When implementing a design, a problem I encounter frequently involves floated elements within a container element breaking the borders of their container. This occurs often in lists of articles or documents that have thumbnail images floated next to their title and description, but the issue can crop up anywhere that you use floats. The following CSS and HTML is an example of this problem.

Last week I was enjoying coffee with a colleague downtown and he was talking about starting a local UX book club. Seemingly, out of nowhere this became a world wide initiative via discussion posts on IxDA.org

Have you join a UX book club in your area?

A co-worker recently attended a conference and noted that several speakers talked about the importance of sitemaps to SEO. He also said that a few of these speakers also recommended "fat footers" that contain a partial site map at the bottom of each page.

I just received this same advice from Whitney Hess via Twitter who was relaying advice from Smart Experience's Web Navigation Design presented by James Kalbach:

A perfect example of data that is beautiful, interactive, and informative. It's a simple idea. Measure the air quality. Launch a gigantic balloon that's color indicates the quality (red=bad, green=good). Let tourists go for a ride.

In 2003, Jakob Nielsen reported that, on average, a usability redesign could increase desired metrics by 135% (based on a study of 42 site redesigns). Fast forward to 2008, Jakob reports in a similar study that gains have dropped to 83%. Why? Usability has become a standard online, making the possible impact smaller than 5 years ago. And it seems that usability budgets have not increased.

Seems like you can't forget a holiday if you're on the internet.