I will be the first to admit that I am severely lacking in this area, despite using JQuery on almost every site I work on. While I have yet to actually view the course I think every bit of information you can find is useful.
The course is offered by JQuery Air. I do not know much about their reputation, but give it a try. Worst case scenario – they get your email address.
Pek Pongpaet has posted a good article at UXMag.com. I have been fascinated by User Experience for years, but admit that I am quite the amateur. I am as guilty as the IT worker in the ‘of course the user will understand exactly what we want them to do.’ Flash forward 3 months, hour 2 on a support call that Customer Service has given up on…
Me: Please click on the green arrow.
Customer: What green arrow?
Me: Which page are you currently on?
Customer: I am on my computer, I don’t have a book or a manual.
Me: I mean which web page are you looking at in your browser?
Customer: What’s a browser?
Me: [pause. sound of head hitting desk] What program are you using to access the internet?
Customer: I don’t use a program, I use the blue picture on the computer, looks like an E. I just want to XXXX, why do you have to make it so difficult?
It all made sense when we built it, our beta test went fairly well [although limited], but in the real world you get such a variety that who knows how it will preform.
I digress – this is an interesting post with some good suggestions for resources I use myself.
24Ways.org has started its Advent calendar for 2010. There seems to be a wealth of information here each year, which can be found in the archives for previous years. The posts tend to span a wide range of topics and not all may be of interest, but I am sure you will find a few that are right up your alley.
Cameron Chapman's article on Wireframing - Must Read!
I am sorry to say that most of the projects I work on lack this very valuable step. It is often weeks into a project where missing elements are found and I lament the day that it was decided that we ‘skip’ the wireframing step. In fact it is happening right now.
I have only breezed through this article quickly, but it is bookmarked and ready to be revisited [as soon as I can squeeze it in]. In the meantime I really recommend you take a look yourself at Cameron Chapman’s Ultimate Guide to Website Wireframing.
Special thanks to @boagworld for sending the tweet.
I don’t know why, but this seems like it would be pretty interesting to have. I have downloaded it and I am looking forward to playing with it.
Have a look and let me know what you think. Get it at Addy Osmani’s Blog.
Thanks to @smashingmag for the tweet!
Thanks to Boagworld for tweeting this wonderful Pines Notify jQuery Plugin.
It seems to have a whole bunch of features I could employ [although a little too late] into a current project:
I don’t have much experience with jQuery, but I am really liking a lot of the plugins that I have been seeing lately.
Here is a nice, short – and to the point – post about A/B testing and the results it yielded.
I know in most projects I have worked on recently A/B testing has not gone beyond internal back-and-forth. Something I hope to change moving forward. It we could only budget the time to do so.