Critique Wall.com

Yesterday, we encountered strange printing issues with Firefox not being willing to send more than the first page of a long table (like a course schedule table) to print. It turns out Gecko browsers don't know what to do with very long floated elements like tables. The solution, which took a bit of searching, is adding "float:none !important;" to the appropriate elements in your print style sheet.

Eric Meyer (who else?) explains the situation very nicely here: CSS Design: Going to Print.

Ever wondered how to create those nifty extra links that appear under some Google search results like this:

Well, you can't create them. At least not yet. Google says they are generated automatically to help save users time. But they do say, "over time, we may look for ways to incorporate input from webmasters too."

Read more about this at the Google Wemaster Central Blog.

Brian Collins is executive creative director of the Brand Integration Group, BIG, at Ogilvy & Mather in New York, teaches at School of Visual Arts and among other things is an . He talked to the Orlando AIGA chapter about creating "brand experience".

During the College's pre-session we had a presentation on Outstanding Customer Service, Ritz Carlton Style, presented by Jeff Hargett from the Ritz external traning unit. It was interesting to me how strongly the attributes of good customer service correlate with the attributes of excellent Web usability and customer experience. I've always considered one of my job titles to be online customer service specialist and Hargett's presentation confirmed that role and challenged me to do it better.

Some of the highlights

Respect people. Respect especially their time. Make it easy to accomplish the things they need to do.

Interactions should be hassle-free: "Get rid of re-occuring mistakes. All mistakes should be new mistakes."

Provide personalized, genuine service, use the customer's name and ask "may I do something else?"

"Great service connects emotionally with the customer."

Know your market. Have we heard this before?

3 Steps of Service:

1. Warm sincere greeting
2. Anticipation and fulfillment of each guests needs
3. Fond farewell. Give a warm good-bye and use their name.

Everything speaks. Everything is a representation of your organization. The off-duty employee, the building, facilities, and I include the Web properties and published materials. It's our responsibility to make sure the trash is picked up in our Web properties. The Web site is likely the first impression many will have of our organizations.

I recently had the opportunity to visit California to present a workshop on usability for the Global Internet Evangilism Forum. The workshop was well received, and I hope it made a positive impact. One of the topics that was hot in this year's discussion was mobile technology. In places where the wired infrastructure is not in place, Internet access is exploding via mobile technology. We need to know a lot about design for mobile technology and quick.

While on the West Coast I was also able to visit two architecturally interesting places. The Getty Center and the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The Getty Center was designed by Richard Meir. After the architecture guide explained Meir's grid system I was amazed how meticulous he was in sticking to it and still creating organic spaces. The entire complex is laid out on two 30 inch based grids. The grids followed the two ridge lines that the complex is sitting on. You can follow a grid line from a wall of one building down to the sidewalk across the plaza and into and up a wall in the next building. Yes, few words ago I said he used two layer grids. The second grid oriented about 35 or 40 degrees off of the first. If a building or a wall needed to be placed at an angle, it sat on the 2nd grid and made sense. I believe this is one way this modernist complex achieved an organic feel. It followed the natural grids of the environment it is occupying.

The Google Blog just announced that Google Video is posting videos from the TED Conference. TED is a high-profile conference focusing on Technology, Entertainment and Design. Being a fan of David Pogue's New York Times email, I chose to watch his presentation first. I wasn't surprised that it was entertaining or that he performed music, but I was not expecting the excellent illustrations he used for extolling the virtues of simplicity and usability. By being at one of the focal points of consumer technology experience he is keenly aware of when technology works and when it doesn't.

Pogue concluded with the challenge to designers, "Easy is hard, pre-sweat the details for your audience" because "simplicity sells."

This is worth 22 minutes of your entertainment and education time allotment.