June 17, 2015 / by Evan Kirkwood / Uncategorized / 0 comments
On a recent responsive website project, we encountered some puzzling behaviour in Safari on OS X and iOS when making asynchronous JavaScript requests to a web service. When navigating forward to a page (i.e. from the navigation menu, a hyperlink, or even entering the URL directly in the browser) things worked as expected. However, going back […]
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Blog posts and articles from Arter Kirkwood & Associates, a mobile app development company based in Alberta, Canada. Read the insights and findings from our top authors below. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like us to write on a particular topic.
Safari back button and web service response behaviour
June 17, 2015 / by Evan Kirkwood / Uncategorized / 0 comments
On a recent responsive website project, we encountered some puzzling behaviour in Safari on OS X and iOS when making asynchronous JavaScript requests to a web service. When navigating forward to a page (i.e. from the navigation menu, a hyperlink, or even entering the URL directly in the browser) things worked as expected. However, going back […]
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Recent search ranking changes highlight importance of mobile
May 31, 2015 / by Evan Kirkwood / Uncategorized / 0 comments
Google’s search ranking update released on April 21 was heralded by many as “Mobilegeddon,” a change to their ranking algorithm that would favour mobile-friendliness, and mark the beginning of the end for search ranking of non-mobile optimized sites. Many pictured prominent web properties disappearing from search results on mobile devices. And not long after Google […]
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When Not to Do It Yourself (DIY)…Iconography
May 18, 2015 / by Rick Arter / Uncategorized / 0 comments
Developing a custom mobile App for your business need not involve developing literally everything from scratch. This is particularly true of icons. Many get caught up in creative design that they unknowingly (or knowingly) bleed into designing their own icons. Not only is this time consuming but also potentially wasteful, particularly when those custom icons […]
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Maintaining a focus on the look and feel of content
April 21, 2015 / by Rick Arter / Uncategorized / 0 comments
The creation, publishing and ongoing governance of content is an extremely important component of user experience (UX) design. Not only from an editorial standpoint but also from a visual and interaction design standpoint. Often, editorial dominates the governance agenda once content has been created and published. The governance of the look and feel of that […]
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Enhancing features for mobile with JavaScript
March 31, 2015 / by Evan Kirkwood / Uncategorized / 0 comments
Sometimes specific features and capabilities must be targeted to types of devices for optimal user experience. Progressive enhancement – starting from a basic, widely compatible set of functionality and enhancing it as supported by the current device – is something that’s usually thought of for progressively larger client devices. A common approach to designing with […]
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Sprint Retrospectives: making them impactful and meaningful
March 17, 2015 / by Rick Arter / Uncategorized / 0 comments
I’m stating the obvious when I say the first step to making Sprint Retrospectives impactful and meaningful is holding them in the first place. Many projects go straight from Sprint Review to Sprint Planning for the next Sprint (undertaking release activities in between, aside). Sprint Retrospectives seem to be ‘one of those things’ often forgotten […]
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Tools for building Hybrid Apps
March 5, 2015 / by Evan Kirkwood / Uncategorized / 0 comments
Building hybrid apps is easier with the right set of development tools. Hybrid apps provide a greater range of capability than is possible through a mobile browser alone. And while the features and user interaction may be more limited than with native apps, the board platform reach that hybrid apps offer may provide significant business […]
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Keep moving! …Iterating to results through an effective time box process
February 15, 2015 / by Rick Arter / Uncategorized / 0 comments
Process is part of any endeavour, whether conscious or not. The key is to navigate those processes and steps as effortlessly and efficiently as possible to achieve a goal or benefit. Lumbering through or lingering around process steps, or worse yet, stopping at them, delays the goal and intended benefits. Those delays can be disastrous. […]
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Touch-friendly menu navigation on the web
February 5, 2015 / by Evan Kirkwood / Uncategorized / 0 comments
Designing website navigation that will work on touch devices can be a challenge. A very common approach for desktop use is some sort of fly out menu – hovering the mouse over a navigation category causes a sub-menu of items within that category appears. Clicking on the category may navigate to a category landing page. […]
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Never too late for user research and usability testing
January 2, 2015 / by Rick Arter / Uncategorized / 0 comments
We’ve heard countless times from those in the user experience (UX) community dreading that call from nervous managers seeking assurance that the App they have laboured over and is near ready for release will in fact be useful and useable. Understandably, by then it’s generally considered to be too late. UX considerations should play a […]
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