naked capitalism Web Usability

The use of the screen real estate is good. When the page loads (on my small screen) I don’t see any article without scrolling down. There is an advertisement running below the title. Even though I couldn’t see the top article immediately off the bat, I get the list of the most recent items as well as a search tab. I thought it was a great use of space since I usually don’t get any content at all unless I scroll down. The rest of the blog does not use 80% for content, but it looks like it might be 50%.

The font is easy to read. It is good as is, but any user can raise the font size if they need to.

I used a laptop running through the wireless network in Sac State, so it is not unusual to see that the page loaded incredibly fast. I’m sure that even with slower internet speeds, the page would load quickly because the blog does not have complicated graphics.

There are no ALT text attributions as the photos used on the blog are often completely unrelated to the news or topics.

Yves Smith’s blog specializes in links. The links stands out from the rest of the text because of its dark orange color. Smith would link her sources before citing it whenever she can. The sources that she cites are often on the web and they would be linked at the end of the article. There are plenty of useful links at the end of the post under the label “More on this topic.” On the left panel, there are plenty of links to other news sources and blogs that Yves Smith recommends.

The blog is separated in two frames. On the left, there are the content, and on the right, there are the linked tabs. The tabs include links to other blogs and news sources, topics, contributors and others. The blog is very straightforward.

The top story was “Sorkin v. Stumpf on Wachovia Loan Losses.” The post that I analyzed last time had considerable explanation after citing their source. This time Smith simply throws out words from someone else who says that Wachovia is in big trouble and then a table with numbers on Wachovia’s loans. There are no explanations of what this all means. There is even a commenter who expressed that he/she does not know what it meant because he/she knows very little about banking. Even if the blog is aimed at people who know a few things about banking, the topic itself is complex; there should have been at least a little bit of explanation.