How to Modify Your Domain Name at Domain Registry Malaysia

Back in January, Domain Registry Malaysia (formerly MYNIC) decided to introduce a new system for domain name owners to have better management of their domain name.

The new system was integrated but there’s a major problem now. They’ve changed the only known way by domain name owners to update their domain name information. I know this because my friend; Alvin, said:

Haha… its in the main left column INSIDE the Flash banner…

That was the only known way. However, I finally found at the corner of my eye, how to modify my domain name at the Domain Registry Malaysia – that’s a mouthful.

Step 1: Look for the Login Button

Someone must have thought an orange button would’ve been good enough. Well, it isn’t. Because I’d say it’s the most important part for the website followed by the domain name checker and whois.

Step 2: Enter User ID and Password

There’s a minor change here as well. It’s no longer called User ID but username. When MYNIC sends the details of newly registered domain names via email, it’s always User ID and not username. So better inform your clients about this.

Step 3: Enter the Contact Code

Seriously, I wonder if managing a .US is as cumbersome as this. Because a client’s first comment would go, what’s a contact code?

And there’s another interface design flaw here. You need to click on the magnifying glass icon to popup a window to start searching for the required contact code. This is a flaw because the first step in this process is you need to click on the icon first. Now, it’s placed at the end of the field like an action to perform AFTER you filled the field. And by the way, look out for the popup window in case your blocker is switched on. But if you already know it, great! You’ll save a lot of time, trust me.

Step 4: Start trying to search

In the popup window, there are several ways for you to search. From my experience, it was best to search using the first and last name. I tried using the domain name option, it works only sometimes. And the organization option is quite hopeless, I tried searching Simpleet or Exabytes and it had no records.

So best advice I have for you, store your contact codes in a document for better reference.

Step 5: Select the Contact Code

Once you’ve finally found your Contact Code, select it from the list. Now, you can proceed with logging into the system.

Step 6: You are in!

After going through all that, you will finally be logged in. It’s not a looker but I’ll say the system upgrade to finally be able to manage these details is welcomed. Not to mention, they now have a logout link. Yes, they didn’t have that previously.

So, I hope this mini guide helps you and maybe your clients out. And, do read my website review when they launched their new website earlier in 2008. I think the company who did it weren’t very happy with what I found.

My Breadcrumb Navigation Design Principles

Hansel and Gretel escaped the forest by retracing their steps from the breadcrumbs laid by Hansel. Though Wikipedia’s version tells Hansel left a trail of pebbles.

Anyway, the trail is identified as the breadcrumb navigation in website design. In a website with a deep menu structure, you’ll find a navigation which looks similar to this:

You are here: Home > Products > Kitchen > Microwave >  Model

This is the most common breadcrumb navigation. Personally, the design criteria for this navigation is to:

• Tell the user it’s a breadcrumb. Normally by the “you are here”.
• Differentiate the webpage you’re on from the trail you used.

In addition, here are my other principles to breadcrumb navigation design.

Unobtrusiveness

The breadcrumb navigation is most commonly located directly beneath the main navigation. Otherwise, directly above the primary content of the website. A breadcrumb navigation is not a replacement of the main navigation but a complimentary navigation.

Readability

I grew from using a minimum typeface size of 11px to 14px (if possible). The only time I used a 10px typeface size is when I’m forced to or the content presented is of no real importance – copyright information. However, I’d avoid using a 10px size for the breadcrumb whenever possible.

Strong Contrast

I’d say this is one of the difficult ones to achieve. Being designers, we end up busy sprucing up the rest of the website, we’d have a tough time trying to make the link colors and activated text color stand out in the breadcrumb navigation. Look at NASA’s website.

Their primary navigation link color and the activated text color of the breadcrumb navigation ended in collision. Oh well.

Other than breadcrumb as a navigation, folks of Delicious applied the breadcrumb concept to a tag filter. Neat.

But before I conclude this article, I personally think slahes (“/”) are not ideal for breadcrumb navigation because they can be easily misinterpreted as divisions and choice (“or”) statements.

Well, these are just my principles when designing a breadcrumb navigation.

P.S.: This article was inspired by Smashing Magazine’s Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices.

Good or Bad: Facebook Acquired Malaysia Octazen Solution

Few days ago, I caught word from Chee Aun on Twitter that Facebook acquired a Malaysian company; Octazen Solution.

I’m always very excited and curious whenever I hear an acquisition of a Malaysian company by an international entity. To me, this represents our potential and richness of hidden talent in Malaysia.

And it was a Facebook acquisition!

If you’re in the web industry, you won’t let this slide by you. Because Facebook has become a multi-billion business, you’d be more curious than the cat. And so I purred.

But was it for good or bad?

The discussion of the acquisition at TechCrunch is very interesting. Octazen customers and industry players have come forth saying they (Octazen) are an information scraping company.

This now has many questioning if Facebook acquired the small company for its talents (owners) for the good or other reasons.

What will Facebook do with all that data?

Is the phrase; world domination, included in their plans. Or, even more optimistic, to overrule Google itself?

Well, we can only wait and see now.

WordPress 2.9.2 Not a Major Upgrade

I just found out WordPress released a mini upgrade to its current version; 2.9.1. However, there really is nothing major and to be worried about, if you’re wondering – unless, you run a multi-author blog.

Looking Into Other People’s Trash

Thomas Mackenzie alerted us to a problem where logged in users can peek at trashed posts belonging to other authors. If you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash, you should…

Source: WordPress

As the WordPress team shared, unless you’re worried about your content being exposed by other authors whom you thought you could trust, it’s best you upgrade.

But if you’re the only author of your blog, then there is nothing to fret.

How to Lead The Eye in Website Design

In website design now, I always say it’s not only aesthetics but how website designers should communicate their design to the objective(s) of the website or webpage.

Recently, Firebug had a website redesign. From that, I’m taking away and sharing with you my observation; how a subtle design led my eye.

Sunken Arrows

Besides the huge bug and red button, your eyes would naturally fall to the benefit columns. However, before reaching the 1st item of each column there’s a subtle sunken arrow.

These arrows are subconscious pointers to lead your eye to these columns. Instead of boxing content up, the designer gave more free space around the content but used the sunken arrows to make sure you read this content.

Design with Reason

In college and university, designers are asked to prepare rationales of their concepts. Same thing here, almost. Only here, your website design is taken to another level considered how a user will interact with your design.