Too bad, these are not as easy to remember, oh well.

So anyway, if you’re going MAD like me trying to figure out a quick “end of line” key now you know. Hope this helps ! : )

MAMP is a program that helps you run a server on your MAC. “But, I already can run a server on my MAC!”, you exclaim. True, but there are some really nice organizational features about MAMP (even the FREE version) that makes it worth checking into. That is another post. For now, I’m going to tell you a simple way to get IE as viewed from Parallels to “see” your local web site(s) you may be developing. This makes trouble shooting, especially where CSS is concerned, much faster and easier. Hey, I’m all for anything that makes dealing with IE easier.

For this post, I assume you have decided to install MAMP and have successfully done so (It’s easy, by the way) and you have also decided to use Parallels and have it installed.

Take a Look at your MAMP console. Do you see where it says “Preferences” ?

Press the preferences button on the MAMP console.

After clicking on the “preferences” button, you will then click on the “ports” button. It should look like this.

Notice the port number of MAMP

Notice what the port number is where it says “Apache Port”. You will use this in you URL in IE. The port number is almost always going to be 8888 unless you have changed it for some reason.

OK, now go to you MAC’s “System Preferences”. Not to insult your intelligence, but, in case your a newbie or just a bit flustered at the moment, you get there by clicking on the little apple in the far upper left corner of your screen. The resulting pane should look like this.

Notice your local IP address

Do you see the IP Adress in the middle of this pane?

After opening Internet Explorer in Parallels, type the following address.

address to type in Internet Explorer

Did you notice that it is a combination of your local IP and the MAMP port separated by a colon? If everything else is working as it should, then this will show you your local site from within the “Sites” folder just under your “Home” on your MAC.

In another post coming soon, I will tell you how to set up multiple sites with the free version of MAMP. Its easy and makes for a much smoother transition between projects.

I hope this post was helpful and easy to understand. Feel free to let me know your thoughts. I’m grateful for any friendly criticism or “how to” contributions.

]]> http://www.rubberneckdesigns.com/usability/view-local-developement-sites-with-parallels-and-mamp-on-a-mac/feed/ 0 http://www.rubberneckdesigns.com/usability/learn-to-guide-web-user%e2%80%99s-with-precedence/ http://www.rubberneckdesigns.com/usability/learn-to-guide-web-user%e2%80%99s-with-precedence/#comments Sat, 02 May 2009 17:11:36 +0000 admin http://rubberneckdesigns.com/?p=52 In web design, it is important to guide the user’s eye. Without a sense of “flow” a feeling of frustration takes over creating a negative experience. The art of subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, guiding the viewer’s attention is referred to as Precedence.

Since web pages are, for the most part, about the users getting information, how the information is presented is of great importance. There are several ways to do this, namely, position, contrast & color, size and design elements.

Position

It is a known fact that the upper left corner of the page is the most frequently viewed. Our attention generally radiates off from there in horizontal and vertical scans. The average of these, as shown on a graph, forms a fuzzy triangle with the most active area in the upper left. Where we put our elements of information on the page clearly make a difference on the attention they get.

Contrast  & Color

When planning your color scheme, be sure to include colors for getting attention as well colors of a subtle nature. Using these properly you can influence which information is highlighted or treated as supplementary. Foreground and background can make a huge difference in how much attention an element gets. Be sure to create high contrast for items of importance and low contrast for information that you do not place as much importance on.

Size

It’s pretty simple, really. Bigger gets more attention.

Design Elements

Graphics can really play an effective role in directing attention where it belongs. Do not get overly complicated about this, though. For example, if there is a huge red arrow pointing at an element on the page, that is where the user will look!

As simple as all this sounds. Learning to use it wisely is an art. Harmonizing these principles with the theme of the site design may often prove challenging. So, from time to time it is good to review the basics and make sure we always improving and learning best practices of web site design.

RIA (Rich Internet Application) Andy Gutmans says RIA is “…how we bring the experience from the desktop into the browser.” What this means is this. You may have noticed that programs that run on your Mac or PC run faster and smoother, providing what is often called a better “user experience”. It used to be that anything on the Internet was generally accepted to be slower and “choppier”. That is because not only did data need to be transmitted at much slower rates, but also entire pages needed to be re-loaded for each and every change that would occur. So RIA, or “Rich Internet Application” refers to improving the experience in your Internet browser to be smoother and faster like your current desktop application.

SOA (Service Oriented Applications)
“What SOA is all about is how the WEB 2.0 applications expose their functionality so that other applications can leverage and integrate the functionality providing a much richer set of applications?” –Andy Guttman

As companies develop new and cool things on the web, they provide a way for other programmers and web developers to use them and make these part of some new design that otherwise would not exist. An example of this would be Google Maps. Google has what is called an API (Application Program Interface) for Google Maps. The API is kind of like a window that lets a web developer use the Google Map technology in their own inventive ways. There are examples of web sites that have tapped into the national database of sex offenders for a given area and create a map displaying their locations. This was made possible because of Google’s API for Google Maps. We can definitely refer to this as an SOA or Service Oriented Application.

The Social Web
Web 2.0 Applications tend to interact much more with the end user. Weather it is by tagging content or subscribing to an RSS feed, doing or watching a Podcast, contributing to a Wiki, and of couse Blogging.

“As part of the social nature of these applications the end user is an integral part of the data is therefore much more a contributor to the content of the application by providing feed back, allowing that application to leverage the users that are using it.”- Andy Gutmans

Understanding Web 2.0 will help you create a web site that offers the kind of experience that people will come back to repeatedly, bragging to thier friends and family about the web site they found.

The Internet, if nowhere else has established beyond any doubt, that usability (ease of use) along with utility (a site’s practical value) are what determine a web designs success over its aesthetic appeal. Imagine if the road signs along your way to an unknown place where works of fine art with beautifully painted details and higher notions of several individual artist’s ideals. Would images of varying styles from impressionism to abstract, art décor, work’s of the old masters or photo-realism really help you traverse your way? The Internet has been described as a super highway with good reason. Web site user’s are extremely fast paced. Web user’s eyes move quickly across page after page. They seldom “look” at your pages. Eyes are darting from one hot spot to another looking for what they came for. There is a very good reason why “real world” highways have huge signs with simple contrasting backgrounds. It helps us get to where we want to be. Have you ever been in the car with a driver who encounters poorly marked navigational signage? What was their reaction? Exactly! Not the reaction you want visitors to your site to have! That being said, we highway traveler’s, when provided good navigational markers, are quite capable of enjoying the beautiful scenery along the way.

A good web site designer/developer knows the importance of providing good navigational guidance and usability. Good web site design liberates web site visitors to enjoy the content or “beautiful scenery” along the way.

In the next several posts we are going to discuss principles of effective web design often referred to as “usability”.