ReadWriteWeb

My friend and colleague Esther Schindler has written a wonderful post over on SoftwareQuality Connection about encouraging user-centric design. The only trouble is figuring out the right set of users that your software is designed for. Put another way, this is the classic programming problem: the person who hires you (or who sets up the job) isn't the ultimate end-user audience for the actual program.

Metro Dynamis is an early alpha release library based on JQuery for designers and developers wishing to build HTML5/CSS/JavaScript websites in a style similar to the Metro UI used by Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. You can get an early look at it by signing up for the newsletter.

Meanwhile, some members of the Microsoft Platform and Tools team, spearheaded by Mads Kristensen, has released a package that adds improved support for HTML5 within Visual Studio.

French startup Pearltrees offers a very unique interface for organizing and sharing collections of links from around the web. Tomorrow the company will release a new, faster version of its application and announce that it has passed 2 million links curated in 7 months since going live. That means an average of 10,000 links have been bookmarked in Pearltrees every day since launch, and presumably many more now that the site has grown.

Last month the company announced that it raised $1.6 million in venture funding. I love what Pearltrees is trying to do, most people I talk to love the idea, and it's good to hear the service is getting so much traction. I'm waiting until the promised iPad version comes out before getting too excited about it.

For most startups in the early-stages of development, much of the building process includes repetitions of prototyping, testing, receiving feedback and iterating the product several times over. The toughest part of this process isn't building or making changes, it's getting that valuable feedback on where your product could be improved. Concept Feedback, a simply named online service, wants to help your startup with constructive criticism from its quickly growing community of over 5,000 designers, developers, marketers and entrepreneurs.

We've talked a lot on ReadWriteStart about how design is an important facet of the development of a web applications for startups. Last week we provided some advice on how to deal with irate customers who hate your design changes, and earlier this month we talked about how small design tweaks can have big impacts of the use of your site.

Earlier today, we had a runaway hit of a post that went viral within a few hours, getting unbelievable pageviews and hundreds of retweets and comments.

The trouble was, it wasn't because of the post's content. Due to some interesting SEO magic, the post was one of the first search results for the term "Facebook login." As a result, hundreds of confused readers bombed us with angry comments about how much they hated the "new Facebook," a.k.a. our Facebook Connect comment login.

How can we balance making the Web simple enough for all users while still creating tech cool enough to satisfy geeks like us? And who says either group - nerds or users - is "normal," anyway?

When you run a community site, your registration and minimum profile requirements are like the front porch to your home. As technology bloggers we trick-or-treat to at least a dozen sites per day and when you make your porch scary, we'd just as soon skip your house. If I make it past 10 minutes of forms and service terms only to find you've got toothbrushes and raisins for me, I'm going to be pissed off. If you're looking at redesigning your site, below are 6 points to consider.

Some LinkedIn users will have noticed a change to the navigation and user interface of the LinkedIn.com website, announces a company blog post. The business-focused social network is in the process of rolling out an updated design that aims to improve and simplify site navigation while also offering a cleaner, less-cluttered look. Does the fresh coat of paint hit the mark?

Starting today, social bookmarking service StumbleUpon is allowing users to beta test a shiny, happy redesign of their site.

The new interface is streamlined and more social with an updated relationship system. A focus on consistency (e.g., limiting user control of visual elements) and removal of clutter (e.g., presenting tags in a drop-down menu rather than a cloud) characterize the design changes made. Also, a few tweaks to group sharing were made to help reduce share-spam.

Twitter has announced some changes to their follower and following pages interface design and functions.

Now, when web users click to see lists of the people they follow or who follow them, they will see more information than just avatars and usernames. The new, improved pages contain full names, locations, most recent tweets, a one-click follow button, and a drop-down menu of possible actions, including @replies, DMs, and blocking. UPDATE: After a commenter pointed out that scanning for non-following users just became more difficult with the new interface, we would like to point out that there's an app for that. You're welcome. We love you, too.