When I first discovered The Daily Beast, what struck me was the lack of banner advertisements and corporate sponsorship. How can an online content pubisher survive without any obvious way to monetize its content? (more…)

My excitement about ELMER 2: Simplified Form Design (PDF – 1 MB) may be due to my Scandinavian roots. But it is probably more likely attributable to the fact that I am a total geek when it comes to documentation. The Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry has written remarkable guidelines on designing simplified web forms. If I’d had something like this when I started out, it would have been my secret weapon.

This document is a very tight example of design documentation. *begin nerd voice* The guidelines are in a tabular format with cross references and clear examples. It also has a glossary of terms used in the document like “inline error” and “standardized text.”
*/end nerd voice*

And don’t forget, as the document footer says… “In case of discrepency, the Norwegian version prevails.” Yahr!