O’Reilly: Inside RIA

I always find it interesting when the web design practice gets a little more attention from the broader business industry. And that's exactly what BusinessWeek has done, they've interviewed a group of web design luminaries to come up with a list of the top 10 rules web designers should follow. They've also compiled a slideshow of best of the web which is composed of 25 top picks from the design gurus they interviewed.

Robert Hoekman Jr is dispelling some common myths in the world of web analytics. The first part of the article regarding hits vs page view vs visitors will likely be old news to most readers of this blog and RIA developers in general. This is still very valuable for most folks out there and worth the read. Towards the end of the article Robert makes a great point that page views for RIAs have become almost irrelevant.

Ted just posted some screenshots for Thermo. Thermo is a highly anticipated tool that will allow designers to create UI designs much like they would in Fireworks then output Flex apps and MXML. The promise that designers and developers to go back and forth in between Thermo and Flex in a nice seamless workflow.

I stumbled upon a new pattern library via, Information Design Patterns this week Nick Bouton's bookmarks. It's got some really neat patterns especially for anyone doing search or data visualization in RIAs. Let's add this to list of pattern resources I blogged about a while back.

Is eye tracking out of reach for web and RIA developers? I think for the most part today cost and lack of knowledge are the two biggest barriers for your average web developer when considering usability testing via eye tracking.

When is good is a minimalist web app designed to help you schedule meetings. In this entry we walk through their simple interface and discuss its strengths and weaknesses.

Searchme is a new search engine that allows users to graphically browse the web using a cover-flow like interface. In this post I discuss the benefits and weaknesses of using new visual interfaces in search engines.

Dan Schafer, author of Designing for Interaction, is examining interaction design best practices and standards again with his new book Designing Gestural Interfaces. He's just posted the first chapter for free download, go download and take a look. I was just reflecting on Tony's post on form factor the other night when I saw Dan post this chapter IxDA list. It looks like the book is going dissect and analyze the new gestural interfaces such as the iPhone's multi-touch interface and the Wii's wand controllers.

This platform released today provides an effective solution for slaying one dragon, but a much scarier dragon lurks atop the mountain I call form factor. The danger is in thinking that we have a platform for developing universal experiences, when the truth is, that we have a platform that provides us with a universal runtime to build experiences upon. Just because your code is cross-platform, doesn't mean that your experience is.

The "Bad Usability Calendar" reminded me that it's just as important to look at mistakes as it is best practices. Here's a couple resources you and your team can use immediately to avoid common user interface pitfalls.