ARTICLE NO. 18    December 19, 2005

First Beta Launch

by

Here we go then. After months of working in the few crumbs of spare-time that we could scrape up we’ve finally done it and launched UX Magazine. We’re pleased with a lot of it but also know that a lot of work still needs to be done; a lot.

First off, we’re trying to remain XHTML strict and are avoiding hacks best we can but IE still misbehaves here and there. Annoying, yes, but the site works well enough to be released into the general population. There are certainly some bugs in other browsers here and there. Ah, the joys of web-development.

Secondly, We have a list of stuff to do before we can be certain that this site is truly user friendly. The tool tips on the Link Pool and the Feeds aren’t quite there yet. We need to make the preview text of articles clearer and some features are just plain missing.

Last but not least, we’re not happy. We never are. Never ever. We look at things and go “bah!”—out loud, numerous times a day. We just had to stop being so bloody picky and launch the damn thing. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to fix these things. So while we’re excited about launching the site, we’ll probably never be 100% happy with it, and that’s the way it should be.

In the meantime, please comment (right here) on things you love, hate, are puzzled by. We’ve probably missed shed loads of important stuff so help us make UX Magazine what you want it to be.

UPDATE (19/12/05): We’ve applied a nasty hack and “fixed” some IE bug which just won’t go away otherwise. This is just band-aid but it will have to do for now. We’re also killing off the tool tips we had as we were getting too many issues with them. Shame because they were damn pretty.

UPDATE (20/12/05): Latest changes include a lot of stuff noticed by our visitors (thank you very much).

  1. We removed the email link from all our commenter’s. Now only a web link will be applied, if entered. (noticed by Alex Casanova)
  2. Fixed the home page a bit, still needs work though. Added the TextPattern credits (question asked by Roshambo)
  3. Changed the tabindex on the comment forms. Now it works as it should. (thanks Greg)
  4. The last update info in the SnapShot box on the Home page, now displays the actual last update time, including the comments.
  5. And last but not least, it seems Del.icio.us is back up, so now you can also see our Link Pool list on the home Page.

UPDATE (20/12/05) Part Deux: Got some new tabs done as the older ones where accused of being, well, rather crap. You can check out their dark chromed goodness by look at the top bar; ooh, shiny… CMD fixed some CSS stuff I broke while hacking away to get IE to bloody work. He also added a smooooth “back to top” at the bottom of every article. We’re working on a better way of integrating that into the design.

UPDATE (21/12/05): We’ve merged the search and tabs and fixed some issues in the process. With Christmas approaching fast, we’re scrambling to fix as much as possible before we’re all off for the holidays. IE unfortunately still misbehaves. The feedback and exposure we’ve been getting has been tremendous, which kind of freaks me out because there’s still so much to do. It’s 4am, I’m going to bed. Thanks for dropping by.

UPDATE (23/12/05): We’ve been very busy trying to get most of your comments into our layout. All of your remarks, complaints and praises have been very helpful. So to keep this note short, here’s what we’ve done so far:

  1. We’ve cleaned up our CSS. If anyone tries to validate it, they will get an error. It’s an ugly hack we’ve added, but will get rid of it shortly.
  2. We added more informative page titles.
  3. We finalized the “tab” & “search” design.
  4. We removed the horizontal scroll bar. The full fix will come when we get around to restructuring the whole site… Should be right after Xmas holidays.

 

UPDATE (23/12/05) Part Deux: Just got around to changing the descriptive text on all articles. The excerpt is now properly displayed.
Also please forgive us if you’ve been receiving one-too-many RSS updates on our articles. We’ve been fidgeting with the Feed a bit… until we get things sorted.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

UX Magazine was created to be a central, one-stop resource for everything related to user experience. Our primary goal is to provide a steady stream of current, informative, and credible information about UX and related fields to enhance the professional and creative lives of UX practitioners and those exploring the field. Our content is driven and created by an impressive roster of experienced professionals who work in all areas of UX and cover the field from diverse angles and perspectives.

Comments

Add a new comment

Because of problems with spam comments, HTML in comments is not permitted. URLs are allowed, but they will not be rendered as clickable links.
January 12, 2006
ok, I have to ask. Does it annoy you that Safari will not allow your search box at the top of the page to look like how you styled it to look?

Well, it annoys me.

Also, have you ever desired to style the scrollbars on a textarea or overflowing div?
January 13, 2006
thinsoldier: Yeah, it kills me. I’ve been having similar problems with XP overiding buttons and the Google Toolbar changing the style of text fields. sigh We’ll work around it somehow, we have to. For those who don’t have access to Safari: this is how it comes out.
January 20, 2006
I think the current layout is absolutely fantastic. The magazine effect of small teaser images is extremely intuitive and enviable.
January 20, 2006
I LOOOVE your site. I think you guys did an amazing job with the layout of the homepage and especially the articles.

A few things:

1) Why you don’t have a Contact page?

2) In FF there’s a bug in the articles page. The writer image won’t slide to the right side and it covers the writer’s title.
January 21, 2006
I really like your site and your layout! Is it possible to submit my User Interface Blog (http://www.user-interface.org) to your Feed Merger?
January 24, 2006
Oded: Thanks. We’re working on adding a contact form and are completely reworking the sub-page. More on that soone.
January 29, 2006
Lovely layout and look. I love color`s ! My site is so green but now will be so red….
January 30, 2006
I really love the design and article, here. a few things thought. there is no clear way to contact you guys through private email, thus my post here. I was wondering that you might want to remove the XHTML and CSS compliant buttons at the bottom of the page, being that this site is geared to designers, those buttons SCREAM ‘press me’, and i am sure you are aware of the problems there.

Im not saying that you should run out and stamp all those issues imediately, just don’t advertise that you are compliant and you really are not, just looks bad IMHO.

other than that I LOVE the visual design of this site and have made it a daily read. Thax for this guys/girls
January 30, 2006
david b: Thanks for the ups. As for the validation buttons we have, well they both seem to be working. We validate XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS .

There are some of our older articles which need a bit of correcting, but I’m pretty sure we’ve solved most of our issues by now.

If there’s something in particular you’ve noticed, please let us know.

And about the contact details, you can find our direct email in the About UX Magazine section.

I would like to take this moment though, to remind all our readers that UX Magazine is still in BETA, which means we’re still working on the site.

Keep up the feedback, we need it. Thanks.
January 31, 2006
Site looks excellent guys! Very clean.
January 31, 2006
Amazing work. Although I liked ProjectNeo, this is most definitely a suitable replacement. It’s now in my collection of Featured Sites.
January 31, 2006
Hello and thanks to cssvault.com, i think i have stumbled upon a useful resource there! :p

Apologies if this feedback has been given. I have noticed that the layout seems to be rendering wrongly on a 1280×1024 resolution, 17 inches LCD monitor.

The “linkpool” column seem to be dumped at the right most corner of the page and the layering seems to be jumbled up at the bottom right hand corner.

Here’s the screenshot for better visualisation(pls note that the pix is cropped and compressed.) – http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic.php?u=5435IamRs&i=778563

Thank you and i shall now savour the prospect of gaining more new knowledges here. :)
February 01, 2006
Hong Hui: My bad! I was messing about with the CSS at 3am and had messed up the code. It’s all good now and we’re doing all the messing about on a development version of the site. I can’t be trusted. Thanks!
February 01, 2006
Why launch a magazine, of all things, as a beta?

In fact, I’m really curious as to why you guys put all this time and effort into developing something that, to a significant degree, runs in parallel with extant magazines and other communication efforts.

What needs did you feel weren’t being addressed by the existing UX-centric publications online? What perspectives did you feel you could bring to these discussions that weren’t being acknowledged?

Over the last seven years now, I’ve been asked to join one UX group after another, been sent links to a long stream of site launches, and watched with some dismay and trepidation as each turned out to consist largely of the same three articles written over and over again. (I particularly don’t think CSS is, in the end, all that interesting to those many of us who perceive the practice of UX as transcending the Web entirely.)

The lesson I draw from this is that, while there may in principle be a large enough community of UX practitioners to support a regular publication effort, there does not exist a comparable critical mass of those able to provide engaging and well-thought-out UX content. So unless you’ve dug up some previously-unacknowledged stratum of Secret Masters, I guess I’m wondering where you’re going to get fresh, new, well-articulated content from.

In the end, none of this – however snarky it may seem – is to discourage you. I, for one, would love to see a well-designed and -produced magazine devoted to design for the user experience (or maybe just “design”), and there’s no reason why yours couldn’t be the one. I do think, however, that you’ve significantly underestimated the challenges involved in producing something of worth. I wish you all the luck in the world, but still more than that I urge you to dig a little deeper.
February 01, 2006
The site looks okay and I am still roaming it. Good thing you actually show, here and there, how you have built things. Much appreciation about that, I am never too old to learn new things.

Fedora Core 4
Firefox 1.5
February 01, 2006
AG: Why not launch a magazine as a beta? We decided to let people in before we were completely finished, we thought it’d be interesting for our readers and ourselves. It has been but mostly it’s been fun. Also, it’s important to note that we’re busy (and somewhat lazy) people so if we’d waited for this thing to be finished you’d still be seeing an “under construction” page.

There will always someone somewhere doing something similar but from the feedback we’ve been receiving people seem pretty happy with our effort so far. It keeps us going, and quite possibly, clouds our judgement as to whether we should be spending our time on something more constructive.

We’re not particularily making this for the people you call UX practitioners. In our book, everyone involved in anything that relates to users interacting with something should be involved in UX and, hopefully, read this magazine.
February 02, 2006
Alex: Haha, i see i see. Well, it’s a beta…so urm…i have nothing to say. :P

P.S: Heh, in 1024×768 (FF v1.5.0.1), the checkbox for the reply box looks kinda chunky and cute eh. Lol~
February 02, 2006
Hong Hui: Indeed. ;) And yes, that checkbox behaves really strangely. Well spotted.
February 03, 2006
I really like the design here. Very impressive and I like the originality. I also think you have some really nice content as well. Nice work!
February 05, 2006
Very nice work m8s, cheers!
February 05, 2006
I don’t think the search results pages are displaying correctly in Firefox, and I can’t search for “css” because all keywords apparently need at least 3 letters.
February 05, 2006
Ben: You’re right there. We’re currently using TxP ’s built in search engine with some minor modifications.

It’s on our list to make the search even better.
February 06, 2006
how did you guys manage to get the little author profile to appear on the articles with textpattern? Is this profile hooked up to the author admin login or do u have it as another category? I’m stumped.
February 06, 2006
SpiritCrossing: Actually we’re using the rss_if_author plug-in originally created by Rob Sable. The plug-in can be found at his site wilshire|one . Again we’ve modified it a bit to suit our needs, but essentially, it’s the same plug-in.

Almost all of UX Magazine is being run off ready made plug-ins which we’ve altered. Others heavily, and others slightly. The whole concept was to create a site with minimum effort. And for that I personally thank the Textpattern crew, and the community behind it.

In our next major update, which should be coming in the following weeks, we’ll also be releasing a full list of all plug-ins used to create this site, along with some very important changes, most of which have been pointed out by our visitors…

Because, “We’re reading every single post…”
February 06, 2006
Just an FYI, the text in the section with the checkbox to open links in a new window is cut off at the bottom. It says “Open in new window?
Select this option if you want to have all external links open in a new” [does not say window]

I am using Safari 2.0.3 and viewing at 1280×854.

Overall I love the flexibilty of the design. However, it is a lot to take in all at once, a bit overwhelming visually. Cheers!