My Portal Project

When I was talking about the org chart I only mentioned Java, Flash, and CSS/DHTML. I had totally forgotten about VML and SVG. Both are client side graphic rendering languages and given an XML stream of hierarchical organization info, could create an excellent org chart.

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Another popular portal application I have seen is weather information. Not only current conditions, but forecasts too. Now weather.com offers a JavaScript solution where you can place a predesigned block on your portal with current and forecast conditions, but this has two drawbacks.

First, the script is executed every time the wrapper page realods. This adds an enormous load to your network and will most likely get your network admins on your back. Second drawback is since it is an external resource, all users need internet access. Far be it from me to judge, but there are still ALOT of archaic organizations out there that give internet access to a very small user population. Even some content filters, like WebSense, will block weather sites (no idea why).

Here is a better way; get some use from those tax dollars you pay uncle sam and use the free weather service provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, pronounced like Noah).

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In a previous post I detailed the Top Ten Intranet Portal applications as defined by the Nielson Norman Group. One of these apps is the corporate organization chart.

We are all familiar with the traditional org chart printed from Powerpoint for some executive cabinet meeting, and we are all familiar with why these are not appropriate for corporate portals: These charts change constantly, and static/old content in a portal prevents users from returning, and that is a slow death for a portal.

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As part of the greater strategy of portal implementation, one must always have an eye on portal performance. Poorly designed portlets, or portlets with slow response time will quickly slow down not only a single page, but the entire portal.

With the idea of not to migrate applications to the portals native language, but to have the portal interact with remote applications via XML, comes the prospect of using AJAX technologies to allow a user to interact with an application without posting/getting pages to the portal server over and over.

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Something that a recent meeting brought back from the recesses of my mind was another of Jakob Nielson’s newsletters called “The top ten mistakes in web design“. Alot of designers out there are in need of help like this. Rule of thumb: just because you can, does not mean you should.

The NNg has an interesting report out that highlights some of the pitfalls and planning points that a company should know when creating a portal. An interesting section was which apps/tools were common in succesful portals. Some of these are a little vague, but nonetheless they point out that the old “HR Forms/About Us” portals are dead (thank goodness).

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Jakob Nielson, of the Nielson Norman group, recently sent out an interesting newsletter where he highlighted the similarities in almost every successful portal home page. The image below is a composite of ten portal/intranet home pages where the similarities are striking

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