You may have noticed that there haven’t been so many updates lately. I am so busy, I simply don’t find time anymore to dedicate to Core.

Since March 1, 2010, I am working for TBWA\ZURICH, a Swiss division of TBWA International, which is part of the Omnicom Group. Aside of daily business and client projects, I am in the process of rebuilding the Online team, which all in all is a time consuming process.

Tumblr has been my rescue. Because I simply haven’t got the time to write long articles, I sometimes jot down a few thoughts, bring them in shape and post them. This whole process doesn’t take up more than five to ten minutes. A great side effect is, the shorter format forces me to keep my thoughts concise and crisp.

My thoughts on the state of advertising is a first example of this new style.

You should add it to your news reader.

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d see that day when Apple surpasses Microsoft in market capitalization. Of course, measured by how many operating systems are being sold, Microsoft is still leading. But in terms of market value, Apple has now become the biggest tech company in the world.

A bit scary, so much success. Is there a break? Apple’s success may increase, but alongside I see an image problem arising, with Apple’s attitude and an incapability to grasp people’s interests. Apple has clearly reached that point where it has the power to decide to become the next Microsoft — with all bad karma included — or to clean up its strategic orientation and figure out how to work with people’s interests.

For a while I had to close down commenting on Core Theory. The amount of spam was jumping over the edge of 2000 items a day. As of today, comments are open again, simply because I believe that interaction and discussion are active and essential elements of a blog.

I know, given his god like authority in the area of Web usability, it’s almost blasphemy to disagree with Jacob Nielsen. His Alert Box is certainly one of the best sources for usability questions and answers, and his research results are invaluable when it comes to the evolution from Web sites to Web applications.

I find Nielsen’s research results interesting and I agree to 99% with his conclusions. However, that is not always the case, especially when it comes to jumping to conclusions based on raw viewer data, such as the results for “how many users tend to look at this part of the screen”.

This gathered data may be correctly reflect user behavior on tested Web sites, but then again it also depends on what these Web sites were about. Where they news pages? Blogs or magazines? Corporate Web portals? Intranet solutions? And how does this affect the trend of Web apps, which are more and more replacing “regular” Web sites?

In a recent article called Horizontal Attention Leans Left, Nielsen presents data that clearly shows a tendency towards left of the middle, inside a regular browser window (I assume it was tested on standard 1024 pixels width resolution).

Nielsen concludes, that because the user’s attention leans towards the left area of the screen, it means that navigation side bars should always be placed on the left side of the screen. I value his observation, but I fully disagree with his conclusion.

The data shows that the highest peak of attention starts around the 400 pixels area, counted from the left side. That is where the content of a regular blog or magazine starts. That is where most pages have main content. Sure, there are still quite high bars even further to the left side, around the 100 pixel area. Now, it may be true this is a result of links or navigation elements placed next to the main content on the left side. But does it mean that all navigation systems need to adopt this behavior?

Clever enough, Nielsen points out the correlation between user behavior and existing layout patterns. That may be the case, but I question his conclusion for various reasons.

For one, Web applications require more action and interaction than regular presentation Web sites. The majority of people is using a mouse with their right hand. Even with an iPad they are probably using their right hand more than their left hand. And even if all that is not the case — the right side is still second in order to the main content.

Why put something above the main content in hierarchy, when content today is the main driver of interaction? Thinking in left-sided navigation bars is retrospective Web design, it isn’t fit for modern Web applications.

Since last night, the amount of spam registered on this Web site has increased by 2000%. Because of these circumstances, I have closed the option to leave comments.

If you would like to leave a comment for an article, please e-mail me your note and I will add the comment manually. This is a temporary solution until I have figured out a better way.