Vancouver web designs Guidelines for Web Applications

'HTML and JavaScript are the real web platform'

2009-08-12T01:56:00.000-07:00

By Jeffrey Zeldman, godfather of web standards

One of Jeffrey Zeldman's biggest passions is web standards. Here, Zeldman, co-founder of the Web Standards Project and founder of Happy Cog offers his take on the current situation:

"For a long time, browsers have been becoming more and more compliant with CSS2, HTML, XHTML, JavaScript and ActionScript. So in one sense, time has been standing still since about 2000 and there have just been incremental upgrades to these browser brands. But I think acceptance of standards has been growing all this time.

"A few days ago I validated the top 100 United States websites according to Alexa and I think seven were valid. But if you look under the hood, there were almost no table layers or anything like that. There was a standards awareness even among the sites that had problems. It's just become normal among many developers and designers. They understand that markup is supposed to be semantic. And there's growing interest in microformats and curiosity about HTML5. Things are happening."

Zeldman, who co-founded the Web Standards Project in 1998, admits that HTML5 is surrounded by a lot of unrest. Many standardistas are worried about the direction it's going in, but he thinks the overall picture isn't actually that bad.

"Among the vanguard of people such as Eric Meyer and John Allsop of Web Directions North there is a frustration that things are moving slowly and they're not sure if the direction we're moving in is good. But I think the larger community, people who use Dreamweaver or just do table-based design, have started thinking about the semantics of their markup and about optimising CSS. All the frameworks that have come out are helping to get acceptance of CSS."

Keeping it simple

There's still a lot of work to be done to improve web standards, of course. Zeldman points out that the understanding isn't always there and some people think it's a good CSS layout if you use a bunch of divs with no semantic markup. Overall, he wants things to be much simpler.

"I'd like to be able to design as easily as if I was using Photoshop," he explains. "I'd like to be able to create a multicolumn layout and control source order without having to do advanced mathematics or hire Eric Meyer or Dan Cederholm to figure out the CSS because I can't. I'd also like to be able to embed fonts via @font-face as a law-abiding owner of a font. I'd like to be able to buy Franklin Gothic and use it for all the headlines on my website and not have a user able to easily pirate it, or the ITC coming after me for violating its copyright. But right now I can't use typefaces that designers have been using for hundreds of years."

The world of standards certainly can be confusing, but Zeldman doesn't see it as a huge problem that there are currently many different guidelines to web standards (he says that if you pick one and adhere to it, you're doing a good thing).

"A bigger problem than multiple standards is the lack of clarity in those standards. Accessibility is like usability or even the aesthetics of design. Two designers look at a design and have three opinions about it. Validation is easy – you run your site through a validator and it's either valid or it isn't. The rest of the stuff, such as whether my logo or the biggest headline should be the h1 in my HTML, isn't so easy and is subject to interpretation. We have arguments about all this stuff. Sometimes it's silly how many arguments we have about it, but I think there's a greater good to the fact that we're having these discussions."

The greater good might be that everything Zeldman uses on the web has now been designed with web standards, which makes him very happy. "I'm not against Flash and I love the work that people such as Joshua Davis do," he explains.

"It's brilliant, but I've always been in this other area of web development that I thought was probably better for most content. There was a point in the 90s when I felt like a sucker for doing HTML and CSS and telling people about this stuff. I looked at all these people who had pure typographic control and could do animation, all this great, fun stuff, and I was this jackass saying 'No, we should use HTML'. I felt like a loser, but we won – HTML has won.

"That's the amazing thing for me. People use Flash for film and they use it for what Daniel Mall calls 'the experience layer' as part of a standards-based site. So there are uses for Flash, but basically HTML, CSS and JavaScript have become the real platform of the web now. I feel very heartened by that; it's the thing that makes me the happiest. Even if it's not always the best markup, what are Facebook and Twitter? They're web standards with some scripts. They may not validate, but they're still CSS layouts and simple markup, and that's great!"

Surviving the crunch

Jeffrey Zeldman founded Happy Cog, initially as a one-man business, at the beginning of 2000 in New York, when the bubble began to burst. Companies were wiped out and the economy was devastated, but Zeldman kept working. He says this downturn is like nothing he's seen before and he knows plenty of web designers who are worried about losing their jobs, but there are also lots of things you can do to survive.

"You have to provide good value," he says. "If you're ethical, do a good job and become known for that, you'll get more work. Don't underprice your services. You don't have to take a job because it's from the first person who comes in. Otherwise you're going to be working on a project for three months, maybe six months and you'll be miserable. Just because the economy is bad, it doesn't mean you have to be unhappy. And you have to court clients more and communicate honestly and regularly with them.

"Those days when you never met the client might be over. And a final piece of advice: do cool free stuff that doesn't make you any money. It will totally grow your brand and get you clients. Putting yourself out there with your writing or your design (especially if you're a quiet, socially shy nerd who doesn't like going out and socialising at parties) will help a lot."

In a way, that's exactly what Zeldman himself did with A List Apart (www.alistapart.com). In 1998 there wasn't an online magazine that talked about web design the way he wanted to read it, so he started one. Now Happy Cog gets clients because someone read a great article on A List Apart that wasn't even written by the agency.

A successful conference, An Event Apart (www.aneventapart. com), developed out of it and will come to four cities in the US this year. Plans to bring the conference to Europe have been put on ice during the recession, but Zeldman vows to revive them next year if the brand lasts.

Also in the pipeline is a web app version of the Web Standards Advisor, which is currently available as a Dreamweaver extension that enables you to validate your HTML, CSS and microformat. "I'm also writing a third edition of Designing with Web Standards, which makes me feel like Al Pacino because they're dragging me back in. But I reread the second edition and realised it was out of date."

It's no surprise that Zeldman compares himself to Pacino; he is the godfather of web standards, after all. And, unlike Pacino, it's a given that he won't stop after three instalments. Designing with web standards has become Zeldman's life story.

[techradar]

PBXT: Your Next MySQL Storage Engine?

2009-08-10T22:53:00.000-07:00

These days InnoDB is the "gold standard" for storage engines in MySQL - both in terms of performance and durability. InnoDB has been around long enough that we kind of take it for granted. It's been years since arguments like "MySQL doesn't even have real transactions!" held any water. While I've written about some of InnoDB's shortcomings, the reality is that it works remarkably well for the vast majority of users. And InnoDB's early design was modeled after Oracle, so its success is hardly shocking.

But can we do better? What if someone decided to build a new transactional storage engine from the ground up, using the lessons learned from InnoDB (and other databases) over the last decade and taking modern hardware architecture into account?

That's exactly what Primebase Technologies is doing with PBXT.

PrimeBase XT (PBXT) is a pluggable, transactional storage engine for MySQL. It uses a unique "write-once", log-based update strategy and MVCC (multi-version concurrency control) to provide optimal performance over a wide range of tasks.

There's a white paper available that describes the basic architecture and design goals of the PBXT engine. Of course, you're welcome to read the whole paper, but I'm going to assume you’re busy and are mainly interested in the highlights and how it differs from InnoDB.

High-Level Similarities and Differences

All of the high-level features we've come to expect from a modern transactional storage engine, like InnoDB, are also present in PBXT:

MVCC: multiple readers and writers, readers do not lock
Transactional: BEGIN, ROLLBACK, and COMMIT
ACID-Compliant: committed data is durable
Row-Level Locking: good concurrency for mixed read/write applications
Deadlock Detection: smart and fast handling of contention
Referential Integrity: foreign keys

In other words, applications designed around InnoDB are likely to work well using PBXT as well. But there are also some noteworthy features that are unique to PBXT.

Write-Once: unlike InooDB, PBXT writes all data to disk a single time (more on this shortly) which means a lot less I/O on write-heavy workloads
BLOB Streaming: using the Primebase Media Streaming (PBMS) add-on, PBXT can efficiently handle streaming of BLOB data to the client without blowing out the main database cache

The similarities between InnoDB and PBXT aren't terribly interesting for most purposes, so let’s dig a little deeper into what’s truly unique to PBXT.

Log-Oriented

The most important design choice that Paul McCullagh (PBXT’s lead developer–see his PBXT blog) made was to use a log-oriented storage system instead of the more traditional tablespaces. I referred to this above as a "write-once" strategy that's different from what InnoDB does. InnoDB writes all changes to a transaction log on disk (as well as the in-memory version of the affected pages from the modified table(s)) and eventually writes those changed pages back out to the tablespace file(s) on disk too.

PBXT does not separate the data storage from the logs. They are one in the same. That leads to some very interesting consequences, some of which are quite beneficial:

Table size is essentially unlimited since filesystem per-file restrictions are not a factor
Logs are written sequentially, so random I/O operations are reduced and you can get more throughput out of your disks
Log entries are written at commit, so there are no "dirty buffers" to manage in the server
Log entries are never updated - an update to a record means writing a new log entry
Rollbacks require no changes to the data (since records are never modified)
Recovery from a crash does not require an extensive replaying of logs, so recovery time is minimal

Now there's a bit more to the picture than this. Logs alone don't provide enough information to represent a table. There actually is a file on disk for each table stored in PBXT. But that file is really just a collection of references to the rows it the table. In PBXT lingo, those references are called "handles" and they act as pointers to the information necessary to construct a given row in a given table-the log entries.

Some of PBXT’s performance comes from the fact that the heavy-duty I/O is all written to log files in serial fashion. The handles are relatively compact in size, so as new row data is written to the logs, updating the handle references is a fairly inexpensive operation.

Early Results

PBXT has been in development for several years and has all the necessary features to put it on par with InnoDB and other engines. Most recent work has been performance optimization and finishing off small bug fixes. That performance work has paid off well. In some benchmarks PBXT performs as well as or even better than InnoDB.

From a stability point of view, PBXT has a growing user base using it for more and more important tasks. That’s the single best endorsement for the stability of any piece of software. I fully expect to see adoption of PBXT really accelerate in the next twelve months. As of this writing, the second PBXT release candidate (RC) is available for testing.

Taking it for a Spin

Testing out PBXT is easy, thanks to MySQL's storage engine architecture. You simply using a pre-compiled binary for your platform or build you own. Binary downloads are available on the PBXT web site and source code is available on Launchpad.

Given the likeliehood of a stable release in the near future, now is a great time to try the PBXT storage engine out for your applications. You may find that it performs and fits your needs very well.

PBXT is also available in MariaDB and Drizzle.

[linux-mag]

Better design produces love at first site

2009-08-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

A user-friendly interface can keep people on your page for longer, writes Greg Muller.

Website design is more than animated spinning logos, embarrassing soundtracks and an inappropriate use of scrolling marquees and blinking text.

The speed at which technology has evolved has been extraordinary and it's vital for small businesses to understand the key elements of modern design.

A website with a great design can provide a key competitive advantage. This can lead to new business and even provide an opening to tap into new markets that might not have been possible otherwise. A great website design never comes in a "one size fits all" solution.

But what makes a design successful? The answer comes in two parts.

Fit for purpose

Even the most visually impressive, innovative and over-the-top websites usually fail for one main reason: they rarely meet the needs of their users. Ultimately, if the user doesn't see the value in a website, finds it hard to navigate, becomes confused with content or just generally dislikes the colour palette, they'll switch off and, chances are, go somewhere else. On average, users take less than a third of a second to judge a website.

If you were to build a small grocery store on one of the busiest main streets in the city, you wouldn't think twice about investing a small fortune to get the layout of the shop floor just right, ensuring all the products on sale were strategically placed to maximise their sales potential. You can do the same with websites – and it's called fit-for-purpose design.

Accessibility

Ask any Apple Mac user why they love their Mac and I guarantee the majority of the answers will be about the experience of using it. Very few companies can get this right but, when they do, the pay-off can be enormous.

There is a social and sometimes legal responsibility to make websites accessible. This refers to websites that can be navigated and read by everyone, regardless of disability, location, experience or technology.

The key ingredient to getting that experience right is to make sure the product connects to its users. Many people tend to think modifications to design should be based on feedback you gather once a website has gone live. Making modifications and tweaks to the designs based on testing feedback is much easier and more cost-effective to do before the website has launched.

This should not, however, deter the owners of existing websites from factoring in user testing. Demographics are constantly changing, so the benefits of maintaining user-centred design cannot be overstated. For example, the Office of State Revenue in Queensland had a website that some users dubbed "unappealing".

Through the use of focus groups, a new website was developed that offered unparalleled usability by breaking the visitors into three groups and providing them with navigation features that suited their specific purposes. Since its launch, this user-centric approach has received extremely positive feedback of up to 99 per cent.

It's important for small businesses to make sure their website is designed with the user and user experience in mind. It's equally important to note that every user is different and, as much as we strive to get this magic formula just right, validation tells us so.

Small business owners need to engage their users and provide an environment that not only identifies the business but sets it apart from its competition.

[smh]

Five Web Design No-Nos to Avoid

2009-07-30T03:38:00.000-07:00

Every Web designer starts out with plans to make an effective and enjoyable browsing experience for their site visitors. Unfortunately, the gap between intention and outcome often ends up a lot wider than intended. Simple mistakes can make your Web site an annoying experience for visitors when it should be anything but. Here are the five worst Web design no-nos to avoid at all costs.

1. Slow Loading

Despite the fact that more people have faster Web connections than ever, the problem of slow Web sites hasn't gone away. Many sites are so slow that people who aren't highly motivated to see your site simply give up and go elsewhere.

Typically the culprit is a slow-loading Flash movie or introduction where the designer offers no alternative to waiting for the movie to load. Showing a progress bar isn't enough, because most people simply aren't interested in waiting around for the site to appear. If you use a Flash introduction, make sure to offer an obvious way for visitors to bypass it and go straight to the site.

Test your Web site to see how long it takes before something useful appears on the screen. If it takes more than three to five seconds you run the risk of your visitor losing interest and leaving. This might seem like a short time but people are so accustomed to things happening quickly that even a few seconds waiting for a Web site to load feels like an eternity.

2. Too Much Information

Many people are cautious when it comes to providing personal information over the Internet. If you collect information from visitors, only ask for what you actually need, and don't collect it just for the sake of it.

Also be careful in areas where people may be reluctant to provide their financial or marital status and age. For example, if you need proof that a person is over 18 consider asking to confirm the age by checking a box rather than by asking for a birth date. If you don't have a very good reason to know your customer's marital or financial status, then don't ask.

Be aware that most visitors won’t want to provide a lot of information before they know something about the site. If they are asked to register for a site before they can enter it, many people won't bother. If you think it’s a valid requirement, make sure you explain why, and be sure to provide at least basic information about the site before sign up. If registering is not essential, give them a visible and easy way to bypass the signup form.

The less information you require from people, the more likely they’ll be to sign up for things like e-mail newsletters and to buy from you. On the flip side, the more information you require and the more intrusive the information requests are, the less a visitor will be inclined to provide it.

This site doesn't have a search page, but the site map helps and it's simple to find a way to contact the owners.

Ask for information once, and if they make a mistake and have to go back and fix it, make sure the information is still there. That way, they won’t have to fill out the entire form all over again.

3. Nasty Navigation

Many sites are poorly designed and require people to click through a number of different pages before they get see any product. Worse still, when you finally get to the product pages some sites tell you that there are no products in that category!

If you have only a few products in a particular area of your site, consider aggregating similar products into one category to reduce the number of clicks that people have to make to find them. You should do everything you can to get your products in front of your potential buyers as quickly as possible even if this means showing them a wider range of products in fewer and more widely defined categories.

Check your site hierarchy. If it is deep rather than wide, then your visitors will have to click many times to navigate to the actual content. Consider flattening the structure so you get visitors to where they are going more quickly.

In addition to determining how quickly you get your visitors to your products, check how many times they have to click to finalize the sale. Your site should make it easy to add an item to the shopping cart, you should provide a Continue Shopping button so people can return to the product list easily after selecting an item, and your visitor should be able to go to the shopping cart from anywhere on the site at any time.

Check the steps to finalize the sale and do everything you can do to ensure your visitor's shopping cart converts to a sale. Don't risk losing them by making the process overly complex.

4. Disorganized Information

When you don't put information where people expect it or worse, when you omit it entirely, you annoy and frustrate your users. People expect to see a privacy notice that describes what you do with the information you have collected from them. They expect you to have a contact page where they can ask questions or make complaints. This page should include phone number, a form or an e-mail address. If you don't make the process for contacting you obvious, people will lose faith in your business.

Most people want a visible search tool on every page of a site. Search is a key way many people find information and forcing them to navigate using only menus will frustrate them.

Provide each of these features as links on every page of your site - either as an option in your main navigation system or as a text link at the foot of the page.

5. All Flash and No Substance

This annoying Flash introduction has singing that you can't turn off easily. The browser close button is easier to find than the Skip Intro option.

Some Web sites showcase leading edge Web technologies at the expense of usable content. While there is a place for Flash animations and 3D product renderings don’t provide them at the expense of information that answers basic questions about products.

In addition, these features should not require visitors to download large applications or movies to do something as simple as see the product and its specifications.

Always make sure that your site focuses primarily on providing easy access to the kind of information that visitors need most. Only when you have nailed the basics should you consider adding bells and whistles.

It's easy to think that interactive displays make a site more attractive and that this will attract customers. However, the opposite is true - people return to sites where information is easy to obtain and products easy to purchase. They will bypass difficult-to-use sites that lack basic product information, which is the key to making a buying decision.

None of these peeves are hard to fix or to avoid creating in the first place. However, both you and I know from our online browsing experiences that too many sites make these mistakes every day. The key is to make sure that your site isn’t one of them and that you focus on what your visitors most need when they visit your site. If you focus on this you give yourself the best chance of selling to your visitors and to have them return in future.

[ecommerce-guide]

New web development training course offers new opportunities

2009-07-29T05:31:00.000-07:00

Alaska-Beginning in September, the Alaska Vocational Technical Center (AVTEC) will offer a Web Development Technology program at its Anchorage campus on Muldoon Road.

"AVTEC is responding to a need for more Web specialists for business and industry," AVTEC Director Fred Esposito said. "Individual courses are also available, so the program will also provide the opportunity for Anchorage-area information technology professionals to upgrade their skills." Classes, which will be daily Monday through Friday from 5:30-9:30 p.m., are limited to 16 students.

The program runs Sept. 14 through July 30. Successful completion of the program will earn both an AVTEC Web Developer Certificate and an AVTEC Application Developer Certificate. The cost of the program, including tuition, books and laptop computer is $5,350.

"We are excited about the potential to serve a greater number of students by moving this program to Anchorage," Esposito said. "Employers tell us they need workers with these skills. The training will allow employers to hire locally."

AVTEC offers 16 long-term training programs ranging from six weeks to 11 months and roughly 60 short-term training programs that take from a week to six weeks to complete. Call 800-478-5389 for more information.

[ktva]

BlackBerry dev tools target Eclipse, Visual Studio

2009-07-29T05:29:00.000-07:00

Research In Motion has released new and updated tools for developers who want to build BlackBerry web applications.

The smartphone maker made its first BlackBerry Web Development Plug-In for Eclipse available on Tuesday, along with version 1.2 of its plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio. The tools allow developers to build BlackBerry web applications within the widely used Eclipse and Visual Studio environments.

"The BlackBerry developer tools portfolio aims to bring together the best of Java and web development for the creation of web applications that are integrated with core BlackBerry smartphone functions for a seamless, intuitive and robust user experience," BlackBerry platform group chief Alan Brenner said in a statement.

Both plug-ins include BlackBerry smartphone simulators for application testing, together with application profiling for checking on the data traffic and load time implications of web content used in the applications.

The Eclipse plug-in, which is compatible with version 3.4 of the environment, allows the debugging and profiling of HTML and CSS-using web pages, and of rich internet applications using Ajax, Silverlights, PHP, ASP, Ruby on Rails, JSP and Python.

The new Visual Studio plug-in - the first version of which came out two years ago - targets the 2008 version of that environment, and aids the creation of simple web pages or rich applications using Ajax and ASP.NET.

[zdnet]

Flexing Your .NET 3.5 Skillset

2009-07-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

With the arrival of .NET 3.5, WPF and the RTM of Silverlight 2, .NET developers have more choices than ever for designing, developing and deploying compelling applications with rich user interfaces. However, there are other mainstream alternatives that don't fall into the .NET camp. When it comes to the RIA world, technologies such as Adobe Flex and Flash may seem more foreign to some of us then driving on the left side of the road would be to an American. However, given the need to work on a Flex project, we are actually quite well suited for the transition, more so in many cases than developers coming from a more traditional web development world.

First off all, why choose to use Flex anyway? If you are building an RIA to deploy through the browser, Silverlight would seem the logical choice for a truly custom and unique UI when ASP.NET and AJAX don't fit the bill. But there are certain situations where an enterprise may decide that going the Adobe route is the correct choice for the needs of a particular project. The primary motivation comes with an application that is being built for external consumers. The Flash plug-in currently has a 99% market penetration according to Adobe and that's hard to argue with. This will be changing as Silverlight continues to be adopted but it currently remains an important consideration. As an example, I was recently involved in building an RIA meant to be subscribed to by many large financial institutions. These types of clients do not typically have the freedom to install browser plug-ins at will. Something like the Silverlight plug-in would need to be deployed in a firm-wide rollout after many months of compatibility testing, while Flash has been standard for years. Aside from this reason, the Adobe AIR runtime makes for a compelling usage scenario where your application assets can be deployed both in the browser or standalone on the desktop, allowing reuse of the majority of the same code base. AIR has a sophisticated web-based deployment and versioning model as well. Some form of this is expected in Silverlight 3 but it is already a reality for AIR. Finally, if you have a set of graphical assets already designed for Flash and designers who are most experienced in this area, the Flash/Flex path may be the easiest way to get the user experience you are after.

If you (or your project manager/architect) have decided that it must be Flex, don't be discouraged. While learning any new platform is a non-trivial undertaking, Flex is not as foreign to .NET as it may seem. When I've conducted interviews for Flex positions, usually the candidate came from a history of Java web development. The Flex platform enjoys close ties with the Java community, from its Eclipse-based IDE, Java style package naming, and Adobe's support of its Livecycle Data Services and BlazeDS APIs for remote service integration. However, I believe that the learning curve is more natural coming from WPF or Silverlight than from Java, culture and IDE differences aside. Rich Internet Applications are closer architecturally to desktop applications written in C++, WinForms or WPF than the standard non-AJAX web application. The kinship between Silverlight and Flash is even closer. RIAs are persistent applications that maintain state, and call remote services to load and store data (usually through XML or JSON), rather than loading pages of HTML. As such, the patterns for architecting one should follow those of a desktop application deployed in an n-tier environment. Further, the major elements of the Flex platform will be quite familiar to any WPF or Silverlight developer. Flex contains an XAML-like markup language for UI layout, an OO language to glue everything together, a mature set of controls and layout panels, an analogous eventing system, databinding, and a DataTemplate like mechanism.

Introducing the Flex 3 Framework

Flex is the UI toolkit for building RIAs based on the ActionScript language and running in Flash player, as WPF and Silverlight are frameworks for building applications in C# that run in the .NET CLR or Silverlight runtime. As WPF has XAML, Flex has its own analogous language called MXML that serves the same purpose. It is a serialization language for describing your application views by constructing trees of layout elements and control elements, and setting properties on them. Your MXML files get compiled to ActionScript and the MXML tags that you declare create instances of AS classes. Flex does not have the same concept of codebehind as you'll find in the .NET world, but ActionScript can co-exist in the same file as your MXML markup in a special CDATA block for this purpose. This ActionScript is just another part of the class that the MXML in the file gets compiled into, so the overall effect is the same.

Many other WPF constructs have similar analogues in the Flex world. Flex provides an eventing model that anyone familiar with C# delegates and events will have no trouble understanding. Routed events have been a part of Flex for as long as they were in WPF. These events have a tunneling phase (called "capture") where they travel down through the control tree from the top level (called the Stage in Flash) to the target where the event occurred, followed by a bubbling phase where they travel up the tree, in both directions, looking for any registered event handlers.

Flex has a databinding mechanism for connecting UI controls to model data. The syntax is more awkward than you may be used to, but you can (and should) still make use of this for binding your view controls to their model (or viewmodel). Unfortunately there is no concept of a DataContext, so even if a single model object provides all of the underlying data for your view, you'll need to specify that in each binding expression path.

For giving a custom look to lists of data as well as DataGrid columns, Flex gives you a construct called an item renderer that is quite similar to our familiar DataTemplate. An item renderer is usually a small tree of MXML, but can be implemented as a class with some behavior behind it. When binding to a list of data, Flex uses the renderer as a factory to create additional instances of the same class, used to render each underlying model item in the list. Just as in XAML, your item renderers can be declared inline, separated out into separate component files or even built up in code. Item renderers in Flex only apply to list data. With the PresentationModel patterns being applied in .NET 3.5 now, views are often being abstracted into a simple ContentControl rendering dynamically based on the DataTemplate for the bound Content, but you won't be able to do anything quite that clever here.

ActionScript

Learning the ActionScript language will present no major hurdle for anyone experienced with C# or Java. ActionScript 3 (the current version) is based on ECMAScript 4.0, and is largely grounded in OO principles with the addition of some ideas from the functional world. It is a true object-oriented language supporting inheritance, polymorphism and interfaces. The language is somewhat more dynamic; however, there are no strongly typed arrays or lists and you can forget about generics. There are no explicit delegates or events (objects fire events by implementing the IEventDispatcher interface). But functions are first class objects that can be passed as method arguments, used most frequently for adding handlers for events. Functions can also be anonymously declared inline. Interestingly, the ActionScript Array class has a number of higher order functions such as forEach(), filter(), map(), and some() for applying a function over a list of elements. If you are already using LINQ extension methods and delegates, you'll have no problem figuring out what to do with these. The language does leave out a few of the common OO constructs that you've grown accustomed to, such as abstract classes, private constructors and static initializers. While you will miss them, they won't be anything that you can't work around.

Flex makes use of the Flash player threading model in which all of the code you write executes on the single UI thread, so forget about doing CPU-intensive processing while keeping your UI responsive. You can perform some I/O bound operations through a model similar to .NET's Asynchronous Programming Model though. Through this mechanism, you schedule an asynchronous action to be executed by the Flash player, such as calling a remote service or reading a file. You provide an event handling function to be invoked when the operation is finished so you can process the results, but this will be invoked on the same UI thread. While this model can be limiting, it does free you from worrying about thread synchronization or the need to marshal data between threads.

Tool Support

Perhaps the most initially disconcerting part of your switch to Flex will be getting used to a new development environment. The FlexBuilder IDE is based on Eclipse, coming either as a standalone install + the Eclipse shell or as a plug-in for existing Eclipse installations. Eclipse is a full-featured IDE when using it for Java development, and you get out of the box a similar feature set to what you have with Visual Studio + Resharper. But FlexBuilder does not support most of the more advanced refactorings, code organization, and generation tools that Eclipse users might be accustomed to. Therefore, you may feel that you are taking a step backwards when making the switch from Visual Studio. Most of your basic debugging tools are present (there are no conditional breakpoints but this is coming in Flex 4).

The story is more fragmented regarding the UI designer/developer workflow. Expression Blend has come a long way toward allowing designers and developers to simultaneously work on the same source tree and have a productive working relationship. Unfortunately there is no equivalent in the Flex world, and no tool that generates MXML, which can build and run the same projects used in Flex Builder. There is a built-in WYSIWYG editor in Flex Builder, but like the XAML designer in Visual Studio, it's not very useful beyond trivial applications. In general the flow between developers and designers is not as natural. Achieving more interesting effects, skins, and animations in Flex is often a combination of handwritten MXML combined with artifacts generated from tools such as Flash IDE, Adobe Illustrator, and open source libraries like Degrafa.

The Server Tier

As mentioned, the Adobe Flex community enjoys close ties with the Java world, and you'll find that a majority of Flex applications are served from and call remote services on a Java application server, or servlet engine. A large reason is that Adobe has released and supported a suite of APIs for integrating Flash Remoting with Java, through its AMF (Action Message Format) binary protocol. These products, BlazeDS and LiveCycle Data Services, provide a framework for exposing Java classes as endpoints for Flash Remoting and you get automatic mapping between your ActionScript and Java domain objects.

However, Flex is not in any way tied to Java, and you can easily serve a Flex application from IIS. Flex's HTTPService class asynchronously consumes XML, JSON or SOAP served from .NET Web Services, REST, or WCF. In this way you'll continue to use your IIS and .NET server infrastructure and skills, perhaps with a thin facade layer to serve the data in the format your Flex application expects. Furthermore, there is an open source implementation of AMF: FluorineFx. It comes complete with framework libraries and wizards for generating and configuring an ASP.NET web application that serves AMF. Writing a remote service for a Flex application becomes little more than writing your class and marking it with the appropriate attributes. I'd highly recommend checking out this option if you want to keep using C# on the server. AMF is more efficient than XML or JSON, and you'll have the power of using strongly typed ActionScript domain objects in your Flex tier without needing to write the mapping layer yourself. Pushing data to the browser is an option with Lightstreamer, RTMP, or sockets with a custom protocol.

Architecture and Design Patterns

As with any platform, architecture and design plays a larger role as the complexity of your application increases. This is one of the places where your existing experience will translate very well, and you'll be better off than Flex developers coming from the web world.

One of the biggest problems we need to circumvent is that of your entire application becoming housed within a few monolithic UI classes. The problem is even worse with Flex because, as mentioned, the code that you write along with your view can be put in a script block right in your MXML markup. This can be greatly abused just as code behind in WPF and other .NET platforms often is. I've seen more than one application consisting of a few grotesquely large MXML files with a few helper classes. Instead we need a way to write our applications in a clean and decoupled manner and achieve a proper separation of concerns.

There are a number of MV-x patterns used to provide basic architectural organization, often Model-View-Presenter for WinForms and Model-View-ViewModel (also called PresentationModel) in WPF. M-V-VM is the choice for WPF (over vanilla MVP) because of the platform's sophisticated databinding framework. As Flex also has a useable binding system, I've successfully applied M-V-VM to a large Flex project. The typical three-layer approach:

Service layer composed of classes that wrap Flash RemoteObjects (when using FluorineFx) or HTTPService classes for JSON or XML transfer. There should be service interfaces for all classes.

ViewModel layer that handles events from the views and exposes bindable properties that present a flat picture of the model data used in the view. These classes get injected with the service classes (of course talking to them through their interface to allow for mocking).

View layer composed primarily of MXML components with a minimum of ActionScript required to glue everything together. The primary purpose of this code is to create the ViewModel instance and direct event handlers from the UI controls into the ViewModel. Code that needs to stay very close to the view (such as drag and drop) can stay here as well.

I like to couple the above pattern with dependency injection to construct and inject instances of the viewmodel classes with their services and any other dependencies. This is still a rare technique in the Flex community, but is becoming more commonplace with several quite useable open source containers out there. SpiceFactory's Parsley and the Spring ActionScript container (formerly known as Prana) are great candidates for this.

Another architectural alternative is the Cairngorm framework, which is the Adobe approved framework for achieving the ideals set out above. You'll find many Flex projects that use it to varying degrees of success and pain. The main features of Cairngorm are a FrontController class with a set of commands that you write to handle the events, a ModelLocator singleton that provides a global access point to your model layer, and a ServiceLocator singleton for looking up instances of Remote Service wrappers. At first glance, Cairngorm feels a lot like a Java Struts MVC style framework (with FrontControllers and Commands), and may trick some more web developers into believing so, but this is not the case.

Cairngorm, like any framework, has some useful constructs and some frustrating ones, and one of the things that makes a framework useful is being able to incorporate the parts you want without making your whole codebase depend on the pieces you don't. While this is not a problem inherent in Cairngorm, many developers new to the framework utilize everything verbatim in the way that the tutorials and how-to's demonstrate. This tends to result in a congested code base with too much boilerplate code for Commands and Delegate classes, and lots of direct dependencies on the ModelLocater and ServiceLocator singletons. As we know that singleton classes are the enemy of flexibility and testability, this should make most of us cringe.

If you decide to leverage Cairngorm or take over a project already using it, remember to apply the good lessons you've learned in the .NET world. ViewModels are still worthy constructs to use with the framework, providing a place for handling events and exposing portions of your model that are local only to your specific component (they can be managed by the ModelLocator). Cairngorm is open source, so you can modify the FrontController to use your IoC container as the factory for your Command classes, so they are injected with the ModelLocator and service instances, rather than using the singleton method of accessing them. The Spring ActionScript container is already incorporating extensions to allow you to work around the messier parts of Cairngorm and is worth a look just for this reason.

Conclusion

As Silverlight and WPF mature and gain mainstream acceptance, Flex and Flash will undoubtedly be forced to evolve in a direction where they can stay competitive. It's likely that there will be further feature swapping and parallels between the two. If you do find yourself in a position where you or your team will need to work on a Flex application, don't feel that you will be throwing away what you know and starting from scratch. Rest assured that you will be in the best possible place to pick up the new framework as well as anyone, and can continue to build on the .NET infrastructure and support that you already have.

[sys-con]

Firefox 3.5 and IE8 Abused to Spy Inside Intranets

2009-07-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

Two security researchers have devised proof-of-concept "ping sweeping" attacks, which leverage on the new Cross-Origin Resource Sharing implementation in Firefox 3.5, as well as the one already existing in Internet Explorer 8. A design weakness can allow attackers to remotely map Web servers on an internal network by using HTTP requests as pings.

XMLHttpRequest is a common API used in AJAX libraries in order to send HTTP requests directly to web servers and return the results as XML or plain text directly into the scripting language. In previous browser implementations, XMLHttpRequest was limited by the JavaScript same origin policy, meaning that HTTP or HTTPS requests could only be sent by an application to the domain that loaded it.

All of that changed with the introduction of the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) specification, which allows such requests to be made cross-site. For security purposes, the specification requires the exchange of specific headers, which servers can use to enforce origin-domain restrictions.

However, as reputed Web security researcher Robert "RSnake" Hansen points out, even if such resource-accessing restrictions are put in place, the ability to make the request itself can be abused. "Although an attacker is not allowed to know if the page was there or not (only if it was allowed to see the content or not), the attacker is still allowed to make an initial request. In doing so that initial request can be used as a pseudo 'ping' sweep," he explains.

Obviously, this is not a real ICMP ping, but an HTTP variant, which can still be used to "tell if the site is there or not because it will either return immediately […] or it will wait around much longer […] before the browser gives up." By leveraging on this architectural weak spot, Hansen claims that a "substantial amount of internal address space" can be scanned for web servers rather quickly.

In order to support his theory, the researcher has created a PoC example, which scans a limited number of intranet IP addresses if the client visiting the page is behind a local router. It is also worth mentioning that port 80 does not necessarily have to be opened in order for this attack to work.

Fortunately, the popular NoScript Firefox extension can be used to mitigate the issue, because of its ABE (Application Boundaries Enforcer) component. Disabling JavaScript globally, something which NoScript does by default, will also block such attacks.

However, Internet Explorer 8 has its own proprietary variant of XMLHttpRequest too. It is called XDomainRequest and is implemented using the same Cross-Origin Resource Sharing specification. Inspired by RSnake's idea, another application security researcher, going by the online handle of Inferno, has devised a similar attack against Microsoft's browser.

[softpedia]

Template Monster Reaches the 25,000 Mark

2009-07-27T02:06:00.000-07:00

Last week, visitors of Template Monster were invited to view and buy the company's latest release, template 25000. On this occasion the company published a promotional code on its official blog that gave the first 25 users a 25% discount for the 25000th template.

This is great news for the template giant, which is widely recognized as one of the biggest trendsetters in website design out there, getting more than 100,000 hits per day. The 25,000th template is a Flash-based design portfolio and features a catch-phrase, "We are the best."

"This is a big day for all of the Template Monster community - and that's about hundreds of thousands of people. Not to mention the joy we at TemplateMonster feel," says David Braun, CEO of TemplateMonster. "[...] Over the past 7 years we've been here for our audience, and the audience has been here for us."

The company was started seven years ago in New York by Artvertex, Inc with a specific target in mind: the web developing community. At first, they've hired a group of developers that started to create fresh and professional website templates, putting them up for sale on their website. The templates looked so good that the company’s reputation grew and it soon became the biggest template seller currently on the web.

Capitalizing on its success, the company launched its affiliate program and expanded the template categories to Flash, PowerPoint, Joomla, Drupal, PhpBB, WordPress, Mambo, PHP-Nuke and E-commerce. Recently TemplateMonster expanded to other new media-related services like audio files, logos and icon sets, hosting more than 21 product types and more than 100 design-related topics.

Inspired by its success, similar affiliate programs spawned all over the internet, but with poor results. In the last few years, the Envato network has caught up with it by exploiting TemplateMonster's weak spots. For several years, web-designers and developers have tried to sell their templates on TemplateMonster, but the team was very picky in allowing regular users to upload and sell products through the website. Meanwhile, Envato has done just the opposite; after a simple registration and test, users can start submitting their artwork so it can be approved and published on different Envato-owned niche websites.

[softpedia]

How To Choose a Web Hosting Provider

2009-07-24T02:09:00.000-07:00

By Stephen Holford, CMO, Fasthosts

A great start to becoming a successful Web host, particularly for resellers, is to know what hosting providers are out there. Unbeknown to your customers, the quality of service they receive from you, the reseller, can often depend on the quality of the hosting provider you choose, the true source for their Web solutions. Researching providers in the beginning, and learning what you can and cannot offer to your customers can have a substantial impact on your success in the reseller industry.

That said, Web hosting can be a lucrative business move for VARs. While an in-depth background in hosting is not a necessity to become a reseller, there are a few "tricks of the trade" that can help even the savviest IT providers become a mainstay in a very competitive industry.

1. Probably one of the most important elements to look for in a Web hosting provider is the cost associated with bandwidth and Web space. Ask the provider if it limits the amount of bandwidth and Web space you are allocated. What costs, if any, can occur if that limit is exceeded? Sometimes, providers may cap how much you are allotted in order to make a greater profit at your expense.

2. Depending on the provider you choose, as a reseller you have the flexibility to run your hosting business as you see fit. Ensuring that you have the ability to structure your business and control its progress can be a plus because it pulls the final say from the provider and gives it to the reseller. In short, if you are in charge, you have total command of your business. On the other hand, not every reseller wants to have full control. To be safe, just make sure you know what responsibilities you and the provider each have in managing the business.

3. How quickly do you want to have your reselling venture up and running? Your best bet is to have a quick and efficient start-up process. This means it should take minutes, not hours! Double check, too, if there is any software you have to use in order to get things working properly.

4. The variety of Web solutions that will be available for you to resell can be important as well. Inquire with the provider to find out what your options are, including how the solutions are purchased. Are they bundled into pre-determined packages? Can you customize them with other options? What individual services are available for you to resell, such as email inboxes, domains, etc.?

5. Regardless of how much control a reseller has, the administrative side of Web hosting matters. It’s a good idea to look for a user-friendly control panel. Ask the provider what tools it offers that can make the administrator's job easier (but not at the expense of efficiency or effectiveness).

VARs will find the world of Web hosting holds a lot of potential for those brave enough to venture into the online world. But, it's important to remember that a partnership with a dependable provider can greatly help you achieve a stable stream of revenue.

[bsminfo]

Luring local traffic to your Web site

2009-07-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

By Emily Maltby

"Attracting local search traffic is much easier than optimizing a Web site for a national or international audience," says Pamela Swingley of Savvy Internet Marketing in Orinda, Calif. "Local search is starting to really heat up."

There are three key elements you'll need to focus on: content, search-engine rankings and design.

You're off to a good start with content. "The best thing to do is to step back and think of the top three things a client would want to see on the site," recommends Tom Grant, executive Web producer at Blue Ray Media in Denver.

Your site highlights the areas of law that your firm practices, but you should build upon that to give visitors more information. "Potential clients will want to know if you have handled situations like theirs. The site should help them answer that question," says Grant. "Some areas of the site start to answer that question, but each could go further by offering details of each area of practice."

Your "Bankruptcy" section, for example, explains what it is and how it affects people. But other topic areas, such as "Estate Planning," provide no such information. Grant thinks you should bring each practice-area page up to the level of your bankruptcy section -- then take each a step further by creating a topical "client stories" page. There, you can give prospective clients a sense of what a typical case you handle looks like.

"This will help them see where you were successful, giving them a better chance to call you if the case sounds like theirs," he says.

Expert tips

Another way to build out the practice-area pages is by providing articles for each. Many in need of legal advice will first try to find answers on their own. If you publish articles, potential clients will appreciate the free information and also have a higher regard for the lawyers who wrote them.

"They think, 'If she writes about this stuff, she must know what she's talking about,'" says Grant. "You position yourself as an expert."

Talk back: Share your advice

Linking to useful resources will also help build your credibility. Your "Bankruptcy" page links to a recommended credit-counseling class and explains the process of obtaining a completion certificate. That's a great model to follow on other pages. For example, you can link visitors to the site where they can pay local traffic tickets, or to a page with detailed information on North Carolina's divorce laws.

To keep the content fresh, try to update at least one article each month. That has a bonus advantage: It tells search engines that your information is timely and relevant. You could also repurpose your articles into content for a newsletter sent out regularly to subscribers.

"Your tagline is 'a law firm for life,' so you should make sure your services go beyond serving prospective and existing clients," Grant says. "Some clients may not realize you have these other areas of practice, so this will keep them aware that you're still there."

Helping the search engines

Expanding your content will also enhance your search engine optimization (SEO). That's because your articles and links will be full of key words that search engines look for when ranking sites.

Grant's firm, Blue Ray Media, has worked on many law firm Web sites and has tracked the "points of entry" into those sites. "We found that articles with statistics and stories are typically where people jump into the site, particularly with the law firms that update their news and articles regularly," he says.

You can also beef up your SEO by reorganizing your site's pages. For example, your "Practice Areas" pages are the most informational part of your site. In order to emphasize their importance to both search engines and visitors, Grant suggests listing all of them in a sidebar that appears on every page of your site, including the home page.

Keep in mind, however, that broken links on any of your pages will both deter clients and trip the search engine crawlers that read your site. Right now you have several broken links -- and the "News" link in the navigation bar is the same as your "Contact Us" link, which is confusing.

"It looks like you don't care and that you're not detail-oriented," says Grant. "I definitely want my attorney to be detail-oriented."

Cornering the local market

Your site's "meta" tags describe its content. A good first step to capturing local traffic is to include your town -- Concord, N.C. -- and your nearest metro area, Charlotte, in all of your keyword and title meta tags.

You are listed in the Super Pages and Yellow Pages online, and in local search tools from Google Maps and Yahoo Local, but you're not ranked very high in any of those places. To boost your visibility, you'll need customer testimonials and more "inbound" links to your page from other sites.

You can go beyond the traditional search engines by establishing yourself on locally-focused sites like Yelp, Judy's Book and Citysearch.

"When it comes to selecting something as important as legal services, references are key," says Swingley. "It's critical that you monitor what others are saying about your services and that you help your reviews along. Do all you can to encourage your clients to write a review."

Swingley suggests reciprocating links with any community programs and associations you belong to, including the Chamber of Commerce or the local Better Business Bureau. Also, try building relationships with local bloggers and your local TV station's site.

"You can never have too many quality links," she says. "If the firm is mentioned in the press, ask for a link to the site. Exchange links with professionals that refer business to you and include your Web site link whenever you answer a question on boards such as Yahoo Answers or law-related forums such as InjuryBoard.com."

Design

The job isn't over once you get traffic to your site. All the links and information in the world won't score you a client if your site looks messy and unprofessional.

"The overall design doesn't do the firm justice," says Grant of your current site. "Pick a simple theme and stick with it."

Your homepage is bland. It's the "cover" for the rest of the site, and it needs to shine. The first problem Grant notices is the color scheme. You use a lot of colors -- gold, black, blue, gray, yellow, white and red. "Stay clear of the heavy, dark layers," he advises. "Try to stick to two or three colors, such as a blue with white and gold highlights."

Jazz it up with some images, and reorganize the information you present there so that clients can jump straight from your homepage to the information they're seeking.

"The homepage has basically no hierarchy. Nothing is more or less important than anything else," says Grant. "It's a jumbled mess graphically and there's no emphasis on what people might want to do on the site."

Grant noticed only one image on your site, the courthouse pictured on the "Contact Us" page. He recommends simplifying that image and using it on every page, perhaps along with the C&W logo. This will provide a consistent theme and a context to help people relate to your firm.

Also, make sure that top navigation tabs don't disappear as visitors move through your Web site, as currently happens in a few places. Also, keep the tabs on it consistent on every page of your site.

On the secondary pages, try to include images where they're relevant, especially next to the bios on your "About the Firm" page. "It's generic without any people on it," says Grant. "Photos of attorneys and staff can make it more memorable."

Fix those bio pages so that you give visitors what they expect. It looks like each hyperlinked employee name will lead to a bio page, but right now, only the attorneys have actual bios. The rest of the names lead to a page full of empty boxes.

When the aesthetics are fixed, you can add elements to your site that will help the visitors start a relationship with you. For example, create a contact page with a standard form for visitors to fill in. Let potential clients choose an area of law from a drop-down menu and then type their questions and contact information in other fields. That type of form will provide you with client leads while cutting down on the spam you'd get by listing only a contact e-mail address.

Swingley suggests touting a marketing deal right on your site, such as a half hour of free consulting or a discounted first meeting. Add this offer to your meta-tags description to increase traffic.

"The first thing that goes through most people's minds when they think of engaging with an attorney is that it is going to be very expensive," she says. "Make it easy to get started."

[money.cnn.com]

Building a Web Site? Did you ask the right questions?

2009-07-22T02:59:00.000-07:00

I've been doing this Web thing for a long time; in fact, I built my first Web site in 1994, back in the days when the average American thought the Internet was an international criminal conspiracy. These days I do ecommerce consulting, which has provided me with the privilege of working with hundreds of companies over the last few years. I've worked for large companies such as Amazon and Zillow... and small companies such as the one-woman firm that arranges "fairy" tours of Ireland. I've seen it all!

One thing I've learned is that the vast majority of businesses start the Web-design process in completely the wrong place. They jump into the graphic-design part of the process, without asking a critical question.

What do you want the visitor to see and do when he arrives on the site?

I know most businesses think they've already answered the question, but "we want the visitor to buy our product" is not a good answer. It's way too vague in most cases, much to general.

Specifically, what do you want the visitor to see and do when he arrives on the site?

If you don't answer the question, you end up with a "throw it onto the site somewhere" process that really won't work well.

Here's an example. A firm I worked with wanted to sell a piece of software. Not having answered The Question, the site was a jumble of information and no real flow... no sales pitch or marketing message, no flow through which a visitor could be converted into a client.

It turned out that they had a great video showing the features of the product; in fact at one point the business owner said to me, "well, I guess it would really help if the visitor saw the video." Why, then, I asked, was the video hidden?

The video was reached by a small link near the bottom of the page on the right side. This was probably the most important sales element we had identified ... and yet it was hidden from the visitor. Sure, the visitor might stumble across it, but in most cases wouldn't. (As, in fact, was proven by their traffic logs; very few visitors ever reached the video.)

Now, had the company asked The Question right from the start, and fully discussed and explored it, before they built the site, they wouldn't be rebuilding the site! They would have realized that they had to push the video, that they had to make sure that every single visitor to the site know about it, and was encouraged to view it.

This, by the way, is why Web design is not about graphic design. A Web site is a piece of software--in many cases, a piece of marketing software. It is supposed to do something; interact with a visitor, and move that visitor along a path toward "conversion." That's a process, not color design, not graphic design. Graphic design is what you apply to a site once you've figured out the process.

[examiner]

Joomla CMS and Its Advantages

2009-07-21T01:43:00.000-07:00

Joomla is an open source Content Management System (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. In August 2005, Joomla originated from the Mambo content management system, which included the source code, as well as the development team. As Joomla code is open source, so it's easy adaptable for anyone to write modules and extensions of the system. Joomla allows web designers to develop websites by combining modules, and requires no programming knowledge. Joomla framework is written in PHP, as are the modules used to customize websites.

Why Joomla?

Why is joomla so popular among web developers? There are various reasons for its popularity depending upon the joomla users. Mainly, as an open source system Joomla is free, Secondly Joomla environment is very flexible which meets the needs of different user accordingly. Thirdly, it can be downloaded from the Internet absolutely free of cost and also, because of its ease-of-use, extensible and accessible environment it so popular.

Characteristics and Benefits of Joomla

Completely database driven site engines. Each and every element in joomla is stored in a centralized database.
The content that is displayed on the website can be scheduled as per the requirement of the web editors.
Fully customizable layouts - there are thousands of templates to choose from so you can change the look and feel of your site without affecting the main content.
Joomla supports multiple languages.
News feeds from various websites can be gathered using the News Feed Manager available in Joomla.
Runs on any platform including Windows, Linux, several Unix versions, and the Apple OS/X platform. It also depends on PHP and MySQL database to deliver dynamic content.

Apart from these characteristics, it provides many benefits such as

Easy Management: Joomla is designed to be easy to install and set up even if you're not a programmer. Once Joomla is installed, configured, it is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images, and to manage the critical data that makes your company or organization go.
Joomla Components & Modules: The popularity and flexibility of Joomla modular architecture has made it possible to develop a wide range of components and associated modules. One can find nearly any component or module which meets our requirements and then just download and plug it into your content management system.
Joomla Templates: There are number of web designers who develop and design Joomla Templates which can transform the look and feel of your web site. All you have to do it find a template you like, download it and apply it to your content management system (CMS). Many of the templates come with predefined module positions so you can display modules in various different positions.
Joomla for Search Engine Optimization: Having your website found by the search engines (Google etc…) is vital in most cases for a successful website. Joomla has built-in SEO functionality. (SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization). The SEO tab in Global Configuration (in Administration backend) takes care of global SEO settings for your Joomla site. Joomla provides (SEF) search engine friendly URLs to ensure you get the highest search engine ranking position

Joomla is an internationally developed application, with many developers contributing to the growing movement by submitting their own web services components and plug-ins to the Joomla Extensions Directory. It is a platform where you can plug-in smaller applications as per the needs of the user. Hence, scalability is an important factor to be considered for organizations that requires CMS.

[cms.sys-con]

Building a Web Site? Did you ask the right questions?

2009-07-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

I've been doing this Web thing for a long time; in fact, I built my first Web site in 1994, back in the days when the average American thought the Internet was an international criminal conspiracy. These days I do ecommerce consulting, which has provided me with the privilege of working with hundreds of companies over the last few years. I've worked for large companies such as Amazon and Zillow... and small companies such as the one-woman firm that arranges "fairy" tours of Ireland. I've seen it all!

One thing I've learned is that the vast majority of businesses start the Web-design process in completely the wrong place. They jump into the graphic-design part of the process, without asking a critical question.

What do you want the visitor to see and do when he arrives on the site?

I know most businesses think they've already answered the question, but "we want the visitor to buy our product" is not a good answer. It's way too vague in most cases, much to general.

Specifically, what do you want the visitor to see and do when he arrives on the site?

If you don't answer the question, you end up with a "throw it onto the site somewhere" process that really won't work well.

Here's an example. A firm I worked with wanted to sell a piece of software. Not having answered The Question, the site was a jumble of information and no real flow ...no sales pitch or marketing message, no flow through which a visitor could be converted into a client.

It turned out that they had a great video showing the features of the product; in fact at one point the business owner said to me, "well, I guess it would really help if the visitor saw the video." Why, then, I asked, was the video hidden?

The video was reached by a small link near the bottom of the page on the right side. This was probably the most important sales element we had identified ... and yet it was hidden from the visitor. Sure, the visitor might stumble across it, but in most cases wouldn't. (As, in fact, was proven by their traffic logs; very few visitors ever reached the video.)

Now, had the company asked The Question right from the start, and fully discussed and explored it, before they built the site, they wouldn't be rebuilding the site! They would have realized that they had to push the video, that they had to make sure that every single visitor to the site know about it, and was encouraged to view it.

This, by the way, is why Web design is not about graphic design. A Web site is a piece of software--in many cases, a piece of marketing software. It is supposed to do something; interact with a visitor, and move that visitor along a path toward "conversion." That's a process, not color design, not graphic design. Graphic design is what you apply to a site once you've figured out the process.

[examiner]

Web May Be Ultimate Mobile Platform

2009-07-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

While Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and Palm take different approaches to the mobile space, executives from each company agreed that the mobile Web will play a significant role in future application development.

At the MobileBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco Thursday, the companies discussed what makes up a winning mobile platform. The executives agreed that the most important thing was ensuring the end user has a good experience with apps, as well as making the platform attractive to developers.

Mobile program makers are facing an increasingly fragmented world, as the smartphone space consists of Apple's iPhone, Google's Android, Nokia's S60 Symbian, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)'s BlackBerry, and Palm's webOS. Additionally, most content creators also have to make apps for the various versions of J2ME if they want to reach a broad audience of feature phone users.

Vic Gundotra, Google's VP of engineering, said even the search giant isn't rich enough to support this many platforms at a sustainable rate over the long term. Gundotra said the Web will become a strong mobile development platform as things like HTML 5 and offline improvements become standardized.

"We've decided to look to the future, and what we see happening is a move to incredibly powerful browsers," said Gundotra. "What that does for our costs is stunning."

Of course, Google also has other interests in pushing the continued adoption of the mobile Web, as more people online will mean more potential users of its Web services, as well as more revenue for its dominant Web advertising platform. But competitors Nokia and Palm echoed similar sentiments about the power of the mobile Web for apps.

Palm has probably taken the most aggressive stance in this Web-centric model for apps, as its recently released webOS was built from the ground up with Internet connectivity in mind. The company also made its Mojo software development kit available to the masses, and Palm said it uses standard Web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Palm is hoping to attract millions of Web developers, even those with little or no experience with mobile devices.

Michael Abbott, Palm's senior VP of application software and services, said Palm is pushing this Web-centric approach beyond its company. The company's SDK enables developers to access the phone's accelerometer using only JavaScript, and Abbott said Palm is pushing to make this a standard in HTML 5, or in future standards. With this in place, content creators could potentially write a platform-agnostic app with motion controls that's delivered through any capable mobile browser.

While it doesn't get the buzz or attention that iPhone or Android gets, Nokia is still the dominant player in smartphones with roughly 41% of the global market. Tero Ojanpera, Nokia's executive VP of services, said this Web-centric view could be hindered by the lack of unlimited data plans for many customers around the globe, but he agreed that the underlying operating system is becoming less important than the layers on top, including those delivered through the browser.

The company is a big backer of the Qt framework, which is an application and user interface framework based on C++ that enables developers to write programs for multiple platforms with little adjustments. Qt is used by many big Web developers like Google, Opera, Last.fm, and others. Ojanpera hinted that Nokia will soon be bringing this to "the next level," but did not elaborate.

This vision of Web applications dominating the market is nothing new, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs originally said all of the iPhone's programs were going to be Web-based ones using mobile Safari. The developer community was severely disappointed by this though, and the iPhone did not really hit critical mass until a full SDK was released and the App Store was implemented. These native apps have done extremely well for the touch-screen smartphone, as iPhone users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion apps in about a year.

Gundotra said the timing and technologies just weren't right for what Jobs envisioned, and he points to the innovations like geolocation and strong JavaScript support that are just making their way into desktop browsers as a sign of where mobile browsers are headed.

"Jobs had it right from the beginning," said Gundotra. "Maybe instead of 'There's an app for that,' it should be 'There's a bookmark for that.'"

[informationweek]

Recovery.gov Development Contract Details Coming

2009-07-15T02:53:00.000-07:00

By J. Nicholas Hoover

Contractor Smartronix will be responsible for Web develpment, storage, security, disaster recovery, hosting, maintenance, and operation of the Web site.

By Monday, the General Services Administration and Smartronix are expected to release a version of the contract to design and operate recovery.gov, a spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board said Tuesday.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board has been urging GSA and Smartronix to release the Recovery.gov contract, which is worth up to $18 million. Watchdog groups such as OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation have begun doing so as well.

"We are not spending this kind of money just to paint a pretty picture," RATB spokesman Ed Pound said in response to some criticism online and from the media that $18 million was too much to spend on designing a Website. "There's a whole heck of a lot of other stuff going on here."

According to a press release and documents the RATB released late Friday, that "other stuff" includes significant infrastructure and operational responsibility. In cooperation with the RATB, Smartronix will be responsible for storage, security, disaster recovery, hosting, maintenance and operation of the Web site and related data.

The initial $9.5 billion outlay to Smartronix will cover redesign and development of Recovery.gov, procurement and installation of hardware and software to host the site, operations, storage and a content management system for the site, among other things.

In a nod to transparency, the RATB also posted a 50-page statement of objectives online Friday, which goes into great detail about the technical requirements for the Recovery.gov contract, describing the required networking and security architecture, high-level user interface requirements, business intelligence and content management capabilities, reporting requirements, and data architecture.

Smartronix won the Recovery.gov contract over two other bidders, SRI International and Accenture, in an accelerated bidding process that only included companies who are part of the multi-vendor Alliant contracting vehicle.

By law, Recovery.gov must be up and reporting stimulus spending in detail by October 10, but Pound said that the normal, full, and open competition process takes an average of 267 days to award a contract. "That's unacceptable and people would be screaming for our heads," he said. Now, the RATB expects the site will be up as early as late August.

Though not well known for developing Websites, Smartronix said in a press release Tuesday that it will be working with digital agency TMP Government and consulting firm Synteractive to design and implement Web 2.0 features in Recovery.gov, including community interaction through features such as blogs and photo uploads. Auditing firm KPMG will be providing support for financial information, policy, reporting and data management.

"We have assembled the best team to meet the contract's complex requirements and have immediately begun work to meet the Recovery.gov 2.0's aggressive schedule," Smartronix CEO John Parris said in a statement.

Contractors and other recipients of stimulus money will be required to report their spending via Excel spreadsheets that recipients will upload to the forthcoming FederalReporting.gov.

That site, contracted with CGI Federal as part of another existing contract ith the Environmental Protection Agency, will feed data to Recovery.gov. The Office of Management and Budget is holding a series of Webinars next week for recipients to find out more information about how to report data.

[informationweek]

Aptana scores $7.8M for open source web building tools

2009-07-15T02:43:00.000-07:00

Aptana, maker of open-source software used to build, implement and manage web sites and applications, has raised $7.8 million in a second round of funding to scale its virtual environment offering, Aptana Cloud - a free service that allows users to deploy and manage their web applications from a central location.

Based in San Mateo, Calif., Aptana is known for making web deployment fairly easy for users of varying skill levels, providing tools to run apps on Ruby on Rails, PHP, MySQL and Apache. Users can toggle the amount of computational power and storage space they need for the tasks at hand. It also lends itself to collaborative projects by giving administrators the ability to add or subtract project team members and edit their privileges.

Before its cloud product was released last year, the company was known for its Aptana Studio offering, an open-source web development platform that just hit 4 million downloads. An Eclipse-based development environment for Web 2.0 sites, Aptana Studio is downloaded 200,000 times each month, the company says.

Mobile Web or Mobile Application Which way to go?

2009-07-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

Enterprise mobility is now moving from the early adopter stage to become a mainstream focus for enterprises and their IT departments. Enterprises are beginning to understand how they can use mobile technologies to improve business process and optimize their mobile worker performance.

Factually, lots of enterprises are in dilemma in terms of choosing a right option a mobile website or a downloadable application that run on the handsets. The best answer is, it depends on what the enterprise wants to accomplish.

Web applications traditionally have been valued for its ease of distribution; faster release cycle, decreased barrier to entry etc. Coming to mobile, web development has long suffered from a rigid platform and the inability for mobile browser to keep up with current web technologies. With many handset manufacturer attempting to clone the iPhones usability and appeal, the mobile web applications are getting better, the browser more robust and the devices more capable in terms of supporting Javascript and other web technologies such AJAX, flash etc.

The mobile web allows you to develop on a single platform and target the broadest set of handsets. On the flip side, the mobile web application cannot access the advanced features of the phones such as contact list, location information, camera, bluetooth etc. The interfaces on mobile websites are quite poor and clunky resulting in less than desirable user experience due to browser fragmentation and varied form factors. For better usability, vendors such asVolantis ( News - Alert) (Multi-channel Server), Mobileaware (Mobile Interaction server) etc. have come up with middleware that manages rendering of web pages to different devices based on device capabilities.

If enterprise has an existing high traffic web destination, developing a mobile version makes sense as site already has a brand attached to it and loyal followers.

Today's mobile handsets are more than just a phone and improved native capabilities of phone can be better utilized with smart client mobile applications. The mobile application provides ability to better control user interactions and user interface via possible inputs such as touch, voice, keyboard etc. The smaller footprint of database allows user to store reasonable amount of data directly on handset giving offline functionality to user. The offline functionality, the important differentiator, could become a major decision factor for enterprises in deciding which way to go.

Mobile device fragmentation at platform, device, firmware and operator level may lead to further confusion for enterprises to choose best suit for their business needs. Additionally, the porting efforts to other platforms and testing applications on physical handset add to overall cost of developing rich mobile application when compared to web site development.

If enterprise has need of extensive data management and interactive user experience on device and also requires access to device functionalities such as location, contact list etc., developing mobile application makes sense.

In conclusion, if enterprise is targeting the mobility to reach out to their customers- a wider audience, mobile web may be better choice compared to native application development, as they do not have a direct control over the mobile devices, personal devices being used by them. If enterprises are thinking of improving the business process or optimizing the mobile workers performance, mobile application would be better choice as enterprise are in better position to manage and control the devices. And, if enterprise believe in mobility as a strong medium for marketing, business process improvement and operational efficiencies, consider investing in both mobile application and mobile friendly web site to utilize the best of these two technologies.

[callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com]

W3C Discontinues XHTML 2 Development

2009-07-14T05:51:00.001-07:00

In an effort to speed up HTML 5 development, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) announced at the start of July that it would discontinue all XHTML 2 research. This means that the XHTML 2 Working Group will stop all activity at the end of 2009, and all resulting resources will be redirected to the HTML 5 Working Group.

The XHTML 2 Working Group has been assigned to expand HTML as an XML mark-up language, working on correcting problems with internationalization, device independence, form processing and making it easier to integrate and combine with other mark-up languages. The group has been active since it was initially charted in March 2007, working alongside the HTML 5 group on developing new HTML web technologies.

Ian Jacobs, representative of W3C said, "We're investing in HTML 5 for the future," announcing W3C's future development plans. From this statement it's clear that XHTML 2 will not become a W3C standard, and all efforts to build an XML formulation for HTML will be continued for HTML 5.

This strategic move from W3C was hailed by the web-developing community. According to InfoWorld, Dion Almaer, co-director of developer tools at Mozilla, had the following to say: "XHTML was a rat hole, and now we can use W3C folks to help make HTML 5 better." The opinion is widely supported because HTML 5 seems to be one of the most powerful and anticipated web development tools to ever be released. Many actually feel that it could spell out an end to Flash-driven applications. "HTML 5 is really the second coming of this Web," concluded Dion Almaer about the future release of HTML 5 to the World (Wide Web).

Big names in the industry, especially browser developers, have also been involved in the development of HTML 5. Well, almost everyone, except for Microsoft, which has been pumping millions into the Silverlight project, which does practically the same thing as HTML 5. Another industry player that might have something against HTML 5 is Google. Mountain View developers may be concerned about the capabilities of HTML 5, which will make YouTube's Flash deployment for video presentations old and obsolete.

For the moment it's quite clear that things are still in the works at W3C, since more resources are needed for the HTML 5 group.

[softpedia]

Web Design with a CSS make excellent mobile shopping for your site

2009-07-09T02:48:00.000-07:00

With a second style sheet and minor changes to a page's HTML, many online stores can offer an excellent mobile shopping experience without creating a second web page or registering a mobile specific domain.

Mobile Internet use is on the rise. And online merchants presumably want to provide customers with the best possible shopping experience. It is for these reasons that many leading ecommerce sites have begun to offer either mobile specific pages (typically a subdomain) or mobile specific styles.

In this "Web Design Tips," I am going to make some suggestions about whether you should build a separate, mobile specific website, and provide a quick example of how you might transform your CSS to create a more mobile-friendly version of your current page.
Should You Build a Separate Mobile Site?

The answer can be either yes or no. Personally, I believe that mobile Internet devices and mobile handsets will soon be as capable of rendering web pages as well as laptops and desktops do now, so that registering a .mobi domain or even building a separate site could be a waste of time.

A better solution might be to redesign your current site so that it is easy to render on multiple platforms. In fact, developing websites that easily migrate among platforms (mobile, desktop, RSS, or more) was the one of the main reasons that CSS was created. Good website design will largely separate content from layout and appearance.

If you do decide that the best way to serve mobile customers is with a mobile-specific site, I will encourage you to use a subdomain rather than a .mobi domain. For example the URL might be http://m.yoursite.com rather than http://yoursite.mobi.

An Example Conversion

Just as each ecommerce website is unique, creating a mobile friendly version of that site will also be somewhat unique. So I thought that, perhaps, the best way to describe a site conversions was to do one.

For this "Web Design Tips," I created a home page for an ecommerce comic book store. This page was created for this demonstration.

First, here is the complete page code from before the conversion.

Here is the style sheet for on-screen display

body {background: url(images/main-background.png) repeat-x; margin-top:0px; font-size:62.5%;}
#wrapper {margin:0 auto; width:800px;}
#access {position: absolute; top:-500px; margin:0; padding:0;}
#header {background: url(images/head-background.png) no-repeat; width:100%; height:256px; overflow:hidden;}
#header img {border: none; position: relative; top:162px; left: 235px;}
#top-nav {position: relative; top: 73px; left: 210px;}
#top-nav li {display: inline; list-style: none; font-size: 1.4em; font-family:Denmark; letter-spacing:1px; font-variant: small-caps; padding-left: 3px;}
#top-nav a {color: #676666; text-decoration:none;}
#top-nav a:hover {color:#e2232b; text-decoration:overline;}
#searchbox {position:relative; top:170px; left: 530px;}
#content p {font-size:1.6em;}
#content li {float: left; display:inline; list-style:none; width: 45%; text-align:center; margin:5px; padding: 10px; border: #ffffff solid 3px;}
#content li:hover {background:#676666; border: #000000 solid 3px;}
#content li:hover h3 {color:#f8a043;}
#content h3 {font-family:Denmark; font-size: 2.6em;}
#price {font-family:Denmark; font-size:2.0em;}
button {margin: 5px; padding: 10px 100px; font-family:Denmark; font-size:1.8em;}
#footer {clear:both; background: url(images/footer-background.png) no-repeat #000000; margin-top:50px; padding: 120px 10px 200px 220px; text-align:center; font-size:1.4em; font-weight:500;}
#footer a {color:#000000; text-decoration: none;}
#footer a:hover {text-decoration:overline; font-weight:900;}
#footer ul {margin:0px; padding:0px;}
#footer li {display:inline; margin: 0px 2px;}

Adding a Mobile-specific CSS

The first step in our conversion process is to add a mobile CSS, linking to it in our HTML and adding a file, which is still blank, to our site hierarchy. In this demonstration, I named the file "handheld.css."


Using the Page Layout As a Guide to Begin Creating Your Mobile Styles

Our goal is to meet the World Wide Web Consortium's standards for mobile browsers, so we'll use that organization's CSS Mobile Profile 2.0 as our guide when determining which selectors or attributes to use. We will also try to keep our page width to 205 pixels, and take steps to limit the total file size of our mobile site.

While our goal is to make most of the changes in the CSS, we will also have to create a couple of mobile-friendly background images. You can watch me do this step-by-step in the video above. Below is the completed "handheld" CSS file.

body {background:#ffffff; margin-top:0px; font-size:62.5%;}

#wrapper {margin:0 auto; width:205px;}

#access {display:none;}

#header {background: url(images/m-head-background.png) no-repeat #60605F; width:100%;  border-bottom: #f8a043 solid 3px;}

#header img {display:none;}

#top-nav {text-align:center;}

#top-nav ul {margin:0px; padding: 2px 0px;}

#top-nav li {display:inline; list-style: none; font-size: 1.2em; font-family:Denmark; font-variant: small-caps; padding-left: 1px;}

#top-nav a {color: #000000; text-decoration:none;}

#top-nav a:hover {color: #f8a043; text-decoration:overline;}

#search {width:120px;}

#searchbox {padding:72px 0px 2px 4px;}

#content {margin:0px; padding:0px;}

#content img {width:100%; padding: 0px;}

#content p {font-size:1.2em;}

#content ul {margin:0px; padding:0px;}

#content li {float:left; display:inline; list-style:none; width:181px; text-align:center; margin:0px; padding: 10px; border: #FFFFFF solid 2px;}

#content li:hover {background:#676666; border: #000000 solid 2px;}

#content li:hover h3 {color:#f8a053;}

#content h3 {font-size:1.6em; font-family:Denmark; margin: 1px 0px;}

#price {font-family:Denmark; font-size:1.4em;}

button {margin:5px; font-family:Denmark; font-size:1.4em;}

#footer {clear:both; color:#FFFFFF; background: #000000; margin-top: 50px; padding: 5px 0px 100px 0px; text-align:center; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: 500;}

#footer a {color:#FFFFFF; text-decoration:none;}

#footer a:hover {text-decoration:overline; font-weight:900;}

#footer ul {margin:0px; padding:0px;}

#footer li {display:inline; margin:0px 2px;}

#product2 img {display:none;}

#product3 img {display:none;}

#product4 img {display:none;}



An Example of What Can Be Done

This demonstration gave an example of how you might convert your existing ecommerce website to a mobile-friendly store using basic CSS. Every store will have different challenges and tradeoffs to make, but optimizing your site for mobile customers can be done.

[practicalecommerce]

Norman plan to begin Web design classes

2009-07-09T02:36:00.000-07:00

Residents can get tips on how to design a Web site during the next session of "Ask the Geek" at 6:30 p.m. July 27 at Norman Public Library, 225 N Webster Ave.

Traci Stallings, who teaches college computer classes and works in online marketing, will teach the two-hour session.

The beginning Web design class will cover accessibility standards, navigation techniques, audience needs, browser/platform concerns, and connection speeds.

Registration is required, and participants must have basic keyboarding and computer mouse skills to attend. To register, call 701-2620.

[newsok.com]

Content Organization

2009-07-08T03:27:00.000-07:00

After ensuring that content is useful, well-written, and in a format that is suitable for the Web, it is important to ensure that the information is clearly organized. In some cases, the content on a site can be organized in multiple ways to accommodate multiple audiences.

Organizing content includes putting critical information near the top of the site, grouping related elements, and ensuring that all necessary information is available without slowing the user with unneeded information. Content should be formatted to facilitate scanning, and to enable quick understanding.

Organize Information Clearly:

Organize information at each level of the Web site so that it shows a clear and logical structure to typical users.
Designers should present information in a structure that reflects user needs and the site’s goals. Information should be well-organized at the Web site level, page level, and paragraph or list level.
Good Web site and page design enables users to understand the nature of the site's organizational relationships and will support users in locating information efficiently. A clear, logical structure will reduce the chances of users becoming bored, disinterested, or frustrated

Facilitate Scanning:

Structure each content page to facilitate scanning: use clear, well-located headings; short phrases and sentences; and small readable paragraphs.
Web sites that are optimized for scanning can help users find desired information. Users that scan generally read headings, but do not read full text prose-this results in users missing information when a page contains dense text.
Studies report that about eighty percent of users scan any new page. Only sixteen percent read each word. Users spend about twelve percent of their time trying to locate desired information on a page.
To facilitate the finding of information, place important headings high in the center section of a page. Users tend to scan until they find something interesting and then they read. Designers should help users ignore large chunks of the page in a single glance. Keep in mind that older users (70 and over) will tend to scan much more slowly through a web page than will younger users (ages 39 and younger).

Ensure that Necessary Information is Displayed:

Ensure that all needed information is available and displayed on the page where and when it is needed.
Users should not have to remember data from one page to the next or when scrolling from one screenful to the next.
Heading information should be retained when users scroll data tables, or repeated often enough so that header information can be seen on each screenful.

Group Related Elements:

Group all related information and functions in order to decrease time spent searching or scanning.
All information related to one topic should be grouped together. This minimizes the need for users to search or scan the site for related information. Users will consider items that are placed in close spatial proximity to belong together conceptually. Text items that share the same background color typically will be seen as being related to each other.

Minimize the Number of Clicks or Pages:

To allow users to efficiently find what they want, design so that the most common tasks can be successfully completed in the fewest number of clicks.
Critical information should be provided as close to the homepage as possible. This reduces the need for users to click deep into the site and make additional decisions on intervening pages. The more steps (or clicks) users must take to find the desired information, the greater the likelihood they will make an incorrect choice. Important information should be available within two or three clicks of the homepage.
One study found that the time to complete a task was closely related to the number of clicks made by users. It appears that users will keep clicking as long as they feel like they are getting closer to their goal. Another study showed that when users were trying to find a target, they were no more likely to quit after three clicks than after 12 clicks.

Design Quantitative Content for Quick Understanding:

Design quantitative information to reduce the time required to understand it.
Make appropriate use of tables, graphics, and visualization techniques to hasten the understanding of information. Presenting quantitative information in a table (rather than a graph) generally elicits the best performance; however, there are situations where visualizations will elicit even better performance. Usability testing can help to determine when users will benefit from using tabular data, graphics, tables, or visualizations.

Display Only Necessary Information:

Limit page information only to that which is needed by users while on that page.
Do not overload pages or interactions with extraneous information. Displaying too much information may confuse users and hinder assimilation of needed information. Allow users to remain focused on the desired task by excluding information that task analysis and usability testing indicates is not relevant to their current task. When user information requirements cannot be precisely anticipated by the designer, allow users to tailor displays online.

Format Information for Multiple Audiences:

Provide information in multiple formats if the Web site has distinct audiences who will be interested in the same information.
Information can be provided in varying formats and at different levels of detail on the same site. For example, information about cancer can be presented in differing ways for physicians and patients.
When segmenting content for two or more distinct groups of users, allow users from each audience to easily access information intended for other audiences. One study showed that users want to see information that is intended for a health professional audience, as well as for a patient or consumer audience. Users want access to all versions of the information without first having to declare themselves as a health professional, a patient, a caregiver, etc. To accommodate these users, audiences were not segmented until they reached a page where links to multiple versions of a document (i.e., technical, non-technical) were provided.

Use Color for Grouping:

Use color to help users understand what does and does not go together.
Color coding permits users to rapidly scan and quickly perceive patterns and relationships among items. Items that share the same color will be considered as being related to each other, while items with prominent color differences will seem to be different.
People can distinguish up to ten different colors that are assigned to different categories, but it may be safer to use no more than five different colors for category coding. If more than ten different colors are used, the effects of any particular relationship will be lost.
Do not use color alone to convey information.

Source:[usability.gov]

CRM on the Web with WinForms-based Visual WebGui Solution

2009-07-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

"Thanks to Visual WebGui the product is a simple, easy to use and efficient application that performs exceptionally well over the web while accessible on multiple platforms and browsers" Overview CRMCompany is a high quality supplier and consultant in the field of CRM and Information. The company's objective is to apply its knowledge and experience in order to provide added value to business which would assist them in improving profitability. This is done by providing businesses with the ability to use information technology in commercial and administrative processes efficiently and effectively as possible with a measurable return.

The customer is a big supplier of materials in the construction industry with many nationwide locations. To support logistics, there was a need for a centralized application to simplify the information flow from the various locations to the central administration. This application extends CRMCompany's 'open' CRM system to the web and makes the process of maintaining customer information much easier and efficient.

Business needs The customer is a so called umbrella organization with many independent companies. This organization has a CRM solution in which customer data is maintained from a centralized database. Since the CRM solution is a Windows application and the users which are employees of the independent companies have to maintain their customer data, there was a need for multi-site customers to keep data that would be on this central database. To provide a 'public' portal to the customer data, a web portal is needed so each independent company can maintain their own data.

Since every company has its own customer data, the product must consist the capability to upload the data in a specific format and users also need to be able to download their own customer data from the central database to their desktop. It was decided to useMicrosoft ( News - Alert) Excel. Another user requirement was the ability to identify customers for a particular mailing.

The portability and usability was very important for this project. The requirements were based on a target of audience of about 50 different independent companies and totally about 200-300 users and it was important that the solution would allow all those requirements while still flexible and not too complicated to implement.

The Solution Visual WebGui was chosen because it fulfills all the major requirements. Many web development tools where looked at, but none of the tools had the flexibility, development simplicity and the ease of maintenance that Visual WebGui offers. The Visual WebGui platform also offers a smooth transition with no learning curve for Windows application developers since it uses the same methodologies.

"We were searching for a tool that makes a good compromise between the time it takes to develop a complete application and to make changes afterwards (maintainability). Visual WebGui is the best choice we made because it takes little time to learn how to write a web application, as a developer you don't have to worry about writing Html, JavaScript or AJAX," said Roy van Duist.

The entire development lifecycle of this web application project (the process of developing, deploying and maintenance) was extremely effective and easy due to Visual WebGui. Other tools are often time-consuming while Visual WebGui takes much shorter development cycles. This is even more significant especially when working on a project with over 200 users, the risk of changes is very large, so maintenance is a very important issue.

Visual WebGui is an easy to use development environment. As a developer you can aim on functionality instead of solving the multi browser problems, etc. One of the best benefits is the built-in AJAX which means that "with VWG it is really easy to write good performing code. There is no time wasted with complex client side code - Just straight to the point code," stated Roy van Duist.

To read about the benefits of the Visual WebGui-based solution and view screen shots of the final project click here: http://www.visualwebgui.com/Gizmox/Showcases/tabid/358/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/620/CRM-on-the-Web-with-WinForms-based-Visual-WebGui.aspx

[tmcnet.com]

AES Redesigned Website Goes Live

2009-07-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

Streamlined, Updated, Expanded & User Friendly
DMN Newswire--2009-7-6--The Audio Engineering Society Web Development Team has completed a massive overhaul of their website's 12-year-old design. Distinguished by a sophisticated user interface, drop down menus and enhanced social networking, audio/visual and search capabilities, the user-friendly site allows content from lower levels to 'float' to the home page and provides quick access to all areas of the website.

AES Webmaster Steve Johnson reports that the site features such important amenities as a job board, podcasts, tutorial content from AES conventions, video excerpts from Oral History interviews, and new ways to connect with audio professionals around the world. "We allow members to create a profile on our site so that other members or potential clients can read about their skill set, link to their website, or simply get back in touch. A good example would be the profile of our President (www.aes.org/aes/jimanderson) where you can see his photo and contact him about AES matters or just say hello," Johnson says.

"We have dramatically revamped the AES electronic library, which includes over twelve thousand scientific papers published in the AES journal or presented at AES events over the past sixty years. The site has streamlined countless tasks ranging from becoming a new member to discussing Journal articles and interacting with your local AES section. Anyone using an RSS reader will appreciate our additional news feeds which provide a stream of timely AES information to members and casual users alike," Johnson adds.

AES Executive Director Roger Furness reports that the Web Development Team consisting of leader Nick Zacharov; webmaster Steve Johnson; graphic designer Josh Tidsbury and copywriters Peter Cook and Michael Fleming have, "designed and constructed a major instrument for maintaining the Audio Engineering Society's leadership position as the primary forum for technical dialogue within the international professional audio community."

"The new www.aes.org site provides some fantastic new social networking features with direct links to committees, Facebook-style member profiles and a highly sophisticated publication search engine," AES President Jim Anderson concludes. "The time and energy devoted to this project will be paying dividends to our entire industry for many years to come."

[broadcastnewsroom.com]

Could Firefox 3.5 Spark a Web Design Boom?

2009-07-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

Mozilla recently released version 3.5 of its browser, Firefox, and it contained one tiny feature that could be a huge boon for web design: The ability to display any font, thanks to "@font-face," which allows designers to store fonts on their own servers, and reference them on their web pages. Designers Ian Lynam and Craig Mod have just posted a primer on the new feature, which shows just how much is possible. (A screencap of the primer is pictured above.)

If you have Firefox 3.0 but not 3.5, update now to see how dramatic the page looks, before and after. Previously, web designers who couldn't bear the thought of compromising on their type have relied on Flash or Javascript--which are, of course, clunky and annoying. @font-face is miles more elegant.

Safari has offered @font-face linking ever since version 3.1; Opera, meanwhile, has announced that the protocol will be supported in its next version. Internet Explorer, of course, is waaaaaay behind.

If you're interested in a longer, more detailed discussion of @font-face, check out this post on Mozilla Hacks.

[fastcompany.com]

No, your Web designer does not understand SEO!

2009-07-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

It's a perfectly natural assumption, so if you think your Web developer (designer, master, or whatever other term he or she goes by) does or should understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you're in good company. You're wrong, but in good company.

It's a simple fact, but critical to understand: The people building your Web site almost certainly do not understand how to optimize your site so that it will rank well in the search engines.

Please, Web developers, don't write and tell me that you do understand SEO. After all, there are a couple of possibilities:

You actually do know SEO; I'm not claiming there are no SEO-savvy Web developers just that they are a very rare breed
You only think you know SEO

Unfortunately SEO has become such a hot topic that Web developers now all say that they can handle your SEO for you. Firstly, it's another great revenue source. Perhaps more importantly, though, if they don't claim they can help with your SEO, another firm down the street will.

It's simply not true, though. How do I know this? Well, I've worked with many, many Web designers, and have rarely found any with more than a rudimentary understanding of SEO (an "enough to be dangerous" level of knowledge). Even the ones who know it "well," don't know it that well.

In addition, in my role as an ecommerce consultant, I've worked with literally hundreds of businesses, large and small. Many of these businesses come to me after it's dawned on them that perhaps their Web sites are not ranking well in the search engines because their Web designers actually know next-to-nothing about optimization.

But I've even had Web developers admit to me that they don't know much about it. ("Yes," the owner of a large development firm once told me over lunch, "we sell SEO services, but I can't say we really know much about it.") Furthermore, I've worked with Web designers on projects, providing them advice on how to optimize mutual clients' sites, only to notice later that one of the services promoted on the designer's Web site is, you've guessed it, Search Engine Optimization. I occasionally have designers come to me for training, when they have already been selling the service for some time.

Also consider this. Why should a Web designer understand SEO? SEO is actually a complex subject that takes a long time to learn well. I've been doing it for years, and still learn new things every day. SEO is difficult because the laws are hidden; the search engines don't really want you to know too much about the subject, and they're constantly changing the rules, too. It's like being an engineer without fully understanding the laws of physics ... and in any case, the laws change every Wednesday. So SEO is difficult, and takes a long time to learn well.

Web development is also a complicated subject. I know how to create Web pages ... but I would never claim that I'm an accomplished Web designer! Yet for some reason we're expected to believe that every Web designer is also an SEO expert.

Now, this is of more than merely academic interest, because if you think that your designer will get youir site ranked well in the search engines, you'll be disappointed. And if you actually pay for the designer's SEO services you'll also be just a little poorer.

[examiner.com]

Free Web Hosting & Email for 6 Months by RTDesignGroup

2009-07-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

Web Design, Development & Hosting company RTDesignGroup.com, LLC based out of Naples,FL USA has extended its Offer of Free Hosting & Email to ALL new Clients for 2009!

"We Feel that this offer will welcome new clients to our professional organization", "Its an incentive for new clients to come check us out", said Ryan Tremblay, CEO.

The Web Design and Development firm offers free web site hosting for six month with purchase of custom web design. "All we ask is that our customers purchase a web design/development or marketing package, and we will cover hosting and email", says Tremblay. RT Design Group's complete services include Website Design, Graphics design including Logos and business cards, custom web application Programming, Dedicated Hosting, video production and Marketing Solutions.

All hosting services provided by RT Design Group utilize our dedicated servers. RT Design Group has made significant investments in dedicated servers, which will in turn provide the fastest website performance to our customers as well as guaranteeing the most reliability. RT Design Groups servers utilize Amazon's EC2 web services and S3 for storage. " We feel you will find value in a free year of hosting using our dedicated cluster.", says Ryan Tremblay, President , RTDesignGroup.com.

[uk.webhostdir.com]

Introducing user-centred web design

2009-07-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

"We've spent thousands on that website and it’s bringing in no business at all. None of our customers seem to use it - we may as well have written the site in a foreign language!"

No one should be saying this kind of thing about their organisation's online presence, yet this problem is depressingly common. Quite often the problem is the process used to design the site.

Every variable was seemingly taken into account - except the most important one: "What do our customers actually want from our website?"

The solution is a new way of stating the questions that form the basis for web design: a perspective known as "user-centred design" (UCD).

Web initiatives are now a commonplace strategy for business and government alike. Increasingly, websites form the centre of organisational communication and marketing strategies. As a result, most of these organisations have got over the thrill of simply having a presence in cyberspace.

Now people are asking the hard questions, like:

"What's our website really for?"

"How do we use the web to make our business grow?"

"Are our customers satisfied with the experience of using our site?"

In the early days of web/business integration, it was often just decided that a website was a must have. Few businesses actually made the effort to find out whether their customers really wanted a website and if they wanted one, and what they would actually want to use it for. Those days have well and truly passed.

If you take a look at businesses that have succeeded in using the internet to grow, there are a few common features. These features are now known as "user-centred design" or "usability".

A classic example of a local site that succeeds through using the UCD perspective is Trade Me. One of the keys to Trade Me's success was that the company has always put the site user - the customer - at the centre of the equation. The site was designed to easily give customers what they wanted, not what the management team or the web designer wanted them to have.

Many sites present information the owners think is important, but that users of the site find unhelpful: as unhelpful as if it was written in a foreign language.

Other under-performing sites organise their content under poorly-designed headings that aren't comprehensible at first glance - or have working parts that are hard to use. A common design error is to animate the navigation links, so they move around the screen as you try to click them. Some web designers will tell you this is cutting edge, but your customers will use words that are much less complimentary.

UCD focuses on user needs and goals. It will be one of the essential characteristics of future net success. Many studies have shown for every dollar spent on UCD, businesses have gained $10 in increased revenue.

Usable sites have a number of key characteristics, including:

Their navigation is intuitive - it can be understood at a glance.
Their content is written specifically for online delivery, not simply re-used from hard copy marketing collateral.
Your customers don't have to learn how to use the site - they can immediately see how to do everything they need to.
Usable site content is often internationalised, so it can be easily read by those for whom English is not a first language.
Accessibility guidelines are followed so that all customers can use the site, even those with poor eyesight or limited dexterity.
Online help is visible on the screen where it is needed, if users do become confused.
All the site features work properly, regardless of what browser software is being used.

Usability consultants, also known as information designers, can design usability into new sites or evaluate existing sites and make them more usable. A key strategy is to test sites with real users. Test subjects are asked to interact with sites and their reactions are observed. If the methodology is right, this can be done cheaply and quickly, with as few as three participants.

Wired Internet Group is one New Zealand web design company that has risen to the usability challenge. Wired has applied the concepts of UCD to the sites of some of its key clients. Wired’s usability consultants have developed a range of services, from full usability testing to quicker and more flexible approaches.

A good first step is to assess users' experiences of using a site by means of an expert evaluation. An information designer reviews the site and uses the information gained from this to interview both the site owners and some actual users. This process reveals what the site owners' actual goals are, as well as what the users really need.

From this we can see where the intentions and expectations of both sides fail to match. A written report outlines both findings and proposed solutions to specific usability concerns.

A usability test expands on this approach, with the expert evaluation used to identify usability concerns with the target site. The test consists of asking up to half a dozen representative users to try looking for specific information or performing specific tasks while using the site.

The usability consultant observes the test with a video camera and notes where groups of users are having trouble or misunderstanding the site. From these observations a report can be written, recommending improvements to enable people to enjoy trouble-free interactions with the site under review.

As awareness of the "usability revolution" spreads through the business and public sectors in New Zealand, demand is growing for web design and review services that match with the objectives of user-centred design.

As more business is done online, there is less room for those websites that seem to be written in a language that customers don't speak.

The second article in this series will look at the concept of user experience. As well as explaining user experience in more detail, the article will outline what skills are needed to embody it in good web design.

[computerworld.co.nz]

9 Reasons Your Website Can Have a High Bounce Rate

2009-07-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Bounce Rate is one of the SEO key success factors that are always under the close radar for web analytics professionals and there are enough reasons for webmasters and Internet marketing professionals to be concerned about high bounce rates. With the increasing awareness about web analytics and businesses taking their web presence more seriously people are now interested to look into more than just the unique visitors and page views and I can vouch for the fact that this would contribute highly towards the overall improvement in the quality of WWW.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate can be simply defined as the percentage of website visitors that leave the website directly from the page they enter without clicking through to any other page of the website.

Let's take a look at some of the factors that can be identified as possible causes of high bounce rate:

Internal Factors Affecting Bounce Rate:

Web Design and Usability: Presentation is important. If your web design is cluttered, have some colors that really hurt the eyes, full of jumping flash animations or has some other design flaw that makes your visitors feel uncomfortable you can be sure that the page would experience a high bounce rate. On similar note if your users need to spend time trying to understand your website or comprehend the features you provide, even if your content is the best in the world your bounce rate would tend to be on the higher side. Here are some site usability checking tools. Provide easy to use interface with a nice design and good content your visitors will stick.

Website Content: Make sure your content adds some value to your visitors and also the content and information flow is good enough to carry your visitors from one page to the other. You might have good content but if there is no spontaneity in writing and if the information flow is not proper, after reading the first page your user would think “what next?” This is the point they bounce off your site. Ensure that your content is written well and give prominent clues to your visitors as to what is the next step .Your website is like your home, if you want your guest to see the entire house you need to take them around, when your visitors come to the door and you don’t invite them in they are likely to leave from the door itself. So use your content wisely to invite them in and keep them entertained.

Website Navigation: Somewhat similar to the point we discussed above. Navigational issues are one of the key factors that contribute to the bounce rate. If you want your visitors to move around your website provide them with a clear intuitive navigation structure. Don't leave anything to their guess work.

Technical Issues: There can be a wide range of factors under this. Think if you land up on a page part of which shows some PHP code instead of the data that it was supposed to pull from the database. Aren’t you likely to feel bad about it? If you have got a fancy ActiveX component on your webpage that requires your viewers to download some other file to get it to render properly, how many of them do you think would do that? Most of these visitors would add to your Bounce rate figure.

Marketing Factors Affecting Bounce Rate:

Wrong Keyword Selection: Search marketing is one of the key avenues through which any website gets a large chunk of their traffic and the entire search marketing game is based on keywords. What happens if you chose the wrong keywords?Well if you choose the wrong keywords and start optimizing your website for the non relevant keywords (which is tad difficult with modern day search engines) or show up on search ads for non relevant keywords ( which is very much possible) all you get are some non targeted visitors who are looking for something different from what your website has to offer. Result: High Bounce Rate.

Ad Copy: Ad copies represent your website in the paid search results. If this representation is not aligned to what your website has to offer it is definitely going to boost up your bounce rate. At times novice search marketers would create alluring ad copies to boost CTR and increase the number of visitors but if the communication in your ad copies is not in line with the content on your page you can't retain them.

Page Title and Meta Description: You can say this is the organic counterpart of Ad Copies. Search Engines typically display the Page Title and Meta description in the organic search result snippets. If the message in page Title and Meta description is not in line with the content of the page, high bounce rate is a big possibility.

External Factors contributing to High Bounce Rate:

Occasional Irrelevant Results from Search Engines - Well, irrespective of all the advancement that the search engines have done at times they still throw in a few irrelevant results and if your site is one of those results you will definitely get a few extra visitors but they will definitely be bouncing off.There is not much that you can do about this. You can still find out those unrelated keywords that are driving traffic and investigate the reason on how search engines are relating to your site for those terms and then try to eradicate the cause.

Improper External Link: A very rare situation, but might happen. If an external site links to your site using an anchor text that's not related to your website, this link would drive traffic that come to your website with some expectations but would find different content - Result: bounce off. Here are some tools to explore and validate outbound links.

[searchenginejournal]

Top 10 Banner Ad Design Tips

2009-07-02T06:39:00.000-07:00

I'm a graphic designer at Oneupweb and let me tell you, banner ads are one of our specialties. That's why I decided to create a top 10 list of tips (in no particular order) to help guide your endeavor into banner ad design and to answer some of your questions about why we do what we do when designing a banner.

Less is more. Banners that are too busy and complex will only irritate viewer's eyeballs (and you don't want to do that).
Keep it short and sweet. Avoid the temptation of the cram! A banner needs to be informative, not over-informative. Don't explain it all on three panels. Get to the main point in a general way, but don't beat around the bush. Remember, you want to intrigue the viewer's interest, which will most likely result in a click.
Nothing beats a good punch line. A catchy phrase can go a long way. It should be just a few words that sparks the interest or imagination of the viewers, and entices them to click on the banner.
Make it visually interesting. There needs to be an eye catcher on the first screen that will grab the viewer's attention. Don't resort to a bunch of annoying animation or tasteless irrelevant images. Flickering, blinking or flashing ads and intrusive fake desktop warnings only aggravate viewers. They've even caused web surfers to develop "banner blindness" (the tendency to consciously or unconsciously ignore any type of banner). Also, keep font size in mind. Lots of tiny text will only cause the viewer to ignore the ad.
Give the viewer direction. That's right, tell them what to do! Use action words like "Click here", "Enter", "Go", "Get", etc.
Use the word "FREE" in your banner. I don't think this needs any explanation.
Choose your fonts and colors carefully. Avoid crazy fonts. Use basic, but interesting bold fonts in standard web colors if possible.
Use subtle animation. When creating a flash banner, many designers make the mistake of getting carried away. While animation can be a great way to catch a viewer's eye, it can also have the opposite effect. Make the animation clever, but simple and short. If your animation takes too much time to load - never mind, you've already lost that click!
Keep the kb down. File size is a very important factor on getting a click. A viewer's attention span is very limited; therefore, you want your banner ad to load before the main content of the website loads. This grabs the viewer's attention immediately. Yet, smaller file size obviously has its trade-offs, such as less animation length, number of colors and detail.
Limit the loop. An animation that loops endlessly tends to irritate viewers. The entire banner ad should be no longer than 15 seconds long. It should loop no more than 3-5 times with the main message and button on the last frame.

[straightupsearch]

Writing Web Content

2009-07-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

Writing Web Content is the most important part of a Web site. If the content does not provide the information needed by users, the Web site will provide little value no matter how easy it is to usethe site.

When preparing prose content for a Web site, use familiar words and avoid the use of jargon. If acronyms and abbreviations must be used, ensure that they are clearly understood by typical users and defined on the page.

Minimize the number of words in a sentence and sentences in a paragraph. Make the first sentence (the topic sentence) of each paragraph descriptive of the remainder of the paragraph. Clearly state the temporal sequence of instructions. Also, use upper- and lowercase letters appropriately, write in an affirmative, active voice, and limit prose text on navigation pages.

Make Action Sequences Clear:

When describing an action or task that has a natural order or sequence (assembly instructions, troubleshooting, etc.), structure the content so that the sequence is obvious and consistent.
Time-based sequences are easily understood by users. Do not force users to perform or learn tasks in a sequence that is unusual or awkward.

Avoid Jargon:

not use words that typical users may not understand.
Terminology plays a large role in the user's ability to find and understand information. Many terms are familiar to designers and content writers, but not to users. In one study, some users did not understand the term 'cancer screening.' Changing the text to 'testing for cancer' substantially improved users' understanding.
To improve understanding among users who are accustomed to using the jargon term, it may be helpful to put that term in parentheses. A dictionary or glossary may be helpful to users who are new to a topic, but should not be considered a license to frequently use terms typical users do not understand.

Use Familiar Words:

Use words that are frequently seen and heard.
Use words that are familiar to, and used frequently by, typical users. Words that are more frequently seen and heard are better and more quickly recognized. There are several sources of commonly used words (see Kucera and Francis, 1967 and Leech et al., 2001 in the Sources section).
Familiar words can be collected using open-ended surveys, by viewing search terms entered by users on your site or related sites, and through other forms of market research.

Define Acronyms and Abbreviations:

Do not use unfamiliar or undefined acronyms or abbreviations on Web sites.
Acronyms and abbreviations should be used sparingly and must be defined in order to be understood by all users. It is important to remember that users who are new to a topic are likely to be unfamiliar with the topic's related acronyms and abbreviations. Use the following format when defining acronyms or abbreviations: Physician Data Query (PDQ). Acronyms and abbreviations are typically defined on first mention, but remember that users may easily miss the definition if they scroll past it or enter the page below where the acronym or abbreviation is defined.

Use Abbreviations Sparingly:

Show complete words rather than abbreviations whenever possible.
The only times to use abbreviations are when they are significantly shorter, save needed space, and will be readily understood by typical users. If users must read abbreviations, choose only common abbreviations.

Use Mixed Case with Prose:

Display continuous (prose) text using mixed upper- and lowercase letters.
Reading text is easier when capitalization is used conventionally to start sentences and to indicate proper nouns and acronyms. If an item is intended to attract the user's attention, display the item in all uppercase, bold, or italics. Do not use these methods for showing emphasis for more than one or two words or a short phrase because they slow reading performance when used for extended prose.

Limit the Number of Words and Sentences:

To optimize reading comprehension, minimize the number of words in sentences, and the number of sentences in paragraphs.
To enhance the readability of prose text, a sentence should not contain more than twenty words. A paragraph should not contain more than six sentences.

Limit Prose Text on Navigation Pages:

Do not put a lot of prose text on navigation pages.
When there are many words on navigation pages, users tend to rapidly scan for specific words or begin clicking on many different links, rather than reading the text associated with the links.

Use Active Voice:

Compose sentences in active rather than passive voice.
Users benefit from simple, direct language. Sentences in active voice are typically more concise than sentences in passive voice. Strong verbs help the user know who is acting and what is being acted upon. In one study, people who had to interpret federal regulation language spontaneously translated passive sentences into active sentences in order to form an understanding of the passages.

Write Instructions in the Affirmative:

As a general rule, write instructions in affirmative statements rather than negative statements.
When giving instructions, strive to tell users what to do (see a dentist if you have a toothache), rather than what to avoid doing (avoid skipping your dentist appointment if you have a toothache). If the likelihood of making a wrong step is high or the consequences are dire, negative voice may be clearer to the user.

Make First Sentences Descriptive:

Include the primary theme of a paragraph, and the scope of what it covers, in the first sentence of each paragraph.
Users tend to skim the first one or two sentences of each paragraph when scanning text.

Source:[usability.gov]

Screen-Based Controls (Widgets)

2009-06-30T04:38:00.000-07:00

In order to interact with a Web site, users usually require the use of screen-based controls (sometimes known as 'widgets'). Besides the pervasive link, commonly used screen-based controls include pushbuttons, radio buttons, check boxes, drop-down lists and entry fields. Designers should ensure that they use familiar widgets in a conventional or commonly-used manner.

When pushbuttons are used, ensure that they look like pushbuttons and that they are clearly labeled. In some cases, the pushbuttons will need to be prioritized to facilitate their proper use.

Radio buttons are used to select from among two or more mutually-exclusive selections. Check boxes should be used to make binary choices, e.g., 'yes' or 'no.' Drop-down lists are generally used to select one item from among many. To speed user performance, show default values when appropriate, and do not limit the number of viewable list box options.

Entry fields are used when completing forms and entering text into search boxes. Designers should try to minimize the amount of information entered by users. Each entry field should be clearly and consistently labeled, with the labels placed close to the entry fields. Designers should also clearly distinguish between 'required' and 'optional' data entry fields, and attempt to minimize the use of the Shift key.

To facilitate fast entry of information, designers should automatically place the cursor in the first data entry field, provide labels for each field (e.g., pounds, miles, etc.), and provide auto-tabbing functionality. In order to increase accuracy of data entry, partition long data items into smaller units, enable the software to automatically detect errors, and do not require case-sensitive data entries. Showing users their data entries can increase accuracy. For experienced users, the fastest possible entry of information will come from allowing users to use entry fields instead of selecting from list boxes.

Distinguish Required and Optional Data Entry Fields:

Distinguish clearly and consistently between required and optional data entry fields.
Users should be able to easily determine which data entry fields are required and which are optional. Many Web sites are currently using an asterisk in front of the label for required fields. Other sites are adding the word 'required' near the label. One study found that bolded text is preferred when compared to the use of chevrons (>>>), checkmarks, or color to indicate required fields.

Label Pushbuttons Clearly:

Ensure that a pushbutton’s label clearly indicates its action.
The label of a pushbutton should clearly indicate the action that will be applied when the pushbutton is clicked. Common pushbutton labels include 'Update,' 'Go,' 'Submit,' 'Cancel,' 'Enter,' 'Home,' 'Next,' and 'Previous.'

Label Data Entry Fields Consistently:

Ensure that data entry labels are worded consistently, so that the same data item is given the same label if it appears on different pages.
If possible, employ consistent labeling conventions. For example, do not use single words or phrases for some labels and short sentences for others, or use verbs for some and nouns for others.

Do Not Make User-Entered Codes Case Sensitive:

Treat upper- and lowercase letters as equivalent when users are entering codes.
Do not make user-entered codes case sensitive unless there is a valid reason for doing so (such as increased security of passwords). If required, clearly inform users if they must enter codes in a case specific manner. When retaining data entered by users, show the data as it was entered by the user.

Label Data Entry Fields Clearly:

Display an associated label for each data entry field to help users understand what entries are desired.
Employ descriptive labels that clearly, concisely, and unambiguously define the required entry. Make labels distinct enough so that readers do not confuse them with the data entries themselves. This can be done by bolding the labels or providing other visual cues, such as an asterisk.
Do not create new jargon when labeling data entry fields. Use common terms (e.g., male, female) rather than arbitrary labels (e.g., Group 1, Group 2). If the meaning of a proposed label is in doubt, conduct usability testing with an appropriate sample of qualified users.

Minimize User Data Entry:

Do not require users to enter the same information more than once.
Requiring re-entry of data imposes an additional task on users, and increases the possibility of entry errors. When entries made by users on one page are required on another page, the computer should retrieve the original entries, rather than requiring re-entry of the same information. In general, require users to make as few entries as possible.

Put Labels Close to Data Entry Fields:

Ensure that labels are close enough to their associated data entry fields so that users will recognize the label as describing the data entry field.
All labels and related information should be close to the data entry field to enable users to easily relate the label and entries required.

Allow Users to See Their Entered Data:

Create data entry fields that are large enough to show all of the entered data without scrolling.
Users should be able to see their entire entry at one time. There always will be some users who will enter more data than can be seen without scrolling; however, try to minimize the need to scroll or move the cursor to see all the data for that field. If there is a character limit for a particular field, state that near the entry field.
Designers should be particularly aware of the length of data entry fields used for entering search terms. One study found that this entry field should be at least 35-40 characters long to accommodate ninety-five percent of search terms being used.

Use Radio Buttons for Mutually Exclusive Selections:

Provide radio buttons when users need to choose one response from a list of mutually exclusive options.
Radio buttons should be used when there is a need to select from among mutually exclusive items. Users should be able to click on the button or its text label to make their selection. Assign one of the radio button choices as the default when appropriate. One study reported that for making mutually exclusive selections, radio buttons elicit reliably better performance than drop-down lists. Radio buttons are also preferred over both open lists and drop-down lists.

Use Familiar Widgets:

Use widgets that are familiar to your users, and employ them in their commonly used manner.
Do not assume that all users are familiar with all available widgets. Unfamiliar widgets will slow some users, and cause others not to use the widget because they do not know how to make it work properly. For instance, one study showed that some users, particularly older users, do not know how to use a drop-down list.
In choosing widgets, designers typically consider such issues as the amount of available screen 'real estate,' reducing the number of user clicks, and whether the user will be choosing one from among many items, or several items at once. Usability test the performance and acceptability of widgets to ensure they do not confuse or slow users.

Anticipate Typical User Errors:

Use the computer to detect errors made by users.
Do not expect that users always will make correct entries. Anticipate possible user errors, and when possible, allocate responsibility to the computer to identify these mistakes and suggest corrections. For example, if a date is entered as 'February 31,' the computer should generate an error message asking for a revised entry.
Design the site's search engine (and other places where users enter data) to accommodate common misspellings and certain other errors.

Partition Long Data Items:

Partition long data items into shorter sections for both data entry and data display.
Partitioning long data items can aid users in detecting entry errors, and can reduce erroneous entries. For example, it is easier to enter and verify a ten digit telephone number when entered as three groups, NNN-NNN-NNNN. Similarly, ZIP+4 codes and Social Security numbers are best partitioned.

Use a Single Data Entry Method:

Design data entry transactions so that users can stay with one entry method as long as possible.
Do not have users shift back and forth between data entry methods. Requiring users to make numerous shifts from keyboard to mouse to keyboard can substantially slow their entry speed.

Prioritize Pushbuttons:

Use location and highlighting to prioritize pushbuttons.
If one pushbutton in a group of pushbuttons is used more frequently than the others, put that button in the first position. Also make the most frequently used button the default action, i.e., that which is activated when users press the Enter key.
One study reported that designers should place the button most likely to be clicked on the left side of a two-button set of buttons. This button arrangement allows the user to read the first button label, and since it is the most likely selection, click on that button immediately. Some users look at the left and then right button before making a selection, preferring to be fully informed before submitting a response.

Use Check Boxes to Enable Multiple Selections:

Use a check box control to allow users to select one or more items from a list of possible choices.
Each check box should be able to be selected independently of all other check boxes. One study showed that for making multiple selections from a list of non-mutually exclusive items, check boxes elicit the fastest performance and are preferred over all other widgets. Users should be able to click on either the box or the text label.

Label Units of Measurement:

When using data entry fields, specify the desired measurement units with the field labels rather than requiring users to enter them.
Designers should include units such as minutes, ounces, or centimeters, etc. as part of the data entry field label. This will reduce the number of keystrokes required of users (speeding the data entry process), and reduce the chance of errors.

Do Not Limit Viewable List Box Options:

When using open lists, show as many options as possible.
Scrolling to find an item in a list box can take extra time. In one study, an open list that showed only three (of five) options was used. To see the hidden two items, users had to scroll. The need to scroll was not obvious to users who were not familiar with list boxes, and slowed down those that did know to scroll.

Display Default Values:

Display default values whenever a likely default choice can be defined.
When likely default values can be defined, offer those values to speed data entry. The initial or default item could be the most frequently selected item or the last item selected by that user. In general, do not use the default position to display a heading or label for that widget.

Place Cursor in First Data Entry Field:

Place (automatically) a blinking cursor at the beginning of the first data entry field when a data entry form is displayed on a page.
Users should not be required to move the mouse pointer to the first data entry field and click on the mouse button to activate the field. Designers should consider, however, that programming this automatic cursor placement might negatively impact the performance of screen reader software.

Ensure that Double-Clicking Will Not Cause Problems:

Ensure that double-clicking on a link will not cause undesirable or confusing results.
Many users double-click on a link when only one click is needed. Developers cannot stop users from double-clicking, but they should try to reduce the negative consequences of this behavior. Usability testing has indicated that if users start with quick double-clicks, they tend to continue to do this for most of the test. Sometimes, when both clicks are detected by the computer, the first click selects one link and the second click selects a second link, causing unexpected (i.e., puzzling) results.

Use Open Lists to Select One from Many:

Use open lists rather than drop-down lists to select one from many.
Generally, the more items users can see in a list (without scrolling), the faster their responses will be, and the fewer omission errors they will make. Ideally, users should be able to see all available items without scrolling.
When compared with drop-down lists, open lists tend to elicit faster performance primarily because drop-down lists require an extra click to open. However, if a list is extremely long, a drop-down list may be better. The available research does not indicate the upper number limit of items that should be displayed in a list.

Use Data Entry Fields to Speed Performance:

Require users to enter information using data entry fields (instead of selecting from list boxes) if you are designing to speed human performance.
At least two studies have compared the effectiveness of text entry versus selection (list boxes) for entering dates and making airline reservations. Both studies found text entry methods were faster and preferred over all other methods. However, use of text entry fields tends to elicit more errors.

Use a Minimum of Two Radio Buttons:

Never use one radio button alone.
Use at least two radio buttons together. If users can choose not to activate any of the radio button choices, provide a choice labeled 'None.'

Provide Auto-Tabbing Functionality:

Provide auto-tabbing functionality for frequent users with advanced Web interaction skills.
Auto-tabbing can significantly reduce data entry times for frequent users by not requiring them to manually tab from field to field.

Minimize Use of the Shift Key:

Design data entry transactions to minimize use of the Shift key.
If possible, designers should not require users to enter characters that require the use the Shift key. Using the Shift key imposes a demand for extra user attention and time. For example, the designer can include symbols such as the dollar or percent sign near data entry fields rather than requiring users to enter those characters. Designers also can treat upper- and lowercases as equivalent when entered by users.

Source:[usability.gov]

Graphics, Images, and Multimedia

2009-06-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

Graphics are used on many, if not most, Web pages. When used appropriately, graphics can facilitate learning. An important image to show on most pages of a site is the organization's logo. When used appropriately, images, animation, video, and audio can add tremendous value to a Web site. When animation is used appropriately, it is a good idea to introduce the animation before it begins.

Many images require a large number of bytes that can take a long time to download, especially at slower connection speeds. When images must be used, designers should ensure that the graphics do not substantially slow page download times. Thumbnail versions of larger images allow users to preview images without having to download them.

Sometimes it is necessary to label images to help users understand them. Usability testing should be used to help ensure that Web site images convey the intended message. In many cases, the actual data should be included with charts and graphs to facilitate fast and accurate understanding.

It is usually not a good idea to use images as the entire background of a page. Complex background images tend to slow down page loading, and can interfere with reading the foreground text.

Experienced users tend to ignore graphics that they consider to be advertising. Designers should ensure that they do not create images that look like banner ads. Also, they should be careful about placing images in locations that are generally used for advertisements.

Use Simple Background Images:

Use background images sparingly and make sure they are simple, especially if they are used behind text.
Background images can make it difficult for users to read foreground text. A single, large, complex background image (including a picture) can substantially slow page download rates. If background images must be employed, use small, simple images with 'tiling,' and/or keep the image resolution as low as possible.

Label Clickable Images:

Ensure that all clickable images are either labeled or readily understood by typical users.
Occasional or infrequent users may not use an image enough to understand or remember its meaning. Ensure that images and their associated text are close together so that users can integrate and effectively use them together. Additionally, alt text should accompany every clickable image.

Ensure that Images Do Not Slow Downloads:

Take steps to ensure that images on the Web site do not slow page download times unnecessarily.
User frustration increases as the length of time spent interacting with a system increases. Users tolerate less delay if they believe the task should be easy for the computer. One study reported that users rated latencies of up to five seconds as ’good.’ Delays over ten seconds were rated as ’poor.’ Users rate pages with long delays as being less interesting and more difficult to scan. One study reported no relationship between slow page download times and users giving up.
To speed download times, use several small images rather than a single large image on a page; use interlacing or progressive images; and use several of the same images. Designers should also minimize the number of different colors used in an image and put HEIGHT and WIDTH pixel dimension tags in an image reference. To achieve faster response time for users with dial-up modems, limit page size to less than 30,000 bytes.

Use Video, Animation, and Audio Meaningfully:

Use video, animation, and audio only when they help to convey, or are supportive of, the Web site's message or other content.
Multimedia elements (such as video, animation, and audio) can easily capture the attention of users; therefore, it is important to have clear and useful reasons for using multimedia to avoid unnecessarily distracting users. Some multimedia elements may take a long time to download, so it is important that they be worth the wait.
Used productively, multimedia can add great value to a site's content and help direct users' attention to the most important information and in the order that it is most useful.

Include Logos:

Place your organization's logo in a consistent place on every page.
Users are frequently unaware when they click through to a different Web site. Having a logo on each page provides a frame of reference throughout a Web site so that users can easily confirm that they have not left the site. Ideally, the logo should be in the same location on each page: many designers place the logo in the top left corner.

Graphics Should Not Look like Banner Ads:

Do not make important images look like banner advertisements or gratuitous decorations.
In a recent study, a graphic developed to inform users about access to live help was not clicked because many users thought it was an advertisement. Even though the graphic was larger than most other graphics on the page, some users missed the item completely because the graphic looked too much like a decoration or a banner advertisement.

Limit Large Images Above the Fold:

Do not fill the entire first screenful with one image if there are screensful of text information below the fold.
Large graphics that cover most of the screen at the top of the page suggest to users that there is no more information below the graphic. In one study, because a graphic filled the screen, some users did not use the scrollbar to scroll down to more content. In fact, some users did not even suspect that more information might be located below the fold.

Ensure Web site Images Convey Intended Messages:

Ensure that Web site images convey the intended message to users, not just to designers.
Users and designers tend to differ in what they think is appropriate to convey a message. When attempting to select the best graphic from a set of graphics, users tend to select those that most other users would have selected (i.e., those that look familiar), while most developers favor graphics that look more artistic. One study found that seventy-five percent of users are able to find information on a content and link-rich site, whereas only seventeen percent could find the same information on a graphic-intensive site.

Limit the Use of Images:

Use images only when they are critical to the success of a Web site.
Ensure that a Web site’s graphics add value and increase the clarity of the information on the site. Certain graphics can make some Web sites much more interesting for users, and users may be willing to wait a few extra seconds for them to load. Users tend to be most frustrated if they wait several seconds for a graphic to download, and then find that the image does not add any value. Some decorative graphics are acceptable when they do not distract the user.

Include Actual Data with Data Graphics:

Include actual data values with graphical displays of data when precise reading of the data is required.
Adjacent numeric annotation might be added to the ends of displayed bars on a bar graph, or to mark the points of a plotted curve. Some displays may require complete data annotation while others may require annotation only for selected data elements.

Display Monitoring Information Graphically:

Use a graphic format to display data when users must monitor changing data.
Whenever possible, the computer should handle data monitoring and should call abnormalities to the users' attention. When that is not possible, and a user must monitor data changes, graphic displays will make it easier for users to detect critical changes and/or values outside the normal range.

Introduce Animation:

Provide an introductory explanation for animation prior to it being viewed.
Providing an explanation of animation before it begins will help users better integrate the animation and associated content. In other words, briefly explain to users what they are about to see before they see it. Also, allow animation to be user-controlled. The user should be able to pause, stop, replay, or ignore animation or other multimedia elements.

Emulate Real-World Objects:

Use images that look like real-world items when appropriate.
Images (e.g., pushbuttons and navigation tabs) are likely to be considered as links when they are designed to emulate their real-world analogues. If a designer cannot make such images emulate real-world objects, the image may require at least one additional clickability cue, such as a descriptive label (like 'Home' or 'Next') or placement on the page. A text label can help inform users about a link's destination, but in one study some users missed this type of image link, even those that contained words, because the words were not underlined.

Use Thumbnail Images to Preview Larger Images:

When viewing full-size images is not critical, first provide a thumbnail of the image.
By providing thumbnails of larger images, users can decide whether they want to wait for the full image to load. By using thumbnails, those who do not need or want to see the full image are not slowed down by large image downloads. Link the thumbnail image to the full-size copy.

Use Images to Facilitate Learning:

To facilitate learning, use images rather than text whenever possible.
The superiority of pictures over text in a learning situation appears to be strong. For example, pictures of common objects are recognized and recalled better than their textual names. Exceptions seem to occur when the items are conceptually very similar (e.g., all animals or tools), or when items are presented so quickly that learners cannot create verbal labels.

Using Photographs of People:

Photographs of people may or may not help build trust in Web sites.
In one e-commerce study, having a labeled photograph on the Web site was perceived as more trustworthy than having a photograph with no label. Further, having a photograph with no label was perceived as more trustworthy than having no photograph at all. Highly experienced users showed the same degree of trust as users that were moderately experienced or inexperienced.
However, another study recommended that photos not be used to increase the trustworthiness of a Web site. They found that the presence of a photo did not affect the trust of a site, or user preferences for a site.

Source:[usability.gov]

Webhosting.uk.com launches Hyper-V Windows 2008 VPS Hosting

2009-06-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

The company states that Hyper-V represents the next era of virtualization, allowing them and their customers to get the most out of their sever investments and usage. Another aspect of Hyper-V virtualization which sets it apart from other virtualization platforms is the ability to run a number of different operating systems in parallel on a single physical server.

The new VPS servers are hosted on the most powerful Dual Quad Core server with 12-16 GB RAM and RAID arrays for redundant data protection and replication. The entry-level Hyper-V Starter plan includes 15 GB of data storage, 300 GB of monthly data transfer, and access to 512 MB of server RAM while Plesk control panel is optional. When combined with the company’s managed services, 24/7 support and reputation for experience and reliability, the new VPS offering positions Webhosting.uk.com VPS plans as the industry’s leading virtual server solutions.

"With the addition of Hyper-V Windows 2008 VPS to our existing portfolio, we are glad to offer our customers a user friendly and reliable virtualization platform for hosting their Web applications and services" states James Anderson, Business Development Manager of WEBHOSTING UK COM LTD. He adds further "With Hyper-V VPS hosting plans, customers are going to have the same level of control as on a dedicated server, but they will be paying significantly lower prices."

[gawkwire]

Web Hosting Sales and Promos Roundup

2009-06-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

There was a wide range of creative sales and promotions for the week ending June 26, including discounts in areas of web hosting including reseller hosting, online backup, web hosting tutorials, disaster recovery, and domains.

midPhase Launches $1 Reseller Hosting Program:

For the next 30 days Turnkey web hosting solutions provider midPhase (www.midphase.com) will provide new and existing customers with an unlimited number of websites to resell for only $1 for designers, developers and entrepreneurs seeking to launch their own startups. Regularly valued at $24.95 per month, the midPhase package includes 100 GB of webspace, 1000 GB of bandwidth, an unlimited number of accounts to resell, custom name servers, client billing software, dedicated IPs, unlimited SSL certificates and 50 advanced anti spam and stat applications, as well as unlimited cPanel accounts.

Webserver.com.my Launches Windows Hosting Plan; 50-Percent-Off Coupon:

Weeks after launching its Linux hosting service, Malaysian web host Webserver.com.my (www.webserver.com.my) has released its second cost effective web-hosting plan based on high-end windows servers. Originally priced at 796 Ringgits (about $225) per year, Webserver.com.my is offering a 50-percent-off coupon.

Memopal Online Backup Offers 30 Percent Off to Customers Switching to Memopal:

Memopal Online Backup (www.memopal.com) started its "Switch to Memopal" promotion this week, offering a 30 percent discount to users of other online backup providers who decide to switch to Memopal. Memopal's online backup and storage software package archives files

from Windows, Mac and Linux computers in real-time, on remote servers. The 30 percent discount offer is valid from June 15 until September 15, 2009.

DemoWolf Spring Sale Ends Next Week:

Web hosting tutorial provider DemoWolf (www.demowolf.com) has marked down all its tutorials by 50 percent as part of its spring sale, which ends June 30, 2009. DemoWolf also offers a number of "Savings Bundles," which offer a variety of tutorials at discounted prices.

DemoWolf is also offering a discount in conjunction with the launch of its newest product, "Demo Pages," which offers a pre-built page to guide customers to DemoWolf tutorials as either a simple hyperlinks page, a "Floatbox" option, or a "Nested Floatbox" option. Customers who order $150 or more of new tutorials, can choose the Demo Page option of your choice for free until June 30, 2009.

Online Tech Launches Cost Effective SAN Disaster Recovery Hosting:

In conjunction with upcoming Dell seminars, where it will demonstrate SAN-to-SAN replication at its data centers, managed data center operator Online Tech (www.onlinetech.com) has launched a SAN Disaster Recovery Package, and is offering a secondary SAN for only $399 per month including Internet connectivity. The primary SAN data, snapshots, and restoration points are replicated at a secondary SAN for disaster recovery at a separate data center.

Domain.com Offers "Domain Day" Monday, Giving Away 30 Domains:

In an effort to lessen the sting of Mondays, domain registrar and web host Domain.com (www.domain.com) will give away free domains to the first 25 people who visit Domain.com and enter their emails, as well as another five for Tweets sent Monday between 9am-1pm Pacific that include the hashtag #domainday and explain why their Monday is so miserable.

"When people wake up Monday morning, now things won't be so bad because it's Domain Day," Domain.com product marketing manager Doug Cobb said in a statement. "I personally love to win things Monday morning. Friday is now second best in my book." The contest began June 22, and will run every Monday until July 20.

[thewhir]

Peer 1 to offer global cloud service hosting

2009-06-26T23:58:00.000-07:00

US web hosting company Peer 1 Network Enterprises Inc, which now also operates out of the UK, has launched a global cloud hosting service so that prospective cloud application providers can develop, test and run cloud applications on a high performance 10GB infrastructure.

Basically, the CloudXcelerator programme will let providers offer cloud applications on Peer 1's global hosting infrastructure, and gives them access to the company's managed hardware and network assets.

The web hosting company said, "As Peer 1 offers global hosting, with data centres across the globe, this programme lets cloud providers host with one company as opposed to hosting with different hosting companies to cover different regions."

It is claimed that going with a single hoster will help providers bring cloud offerings to fruition faster, more reliably and much cheaper than other options.

Peer 1 is among the top five US web service providers, and has 15 data centres worldwide from which it offers a range of services from managed hosting and support services to dedicated hosting through its ServerBeach brand. It competes with the likes of Rackspace, NetBenefit and Savvis.

It has been announced today that UK-based ElasticHosts is the first to join Peer 1's EMEA CloudXcelerator programme, enabling it to speed up roll-out of its cloud infrastructure products and be able to offer dual redundant availability zones in Europe.

The business provides cloud capacity for scalable web hosting and on-demand burst computing such as batch processing, development and test, and disaster recovery.

[cbronline]

Lists

2009-06-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

Lists are commonly found on Web sites.These may be lists of, for example, people, drugs, theaters, or restaurants. Each list should be clearly introduced and have a descriptive title. A list should be formatted so that it can be easily scanned. The order of items in the list should be done to maximize user performance, which usually means that the most important items are placed toward the top of the list. If a numbered list is used, start the numbering at 'one,' not 'zero.' Generally only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, unless a word that is usually capitalized is shown in the list.

Order Elements to Maximize User Performance:

Arrange lists and tasks in an order that best facilitates efficient and successful user performance.
Designers should determine if there is an order for items that will facilitate use of the Web site. If there is, ensure that the site is formatted to support that order, and that all pages follow the same order. For example, ensure that lists of items, sets of links, and a series of tabs are in a meaningful order.
Where no obvious order applies, organize lists alphabetically or numerically. Keep in mind that it is the user's logic that should prevail rather than the designer's logic.

Place Important Items at Top of the List:

Place a list's most important items at the top.
Experienced users usually look first at the top item in a menu or list, and almost always look at one of the top three items before looking at those farther down the list. Research indicates that users tend to stop scanning a list as soon as they see something relevant, thus illustrating the reason to place important items at the beginning of lists.

Format Lists to Ease Scanning:

Make lists easy to scan and understand.
The use of meaningful labels, effective background colors, borders, and white space allow users to identify a set of items as a discrete list.

Display Related Items in Lists:

Display a series of related items in a vertical list rather than as continuous text.
A well-organized list format tends to facilitate rapid and accurate scanning. One study indicated that users scan vertical lists more rapidly than horizontal lists. Scanning a horizontal list takes users twenty percent longer than scanning a vertical list.

Introduce Each List:

Provide an introductory heading (i.e., word or phrase) at the top of each list.
Providing a descriptive heading allows users to readily understand the reason for having a list of items, and how the items relate to each other. The heading helps to inform users how items are categorized, or any prevailing principle or theme. Users are able to use lists better when they include headings.

Use Static Menus:

Use static menus to elicit the fastest possible speed when accessing menu items.
To elicit the fastest possible human performance, designers should put the most frequently used menus times in the first few positions of a menu. Designers should determine the location of items within a menu based on the frequency of use of each item. Adaptable menus, where users are allowed to change the order of menu items, elicits reasonably fast performance as well. The slowest performance is achieved when an adaptive menu, where the computer automatically changes the position of menu items, is used. One study found that users prefer having static menus, rather than adaptive menus.

Start Numbered Items at One:

When items are numbered, start the numbering sequence at 'one' rather than 'zero.'
Do not start the numbering with a 'zero.' When counting, people start with 'one,' not 'zero.'

Use Appropriate List Style:

Use bullet lists to present items of equal status or value, and numbered lists if a particular order to the items is warranted.
Bullet lists work best when the items do not contain an inherent sequence, order, or rank. Numbered lists assign each item in the list an ascending number, making the numerical order readily apparent. Numbered lists are especially important when giving instructions.

Capitalize First Letter of First Word in Lists:

Capitalize the first letter of only the first word of a list item, a list box item, check box labels, and radio button labels.
Only the first letter of the first word should be capitalized unless the item contains another word that would normally be capitalized.

Source:[usability.gov]

RESTful Services With ASP.NET MVC

2009-06-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

A RESTful service is a web of resources that programs can navigate. When designing a RESTful service, you have to think carefully about how your web will work. This means designing resource representations with links that facilitate navigation, describing service input somehow, and considering how consumers will navigate around your service at run time. Getting these things right is often overlooked, but they're central to realizing the full potential REST has to offer.

Today, humans navigate sites using Web browsers that know how to render HTML and other popular content types. HTML provides the syntax and semantics for establishing links between resources (<a> element) and for describing and submitting application input (<form> and <input> elements).

When a user clicks on an <a> element in the rendered page, the browser knows to issue an HTTP GET request for the target resource and render the response. When a browser encounters a <form> element, it knows how to render the form description into a user interface that the user can fill out and submit using either a GET or POST request. When the user presses a submit button, the browser encodes the data and sends it using the specified request. These two features are largely responsible for the success of the Web.

Using links in conjunction with the universal HTTP interface makes it possible to redirect requests to new locations over time and change certain aspects of security on the fly without changing the client code. A standard approach for forms means that you can add or remove input properties and change default values, again without changing the client code. Both features are very useful for building applications that evolve over time.

Your RESTful services should also somehow provide these two features through whatever resource representation you decide to use. For example, if you're designing a custom XML dialect for your service, you should probably come up with your own elements for establishing links and describing service input that will guide consumers through your web. Or you can simply use XHTML.

Most developers don't immediately consider XHTML as an option for "services," but that's actually one of the ways it was intended to be used. XHTML documents are by definition well-formed XML, which allows for automated processing using standard XML APIs. And since XHTML is also HTML, it comes with >, <form>, and <input> elements for modeling link navigation and service input as I described earlier. The only thing that's a little strange at first is how you model user-defined data structures-however, you can model classes and fields with <div> and <span> elements and collections of entities with <ol>and <li> elements. I'll walk through how to do this in more detail later in the article.

To summarize, there are several reasons to consider XHTML as the default representation for your RESTful services. First, you can leverage the syntax and semantics for important elements like <a>, <form>, and <input> instead of inventing your own. Second, you'll end up with services that feel a lot like sites because they'll be browsable by both users and applications. The XHTML is still interpreted by a human-it's just a programmer during development instead of a user at runtime. This simplifies things throughout the development process and makes it easier for consumers to learn how your service works. And finally, you can leverage standard Web development frameworks to build your RESTful services.

ASP.NET MVC is one such framework that provides an inherently RESTful model for building XHTML-based services. This article walks through some XHTML design concepts and then shows you how to build a complete XHTML-based RESTful service that you can download from the MSDN Magazine site.

[msdn.microsoft.com]

NEOTEC Upgrades Web Presence

2009-06-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Northeast Ohio Trade & Economic Consortium has announced the launch of its newly redesigned Web site, which features updated information and an enhanced format that will assist companies with business support services and regional economic development initiatives.

The site focuses on NEOTEC’s four core services -- Foreign-Trade Zone 181, the International Trade Assistance Center, the Northeast Ohio Logistics Network and the Global Business Development Initiative -- and provides resources and links to related sites.

According to Ron DeBarr, NEOTEC president and CEO, the redesigned Web site is easy to navigate, yet provides a tremendous amount of valuable business support information for companies located in Northeast Ohio as well as for domestic and foreign companies considering expansion plans into the region.

"NEOTEC is a central point of contact for businesses, economic development professionals and site selection consultants who are interested in Northeast Ohio," DeBarr said. "Our new Web site offers a broad range of information to assist them in the areas of international trade, logistics, and global business development."

NEOTEC is a regional economic development partnership of 10 Northeast Ohio counties, including Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.

[business-journal]

Building the Next-Generation Web Experience

2009-06-26T06:49:00.000-07:00

Corporations building the next generation of user experience will have four attributes, and companies will need five skills to meet the challenge, according to Moira Dorsey, Forrester Research vice president and research director, who spoke at Forrester's Customer Experience Forum 2009.

She said that the ideal Web experience of the future will be Customized, Aggregated, Relevant and Social (with the acronym "CARS" as a mnemonic). She pointed to several services that take advantage of social networking and aggregation to deliver customized and relevant data to users.

Many mobile applications fit the bill -- but certainly not all. One that does is the Wikitude travel guide that aggregates content from multiple sources, uses GPS to determine where the user is, and then tells the user about their location.

Another is an app called Shop Savvy for the Android and iPhone that lets users search for an item, find out which stores nearby have it, and either call the store and reserve it or put them item on a wish list for sharing or to receive price alerts.

Stop imitating paper and be the Web

These sites succeed by taking full advantage of the Internet. "New forms of technology start by imitating older forms and then evolve into their true forms," said Dorsey.

As an example, she pointed to the Benz Patent Motorwagen of 1886 which looks more like a carriage than a modern day car. Even the famous Ford Model T required a hand crank to start. "The Austin 7 RK Saloon of 1928 was a car that you or I could start." She meant that in the Austin 7, the controls were located where a modern driver would expect them to be.

The first Web page appeared in 1991. In 1992 it still looked like a piece of paper.

"We've been working on the Web for ten years," said Dorsey. "It took the car 50 years to find its true form. The online experience has yet to find its true form."

But indications of change are in the air. Dorsey pointed to the increasing adoption of mobile devices, to the development of new interfaces, and to the proliferation of new Web sites and content creators as forces that will drive change within corporate Web design.

Follow customers and don't expect them to come to you

"We need an online experience that can span devices, sites, and locations," she said. She added that there are five things that companies can do to get ready.

Ccompanies will need to conduct more in-depth research to find the devices and channels that people use. Companies will use this data to create multi-channel personas, prototypical customers that will influence how a company tries to reach customers.

Dorsey said that surveys are not enough. Companies will need to conduct virtual ethnographic research in order to find out what people are actually doing -- not just what they say they're doing.

She said that companies will need to "atomize content and functionality to send content to where the customers are" and pointed to a recent Avis ad in which customers could reserve a car from within the banner without going to the Avis Web site as one example of how to do it right.

She said that companies will be developing new things that are so complex that they will need to test the user experience before they deploy.

Finally, Dorsey said that companies will need "mad design skills." She said that designers will need to build projects that span sites, devices and applications and that the developer experience will be "like designing software."

In the question and answer session, she admitted that not every company will need to have the most advanced online program. "Find where you can offer the most value," she said. "Deliver an experience that enables you to get the most value. It has to be useful first, then enjoyable."

But there's no avoiding some complexity. "Once you move from within your own Web site to delivering an online experience, the training wheels come off," Dorsey warned.

[internetnews]

10 Questions To Get Answered Before Choosing A Web Host

2009-06-25T22:08:00.000-07:00

by Amy Armitage

It is particularly important for individuals and SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Businesses) that build their own websites, or spend very precious capital to do so, to find a good web hosting plan. If you are just now getting up to speed in this area, it is important that you know how quickly things change in this industry. In addition, you need to know what the basic components of a good hosting plan are, and learn to compare apples with apples, as they say.

It used to be crucially important to pick the right web host, as there were fly-by-night firms actually ripping people off and running away to Belize or somewhere. Things have settled down quite a bit, and there are scores of hosting firms to choose from, all of which are reputable and honest. It may still be true that some hosts have better uptime statistics or offer better deals, but as long as you stay with an established host you should not have any problems with rip-offs.

After making a list of potential companies, you should get these 10 questions answered before choosing a web host:

1. Will you get unlimited disk space?

You certainly can't afford to run out of disk storage space when people are relying on your site to provide important information or services. Most of today's plans, even low-cost ones, feature unlimited disk space, a testament to how much the price of hard drives has come down.

2. Is there unlimited bandwidth?

This term refers to the amount of traffic that can be sent back and forth, to and from your site. When a lot of people want to connect to your site at the same time, limited bandwidth is a real problem and a business-killer, too. Again, even low-cost plans now offer unlimited (or extremely high amounts of) bandwidth.

3. Is there a 99.9% uptime guarantee?

No web host can honestly guarantee 100% uptime, but many hosting services get very close. A standard in the industry is now 99.5%, but leading hosts will advertise a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

4. Do you get free setup?

Setup fees were appropriate at one time when the tools were less powerful and the process less automated. There is currently no reason in the world to pay setup fees, and companies that advertise that they "waive" these fees are essentially imputing a value to something they wouldn't charge for anyway.

5. Do you get subdomains allowing for unlimited sites?

You may begin your Internet strategy with a single site, but when you want to launch others you will need a way to do that, and without setting up a new domain at new cost. This option is quite important, as subdomains (with the format, subdomainname.maindomainname.com) allow you to spread out and create other separate online entities that may not be strictly related to the main domain's purpose.

6. Is 24/7 support available, and how much of it is from real people?

Some hosting services don't let customer call by phone, which should throw up a red flag. Support is absolutely critical, so make sure it's available, and the best companies will provide it in several ways-via e-mail, online web forms, chat and phone calls to real human beings.

7. Do you get installed software for databases, scripting, email, etc.?

Even if you don't understand or make use of Perl, CGI, MySQL, PHP or other acronyms you've been told are important, you do need them. You can make use of them through graphical-interface applications that ease the process, or your IT consultant or employee can handle all of it. You do need these.

8. Is the cPanel hosting tool used?

This is by far the most useful control panel for managing sites, and is made available by many of the leading hosts. If not cPanel, what tools are offered? If you can't find much information in a web search about the toolkit being used by a potential host, considering choosing only a host company that has this one available. The cPanel took is the best example of its kind.

9. Is the plan affordable?

Many hosting plans start at under $10 per month. That's very affordable, but you can do even better by paying for a year's hosting service in advance. When you start requiring e-commerce components and huge database access, your hosting cost will increase, of course.

10. Are there contracts, excessive fine print and/or hidden fees?

Everything in the plan should be made crystal clear from the beginning. Read every word of the user terms and conditions, and don't sign up for anything if you don't understand them. If you start hearing about extra fees, scratch the company off your list of potential hosts.

[domaininformer]

Web Host Verio Launches New Linux VPS Program Exclusively For Channel Partners

2009-06-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

Verio Inc., the leading provider in delivering online business solutions to SMBs worldwide, including web hosting, application hosting and Software as a Service (SaaS), has announced a new Linux Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting program designed exclusively for viaVerio channel partners. Developed to help partners grow their business and secure new customers, this program offers some of the most competitively priced VPS solutions on the market today.

Available immediately, Verio will offer lower pricing on all new Linux VPS plans purchased and partners will receive discounts of up to 50% on buy prices for select plans. This is a substantial savings over SRP and a significant discount that they can extend to their end user customers. Partners will continue to receive all of the same benefits, features, power and functionality of Verio's current Linux VPS solutions, but at a new lower price. Partners who qualify for the program will also have the ability to leverage the viaVerio Sales Team (VST) to secure new business. As part of the program, any new Linux VPS opportunity coming in directly to Verio will be passed over immediately to a partner to close. In addition, end user customers will receive a substantial discount only available to them by working with a viaVerio partner.

"This program truly demonstrates Verio's commitment to its channel partners and is one of the key reasons we wouldn't work with any other hosting provider," said Dean Bowen, President, Net-Flow Corporation. "Verio offers the highest margins in the industry and this is another resource that will help us increase our new customer base while significantly growing our revenues."

The viaVerio Partner Program is designed to offer web designers, developers, ISVs and MSPs turn-key solutions for selling Verio's hosting plans and services. Verio's partner program is renowned for its ease-of-use and business tools, making it simple to manage clients and accounts and to create a recurring revenue stream. The program also provides partners the tools and support needed to effectively market and sell Verio's diverse range of products.

"We are seeing strong demand for our Linux VPS solutions as SMBs further strengthen their online presence and it was important for us to create a program that would help our partners fully leverage this opportunity," said Scott Calvert, Senior Director of Channel Sales for Verio. "We announced our partner stimulus package earlier this year and this is just another way for us to invest in our partners and create programs that will help them grow their business in 2009 and beyond."

Verio is part of NTT, the 54th largest company in the world and is backed by NTTs world- class, tier 1 infrastructure. To learn more about this program or to join the viaVerio Partner Program, visit www.viaverio.com.

[hostsearch]

Free Web hosting still alive despite GeoCities' end

2009-06-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

Another icon of the early Web will soon disappear.

GeoCities, one of the first free personal home page services that debuted in the 1990s, is shutting down later this year.

Before there was MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, there was GeoCities, Angelfire, Xoom and Tripod.

The concept was simple: Offer people free Web page hosting in exchange for small banner ads running on the hosted pages.

The appeal of these services was that they made the process of creating a Web page fairly easy for the average person. Templates and limited design options allowed the novice to quickly add his or her presence to the early Internet community.

For those who needed more than a simple static Web page, various levels of paid options were available.

I was among the 1.1 million users of GeoCities in the early days.

So was Richard Becker, Minot, who is still using GeoCities and who first alerted me to the impeding shutdown of the service.

"That's the site I use to build my Web page," Becker wrote in a recent e-mail. "Any suggestions on another site I can use that's free and which I could copy over what I have currently?"

You might be surprised to learn there are still hundreds of free Web page hosting services available for the person whose online needs are simple.

Indeed, a few of GeoCities' cousins are still operating such as Tripod (www.tripod.lycos.com) and Angelfire (www.angel-fire.lycos.com). They, along with other free services, are well aware of GeoCities' impending shutdown and are, to varying degrees, looking to be the new home for the soon to be displaced GeoCities residents.

There are a number of free hosting services that actually offer more in terms of disk space and more complex coding options than GeoCities. For example, 000webhost.com offers intermediate to advanced Web functions such as MySQL databases, PHP, cron jobs, custom error pages, password protected directories and more as part of their free package. For just a few dollars a month, the service offerings dramatically increase.

The key in moving to a new free hosting service is making sure the services you currently use in GeoCities match the services offered by the new host. Some hosts, for example, may offer you less online storage space than GeoCities. Others may want to force your Web pages into their template formats which would mean significantly changing the look and function of your exisitng site.

Also, rules governing things such as acceptable types of content and incorporation of mandatory ads may differ from GeoCities.

You'll also want to check on whether the new host offers ways to easily transfer the content from your existing site to the new service.

Bottom line: Finding a free Web host is easy. Making sure it meets your existing needs will take a little effort on your part.

TheFreeSite.com has a very good list of free Web host services and short descriptions of what those services offer (www.thefreesite.com/Free_Web_Space). You may want to start your search for a new digital home there.

Also, using your favorite search engine, do a search on "free web hosting services" for a good list of free hosting services.

In addition to the sites already mentioned, below are some specific sites worth checking out as replacements for your GeoCities account or if you're just interested in creating a simple, no cost Web presence:

50Megs: www.50megs.com

WebNG: www.webng.com

1Hwy: www.1hwy.com

FreeWebTown: www.freewebtown.com

Hostrator: www.hostrator.com

Webs: www.webs.com

WebSamba: www.websamba.co m

eSmartStart: www.esmartstart.com

AtSpace: www.atspace.com

[bismarcktribune]

80% Of VARs Reselling Web Hosting Make A Profit

2009-06-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

Two-thirds find it 'easy' to cross-sell web hosting to their existing customer base - Half increased average length of service per client as a result of reselling hosting Eighty percent of businesses that begin to resell web hosting in addition to their regular products or services earn a profit from the practice, according to research by Fasthosts Internet, (http://www.fasthosts.com), a web hosting provider. The survey of 793 resellers, also found that 66% found it "easy" to cross-sell hosting to their existing customer base, and 50 % have increased their average length of service per client as a result of reselling web solutions.

In today's difficult economic climate, the figures lend weight to the concept of reseller web hosting as a low risk and profitable way to develop an enterprise such as an IT or marketing related business. Fasthosts launched in the United States last fall with an aggressive launch offer, 1 year free unlimited reseller web hosting, offering an easy step to resell private label web solutions including web hosting and domain names. Fasthosts' unique philosophy provides resellers unlimited web space and bandwidth enabling them to create their very own packages (including hosting, domains and email solutions) and set their own prices.

Some 70% of Fasthosts resellers surveyed would recommend reselling web hosting to other businesses such as theirs. In 2008, the low investment costs involved make reseller web hosting a compelling business proposition. The research found that excluding monthly subscription fees, 61% of resellers invested less than $1,000 in setting up their own reseller hosting operation. A further 84% of those surveyed would recommend Fasthosts as a reseller partner.

Steve Holford, CMO of Fasthosts Internet, said, "In recent months, demand for reseller web hosting has been brisk as more IT related SMBs are seeking to diversify and add strings to their bow. By offering web solutions alongside existing services, many businesses find that they can bolster their revenues and protect their client relationships." The recurring fees model and healthy profit margins involved with web hosting can also be attractive for those under pressure to grow revenue streams. Sixty-four percent of resellers reported that they had increased overall "revenue per client" as a result of reselling web solutions.

[bsminfo]

Text Appearance

2009-06-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

There are several issues related to text characteristics that can help ensure a Web site communicates effectively with users:

Use familiar fonts that are at least 12-points;
Use black text on plain, high-contrast backgrounds; and
Use background colors to help users understand the grouping of related information.

Even though it is important to ensure visual consistency, steps should be taken to emphasize important text. Commonly used headings should be formatted consistently, and attention-attracting features, such as animation, should only be used when appropriate.

Use Black Text on Plain, High-Contrast Backgrounds:

When users are expected to rapidly read and understand prose text, use black text on a plain, high-contrast, non-patterned background.
Black text on a plain background elicited reliably faster reading performance than on a medium-textured background. When compared to reading light text on a dark background, people read black text on a white background up to thirty-two percent faster. In general, the greater the contrast between the text and background, the easier the text is to read.

Format Common Items Consistently:

Ensure that the format of common items is consistent from one page to another.
The formatting convention chosen should be familiar to users. For example, telephone numbers should be consistently punctuated (800-555-1212), and time records might be consistently punctuated with colons (HH:MM:SS).

Use Mixed-Case for Prose Text:

When users must read a lot of information, use lower-case fonts and appropriate capitalization to ensure the fastest possible reading speed.
Using 'mixed-case' fonts for reading prose text means that most letters will be lowercase, with all letters that should be capitalized being in uppercase. Most users have had considerable experience reading lowercase letters and are therefore very proficient at it.

Ensure Visual Consistency:

Ensure visual consistency of Web site elements within and between Web pages.
Two studies found that the number of errors made using visually inconsistent displays is reliably higher than when using visually consistent displays. Visual consistency includes the size and spacing of characters; the colors used for labels, fonts and backgrounds; and the locations of labels, text and pictures. Earlier studies found that tasks performed on more consistent interfaces resulted in (1) a reduction in task completion times; (2) a reduction in errors; (3) an increase in user satisfaction; and (4) a reduction in learning time.
However, users tend to rapidly overcome some types of inconsistencies. For example, one study found that the use of different-sized widgets (such as pushbuttons, entry fields, or list boxes) does not negatively impact users' performance or preferences.

Use Bold Text Sparingly:

Use bold text only when it is important to draw the user's attention to a specific piece of information.
In the following example with the Field Identifiers bolded on the left, users spent about four times as long looking at the bold Field Identifiers than the non-bold Field Values. In the example on the right, participants spent more time looking at the bolded Field Values. In addition, the non-bold Field Values elicited better search accuracy rates than did the bold Field Values. In situations like this example, it is probably best to not use bold for either field identifiers or field values. In general, bold text should be used sparingly.

Use Attention-Attracting Features when Appropriate:

Use attention-attracting features with caution and only when they are highly relevant.
Draw attention to specific parts of a Web page with the appropriate (but limited) use of moving or animated objects, size differential between items, images, brightly-colored items, and varying font characteristics.
Not all features of a Web site will attract a user's attention equally. The following features are presented in order of the impact they have on users:

Movement (e.g., animation or 'reveals') is the most effective attention-getting item. Research suggests that people cannot stop themselves from initially looking at moving items on a page. However, if the movement is not relevant or useful, it may annoy the user. If movement continues after attracting attention, it may distract from the information on the Web site.
Larger objects, particularly images, will draw users' attention before smaller ones. Users fixate on larger items first, and for longer periods of time. However, users will tend to skip certain kinds of images that they believe to be ads or decoration.
Users look at images for one or two seconds, and then look at the associated text caption. In many situations, reading a text caption to understand the meaning of an image is a last resort. Parts of images or text that have brighter colors seem to gain focus first.
Having some text and graphic items in brighter colors, and others in darker colors, helps users determine the relative importance of elements. Important attention-attracting font characteristics can include all uppercase, bolding, italics, underlining, and increased font size.

Use Familiar Fonts:

Use a familiar font to achieve the best possible reading speed.
Research shows no reliable differences in reading speed or user preferences for twelve point Times New Roman or Georgia (serif fonts), or Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana (sans serif fonts).

Use at Least 12-Point Font

Use at least a 12-point font (e.g., typeface) on all Web pages.
Research has shown that fonts smaller than 12 points elicit slower reading performance from users. For users over age 65, it may be better to use at least fourteen-point fonts. Never use less than nine-point font on a Web site.
Traditional paper-based font sizes do not translate well to Web site design. For instance, Windows Web browsers display type two to three points larger than the same font displayed on a Macintosh. User-defined browser settings may enlarge or shrink designer-defined font sizes. Defining text size using pixels will result in differently-sized characters depending upon the physical size of the monitor's pixels and its set resolution, and presents accessibility issues to those individuals who must specify large font settings.

Color-Coding and Instructions:

When using color-coding on your Web site, be sure that the coding scheme can be quickly and easily understood.
One study found that participants were able to answer questions significantly faster when the interface was color-coded, but only when information about the color-coding was provided. When both color-coding and information about how to interpret the colors were provided, user performance improved by forty percent. Be sure that the information provided does not require the user to read and comprehend a lot of text to understand it.

Emphasize Importance:

Change the font characteristics to emphasize the importance of a word or short phrase.
Font characteristics that are different from the surrounding text will dominate those that are routine. Important font characteristics include bolding, italics, font style (serif vs. sans serif), font size (larger is better to gain attention), and case (upper vs. lower). When used well, text style can draw attention to important words.
The use of differing font characteristics has negative consequences as well–reading speed can decrease by almost twenty percent, and thus should be used sparingly in large blocks of prose. Do not use differing font characteristics to show emphasis for more than one or two words or a short phrase. Do not use underlining for emphasis because underlined words on the Web are generally considered to be links.

Highlighting Information:

Do not use two (or more) different ways to highlight the same information on one page.
One study found that participants were able to complete tasks faster when the interface contained either color-coding or a form of ranking, but not both. The presence of both seemed to present too much information, and reduced the performance advantage by about half.

Source:[usability.gov]

How Accessibility Is Important To Any Website Design

2009-06-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

Over recent years the Internet has become one of the most used sources for research of products and services. In fact 60% of people use the Internet to find a local business service and a further 60% go on to use a service they have found online.

However, there are drawbacks that many web design companies have yet to face. There is a large amount of people that suffer from a range of disorders including colour blindness, hearing problems and no or reduced use of their arms or hands. They find that many web sites do not cater for their needs and therefore become frustrated with certain limitations online.

The Creare Group is a web design and SEO company who make their sites accessible for as many people as possible. They develop their sites to cater for many different needs and comply with the equipment that many people with disabilities use. Sites designed for their customers are dependent on requirements asked for by the customer specifically.

Colour blindness affects more men than women where on average 3% of the population suffer from this condition. There are different types of colour blindness but all cases need to be considered when developing a web design.

The Creare Group develops their web sites with colours in mind to help with SEO campaigns. Links need to be obvious and stand out from the text or have text decoration. Colours too close to each other or those that cause problems for colour blind suffers, will cause frustration and not effectively use the site causing potential sales to be lost.

As well as not seeing colours there is a large percentage of people who suffer from poor eye site or partial blindness. For accessibility it is integral that the text on a web site is can vary in size to allow users to adjust accordingly. This is just another step that The Creare Group take to ensure that their web site designs cater for all needs by being fully functionally and accessible.

Often web sites have the addition of videos but more often than not have no way of letting hard of hearing users know the content. The Creare Group is working towards installing subtitles to follow the words alongside the speaker. This is still in development but this helps to maintain the high standards that The Creare Group try to achieve in ever area of their web design.

"Our aim is to make businesses a success, however you need customers to make this happen. We make our web sites accessible but understand there are more developments we can do to make sure we cater for all online users." Mike McKinlay MD

The Creare Group is proud of their achievements to making their sites - inlcuding ecommerce web design - more accessible. It is vital to find the right company to develop web design so customers are never alienated and can access your site without frustration.

For more information visit www.crearedesign.co.uk

[officialwire.com]

Website Design: Company Offers Over 5000 Templates For One Payment

2009-06-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

Dream Templates Offers Over 5000 Templates For One Payment, you no need to learn HTML programming or trouble yourself with website design or even pay a small fortune to a website designer to get the website you want.

Usually what puts people off creating a website is the cost of paying a website designer to create your vision at an astronomical cost to you. It is either that or spend 3 years learning html and then pay lots of money for some web design software in order to proceed.

This is where dream templates comes in. Dream Templates have designed thousands of templates which you can browse through and for a one off payment you can use whichever templates you want. There is no need to learn any programming at all just enter your text and get your website up on the web live.

This website contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this website is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this website for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

[officialwire.com]

Links

2009-06-23T05:15:00.000-07:00

Linking means that users will select and click on a hypertext link on a starting page (usually the homepage), which then causes a new page to load. Users continue toward their goal by finding and clicking on subsequent links.

To ensure that links are effectively used, designers should use meaningful link labels (making sure that link names are consistent with their targets), provide consistent clickability cues (avoiding misleading cues), and designate when links have been clicked.

Whenever possible, designers should use text for links rather than graphics. Text links usually provide much better information about the target than do graphics.

Use Meaningful Link Labels:

Use link labels and concepts that are meaningful, understandable, and easily differentiated by users rather than designers.
To avoid user confusion, use link labels that clearly differentiate one link from another. Users should be able to look at each link and learn something about the link’s destination. Using terms like 'Click Here' can be counterproductive.
Clear labeling is especially important as users navigate down through the available links. The more decisions that users are required to make concerning links, the more opportunities they have to make a wrong decision.

Link to Related Content:

Provide links to other pages in the Web site with related content.
Users expect designers to know their Web sites well enough to provide a full list of options to related content.

Match Link Names with Their Destination Pages:

Make the link text consistent with the title or headings on the destination (i.e., target) page.
Closely matched links and destination targets help provide the necessary feedback to users that they have reached the intended page.
If users will have to click more than once to get to a specific target destination, avoid repeating the exact same link wording over and over because users can be confused if the links at each level are identical or even very similar. In one study, after users clicked on a link entitled 'First Aid,' the next page had three options. One of them was again titled 'First Aid.' The two 'First Aid' links went to different places. Users tended to click on another option on the second page because they thought that they had already reached 'First Aid.'

Avoid Misleading Cues to Click:

Ensure that items that are not clickable do not have characteristics that suggest that they are clickable.
Symbols usually must be combined with at least one other cue that suggests clickability. In one study, users were observed to click on a major heading with some link characteristics, but the heading was not actually a link.
However, to some users bullets and arrows may suggest clickability, even when they contain no other clickability cues (underlining, blue coloration, etc.). This slows users as they debate whether the items are links.

Repeat Important Links:

Ensure that important content can be accessed from more than one link.
Establishing more than one way to access the same information can help some users find what they need. When certain information is critical to the success of the Web site, provide more than one link to the information. Different users may try different ways to find information, depending on their own interpretations of a problem and the layout of a page. Some users find important links easily when they have a certain label, while others may recognize the link best with an alternative name.

Use Text for Links:

Use text links rather than image links.
In general, text links are more easily recognized as clickable. Text links usually download faster, are preferred by users, and should change colors after being selected. It is usually easier to convey a link's destination in text, rather than with the use of an image.
In one study, users showed considerable confusion regarding whether or not certain images were clickable. This was true even for images that contained words. Users could not tell if the images were clickable without placing their cursor over them ('minesweeping'). Requiring users to 'minesweep' to determine what is clickable slows them down.
Another benefit to using text links is that users with text-only and deactivated graphical browsers can see the navigation options.

Designate Used Links:

Use color changes to indicate to users when a link has been visited.
Generally, it is best to use the default text link colors (blue as an unvisited location/link and purple as a visited location/link). Link colors help users understand which parts of a Web site they have visited. In one study, providing this type of feedback was the only variable found to improve the user's speed of finding information. If a user selects one link, and there are other links to the same target, make sure all links to that target change color.
One 2003 study indicated a compliance rate of only thirty-three percent for this guideline; a 2002 study showed a compliance rate of thirty-five percent.

Provide Consistent Clickability Cues:

Provide sufficient cues to clearly indicate to users that an item is clickable.
Users should not be expected to move the cursor around a Web site ('minesweeping') to determine what is clickable. Using the eyes to quickly survey the options is much faster than 'minesweeping.' Similarly, relying on mouseovers to designate links can confuse newer users, and slow all users as they are uncertain about which items are links.
Be consistent in your use of underlining, bullets, arrows, and other symbols such that they always indicate clickability or never suggest clickability. For example, using images as both links and as decoration slows users as it forces them to study the image to discern its clickability.
Items that are in the top center of the page, or left and right panels have a high probability of being considered links. This is particularly true if the linked element looks like a real-world tab or push button.

Ensure that Embedded Links are Descriptive:

When using embedded links, the link text should accurately describe the link's destination.
Users tend to ignore the text that surrounds each embedded link; therefore, do not create embedded links that use the surrounding text to add clues about the link's destination.

Use 'Pointing-and-Clicking':

'Pointing-and-clicking,' rather than mousing over, is preferred when selecting menu items from a cascading menu structure.
One study found that when compared with the mouseover method, the 'point-and-click' method takes eighteen percent less time, elicits fewer errors, and is preferred by users.

Use Appropriate Text Link Lengths:

Make text links long enough to be understood, but short enough to minimize wrapping.
A single word text link may not give enough information about the link's destination. A link that is several words may be difficult to read quickly, particularly if it wraps to another line. Generally, it is best if text links do not extend more than one line. However, one study found that when users scan prose text, links of nine to ten words elicit better performance than shorter or longer links. Keep in mind that it is not always possible to control how links will look to all users because browser settings and screen resolutions can vary.

Indicate Internal vs. External Links:

Indicate to users when a link will move them to a different location on the same page or to a new page on a different Web site.
One study showed that users tend to assume that links will take them to another page within the same Web site. When this assumption is not true, users can become confused. Designers should try to notify users when they are simply moving down a page, or leaving the site altogether.

Clarify Clickable Regions of Images:

If any part of an image is clickable, ensure that the entire image is clickable or that the clickable sections are obvious.
Users should not be required to use the mouse pointer to discover clickable areas of images. For example, in a map of the United States, if individual states are clickable, sufficient cues should be given to indicate the clickable states.

Link To Supportive Information:

Provide links to supportive information.
Use links to provide definitions and descriptions to clarify technical concepts or jargon, so that less knowledgeable users can successfully use the Web site. For example, provide links to a dictionary, glossary definitions, and sections dedicated to providing more information.

Source:[usability.gov]

Navigation

2009-06-22T04:33:00.000-07:00

Navigation refers to the method used to find information within a Web site. A navigation page is used primarily to help users locate and link to destination pages. A Web site's navigation scheme and features should allow users to find and access information effectively and efficiently. When possible, this means designers should keep navigation-only pages short. Designers should include site maps, and provide effective feedback on the user's location within the site.

To facilitate navigation, designers should differentiate and group navigation elements and use appropriate menu types. It is also important to use descriptive tab labels, provide a clickable list of page contents on long pages, and add 'glosses' where they will help users select the correct link. In well-designed sites, users do not get trapped in dead-end pages.

Provide Navigational Options:

Do not create or direct users into pages that have no navigational options.
Many Web pages contain links that open new browser windows. When these browser windows open, the Back button is disabled (in essence, the new browser window knows nothing of the user's past navigation, and thus is disabled). If the new window opens full-screen, users may not realize that they have been redirected to another window, and may become frustrated because they cannot press Back to return to the previous page. If
such links are incorporated into a Web site, the newly-opened window should contain a prominent action control that will close the window and return the user to the original browser window.
In addition, designers should not create Web pages that disable the browser's Back button. Disabling the Back button can result in confusion and frustration for users, and drastically inhibits their navigation.

Differentiate and Group Navigation Elements:

Clearly differentiate navigation elements from one another, but group and place them in a consistent and easy to find place on each page.
Create a common, Web site-wide navigational scheme to help users learn and understand the structure of your Web site. Use the same navigation scheme on all pages by consistently locating tabs, headings, lists, search, site map, etc. Locate critical navigation elements in places that will suggest clickability (e.g., lists of words in the left or right panels are generally assumed to be links).
Make navigational elements different enough from one another so that users will be able to understand the difference in their meaning and destination. Grouping reduces the amount of time that users need to locate and identify navigation elements.
Do not make users infer the label by studying a few items in the group. Finally, make it easy for users to move from label to label (link to link) with a single eye movement. This best can be done by positioning relevant options close together and to using vertical lists.

Use a Clickable 'List of Contents' on Long Pages:

On long pages, provide a 'list of contents' with links that take users to the corresponding content farther down the page.
For long pages with several distinct sections that are not visible from the first screenful, add a short, clickable list of the sections (sometimes called 'anchor' or 'within-page' links) at the top of the page. 'Anchor links' can serve two purposes: they provide an outline of the page so users can quickly determine if it contains the desired information, and they allow users to quickly navigate to specific information.
Since 'anchor links' enable a direct link to content below the first screenful, they are also useful for getting users to specific information quickly when they arrive from a completely different page.

Provide Feedback on Users' Location:

Provide feedback to let users know where they are in the Web site.
Feedback provides users with the information they need to understand where they are within the Web site, and for proceeding to the next activity. Examples of feedback include providing path and hierarchy information (i.e., 'breadcrumbs'), matching link text to the destination page's heading, and creating URLs that relate to the user's location on the site. Other forms of feedback include changing the color of a link that has been clicked (suggesting that destination has been visited), and using other visual cues to indicate the active portion of the screen.

Place Primary Navigation Menus in the Left Panel:

Place the primary navigation menus in the left panel, and the secondary and tertiary menus together.
One study found that navigation times were faster when the primary menu was located in the left panel. Also, navigation performance was best when the secondary and tertiary menus were placed together. Placing a navigation menu in the right panel was supported as a viable design option by both performance and preference measures. Users preferred having the primary menu in the left panel, and grouping secondary and tertiary menus together, or grouping all three menu levels together. The best performance and preference was achieved when all three menus were placed in the left panel (placing them all in the right panel achieved close to the same performance level).

Use Descriptive Tab Labels:

Ensure that tab labels are clearly descriptive of their function or destination.
Users like tabs when they have labels that are descriptive enough to allow error-free selections. When tab labels cannot be made clear because of the lack of space, do not use tabs.

Present Tabs Effectively:

Ensure that navigation tabs are located at the top of the page, and look like clickable versions of real-world tabs.
Users can be confused about the use of tabs when they do not look like real-world tabs. Real-world tabs are those that resemble the ones found in a file drawer. One study showed that users are more likely to find and click appropriately on tabs that look like real-world tabs.

Keep Navigation-Only Pages Short:

Do not require users to scroll purely navigational pages.
Ideally, navigation-only pages should contain no more than one screenful of information. Users should not need to scroll the page, even a small distance. One study showed that users considered the bottom of one screenful as the end of a page, and they did not scroll further to find additional navigational options.

Use Appropriate Menu Types:

Use 'sequential' menus for simple forward-moving tasks, and use 'simultaneous' menus for tasks that would otherwise require numerous uses of the Back button.
Most Web sites use familiar 'sequential' menus that require items to be selected from a series of menus in some predetermined order. After each selection is made, another menu opens. The final choice is constrained by the sum total of all previous choices.
Simultaneous menus display choices from multiple levels in the menu hierarchy, providing users with the ability to make choices from the menu in any order. Simultaneous menus are often presented in frames, and are best employed in situations where users would have to make extensive use of the Back button if presented with a sequential menu.

Use Site Maps:

Use site maps for Web sites that have many pages.
Site maps provide an overview of the Web site. They may display the hierarchy of the Web site, may be designed to resemble a traditional table of contents, or may be a simple index.
Some studies suggest that site maps do not necessarily improve users' mental representations of a Web site. Also, one study reported that if a site map does not reflect users' (or the domain's) conceptual structure, then the utility of the map is lessened.

Use 'Glosses' to Assist Navigation:

Provide 'glosses' to help users select correct links.
'Glosses' are short phrases of information that popup when a user places his or her mouse pointer close to a link. It provides a preview to information behind a link. Users prefer the preview information to be located close to the link, but not placed such that it disturbs the primary text.
However, designers should not rely on the ’gloss’ to compensate for poorly labeled links.

Breadcrumb Navigation:

Do not expect users to use breadcrumbs effectively.
One study reported no difference in task completion times and total pages visited between groups that had breadcrumbs and those that did not. Participants could have used breadcrumbs thirty-two percent of the time, but only did so six percent of the time. It is probably not worth the effort to include breadcrumbs unless you can show that your Web site's users use them frequently, either to navigate the site, or to understand the site's hierarchy.
One study found that test participants who received instruction on the use of breadcrumbs completed tasks much faster than those who did not. This time savings could result in increased productivity for users that search Web sites on a daily basis.

Source:[usability.gov]

Headings, Titles, and Labels

2009-06-19T01:50:00.000-07:00

Most users spend a considerable amount of time scanning rather than reading information on Web sites. Well-designed headings help to facilitate both scanning and reading written material. Designers should strive to use unique and descriptive headings, and to use as many headings as necessary to enable users to find what they are looking for-it is usually better to use more rather than fewer headings. Headings should be used in their appropriate HTML order, and it is generally a good idea not to skip heading levels.

Designers should ensure that each page has a unique and descriptive page title. When tables are used, designers should make sure that descriptive row and column headings are included that enable users to clearly understand the information in the table. It is occasionally important to highlight certain critical information.

Use Clear Category Labels:

Ensure that category labels, including links, clearly reflect the information and items contained within the category.
Category titles must be understood by typical users. Users will likely have difficulty understanding vague, generalized link labels, but will find specific, detailed links, and descriptors easier to use.

Provide Descriptive Page Titles:

Put a descriptive, unique, concise, and meaningfully different title on each Web page.
Title refers to the text that is in the browser title bar (this is the bar found at the very top of the browser screen). Titles are used by search engines to identify pages. If two or more pages have the same title, they cannot be differentiated by users or the Favorites capability of the browser. If users bookmark a page, they should not have to edit the title to meet the characteristics mentioned above.
Remember that some search engines only list the titles in their search results page. Using concise and meaningful titles on all pages can help orient users as they browse a page or scan hot lists and history lists for particular URLs. They can also help others as they compile links to your pages.
To avoid confusing users, make the title that appears in the heading of the browser consistent with the title in the content area of the pages.

Use Descriptive Headings Liberally:

Use descriptive headings liberally throughout a Web site.
Well-written headings are an important tool for helping users scan quickly. Headings should conceptually relate to the information or functions that follow them.
Headings should provide strong cues that orient users and inform them about page organization and structure. Headings also help classify information on a page. Each heading should be helpful in finding the desired target.
The ability to scan quickly is particularly important for older adults because they tend to stop scanning and start reading more frequently. If headings are not descriptive or plentiful enough, the user may start reading in places that do not offer the information they are seeking, thereby slowing them down unnecessarily.

Use Unique and Descriptive Headings:

Use headings that are unique from one another and conceptually related to the content they describe.
Using poor headings (mismatches between what users were expecting and what they find) is a common problem with Web sites. Ensure that headings are descriptive and relate to the content they introduce.
If headings are too similar to one another, users may have to hesitate and re-read to decipher the difference. Identifying the best headings may require extensive usability testing and other methods.

Highlight Critical Data:

Visually distinguish (i.e., highlight) important page items that require user attention, particularly when those items are displayed infrequently.
Items to highlight might include recently changed data, data exceeding acceptable limits, or data failing to meet some other defined criteria. Highlight is used here in its general sense, meaning to emphasize or make prominent. Highlighting is most effective when used sparingly, i.e., highlighting just a few items on a page that is otherwise relatively uniform in appearance.

Use Descriptive Row and Column Headings:

Ensure that data tables have clear, concise, and accurate row and column headings.
Use row and column headings to indicate unique cell contents. Users require clear and concise table headings in order to make efficient and effective use of table information. Row and column headings will indicate to screen readers how data points should be labeled or identified, so the user can understand the significance of the cell in the overall scheme of the table.

Use Headings in the Appropriate HTML Order:

Use headings in the appropriate HTML order.
Using the appropriate HTML heading order helps users get a sense of the hierarchy of information on the page. The appropriate use of H1-H3 heading tags also allows users of assistive technologies to understand the hierarchy of information.

Provide Users with Good Ways to Reduce Options:

Provide users with good ways to reduce their available options as efficiently as possible.
Users seem willing to reduce their options quickly. Provide all options clearly so that users can focus first on selecting what they consider to be the most important option.

Source:[usability.gov]

Scrolling and Paging

2009-06-19T01:43:00.000-07:00

Designers must decide, early in the design process,whether to create long pages that require extensive scrolling or shorter pages that will require users to move frequently from page to page (an activity referred to as paging). This decision will be based on considerations of the primary users and the type of tasks being performed. For example, older users tend to scroll more slowly than younger users; therefore, long scrolling pages may slow them down considerably. As another example, some tasks that require users to remember where information is located on a page may benefit from paging, while many reading tasks benefit from scrolling.

Generally, designers should ensure that users can move from page to page as efficiently as possible. If designers are unable to decide between paging and scrolling, it is usually better to provide several shorter pages rather than one or two longer pages. The findings of usability testing should help confirm or negate that decision.

When scrolling is used, a Web site should be designed to allow the fastest possible scrolling. Users only should have to scroll through a few screenfuls, and not lengthy pages. Designers should never require users to scroll horizontally.

Use Scrolling Pages For Reading:

Use an appropriate page layout to eliminate the need for users to scroll horizontally.
Horizontal scrolling is a slow and tedious way to view an entire screen. Common page layouts including fluid and left-justified may require some users to scroll horizontally if their monitor resolution or size is smaller than that used by designers.

Facilitate Rapid Scrolling While Reading:

Facilitate fast scrolling by highlighting major items.
Web pages will move quickly or slowly depending on how users elect to scroll. Some users click on the arrows at the ends of the scroll bar, which can be slow but does allow most information to be read during the scrolling process. Other users drag the scroll box, which tends to be much faster. When the scroll box is dragged, the information may move too fast on the screen for users to read prose text, but they can read major headings that are well-designed and clearly placed. Keep in mind that older users (70 and over) will scroll much more slowly than younger users (39 and younger).

Use Scrolling Pages For Reading Comprehension:

Use longer, scrolling pages when users are reading for comprehension.
Make the trade-off between paging and scrolling by taking into consideration that retrieving new linked pages introduces a delay that can interrupt users’ thought processes. Scrolling allows readers to advance in the text without losing the context of the message as may occur when they are required to follow links.
However, with pages that have fast loading times, there is no reliable difference between scrolling and paging when people are reading for comprehension. For example, one study showed that paging participants construct better mental representations of the text as a whole, and are better at remembering the main ideas and later locating relevant information on a page. In one study, paging was preferred by inexperienced users.

Use Paging Rather Than Scrolling:

If users' system response times are reasonably fast, use paging rather than scrolling.
Users should be able to move from page to page by selecting links and without having to scroll to find important information.

Scroll Fewer Screenfuls:

If users are looking for specific information, break up the information into smaller portions (shorter pages).
For many Web sites, users deal best with smaller, well-organized pages of information rather than lengthy pages because scrolling can take a lot of time. Older users tend to scroll much more slowly than younger users. One study found that Internet users spend about thirteen percent of their time scrolling within pages. Even though each event takes little time, cumulative scrolling adds significant time.

Source:[usability.gov]

Page Layout

2009-06-16T21:54:00.000-07:00

All Web pages should be structured for ease of comprehension. This includes putting items on the page in an order that reflects their relative importance. Designers should place important items consistently, usually toward the top and center of the page. All items should be appropriately aligned on the pages. It is usually a good idea to ensure that the pages show a moderate amount of white space-too much can require considerable scrolling, while too little may provide a display that looks too 'busy.' It is also important to ensure that page layout does not falsely convey the top or bottom of the page, such that users stop scrolling prematurely.

When a Web page contains prose text, choose appropriate line lengths. Longer line lengths usually will elicit faster reading speed, but users tend to prefer shorter line lengths. There are also important decisions that need to be made regarding page length. Pages should be long enough to adequately convey the information, but not so long that excessive scrolling becomes a problem. If page content or length dictates scrolling, but the page's table of contents needs to be accessible, then it is usually a good idea to use frames to keep the table of contents readily accessible and visible in the left panel.

Avoid Cluttered Displays:

pages that are not considered cluttered by users.
Clutter is when excess items on a page lead to a degradation of performance when trying to find certain information. On an uncluttered display, all important search targets are highly salient, i.e., clearly available. One study found that test participants tended to agree on which displays were least cluttered and those that were most cluttered.

Place Important Items Consistently:

Put important, clickable items in the same locations, and closer to the top of the page, where their location can be better estimated.
Users will try to anticipate where items will appear on their screen. They will start 'searching' a page before the layout appears on their screen. When screen items remain constant, users learn their location on a page, and use this knowledge to improve task performance. Experienced users will begin moving their mouse to the area of the target before the eye detects the item. Users can anticipate the location of items near the top much better than those farther down the page.

Place Important Items at Top Center:

Put the most important items at the top center of the Web page to facilitate users' finding the information.
Users generally look at the top center of a page first, then look left, then right, and finally begin systematically moving down the total Web page. All critical content and navigation options should be toward the top of the page. Particularly on navigation pages, most major choices should be visible with no, or a minimum of, scrolling.

Structure for Easy Comparison:

Structure pages so that items can be easily compared when users must analyze those items to discern similarities, differences, trends, and relationships.
Users should be able to compare two or more items without having to remember one while going to another page or another place on the same page to view a different item.

Establish Level of Importance:

Establish a high-to-low level of importance for information and infuse this approach throughout each page on the Web site.
The page layout should help users find and use the most important information. Important information should appear higher on the page so users can locate it quickly. The least used information should appear toward the bottom of the page. Information should be presented in the order that is most useful to users.
People prefer hierarchies, and tend to focus their attention on one level of the hierarchy at a time. This enables them to adopt a more systematic strategy when scanning a page, which results in fewer revisits.

Optimize Display Density:

To facilitate finding target information on a page, create pages that are not too crowded with items of information.
Density can be defined as the number of items per degree of visual angle within a visually distinct group. This density either can be crowded with many items, or sparse with few items. One study found that locating a target in a crowded area took longer than when the target was in a sparse area. Also, participants searched and found items in the sparse areas faster than those in the crowded areas. Participants used fewer fixations per word in the crowded areas, but their fixations were much longer when viewing items in the crowded areas. Finally, participants tended to visit sparse areas before dense groups. To summarize, targets in sparse areas of the display (versus crowded areas) tended to be searched earlier and found faster.

Align Items on a Page:

Visually align page elements, either vertically or horizontally.
Users prefer consistent alignments for items such as text blocks, rows, columns, checkboxes, radio buttons, data entry fields, etc. Use consistent alignments across all Web pages.

Use Fluid Layouts:

Use a fluid layout that automatically adjusts the page size to monitor resolution settings that are 1024x768 pixels or higher.
When web page layouts are fixed either to the left or centered, much of the available screen space is not used. It is best to take advantage of as much of the screen space as possible because this will help move more information above the fold. There has been no degradation in user performance when using the non-fluid layouts. However, most users prefer the fluid layout. One 2003 study reported a compliance rate for this guideline of twenty-eight percent, and a 2001 study found that only twenty-three percent of top Web sites used a fluid layout. Keep in mind that large monitors and higher pixel resolutions allow viewing of more than one window at a time.

Avoid Scroll Stoppers:

Ensure that the location of headings and other page elements does not create the illusion that users have reached the top or bottom of a page when they have not.
In one study, three headings were positioned in the center of a page below a section of introductory text-the headings were located about one inch below the navigation tabs. When users scrolled up the page from the bottom and encountered these headings, they tended to stop, thinking the headings indicated the top of the page.
Similarly, users have been found to not scroll to the true bottom of a page to find a link because they encountered a block of text in a very small font size. This small type led users to believe that they were at the true bottom of the page. Other elements that may stop users' scrolling include horizontal lines, inappropriate placement of 'widgets,' and cessation of background color.

Set Appropriate Page Lengths:

Make page-length decisions that support the primary use of the Web page.
In general, use shorter pages for homepages and navigation pages, and pages that need to be quickly browsed and/or read online. Use longer pages to (1) facilitate uninterrupted reading, especially on content pages; (2) match the structure of a paper counterpart; (3) simplify page maintenance (fewer Web page files to maintain); and, (4) make pages more convenient to download and print.

Use Moderate White Space:

Limit the amount of white space (areas without text, graphics, etc.) on pages that are used for scanning and searching.
'Density' is the percentage of the screen filled with text and graphics. One study found that higher density is related to faster scanning, and has no impact on user accuracy or preference. Another study found that users prefer moderate amounts of white space, but the amount of white space has no impact on their searching performance. On content (i.e., text)pages, use some white space to separate paragraphs. Too much separation of items on Web pages may require users to scroll unnecessarily.

Choose Appropriate Line Lengths:

If reading speed is most important, use longer line lengths (75-100 characters per line). If acceptance of the Web site is most important, use shorter line lengths (fifty characters per line).
When designing, first determine if performance or preference is most important. Users read faster when line lengths are long. However, they tend to prefer shorter line lengths, even though reading shorter lines generally slows overall reading speed. One study found that line lengths of about twenty characters reliably slowed reading speed.
When space for text display is limited, display a few longer lines of text rather than many shorter lines of text. Always display continuous text in columns containing at least fifty characters per line.
Research done using a paper-based document found that medium line length was read fastest.

Use Frames when Functions Must Remain Accessible:

Use frames when certain functions must remain visible on the screen as the user accesses other information on the site.
It works well to have the functional items in one frame and the items that are being acted upon in another frame. This is sometimes referred to as a 'simultaneous menu' because making changes in one frame causes the information to change in another frame. Side-by-side frames seem to work best, with the functions on the left and the information viewing area on the right.
Keep in mind that frames can be confusing to some users. More than three frames on a page can be especially confusing to infrequent and occasional users. Frames also pose problems when users attempt to print, and when they search pages.

Source:[usability.gov]

SEO Ranking Factors for 2009

2009-06-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Marketing and SEO have always been very dynamic fields. Search engines make changes all of the time. Sometime they announce their changes, sometimes we are left to guess at them. In either event, more often than not, we are left largely to our own devices in terms of assessing the impact of these changes and what to do about them - if anything.

This makes sessions related to ranking factors pretty popular at shows like SMX Advanced. This year was no exception and I was able to get a few minutes with one of this years speakers, Rand Fishkin, to chat about the state of SEO ranking factors.

One of the more interesting things Rand and I agreed on was the fact that it's 2009 and a lot of today's fundamental ranking factors, are very similar to the same stuff that worked in 2005, 2006, 2007 and so on. In other words, a lot of the basic things have been pretty consistent.

That said, I thought it might be useful to run down a quick list of some of the things that matter most and least in terms of ranking in 2009. We’ll start with the Important Things:

Title tags - This one is a no brainer. Good title tags have long been recognized as one of the single most important on page SEO elements of any web page. What makes a good title tag? A good title tag specific to each individual page is absolutely essential. Beyond that, as Rand pointed out, having your 'important terms' appear early in your title tag also has a significant impact.

Anchor Text - Anchor text is the visible text of a link. Having inbound links is the overriding number one search factor but not all links are created equally. Say you have people linking to your page about blue widgets. If the text in their content reads "Fantastic Blue Widgets can be found here!" it makes a big difference in which words they link to your page. If they link the words 'Blue Widgets', it's going to do you a lot more good than if they just link the word 'here'.

This is important to keep in mind with your own internal linking too. Avoid using generic, nondescript terms like 'home' and 'here' and 'main' when you link to your own pages.

Quantity of Domains Linking - This one is interesting. if you have 10,000 inbound links and your competitor only has 7,000 inbound links but still seems to outrank you consistently, this could be the reason. Number of links is important, but the number of unique domains those links are coming from is also very important.

You may have 10,000 inbound links but maybe your links all come from 5,000 unique, separate domains. Your competitor may only have 7,000 inbound links but if they have 6,000 coming in from separate domains... they will get you most every time.

Social Media/Mobile - we talked a little bit about social and mobile. Social and to some extent mobile too can be hard to quantify. The fact of the matter is though, these are absolutely 2 hugely explosive categories. Facebook, Twitter and other social giants are continuing to grow in users and usage. Effective social media management can be a tremendous source for generating buzz, those all-important inbound links and just plain direct referral traffic.

Those are a few ranking factors Rand and I discussed as important, so what are some things people might be spending too much time worrying about? Here are some of the things we talked about in terms of being 'not so important':

H1 Tags - A couple of years ago, making use of H1 and H2 tags on selected areas of your HTML code kind of came into vogue. The rationale was the search engine spiders interpreted H1 tags as a signal that 'hey, this text is important because it's bigger'. Of course the proliferation of .css meant that you could throw H1 tags pretty much anywhere and everywhere on your page and just take care of how things looked to people with stylesheets.

That this was ever an effective ranking tactic or strategy is somewhat debatable. However, currently, while H1 tags aren't going to hurt you, they don't seem to be much of a factor.

Keyword Density - This one might surprise you a little bit. Keyword density is kind of a joke. It is in fact NOT desirable to work 500 instances of your target keyphrase into the text of your target page. I know this seems counter intuitive to some, but I for one was very glad to see this claim supported by some data in the Ranking Factors session.

If your page is about Blue Beach Widgets, you have Blue Beach Widgets in your title and you have pages linking to your blue beach widgets page with the terms 'blue beach widgets' in the anchor text THAT is good.

You do NOT have to whore out the content of your page to have 'blue beach widgets' repeated 50 times in the description. I know you have seen these pages... they look like:

This has to stop people. It makes your site read like a bad skit on the Muppet Show. This kind of thing makes me cringe, and it's ruining the Internet. Well maybe it isn't ruining the Internet like MTV ruined America, but it does make for some horrible web pages. I still hear SEOs talking keyword density to site owners. If you are a site owner and some SEO comes talking to you about increasing your keyword density, do everybody a big favor and throw something at them. Please.

W3C Validation - Ah, my old arch nemesis W3C Validation. If I've said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times... but I’ll say it again: if you want your site to validate W3C, by all means... do that. If having code that passes W3C validation makes you sleep well at night, then, my friend... you go get that done. I am all for people having W3C valid code, if that's what they want.

That said.... in terms of SEO and search engine ranking, the simple reality is: IT DOESN’T MATTER. It never has mattered and I daresay it never will matter. Can it hurt you to have valid code? Certainly not. Should you pay a designer and extra 30% to design your webpage to be 100% W3C compliant and valid? That’s up to you. But before you do, consider this: of the top 100 websites online, MAYBE 8 (and I am being exorbitant in that estimate) of them pass W3C validation. Amazon doesn't pass, eBay doesn't pass, Twitter doesn't pass, heck neither do Google, Yahoo or even Microsoft’s new Bing.

Oh Yeah!!!!If your page renders in all the browsers, if you don't have a bunch of broken links, in other words if your webpage looks like a webpage and can be read... that's all you need here folks. Search engines could not possibly care less, in other words if "document type does not allow element "div" here". They just don't. They never will. W3C might help get you listed in some directories (maybe?), it has some practical applications in terms of accessibility, and you could maybe argue that it can help you diagnose some page render/load time issues. Personally I think it’s most common application however is to inflate the bottom line estimate for web designers that can talk you into a cup of the W3C Validation Kool Aid.

So there are a few things Rand and I discussed that matter more and matter less in regard to search ranking factors in 2009. I'm sure we left plenty of things out, so if you want to add your opinion to either list, feel free to do so in the comments section.

[webpronews.com]

Web 2.0 Design & Development - What is Web 2.0?

2009-06-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and Media Live International. Dale Dougherty and O'Reilly noted that far from having "crashed", the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and websites popping up with surprising regularity. Hence the Web 2.0 concept was born.

"Web 2.0" refers to a perceived second generation of web development and web design, that facilitates communication, secures information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs and others. The sometimes complex and continually evolving technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 includes RSS feeds, server-software, content-syndication, messaging-protocols, standards-oriented browsers with plug-ins and extensions and various client-applications.

To know more about Web 2.0, please visit the site http://www.newpathweb.com.au

Web Design Tips: The Laws of Ecommerce Navigation Design

2009-06-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

CSS, Flash, jQuery, and an arsenal of other powerful web techniques and technologies have unbound website design, creating the opportunity to develop either exceptional user interfaces or really frustrating ones.

Furthermore, the growth of "cookie-cutter" ecommerce templates (i.e., "insert your logo here") has quelled site concepts with great potential and made some ecommerce pages as bland and tasteless as a papier-mâché popsicle.

To avoid the pitfalls of a site design that is too confusing, too ugly, or too experimental to be effective, the ecommerce site owner must strike a balance between leading-edge techniques and technologies, effectiveness, and aesthetics. So, in this edition of "Web Design Tips," I'll outline the laws for ecommerce site navigation design to help any ecommerce business.

Law No. 1: Make Navigation Easy to Understand and Use

Shoppers browsing to an ecommerce store don't want to be baffled by navigation. As I implied above, there are a lot of amazing things that you can do with site navigation that you shouldn't.

As a specific example, the agency Publicis & Hal Riney has developed site navigation that responds to gestures captured via web cam. The effect is stunning, and is an excellent way to demonstrate development talent. But as navigation, it is really frustrating. And if an ecommerce site deployed anything like it, I'd bet that they would never make a sale again.

Make your site navigation easy to understand and use. Provide clear labels that explain what a user will find when he or she clicks. If you sell shoes, try labels like "Men's Shoes" or "Women's Shoes" or "Nike." And put navigation in a predictable place, top, left, right, or front and center.

Here are some examples of sites obeying law number 1:

Skooba Design features labels like "Laptop Bags" and "Apple 4G iPod Nano Cases"
Bonobos, which sells nothing but men's trousers and shorts, has a homepage with a less than perfect middle navigation, but the sites store obeys this law perfectly
Gateway obeys this law with a very nice top navigation that provides images (easy to understand) for many products
Dripping in Fat features a front and center navigation that works because of the limited number of products on the site
Crucial uses three forms of navigation-each clear-to make it easy for customer to find the computer memory or Flash cards they seek

Law No. 2: Make Navigation Accessible

Making your ecommerce site easy for customers with disabilities is good for business and the right thing to do. Some of your customers are going to have disabilities that require them to surf the web using screen readers, refreshable Braille displays, magnifiers, or other helpful devices. Develop navigation that these devices easily understand. Take a look at the World Wide Web Consortium's How People with Disabilities Use the Web for an idea of how these customers use websites.

One technique to try is to place text-based navigation and skip links (often hidden from most site visitors via CSS) at the very top of the page.

Here are some examples of sites obeying law number 2:

Productive Alternatives is a very accessible site with a range of products
Zahradka Art & Illustration is accessible and provides some visual interest
Crawleys Furniture uses a simple text-based navigation at the top of the page
Scruffs Hardwear is easy for devices like screen readers

Law No. 3: Tell Me Where I Am

Before customers can make a good choice about where they want to go on your site, they should know where they are. Because so many online shoppers use search engines to locate online stores, your customers can enter your site just about anywhere. So there is no guarantee that they are starting on the home page.

Use visual and text clues (i.e., breadcrumbs) to show the customer where he or she is on your site.

Here are some examples of sites obeying law number 3:

Eagle Coffee Company uses CSS to change the look and feel of the active page in its left navigation and uses a clear breadcrumb to show the user just where she is
Tokidoki uses pink font to highlight the current page in the navigation and has a good breadcrumb trail
PEZ Factory Store has an easy-to-read orange breadcrumb and puts the current page in all capital letters in the left-hand navigation
Cabela's actually includes the phrase "You are here" in its breadcrumb
Newegg changes the background and font color of the current page and includes an accessibility-friendly breadcrumb

Law No. 4: Use Layers and Facets on Big Sites

If your ecommerce site has more than a few product categories, more than a handful of brands, or more than a dozen products, add navigation layers and facets.

As a customer, I want to be able to browse by brand, price, age-appropriateness, color, or just about any other relevant product attribute. Your navigation should let me do that right in place.

Here are some examples of sites obeying law number 4:

PetsRight provides understandable layered navigation
Ramco Worldwide offers a price facet -MiniRepublic lets customers navigate by just about any product attribute
Wlanmall includes attributes like frequency, series, and radio frequency connector

Law No. 5: Let There Be Search

Every ecommerce site should allow shoppers to just search for products. Not a lot of explanation needed. Add a search box (yes it is a form of navigation) to every page on your site.

Here are some examples of sites obeying law number 5:

Amie Street allows you to find music from any page on the site
Knife Center has search right up top
Art.com puts search to the left (ahead) of its text navigation

[practicalecommerce.com]

How Can CSS Benefit Website Design For Google?

2009-06-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a stylesheet language that describes the presentation of web documents. Web pages that are written in HTML and XHTML can be styled in many ways by using CSS. In fact CSS allows to separate the stylistic elements of the web page like layout, color and fonts from the content matter like textual paragraphs and images. This is called separation of content from presentation.

Separation of Content from Presentation

The separation improves the accessibility of content on the web pages. Moreover, it provides flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics at the same time reducing complexity and repetition in the structural content.

CSS also allows the web page to be presented in different styles so that it suits different rendering methods. The web content is thus made available in various forms like on-screen, print, voice modes (speech-based browsers and screen readers) etc.

While CSS offers a plethora of benefits on the Internet, a good knowledge of the same is required if you need to employ it for your website. Therefore, to really reap the benefits of CSS and make it work for your online presence, you should invest quality time in learning its nuances.

Why is CSS good for Google?

CSS has a considerable impact on how Google views your website. In fact, you can soar your website's chances to rank well in the Google search results by employing CSS efficiently. CSS has many benefits with respect to Google.

It shrinks the file sizes on your web pages
It grants more control over the structure of the web pages
It allows for certain content information to be hidden by browsers yet be visible to Google crawlers.

Let us understand all these potential benefits in detail:

Smaller File Sizes

Without CSS, all the styles on your web pages require to be supported by appropriate HTML coding. And this bloats up the file size which further adds up on the load time of the website.

CSS takes out the style from the HTML pages and puts into another separate file called the css file. This reduces the amount of code on the web pages. Lesser amount of code means smaller sizes of files and this is something Google prefers in the web pages on the Internet. Ideally, web pages should not be more that 100 kb.

Moreover, smaller file sizes also cause the pages to load quickly. This increases the accessibility and pleases your website visitors.

Increased Control over Web Pages

With CSS, you are able to structure the documents of your web pages as per the HTML standards at the same time retaining the look and feel of the page. Better structure with the same visual appeal is what CSS grants you.

Google prefers well structured web pages that score well on the design aspects too. And CSS allows website designers to do just the same. They can create attractive websites that not only are a treat to look at but also adheres to the standards and guidelines of the web.

Hiding Content from Browsers

With CSS, you can hide bits and chunks of content that you dont want the browser to read yet want Google crawlers to take into account. For example, you may have certain content on your website that you want to appear only on vice versa. CSS makes it possible to camouflage certain text without loosing on the chances of being picked up by Google.

[promotionworld.com]

Make More Money From Your Online Ads

2009-06-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Want to make some quick money with almost no work? If you don't already have AdSense ads on your site, you should think about getting started.

Google's AdSense places contextual ads on your web pages, and keywords defined by advertisers are matched to your site's content by Google. You make money each time someone on your site clicks on one of the ads. You can set filters so your competitors' ads aren't displayed on your site, and you can restrict the ad content by region and language.

This article will point out a few ways you can manage the ads on your website so they make you more money. We'll talk about three key issues: ad design, ad location and keywords.

You'll be surprised to learn just how much control you have over these elements--and you'll be delighted to see how much more money a few small changes can make you.

Designing for Dollars
Yes, "content is king," but good design is the crown jewel. Spend a few minutes getting the look of your AdSense ads right, and the payoff to you is priceless.

Tweak the color. Make the ads blend into your content so they'll be perceived by visitors to your site as supplementary or supporting information. Visitors are much more likely to click on links that look like part of the content they're reading.

You can change the color of the background and the color of the links to match those on your web pages. There are two ways to do this. One is a cinch: Use the pre-formatted colors that Google offers. The other requires a bit of HTML knowledge: Hand code the colors so you get an exact match to the ones on your site.

As an alternative design plan, consider changing the colors from time to time to keep things fresh for returning visitors who might suffer from "ad blindness"--viewers often automatically filter out any content they've seen before.

Align the images. Use images on your site as "captions" for the AdSense ads that appear. Now, of course, they won't have a direct relationship to each ad because you don't know exactly which ads will be placed on your page. The purpose of the images isn't to explain the ads, but to draw the eye and then lead it down or across to the text. Since that text is your ad, the image has just increased the chances that the ad will be clicked.

If you try this strategy, be aware that Google's algorithm is always looking for ways to get your ads to make you more money, and that could mean it might override your default settings. If you've asked for a four-ad banner, but Google knows that three ads will make you more money because of its keywords, then the images you've carefully aligned for four ads will be out of whack.

Run from the border! Unless... Borders separate the ads from the content. This visual separation works against your careful attempts to integrate the ads with the content. (Remember: Your goal is to integrate the ads as much as possible so they appear to be just one more valuable piece of relevant content on your site.)
For that reason, you should not use any of the pre-set borders Google gives you.

But if you use the "image caption" trick described above, Google requires that you use a border or a line separation between the images and the ads. The solution is to create your own line separation that's consistent with other design elements on your page.

When we talk about the location of your ads, we don't mean where they appear on each page.

What we're emphasizing here is that there are methods of setting up AdSense ads to appear on pages other than your own website pages. Increasing the variety of pages you put AdSense ads on can really boost your click-through rate. We'll also tell you about the kind of website page on which to never let an AdSense ad appear.

Extend your reach with AdLinks. When you sign up for AdSense, you also have the opportunity to display AdLinks. These are text links that take your visitor to a page of AdSense ads when clicked. The text links are related to the topics on your site, just like AdSense ads, but you get more of them and they might cover a wider range of relevant topics.

If space on your site is limited, AdLinks are a terrific idea because they're much more compact than AdSense ads. The downside is it takes two clicks (one on the text link and one on the resulting ad) before you make any money from them.

Put AdSense ads in RSS feeds. If you have more than 100 subscribers to your RSS feed, you can apply to have AdSense ads appear whenever the feed is pulled by a news reader. The ads are matched by the content of the entire feed, not just the title and teaser.

You need to put a snippet of code, provided by Google, into your feed, and the ads are then rendered when a reader downloads your feed. The text-based AdSense ad is converted to a graphic that remains stable even after it's downloaded by the reader. (If the ad remained in text form, the news reader would detect a new article each time the ad changed and would reload it.)

Use Web Search on your site. Putting a Google Web Search box on your site adds functionality for your visitors and potential ad revenue for you. When your site visitors search, Google places ads directly related to their search topics on the results page.

This has two benefits for you: You keep traffic on your site longer because visitors don't have to leave to do a Google search; and, of course, you make money when they click on one of the related ads.

Keep your sales pages for your own sales. Do not place AdSense ads on any web page designed to sell your visitors your product. This includes your salesletter as well as any page on which they can make a purchase. You'll make a lot more money by having your customers buy your product than by having them click away on an AdSense ad. Don't mix the messages by giving them more than one thing to "buy."
Keep the AdSense ads on your content and news pages, add them to your newsletter archive pages, but don't put them on your sales pages.

Follow the Money
The amount of money you make from AdSense ads is partly determined by the value of the keywords in the ads--in other words, how much advertisers have paid to use those keywords. Try to attract the big-money ads to your site by generating content that includes those high-paying keywords.

Find the expensive words... If you've signed up for Google's AdWords program, then you already have some resources to help you determine the cost of different keywords. For the rest of us, a bit of detective work is necessary.

Start with Google itself. Do a Google search using the keywords you want to use on your site. Pay attention to the wording of the ads that show up in the right margin--the ads at the top have the higher-paying words in them. You can piggyback on the ad revenue for those words by using them in your site's content.

You can also find the pricey keywords by tapping into keyword databases. Try these three:

www.bestfreekeywords.com
www.factsaboutadsense.com
www.toppayingkeywords.com

...But not at the expense of your credibility. It might be tempting to create all your content around certain high-paying keywords just to benefit from the click-through payments. However, your visitors are savvy enough to know when they're being manipulated, and they won't tolerate it.

If your content ceases to be useful, relevant or interesting to them, they'll stop coming to your site entirely. And you'll have lost not only the high-paying click-throughs, but also the bigger money from product sales.

Final Thoughts
The only criteria Google has for ad placement is relevant content, so AdSense puts your site on an equal footing with much bigger, "more valuable" sites. It's not your bank balance that competes with the big guys for ad revenue but the quality of your content.

Google doesn't actually reveal how much you can make from running AdSense ads on your site--and other site owners are restricted in how much information they can release to the public. Therefore, specific numbers are hard to predict.

It's safe to say, though, that with almost no effort it's possible to bring in a little money, and if you apply yourself, it's possible to make a bundle!

[news.alibaba.com]

Google Chrome SEO Toolbar with Page Rank– An Easy Way

2009-06-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

A while ago, Google launched smart, stylish and faster web browser, Google Chrome, and after its launch, many more users downloaded it, and considered switching to it.

Being an SEO Consultant so I needed an SEO toolbar for web browsers like Firefox and IE. But unfortunately (and surprisingly), Google did not launch its toolbar for Google Chrome.

So here is a very easy way to have SEO toolbar for Google Chrome.

Download and install Google Chrome developer version. If you have installed, ignore this step.
Learn how to change Chrome to Chrome Developer Version.
Add -enable-extensions parameter:

Right click the Chrome icon in your desktop, and then click Properties.
Click Shortcut tab.
Add '-enable-extensions' parameter in the Target field.

Download these two files from the following address and save them at your desktop.

http://www.2shared.com/file/6242345/4c394a8f/Bookmarks.html
http://www.2shared.com/file/6242381/e7e1c19a/Bookmarks.html

Just go at following address:
In WindowXP : "C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default" {Replace username as per your profile name}
In Windows Vista : "C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default" {Replace username as per your profile name}
Copy both the downloaded files and just paste them in Default directory.
Then just refresh it and open Google Chrome.
Make sure your Google Chrome browser always shows the Bookmarks bar. If not, click menu: Tools -> Always show bookmarks bar.
Your chrome bookmark bar (See red blocks) will become SEO toolbar.

[searchenginejournal.com]

Choosing a Web Hosting Company that’s Right for You

2009-06-10T01:51:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, choosing a company to host your website was an exercise in frustration and confusion. But now, with so many web hosting companies competing for your business, you're assured of finding more than one company that will meet your needs. Your biggest problem will be choosing among the candidate companies. With free web hosting and packages starting at $1.95 per month, the money you spend getting your website up and running can go much further than it could a few years ago.

You'll need to do some research on web hosting companies first. While most companies offer generous bandwidth, disk space, and email accounts, variables such as cost and availability of technical support increase in importance. Here are some ways to begin your search for the perfect web host.

First, determine what you need. You probably wouldn't walk into a shoe store and say, "I need shoes." You'd give some specifics, like your shoe size, what type of shoes you want, how much you're willing to pay. The situation with buying website hosting is similar. Are you a one-person shop, or do you have a dozen employees? Will you be selling things on your site, or is it purely informational? Will visitors to your site download large files? How many visitors do you expect or hope to have on a given day?

There's nothing wrong with asking someone you know who runs a website how they went about it. In fact, it's an opportunity to learn from others' mistakes. But there are also plenty of resources online. The home pages of web hosting providers should give you some ideas, and there are user forums where you can read and learn some real world experiences with various hosting companies. If you are able to join these forums, it's OK to ask questions, such as, "I see you chose Company X for your web host. Do you think they would work well for my site? My site will offer downloads of video training materials, and I'll need quite a bit of bandwidth." The user forums are where people tend to tell it like it is.

Speaking of bandwidth, while that and disk space are important considerations, you should know that most hosting providers will offer sufficient resources unless you will have a bandwidth hogging application, or a 10,000 visitors per day. It is important, however, to make sure that you will be able to upgrade your service if your business outgrows its original website. The answer is almost always "yes," but it’s a good idea to make sure.

If you plan to have extra features, like extensive photo storage, database support, or other add-ons, ask up front if your hosting package will accommodate these things.

One thing that you should never consider as an "extra" is live tech support by email, live chat, and phone. Web hosting companies are coming around to the fact that there are no "regular business hours" for online businesses, and that their clients want to talk to an actual human regardless of time or day. Again, don't take it for granted; make sure upfront that you’re getting true 24/7/365 support services.

Many clients enjoy having a web based control panel. This will allow you to add or modify email accounts, tweak your site's configuration, and do basic file editing. These control panels often are graphical user interfaces that make it easy for you to make changes to your site without having to know HTML.

Round the clock FTP (file transfer protocol) access is another very handy thing to have. This will allow you to make changes to your site no matter what time it is. Web based email is another near necessity in today's business environment. This will allow you and your employees to check their email anywhere – not just from their own computer.

Beyond these basics, here are some other questions to answer before signing on with a hosting company.

Will you share a server or will your site have one dedicated to it alone? For most businesses, shared hosting works fine. But larger businesses may need to flexibility and control that comes with having an entire server devoted to their website. Fortunately, shared hosting can now be quite generous with disk space and bandwidth, and security measures between websites hosted on the same server minimize the chances of technical problems. And shared hosting costs much less than dedicated hosting.

Does your hosting provider have e-commerce capabilities? Many come with ready-to-use shopping cart programs and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protection for online credit card transactions. These features allow you to configure your retail site quickly and with minimal costs.

Some hosting companies provide other goodies, like blog software, content management, and picture galleries. Fantastico is the name of a package of software that contains over 40 free programs that are easy to install from your site's control panel.

While price is still important in determining which webhost you choose, tech support and a good reputation are more important factors. You need to get your site up and running, and you need to be able to grow on the web as your business takes off.

[ghacks.net]

Five tips on good Web design

2009-06-09T05:44:00.000-07:00

By TASHA CUNNINGHAM
Special to The Miami Herald

Whether you have decided to hire a professional Web designer or use one of the template services mentioned in mylast column to create your site, good design is essential to running a successful business on the Web.

Google the term ''good Web design'' and you'll find myriad websites devoted to the topic with advice on how to create perfect Web pages. Web design is largely subjective. While many experts differ on what really makes good Web design, there are a few fundamentals most can agree on:

Think before you design -- Create a blueprint of the site you want before you pay that Web designer you've just contracted or begin working with favorite templates you've found online. Sit down, get out a piece of paper and actually sketch what you want your site to look like. How would it function? What would your site's key pages look like? Where will your navigation bar be? What colors will you use? What content areas will be on your site? This is a valuable first step. Your sketch will serve as a road map and quick reference guide as you implement your design.
Choose content carefully -- Whether your site will be used to sell products or not, the content on it is important. It has to be high-quality and informative, particularly if you are promoting yourself as an expert in a particular field. Don't let misspelled words, shoddy grammar and poor sentence structure be the reason you lose a reader or customer.
Color your site with care -- People respond to color. Choose soothing earth tones, such as forest green and gray, for your design.
Name your pages properly -- To optimize your site's pages, be sure to name the URLs for each page correctly. Don't use symbols and numbers, which aren't search-engine friendly. Instead, use the name of the page, which will rank your site much higher in search results. A good example of a properly named page is www.Miami Herald.com/business, which indicates it's the business page of the Miami Herald. A poorly named page would look something like this: www.miami herald.com/?54=27#8=617, which tells you nothing about the page and is hard for search engines to index the site. I'm guilty of this with www.Chick Centric.com, but I'm working to fix it.

Most services that allow you to design a site using a template will generate URLs for your pages that have letters and numbers, but a fair number of them allow you to rename your pages.

• Get free expert advice -- Take advantage of the wealth of free information about site design available on the Internet. You want to get your site indexed by Google, so start there by using their free Google Webmaster Guidelines, which give you everything you need to create a site that Google will love. Other good resources are www.SitePoint.comand www.SiteProNews.com.

You've got a lot of work to do, so get started! In my next column, I'll show you how to make extra money with your site and give you a slew of great tips on how to market it for maximum profit.

Tasha Cunningham is a pioneering Web entrepreneur and a principal of The Cunningham Group.

[miamiherald.com]

Title tags, anchor text 'most vital in SEO'

2009-06-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

The most important ranking factors in search engine optimisation(SEO) include title tags, anchor text, unique inbound links and use of social media and mobile advertising.

This is according to Rand Fishkin, a speaker at the recent SMX Advanced event, and Mike McDonald of WebProNews, who also concluded that the least important ranking factors are H1 tags, keyword density and W3C validation.

When it comes to using title tags in an effective way, it is advisable to insert key terms as early as possible into each tag and to ensure every website page has its own relevant title tag, Mr McDonald and Mr Fishkin stated.

"It's 2009 and a lot of today's fundamental ranking factors are very similar to the same stuff that worked in 2005, 2006 [and] 2007," Mr McDonald remarked, adding: "A lot of the basic things have been pretty consistent."

Earlier this month, a poll by Forbes.com found that SEO, pay-per-click ads and email marketing are seen as the most effective online marketing tactics when it comes to influencing brand perception by senior marketers.

[directnews.co.uk]

SEO is the best way to generate online sales, Forbes

2009-06-04T02:37:00.000-07:00

The best way for marketers to generate sales online is to start with search marketing techniques, according to a new study from Forbes.

The study reveals that 48 per cent of marketers believe that search engine optimization (SEO) was the best method for generating conversions online.

More than one-half of marketers with budgets up to £1 million agreed. For both small- and large-budget marketers, site or page sponsorship and SEO were considered the most effective ways to build a brand online.

The next-most-effective conversion tactic for smaller marketers was e-mail and e-newsletters, followed by pay-per-click and search ads, behavioural targeting and page sponsorships.

For larger marketers, the list of effective online tactics was nearly the same, except search and e-mail were flipped. Pay-per-impression ads were also more effective for larger marketers.

To build, maintain or change brand perceptions required different tactics, however. Pay-per-impression ads came next on the list for big spenders, while the more budget-constricted focused on e-mail newsletters, pay-per-impression and viral marketing.

In anticipation of the end of the recession, marketers are changing their spending priorities in the six months after March 2009 to feature more viral marketing, SEO, behavioural targeting and pay-per-click, according to the study.

Jon Smith, head of Aedgency Cashback said, "Smith said, "Search Engine Optimisation takes time and effort, but the rewards of a successful strategy are more customers, more revenue and dominance over your market.

"Web users seldom search beyond the first results page and if you don't have at least one of the coveted twelve positions you can bet your competitor will have. From this perspective, investing in effective SEO is business critical."

Source:[utalkmarketing.com]

The Homepage

2009-05-20T02:04:00.000-07:00

The homepage is different from all other Web site pages. A well-constructed homepage will project a good first impression to all who visit the site.

It is important to ensure that the homepage has all of the features expected of a homepage and looks like a homepage to users. A homepage should clearly communicate the site's purpose, and show all major options available on the Web site. Generally, the majority of the homepage should be visible 'above the fold,' and should contain a limited amount of prose text. Designers should provide easy access to the homepage from every page in the site.

Enable Access to the Homepage:

Enable users to access the homepage from any other page on the Web site.
Many users return to the homepage to begin a new task or to start a task over again. Create an easy and obvious way for users to quickly return to the homepage of the Web site from any point in the site.
Many sites place the organization's logo on the top of every page and link it to the homepage. While many users expect that a logo will be clickable, many other users will not realize that it is a link to the homepage. Therefore, include a link labeled ‘Home’ near the top of the page to help those users.

Show All Major Options on the Homepage:

Present all major options on the homepage.
Users should not be required to click down to the second or third level to discover the full breadth of options on a Web site. Be selective about what is placed on the homepage, and make sure the options and links presented there are the most important ones on the site.

Create a Positive First Impression of Your Site:

Treat your homepage as the key to conveying the quality of your site.
In terms of conveying quality, the homepage is probably the most important page on a Web site. One study found that when asked to find high quality Web sites, about half of the time participants looked only at the homepage. You will not get a second chance to make a good first impression on a user.

Communicate the Web Site’s Value and Purpose:

Clearly and prominently communicate the purpose and value of the Web site on the homepage.
Most people browsing or searching the Web will spend very little time on each site. Emphasize what the site offers that is of value to users, and how the site differs from key competitors. Many users waste time because they misunderstand the purpose of a Web site. In one study, most users expected that a site would show the results of research projects, not merely descriptions of project methodology.
In some cases the purpose of a Web site is easily inferred. In other cases, it may need to be explicitly stated through the use of brief text or a tagline. Do not expect users to read a lot of text or to click into the Site to determine a Site’s purpose. Indicating what the Site offers that is of value to users, and how the Site differs from key competitors is important because most people will spend little time on each Site.

Limit Prose Text on the Homepage:

Limit the amount of prose text on the homepage.
The first action of most users is to scan the homepage for link titles and major headings. Requiring users to read large amounts of prose text can slow them considerably, or they may avoid reading it altogether.

Ensure the Homepage Looks like a Homepage:

Ensure that the homepage has the necessary characteristics to be easily perceived as a homepage.
It is important that pages 'lower' in a site are not confused with the homepage. Users have come to expect that certain actions are possible from the homepage. These actions include, among others, finding important links, accessing a site map or index, and conducting a search.

Limit Homepage Length:

Limit the homepage to one screenful of information, if at all possible.
Any element on the homepage that must immediately attract the attention of users should be placed 'above the fold.' Information that cannot be seen in the first screenful may be missed altogether-this can negatively impact the effectiveness of the Web site. If users conclude that what they see on the visible portion of the page is not of interest, they may not bother scrolling to see the rest of the page.
Some users take a long time to scroll down 'below the fold,' indicating a reluctance to move from the first screenful to subsequent information. Older users and novices are more likely to miss information that is placed below the fold.

Announce Changes to a Web Site:

Announce major changes to a Web site on the homepage-do not surprise users.
Introducing users to a redesigned Web site can require some preparation of expectations. Users may not know what to do when they are suddenly confronted with a new look or navigation structure. Therefore, you should communicate any planned changes to users ahead of time. Following completion of changes, tell users exactly what has changed and when the changes were made. Assure users that all previously available information will continue to be on the site.
It may also be helpful to users if you inform them of site changes at other relevant places on the Web site. For example, if shipping policies have changed, a notification of such on the order page should be provided.

Attend to Homepage Panel Width:

Ensure that homepage panels are of a width that will cause them to be recognized as panels.
The width of panels seems to be critical for helping users understand the overall layout of a Web site. In one study, users rarely selected the information in the left panel because they did not understand that it was intended to be a left panel. In a subsequent study, the panel was made narrower, which was more consistent with other left panels experienced by users. The newly designed left panel was used more.

Source:[usability.gov]