I will be re-designing a site in the next week or so, the SuperbHosting.net and HopOne.net sites are being updated, and shortly thereafter, we’ll be looking at doing a major update to the control panel used for dedicated and shared hosting customers, as well. I was doing a bit of poking around, and I came across an article from April 2006 about designing user interfaces - Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives, by Joel Spolsky. It starts off:

When you design user interfaces, it’s a good idea to keep two principles in mind:

1. Users don’t have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn’t read it.
2. In fact, users can’t read anything, and if they could, they wouldn’t want to.

These are not, strictly speaking, facts, but you should act as if they are facts, for it will make your program easier and friendlier.

The article raises some interesting points about taking a minimlist approach to design, and how that improves usability. It’s actually a great look at some of the common mistakes people make when designing and documenting their products and applications, and the author is quite blunt in his delivery. A good read for those who might want some tips, and a little humerous for those already in the know.

Everywhere I seem to look the last few days, security seems to be a major topic; I briefly read over the headlines from my Computerworld newsletter and Microsoft is patching a ’super nasty’ bug. I open up the daily 24hours newspaper, and a Virus has taken control of the Vancouver school board computers, resulting in a near lockdown of the entire system as technicians scramble to isolate and remove the infection. Even Paris Hilton’s website has been hacked and used to serve a malicious Trojan program.

It’s almost impossible to completely secure your site and/or applications, and it will almost always be a game of catch-up for those trying to prevent these attacks, but its important for users and programmers/developers to take the steps they can take to help prevent or limit their vulnerabilities. In line with that, the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE), a community-developed dictionary of software weakness types, has released the top 25 most dangerous programming errors for 2009. Touted as a tool for educating and helping to eliminate common mistakes, the list can be used by developers, project managers, and CIOs as a measuring stick to gauge efforts in securing software and applications.

One of the toughest searches seems to be for good icons. It’s usually easy to find standard icons, but to find a larger or broader set of icons to be used throughout a site or to find an icon set with a specific look and feel can be a bit more difficult. I’ve scoured some of the usual suspects for icons, like Smashing Magazine or famfamfam, both of which are great resources, but today I saw an article for the 50 Most Beautiful Icon Sets Created in 2008. It’s a great package of icon sets that can come in handy for designers and developers alike.

Couple other links from PSDTUTS that are worth mentioning (should’ve caught these last week, but c’est la vie!):

Best of the Web - November 2008: From custom brushes and fonts to tutorials on effects and finding inspiration, a great collection of design resources. Interested in the Slow Motion Bullet photoshop tutorial - just seems really cool!

Best of TUTS - November 2008: Web development screencasts (who wants to look at code when they’re coding?!), 10 CSS mistakes to avoid, and a collection of must-read web development books.