SloDive » Web Development

How to Stay Ahead When You’re a Web Designer

SloDive Admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:23:32 +0000

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When Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

The trouble with being a creative professional is that you have to keep finding ways to feed your creativity; once the source dries up, the opportunities wither too. There are many authors who are one-book wonders, many directors who fade away into ignominy after one great film, and many artists who are remembered for one striking painting or sculpture alone. Web designers too risk falling into this trap – they may not stop at designing one eye-catching site; however, they do tend to follow a stereotype and repeat their designs with just a minor tweak here and there, or worse, use templates instead of coming up with their own designs.

Only Change Is Consistent

There’s fierce competition in the world of web design, and unless you’re able to differentiate yourself in some way from the crowd, you’re not going to taste success for very long. The key to standing head and shoulders above the rest lies not in being the best designer, but in knowing how to redesign yourself according to the nature and need of the project and the client. In short, a designer has to know when change is necessary, what kind of change will work, and how to sell that change to the client.

Prisoners of Our Own Success

Most people require just one website, but if a client asks you to do more than one, then you can bet that it’s a testimonial to and an acknowledgment of your good work. However, the burden on your shoulders has just become heavier because now, the expectations are higher than before. Your client expects you to deliver a site just as good as or better than the one you’ve done for them earlier. The problem here is that there is no simple way to qualify a design – your client either likes it or not, and no matter if you feel that it’s the best design there is, if your client hates it, then it’s a wasted exercise.

Confidence Means Knowledge & Skills but Overconfidence Kills

So when you’re designing multiple sites for the same client, never assume that what worked for the first site will work for the second. Rather, include your client in every stage of the design and proceed only when they’re satisfied with your idea. If you have a design that you want to pitch, you must know how to sell it to your client. If not, it’s best to go with what the client wants, even though you may have to go against your creative instincts. The ability to do this defines how well you’re able to redesign yourself based on need and situation.

Redefining Your Success

And then there are times when you may have to call up old clients and remind them that their websites could do with some tweaking and redesigning. If they accept your sales pitch and let you do the job, remember that you need to do an exceptional job so that they don’t feel shortchanged. When you’re working on a site that you designed some time ago, it’s best to look at it with new eyes – you need to do away with the old and incorporate the new; the web changes within the blink of an eye, and unless you keep up with these changes and include them in your redesigns, you’re going to become professionally stale.

About The Author

This guest post is contributed by Bailey Digger, she writes on the topic of web design degree. She welcomes your comments at her email id: baileydigger189(@)gmail(.)com

Key to Improve the Conversion Rate of Your Online Store

SloDive Admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:21:40 +0000

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Arrival of autumn season is pronounced by passage of Temperature from summer into winter season. Its long awaited as it gives us a respite from scorching sun and brings our most favorite shopping time expected during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Thanksgiving holidays. This season is even more important for online stores as this period is marked for spending big bucks by customers. Your website is the only way where you display your products & services/interact with your prospective customers. But the poor web design leaves no second chance to convert the site visitors into paying customers.

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We have found a very good answer to an effective design strategy, that too in an affordable manner as it is raining discounts from Template Monster. The company offers its customers the ability to get professional eCommerce Templates at a 20% discount. This promo is oriented on those site-owners who wish to most efficiently optimize their website and, what’s more essential, acquire and convert their site visitors into paying, loyal customers.

But what if we dig deeper than just a discount on template purchase? What matters the most for any eCommerce project is the website conversion rate, it is a crucial thing when it comes to website’s profitability. High conversion rates are feasible only with such website design and page content that play a huge part in visitors’ trust. Here’s a couple of tips for those who want to improve online store conversion rate:

Plan Your Website Design

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Any website retailer should have a great functional site design with all the basic elements professionally presented. That should be a decent layout with accurate content that communicates unique value and unique campaign propositions you offer.

Testimonials and References

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The website will be more credible when there is a wide range of testimonials and references from well known brands or actual individuals included. Just make sure you have a human aspect included into testimonials – we are all social creatures and other individuals’ experience really does matter for us, as long as it’s an experience we can relate to. This will ensure the users that their order will be treated with all the importance it deserves.

Website Search

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To enhance website usability, it is essential to offer functional search facility so that customers can easily find what they are shopping for within a few seconds. Do not let them get lost in the sea of products and work hard to find a search box. Better include the lists of what could be found using the search option. Perhaps it’s also necessary to suggest for similar or recommended products if the desired items cannot be found.

By the way, don’t forget to pay attention to the breadcrumb – it is a scientifically proved fact that as long as a visitor knows the tree structure of a website he/she is browsing, the feeling of confidence and safety get him to be more likely to actually make a purchase. While being confused about the structure scares customers off immediately.

Deliver What Your Want Audience to Know

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Make sure that every page of your website seeds the offer – these might be banners, ads, strong call to action buttons. To attract bargain hunters, consider adding savings or special offers by RSS and email, and don’t make people register to buy from you. Other great suggestions include showing the ratings and reviews of top products with a layer of social proofing to them. In such way your store visitors will more willingly buy from you. And what’s more important they’ll buy what you want them to buy.

Longer Checkout = Less Sales

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When talking about the shopping cart, it is advisable to minimize the number of pages, remove unnecessary navigation, account information on one page – just let your customer focus on completing the purchase. Plus you can make some data automatic so that customer doesn’t have to fill the same information twice. And make sure that you provide additional payment options since customers may prefer paying with another method. But what’s the most important here is that you have to keep it simple and make sure a customer may complete the order within minimum steps – each new page in checkout takes 20% off of the amount of customers you would have if it was only one checkout step.

Build Maximum Trust

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So it’s important to give the potential customer every reason to trust you – provide your sales customer service phone numbers and email addresses, secure your website with SSL certificate, offer hacker-proof facilities, show your privacy policy, clearly explain the shipping procedure. While less and less people are cautious to buy online, more and more care of safety and pay great attention to a website credibility.

Actually, you can become a successful online website retailer with any eCommerce design offered by Template Monster. These eCommerce Templates being now available 20% off adopt professional practices using a combination of quality design, overall usability, site’s credibility, and various applicable tactics to significantly increase online conversion rates. So be more productive with your website design.

About The Author

Lilian Rigo, an expert columnist working with TemplateMonster since 2009, is committed to exploratory and creative writing that covers various aspects of the current state of web design and web development technologies.

Marketing Tip: Consider Video When Marketing to Twitter Users

SloDive Admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 06:53:49 +0000

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Twitter is one of the fastest growing Social Media Platforms that has since its inception in August 2006 grown at an unstoppable rate. Twitter has a great fan following and their participation is immense. Although it began as a Social Networking Site, marketers are favoring it as a powerful marketing medium. Twitter until in the recent past had not been in focus for marketing purposes. The reason is quite simple-The Twitter traffic conversion rates aren’t extremely high in comparison to other traffic sources. So quite obviously, the other traffic sources were more preferred than Twitter. For direct response marketers however, the traffic conversion rates of Twitter are quite heavy. Things changed when it was discovered that Twitter could be used to get users to watch videos.

Twitter has emerged as an online Video Power broker. This is because it has been noticed that not only is Twitter the top referrer for most video sites but Twitter traffic tends to watch the videos for a longer time.

[Charts courtesy of Mashable]

When you are considering advertising to people on Twitter, you would be making a big blunder if you do not use a video on your landing page. Advertising on Twitter and promoting products on it would definitely call for the use of a video. Why is that so? Well, more tech savvy people use Twitter; so, if you are trying to catch their attention and reach out to them, your advertisement should be accompanied by a video for better results. Suppose you need to advertise a product on Twitter and have a message associated with the product, you can put the message in a video form to reach out to Twitter users. The shorter the message e.g. two minutes the better the impact. You must keep it short and crisp in order to hold people’s interest and at the same time make an impact.

A conscious and well-planned marketing scheme can always prove to be of great benefit. Therefore, you should always design a market plan that will draw more traffic to a website. Using Twitter as a marketing tool is a part of the online marketing strategy that is hugely popular in this high tech world. If you wish to advertise on Twitter and get good publicity for your product employ the mechanism that has proved to be of great help. Currently the most effective trend of marketing a business on Twitter is by using video. Every traffic source has its own rules and so does Twitter. When your aim is to enhance traffic to your advertisement, display it in a manner that will be best received by the people. Many case studies show the significance and importance of using video to market to twitter users.

About The Author

Dana Bashor is a “noob” and has absolutely no formal writing credentials whatsoever, but that doesn’t stop her from writing on topics that catch her attention. Dana Bashor loves to write and follow online trends. Follow Dana on Twitter @Dana_Bashor

WordPress: Not Just About Blogging but Something More!

SloDive Admin — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:32:10 +0000

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A long way back, WordPress was actually designed by the content publisher system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL, and actually for them to be able to publish and edit any content in a website as per their needs. It was actually a blogging platform and primarily known for it. It is known for its Portability, Universal, Coordinated Time-friendly, Dynamism in the generation of pages, easy installation, and user-friendliness.

But as we very well know that “nothing remains constant in this world,” therefore, WordPress has successfully evolved itself as a tool to create a complete website of your own. And there is no denying to the fact that the main problem with the small businesses is the investments in creating, as well as updating and maintaining their sites. But WordPress makes the whole process easier.

I guess, it would be appropriate to list the advantages of WordPress, to use it to design your website. They are as follows:

Easy Customized Themes:

There are hundreds of free templates available. Its easy to download by simply unzipping the files that you have downloaded from the Google free WordPress templates. After you are done with this, simply upload them on the server and then, login to the admin to select the new theme.

You must be wondering what is it all about adding customized themes, and developing your own theme with parent themes and blank WordPress themes that are available for experiments. You actually don’t have to worry because there are plenty of tutorials available on the net that can help you with the same, for example:

1. How to Use WordPress for a Portfolio Site – Part 1

2. How to Implement Ajax in WordPress Themes

3. WordPress CMS Part 2: Theme Implementation

4. 8 Great Tutorials on How to Build a Custom WordPress Theme

Easy maintenance:

You can add, edit, or delete and make any change without any technical knowledge. With the administrative panel, you can add or delete anything or even the whole pages with the help of administrative panel.

SEO:

WordPress allows you to establish search engine friendly URLs and the plug-ins available with help you create title and description tags of your content. And there is still more to it… when a new post is published, they automatically appear in the search engine result.

Standard compliant:

WordPress follows all the rules that actually define a website. Its cross-browser compatibility is ensured by the WordPress developers.

Large Community:

Since, WordPress has a large community support, you can actually visit any forum to seek answer to any of your problem.

Plug-ins:

Once you install a plug-in, you can add ample of functionality to your website. There are thousands of WordPress plug-ins available that can add life to your site.

RSS Feeds:

RSS feeds are in-built and one can actually subscribe to your content by clicking on the yellow RSS feed icon and subscribe to your content.

WordPress has often been overlooked as a content management platform for non-blogging sites. Since you already know that WordPress is already very standard-compliant, and contain almost all the features that one needs to incorporate into any site.

The ABC of WordPress, for instance, where to start from, how to install, upgrading, WordPress for beginners, tutorials, file and plug-in management, and all the snippets to simplify all the complexities, is provided on http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page

On the same line, this blog is an attempt to make you well equipped and comfortable with the idea of using WordPress as a tool to create full-fledged website, with an emphasis on using WordPress 3.0 as the next best version, which has been recently launched with advanced features.

1. Installing WordPress:
Now, its not just about installing a default username— admin and some randomly generated password. Now, WordPress gives you the liberty to choose your own.

2. Theme:
Wordpress 3.0 comes with new themes and skins. So, we’ve got new options to be able to select a theme template for our website, or blogs.
For instance, a new default theme, TwentyTen has been released with a new typeface— Georgia, dropdown menus, new custom header and background and many such new advanced features. You also get a virtual representation of your post if you using TwentyTen using Visual Editor.

3. Custom Background Support:
There is nothing new to it, but surely WordPress would soon add something to it. To add a Custom Background support, add;
add_custom_background();
Then, you would be able to add a header image and customize it by clicking on the Background option.

4. Handle Large WordPress Networks:
With the WordPress and WordPress MultiUser, it becomes really easy to maintain a large network of WordPress sites but comes optional.

5. Welcome New Custom Post Types:
Now, you can create new post types, called the Portfolio.
It avoids the need where you fiddle all around with the custom themes. It gives way to the theme developers.

6. More Flexible:
WordPress, with the introduction of much easier custom and sub-taxonomies, has made WordPress a much more flexible content management system.

7. Menu Manager:
With the advent of a menu manager in WordPress 3.0, you can create multiple menus, categories and links, adding on to the comfort level of both, the users as well as the WordPress theme Developers.

8. A Guide:
WordPress 3.0 has a user-friendly guide, which would make it easier for you to understand the CMS better and make things more than easier for you.

9. Plug-ins:
With the introduction of WordPress 3.0, Add Details and Install Now links are available with each plug-in. Even the plug-in editor is equipped with Tab indenting, outdenting and multi-line tabbing and you can easily upgrade the plug-ins in bulk.

10. More focus on your content:
To increase accessibility and put more focus on the content of your website, a very light color admin is launched with WordPress 3.0 and a revised grey color admin scheme as well.
The list is endless, if you start using WordPress, not only as a blogging platform but, to develop full-fledged websites as well. There is no denying to the fact that if you go back to the history of WordPress since May 2003, you will witness its evolution and how it has attain that flexibility to meet all your requirements.

About The Author

The post is shared by PixelCrayons,a creative web design and development agency that specializes in providing bespoke WordPress CMS solutions ranging from a simple blog to heavily customized WordPress implementations.

Applications of AIDA In Website Designing

SloDive Admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:11:33 +0000

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—“Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.”

Marketing is a very broad term and holds a lot of importance in this cut-throat competition of online business. “The main point to remember about selling things is that besides creating atmosphere and excitement about your product, you gotta know what you are selling.” It deals with the familiar, therefore, it generates the need to come up with a systemic way and a lot of creativity.

— “A market is never saturated with good products, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.”

Being from a marketing field, one must be well aware of the marketing model called AIDA. As the current business scenario is altogether taking an online shift, it becomes very important to understand this model in terms of web design.

What is AIDA?

AIDA is a systematic marketing model that involves the basic but, creative four steps to sell a product or a service. Since, “Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to someone else products, services or values. Simply, if it doesn’t facilitate a ‘sale’ then it’s not marketing,” and and the involvement of a web designer and a developer on a technical level to put in efforts in the whole process of marketing a website that starts right from its designing.

A= Attention
I= Interest
D= Desire
A= Action

Now, lets begin our study of the application of AIDA model in relation to the web design to be able to create powerful and effective marketing communication.

—Attention:

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“You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull… when you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with fire.”

Be specific to what your product or service demands. The use of strong and powerful imagery of what is needed is preferred and forms a potential way to grab a visitor’s attention.

—“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
by Rudyard Kipling

But of course, there is no denying to the fact that content is the King but “As the saying goes, type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.” Typography needs to be felt, audible and experienced. Large headings, full utilization of colors and white space maximize the overall effect of the content on the visitor.

— Interest:

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The most important fundamental principle of developing interest of the visitor is to equip the visitor with the full-fledged information on how your product/service can be of use to them. Just by grabbing attention through typography and imagery won’t help you.
Just keep in mind top mention all the practical uses your respective product/service would offer. As we all know that time is the biggest constraint and useful piece of information that in turns develop interest of the consumer saves time, money, and laden them with the service that would help them to overcome repetitive tasks.

1. Serve them on platter: Make use of your common sense to understand their search terms to be able to create a content that is tailor-made for your visitor.
2. Research Work: Understand the marketing technique to find out the weak points of other websites— about their designs, content, user-friendliness, and much more. Just take sneak-peak into others’ work and then, work out keeping in mind ‘why a customer would want to shift to your site?”

— Desire:

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Creating that desire in your visitor for your product/service is the most difficult task. Its more than easy in theories, but very tough to implement.

We all know that desire is just an extension of interest. The real task comes when you have to create a particular desire in a customer to generate conversions. JavaScript-driven content switchers and image sliders beautify and makes your web page accessible in a very sophisticated and tasteful manner.

Regular promotion automatically begins to grow in the desire for your products/services.

Besides the attractive photography and imagery, provide detailed informative content about the web page, the product/services your web page offers.

Regular updated content and even a refreshing content generates visitors’ desire to go through it frequently. Understanding your customers and then, acting according to their needs is the key to effectively create that desire in your customer for your web page.

— Action:

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“The only people who can resist a quick fix are those who are not addicts.”

This step involves the call-of-action. The trip of a customer to the real action, where he/she is already prepared to commit a business with you, should be elegant, user-friendly again, and effectively placed.

Its actually quite apt to place a sitemap for the desired action. Do not disappoint them by leading them to a maze after you are successful in grabbing a quality visitor to your site. In a nut shell, optimize the last task.

Just try and build a healthy relationship with your customer. Develop that trustworthiness so that it helps in maintaining a long-term relation with that particular customer.

“Satisfaction doesn’t come with achievement, but with effort. Full effort is full victory.”

Last But Not The Least

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Customer’s satisfaction and the designer’s ( in relation to his/her designed web page) is the ultimate quality that AIDA— marketing model has in store to offer you. Though we all, are well aware of this fact that these techniques are nothing new. The main purpose, which this blog meant to offer is the need for a systematic and in-depth approach to a quality web design to be able to satisfy the needs, both at the customers’ as well as the administrative end.

About The Author

This post is shared by PixelCrayons, a creative web design and development agency that specializes in custom web design & development, markup services, CMS & ecommerce solutions.

Best Chrome Addons For Power Blogging

SloDive Admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:35:14 +0000

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AdBlock

AdBlock for Chrome! Blocks ads all over the web. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars by our users!

Download Adblock

Chrome SEO

The Google Chrome SEO Extension. Make your SEO tasks easier with Chrome SEO Tools, includes ‘all’ the stats and data you need.

Download Chrome SEO

Chrome.fm

Well, this is the “Fire.fm” extension for Chrome, so you have a little toolstrip menu for listening last.fm music. You can Love / Ban songs and skip them as well. Have fun!

Download Chrome.fm

Chromed Bird

Chromed Bird is a Twitter extension that allows you to follow your timelines and interact with your Twitter account.

Download Chromed Bird

Eye Dropper

Eye Dropper for Google Chrome.

Download Eye Dropper

FastestChrome – Browse Faster

Save time and enhance your productivity! Get quick definitions, auto-load next pages, search faster, and more.

Download FastestChrome – Browse Faster

Firebug Lite

Using firebug lite on Google Chrome. Originaly made by Firebug Team.

Download Firebug Lite

Google Mail Checker Plus

Displays the number of unread messages in your Gmail and Google Apps inbox. Preview mail, read, delete, archive and mark as spam!

Download Google Mail Checker Plus

Google Translate

This extension translates entire webpages into a language of your choice with one click. By the Google Translate team.

Download Google Translate

LastPass

LastPass is a free password manager and form filler. LastPass is also available for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari (Mac).

Download LastPass

Lorem Ipsum Generator

Creates random dummy text.

Download Lorem Ipsum Generator

RSS Live Links

Provides bookmark-like links to items from configured RSS feeds.

Download RSS Live Links

ScribeFire

A full-featured blog editor lets you easily post to all of your blogs.

Download ScribeFire

Tab Switch Plus

Quickly switch between tabs. If you have many tabs opened, this extension is for you – a vertical list of your opened tabs.

Download Tab Switch Plus

Webpage Screenshot

Fast & Simple solution to save JPG screenshots of any webpage. The first extension that captures the whole page.

Download Webpage Screenshot

Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

Backup and sync your bookmarks and open tabs across computers and browsers. Xmarks is also available for Firefox, Safari and IE.

Download Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

HTML5 Versus Flash — Is It Really So?

SloDive Admin — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:57:41 +0000

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An Unbiased Discussion

I won’t be really biased either with Flash or with HTML5, but to tell you, I personally don’t think HTML5 will replace Flash. Each has its proper place on the Web and in the graphic community. You must be thinking if there is no such battle, the title seems contradictory. Its just to bait readers in plenty and eradicate this pointless discussion.

HTML5 – A Modern Supplement

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First of all, it has become really important to understand their respective places. HTML5 but of course, is an outstanding development. It is the next major revision of HTML— the core markup language of World Wide Web. No doubt, it has made possible for our web developers to move forward with standard based browsers and rich functionality through CSS3 and HTML5. It will take our e-industry to new heights and the kind of functionality we would have never witnessed before.

* Semantic Replacements For Common Uses Of Generic Block
* New functionality have been equipped through a standardized interface.
* HTML5 is no longer based on SGML despite of the similarity of its markup.It comes with a new introductory line that looks like an SGML which enables standards-compliant rendering in all browsers.
* HTML5 specifies scripting application programming interfaces (APIs) such as— timed media playback, offline web application, document editing, web messaging, etc.
* Flexible handling of syntax errors — An HTML5 browser is flexible in handling incorrect syntax. HTML5 is designed so that old browsers can safely ignore new HTML5 constructs.
* Peer-to-Peer connections — HTML5 is designed specifically designed to handle connections between the users, with Peer to peer connections, and also with the web socket. It is a direct competitor to Flash’s peer to peer technology.

Flash – Old is Gold

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Flash is a single browser plug-in that provides consistency from one computer to the next. When Flash was introduced, its simple benefit was that it allowed the average computer user to design graphics and create simple user interactions with almost no skill: quite a feat in the messy and over-complicated world of Netscape and IE4. Over the releases of new versions of Flash, Macromedia has made Flash more and more controllable via programming, where they have positioned it as a competitor to HTML to build interactive web sites and applications such as an e-commerce store. People didn’t take long to start using Flash as an engine to create full and complete websites. Interestingly enough, Flash is not entirely on the web. It has left its positive mark especially.

* In the Corporate Setting — Its capabilities for database interaction, PHP integration, XML sourcing, external ActionScript 3, extensible plug-ins and import and export functionality make it an extremely robust tool, which is booming rich media, training and learning solutions, Intranet applications and others.
* Mobile Platforms — Flash is a powerful development tool, beyond its graphic and animation capabilities. Mobile platforms and mobile content development being the newest and fastest-growing subset of the industry, and ActionScript 3 has improved the structure and functionality of applications, allowing developers to create powerful applications.

The Web Will Undergo A Makeover

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To really undergo an idealistic idea, not only me, but the other developers as well, would surely like to see some major changes. To encapsulate them, all browsers must be compatible and standards based.
HTML5 and CSS3. Flash would be seen as a tool for multimedia and gaming and interaction, as well as sporting flash capabilities for robust application development across all platforms. And mobile browsing would then, use HTML5, CSS3 and complex Javascripts capabilities.

Conclusion

In the end, I would only like to conclude that Flash will regain its proper place. A day will come when a typical Flash site will be as friendly to search engines as are its HTML/CSS counterparts. It has capabilities beneath the hood that make it an extremely valuable resource for certain uses, particularly in the mobile space.

About The Author

This guest article is from Jenny Warner, a writer working for PixelCrayons, which is a premier eBusiness solutions partner to small and medium enterprises. It delivers services like custom website design, PSD to XHTML, e-commerce solutions and CMS solutions.

A Roundup of 15 Mobile Web Design Tutorials

SloDive Admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 14:14:27 +0000

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1. Coding for the Mobile Web

In this tutorial, Chris Mills runs through the basics of designing websites that work across mobile and desktop browsers, along with some general hints and tips, perils and pitfalls of the mobile format and pointers to related resources.

Coding for the Mobile Web

2. How to Create a Mobile Site with MoFuse

This tutorial from Nettuts+ explains step-by-step how to convert any site with an RSS feed into a mobile site hosted by MoFuse. The service supports sites for the iPhone and other mobile devices, and allows users to personalize and tweak their sites, set up a domain and add advertising. It’s a great solution for people who do not yet feel comfortable hosting mobile versions of their websites.

How to Create a Mobile Site with MoFuse

3. A Simple Mobile Site with CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter provides a toolkit for building websites using PHP, with an extensive library of templates to reduce time spent coding so users can focus on site design quickly and efficiently. This tutorial explains how to make a simple site for generic mobile devices, a great introduction to CodeIgniter’s frameworks.

A Simple Mobile Site with CodeIgniter

4. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly in Two Minutes

Mike Industries presents a straightforward tutorial in four easy steps showing how to make a website mobile-friendly without touching the pages’ coding. The results are quickly evident: because the site is stripped of content that slows down mobiles, pages download much faster with improved compatibility.

Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly in Two Minutes

5. Make your Site Mobile Friendly

This article covers the basics of making websites more compatible and digestible for mobile devices, writing and testing CSS for mobiles. For users of Flash and Dreamweaver there’s an explanation of Adobe’s Device Central, along with some tips for bloggers.

Make your Site Mobile Friendly

6. Writing a Mobile Friendly Website

Jennifer Kyrnin offers a general overview of the key considerations for mobile websites, looking at graphics, HTML and content issues.

Writing a Mobile Friendly Website

7. Creating Mobile Web Sites with Google App Engine

With Google App Engine (GAE), users can scale web applications in response to the demands of traffic by running them on Google’s servers. This tutorial explains how to add device detection to GAE apps, to distinguish between desktop and mobile browsers, determine device capabilities, and then present the appropriate version of a website accordingly.

Creating Mobile Web Sites with Google App Engine

8. Tips for New iPhone Developers

In many ways, making sites for the iPhone is similar to creating a normal website, but there are certain important points to make a truly successful web app. This tutorial by Paolo Ranoso covers usability guidelines, testing and debugging applications and web performance, along with more general tips to bear in mind during the design process.

Tips for New iPhone Developers

9. Website Design for the iPhone

This isn’t a tutorial as such, but Brian Getting offers a good general overview of the basic challenges for web designers developing sites for the iPhone.

Website Design for the iPhone

10. Design and Code a Cool iPhone App Website in HTML5

Designer Chris Spooner has written a neat tutorial detailing iPhone app website creation in HTML5. Using the example of a fictitious app, in this case a PKE ghost detector, Spooner works through the process from making a PSD concept in Photoshop, to HTML coding and CSS styling.

Design and Code a Cool iPhone App Website in HTML5

11. Mobile Web Design – Working with Colour

The use of colour is an essential aspect of mobile website design. Because the designer is playing with limited screen space on a device to be used on the move, colour must be carefully applied for aesthetics and for practical issues such as readability and navigation. This tutorial covers the essentials of colour in mobile website design.

Mobile Web Design – Working with Colour

12. Create a Slick iPhone/Mobile Interface from any RSS Feed

This tutorial from CSS-Tricks shows how to create slick web pages aimed primarily at the iPhone, which will also work on other similar mobile devices. The pages created are RSS-fed, with large ‘touchable’ areas suitable for mobile use, and pleasing animations to navigate through content.

Create a Slick iPhone/Mobile Interface from any RSS Feed

13. Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Devices

The developers at Element Fusion share the steps to successfully optimizing websites for mobile devices. The tutorial covers mobile considerations such as screen size and CSS support, lay out designs, implementation, development, testing and troubleshooting, and some notes on special content for the iPhone.

Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Devices

14. Build a Mobile and Desktop-Friendly Application in Django in 15 Minutes

The Django framework lends itself particularly well to mobile-friendly web applications due to its structures and templates. This tutorial eases the user through the process of creating a web app suitable for both mobile and desktop platforms, with the aim of completing the task in 15 minutes.

Build a Mobile and Desktop-Friendly Application in Django in 15 Minutes

15. Effective Design for Multiple Screen Sizes

One of the main problems faced by mobile website designers is the diversity of screen sizes and pixilation used by different devices. This tutorial offers guidance on making websites and web apps functional and compatible when designing for small screens.

Effective Design for Multiple Screen Sizes

About The Author

This guest article is from Tom Walker, a writer working for a specialist online supplier of the HP 57 ink cartridge and other printed media supplies.

A Roundup of 22 Cutting Edge PSD to HTML Tutorials

SloDive Admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:15:22 +0000

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XP Users:

Robocopy will need to be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Unfortunately it is bundled in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools so you will need to download the entire kit (11.8MB). It is a simple exe file so all you have to do is install and we will be ready setup our backup.
Download: http://www.microsoft.com

VISTA Users:

Robocopy is included with Vista so there is no download or install needed.

Robocopy does not have an interface, so to do your back-up we will need to run a CMD or create a simple batch file which is what we are gonna do. Don’t worry, all you need is notepad and the right extension. Trust me this is incredibly easy and you only have to make this one time.

Open notepad and copy / paste the code into your document. Now all you have to do is save the file with the .bat extension. In this example I called mine backup.bat.

robocopy "C:\My Music" "F:\C-Drive Backup\My Music" /MIR /R:2 /W:5 pause
You should have a file that looks like the one on the left. Before opening we need to make some changes to the code. Right click and select Edit.

We need to tell windows what we are looking for and by simply typing in robocopy, this gives us access to the application. Since it should be in your system32 folder after installing, there is no need to type in the path to where robocopy is located.

Here we tell robocopy what folder we want to back-up. On my computers hard drive (C: drive for me and probably you too) I am backing up the contents of “my music” folder.

In the second set of quotes we tell robocopy what folder to place the back-up in. On my external hard drive (F: for me) I have made a folder called “C-Drive Backup” and inside that is another folder called “My Music”. So the structure for this is “F:\C-Drive Backup\My Music”.

MIR activates mirror mode, deleting any files in the destination that are not present in the source. R:2 Tells robocopy to retry ’2′ times before giving up in the event of error (default is 1 million). W:5 is wait time between retries (default is 30 seconds). These are the command line options I use but there are many more which you can read about here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy

* Please notice the spaces in the code. Leaving these out will cause some issues.

The final line of code is “Pause” and needs to be on it’s own line. This is optional and just keeps the window open so you can review any issues that may have occurred. If this is something that is not important to you, then you can remove it and the window will close automatically when completed.

Finally, you can add more folders if you would like to back-up more than one at a time which would look something like:
robocopy "C:\My Music" "F:\C-Drive Backup\My Music" /MIR /R:2 /W:5 robocopy "C:\My Downloads" "F:\C-Drive Backup\My Downloads" /MIR /R:2 /W:5 pause

There is no way to schedule the batch file to run once a day or whatever so you will need to double click the file to run the backup as needed. What I’ve done is placed the batch file in my startup folder so every time my computer is rebooted it will run. This is good for those of us who tend to forget about these kinds of things and will give you a little more cushion if you do lose some content and forgot to run the batch file.

An easy way to do this is to go to the start menu and select “RUN” and paste the following instructions in the dialog box.

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\

Now that you have found your startup folder, just drag a copy of your batch file into it and that’s it. I would leave one on your desktop as well for easy access and as a reminder.

Let us know how you back-up your content or what command line options you use with robocopy in the comments.