We dedicated part of this months meeting to talking about tools, software, templates, and any other things we have found which are interesting.
{snippet phil} suggested use cases for the following browser add ons:
- Imacros
- Can be used to automate a great many tasks
- Solenium
Phil also shows us the YooTheme, Joy template. The overall findings were as follows.
- Nice pictures.
- Works quite well.
We then had a discussion on the Burger menu usage
- Phil likes the off canvas burger menu on desktop.
- Eoin thinks it is a huge UX problem as nobody will know the search & social buttons are in that area.
- Phil pointed out that it works correctly on mobile and tablet. Obviously that area could be use for any module in your own design.
Phil showed a website called screentime.parsnip.io
- They provide a plugin that means you cannot move down the screen unless you have spent enough time reading it.
- This is useful because of a new law regarding advertising. You now have to prove that someone has seen the advert in order to charge for the impression. Thus, it needs to be on screen for a set amount of time (2 seconds).
- Screentime.parsnip.io have created free plugins which can tell you whether people have scrolled on your page, and how long people have been on each section.
- The discussion moved on to which products already exist to measure this type of behaviour, although measuring alone would not meet the requirements of the new law.
- An alternative is Hot Jar, which has a free version. You can see heat maps of where people have viewed, unlike Google heat maps which only shows where people have clicked. hotjar.com is free up to 2000 page views per day.