users through arduous forms, plus a bonus primer on Ajax.

Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction

by Nick Usborne

You want your users to do something—buy things, beg you to work for them, learn how they too can achieve inner peace. So how do you get them to do what you want? Try getting out of the way.

Getting Started with Ajax

by Aaron Gustafson

In this excerpt from O’Reilly’s Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition, ALA’s production editor would like to take you aside for a little chat about the birds and the bees. Or maybe about Ajax.

We’re off to SXSW, but we’ll be back around the end of March. In the meantime, explore our articles or find out more about us.

Editor’s Choice

originally ran: April 27, 2001

“Forgiving” Browsers Considered Harmful

by J. David Eisenberg

By hiding the need for structure that the web will require as it moves toward XHTML and XML, “forgiving” web browsers have helped breed a world of structural markup illiterates. Eisenberg examines the damage done.