Articles — Cornae

Dealing with Labels by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — February 1, 2009

As suggested in the article Form Follows Function and Achieving Thereof, every input element on a form should ideally have a label. Labels give more meaning to input elements and makes them accessible. This article dives into dealing with labels and input fields for postal addresses on forms.

Form follows function and achieving thereof by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — February 1, 2009

Forms can be dreadfully tricky to style and structure properly. Several articles that are out there focus on best practises for building forms using HTML en CSS. This article focusses in a non technical fashion on the use of meaningful nomenclature and how form semantics relate to elements that current markup standards have to offer. It may help you recognise structural patterns and to compose forms properly.

Gregorian date input diversity by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — February 1, 2009

One of the most common interaction patterns one can find on forms is the date input group. They appear in all shapes and sizes in various applications and sign up forms on websites. Certain forms of appearance seem to be more popular in certain geographical areas than other. But other than that it is hard to find any pattern or rationale why one website has chosen for model X while the other has chosen model Y. The suspicion would rise that the date input method is often dictated by the way the backend would 'like' it. This is a situation which neither we, as interaction designers and consultants, nor the end user should settle for.

AJAX and the Old World by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — November 19, 2006

Most of us know that HTML was designed in such a way that it would enable one to (single) click on certain underlined words in a text, that would link to another page. Initially, these hyperlinks were the only clickable items on web pages. Soon enough, besides using hyperlinks in an inline fashion, they would be grouped on pages so they would form a menu which would help people to navigate between pages that belonged to a certain group of pages. The web site was born.

Today, complex layout methods have made it possible to borrow from interaction patterns of desktop applications, including drop down menu bars, expanding trees and tabs. It's this exact inevitable shift of desktop application design patterns to the page metaphor that has more than often led to confusion amongst both web designers and end users. In this era of AJAX and RIAs, the possibilities for user interface designers have become infinite. Hence the question arises: Have all of these developments actually led to an improved user experience?

The ugly duckling by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — September 25, 2005

In the beginning there was the internet. It was formless and empty and information was hovering on the lines. Then the web was created, to give house to the information. Then there was HTML. It gave structure to the information and the people saw that it was good.

Multi-lingual websites: A different approach by Cornelis G .A. Kolbach — July 7, 2005

Once upon a time the world was a well defined, less complicated place than it is today. The Italians lived on a pasta diet, only Japanese people drank sake and the Friesians only spoke Frysk. But things have moved on from here.

Creating Dynamic Pie Graphs Using CSS by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — December 23, 2005

After all the positive responses to my article on creating dynamic column graphs using CSS, I decided to go one step further and publish a method to create dynamic 3-dimensional pie graphs, again based CSS and XHTML.

Creating Dynamic Column Graphs Using CSS by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — June 27, 2005

An article on producing dynamic, graphically rich column graphs, using structural xHTML and CSS.

The Structure of xHTML by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — June 16, 2005

A concise manual for building a basic XHMTL document.

Anatomy of a (Web) Document by Cornelis G. A. Kolbach — June 16, 2005

An essay on the usage of (x)HTML and the application of the Document Object Model (DOM).