Minimize Visual Noise with White Space

So far, we’ve discussed minimizing complexity by killing or hiding features. But minimizing “perceived” complexity is also important. The amount of visual noise in an interface has a great deal of impact on the perceived complexity of the interface. Keeping visual noise to a bare minimum will make an interface seem easier to use. The two primary tools for reducing visual noise are white space and contrast.

Hide Complexity in Design

If you can’t kill a complex feature, the next best thing is to hide it. Too often, rarely used yet complex features take up more screen real estate than frequently used yet simple features. This shouldn’t be. A good user interface should make the most common tasks the most prominent and then hide rare tasks so that they don’t get in the way.

White Space Improves Comprehension

Most designers know the value of white space, which is the empty space between paragraphs, pictures, buttons and other items on the page. White space de-clutters a page by giving items room to breathe. We can also group items together by decreasing the space between them and increasing the space between them and other items on the page. This is important for showing relationships between items (e.g. showing that this button applies to this set of items) and building a hierarchy of elements on the page.

The Ideal Search Box Is 27-Characters Wide

What’s the ideal width of a search box? Is there such a thing?

Most Users Do Not Scroll

Jakob Nielsen’s study on how much users scroll (in Prioritizing Web Usability) revealed that only 23% of visitors scroll on their first visit to a website. This means that 77% of visitors won’t scroll; they’ll just view the content above the fold (i.e. the area of the page that is visible on the screen without scrolling down). What’s more, the percentage of users who scroll decreases with subsequent visits, with only 16% scrolling on their second visit. This data highlights just how important it is to place your key content on a prominent position, especially on landing pages.

Achieve Typography Perfection Online

Common practices and guidelines for setting type in Web design. Note, though, that these findings are not scientific and should serve only as rough guidelines:

Drop-Down Menu with jQuery

Make a Mega Drop-Down Menu with jQuery
So how would we go about implementing Mega drop down menus? While it’d be great to do all of this in pure HTML and CSS, it’s impossible at the moment to get those nice half-second delays — and of course there’s a pesky problem with Internet Explorer 6, which only supports :hover on anchor elements. Instead, I’ve whipped up a solution using jQuery and a very nifty plugin called hoverIntent.

Skills Required -> HTML, CSS, JQUERY