Writings on web design and higher education from Missoula, MT

According to the latest UseIt AlertBox, it’s better to use “23″ than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts.

Tips from the article when writing for the Web:

• Write numbers with digits, not letters (23, not twenty-three).
• Use numerals even when the number is the first word in a sentence or bullet point.
• Use numerals for big numbers up to one billon:
  • 2,000,000 is better than two million.
  • Two trillion is better than 2,000,000,000,000 because most people can’t interpret that many zeros.
  • As a compromise, you can often use numerals for the significant digits and write out the magnitude as a word. For example, write 24 billion (not twenty-four billion or 24,000,000,000).
• Spell out numbers that don’t represent specific facts.

Just another reminder that writing for the web is so different than the print writing we were all taught. Thanks for another great insight that can help all our users Jacob!

Dear Google,

I use Gmail for Your Domain, and since the calendar function has finally been added, I am in love with this service. I do have a small request though, one that I believe many customers would like to utilize.

My suggestion is simple, integrate the calendar and email clients more fully; give me a checkbox when I set up an appointment to activate the email auto-responder during the time that I am scheduled for that event.

Thank you,

Dan Bowling

Tag clouds (a form of Folksonomy) seem to have creeped into web applications all over the internet. First seen on Flickr, tag clouds showed great promise as a novel way to view user trends and graphically showing relative the popularity of tags (think categories, but on steroids). The question I am interested in is: do tag clouds belong in the blogosphere?

Read the rest of this entry »