Two Common Web Design Myths

If your site has been around for a while, you'd probably have been visited by the "Web Design Police" (people who have a lot of time on their hands). In fact, depending on your site, you might have been visited by different branches of these people, both advocating opposite policies. I recently received an email from one of my visitors who had apparently been "helped" by some of these people, and thought that an article on two of the myths of web design was appropriate.

Read More Article...

Keeping Your Website Simple is Most Effective

What do the Internet’s most profitable websites such as Dell, Amazon and Yahoo all have in common? They are plain, simple, and easy to use. The most effective web sites do not employ fancy graphics or animations to sell their products and services because these distractions take away from the goal of a website – selling! Your goal is to sell your products, services, and yourself – not impress people with your technical prowess. It just does not make sense to pay a website development company thousands of dollars to design a fancy website that will not be as effective as its cheaper, simpler counter-part.

Read More Article...

Web 2.0 'neglecting good design'

Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has said.

He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the "glossy but useless" sites at the height of the dotcom boom.

Research into website use shows that sites were better off getting the basics right, said Mr Nielsen.

Read More Article...

Reality Check for Web Design

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, recognized that universal access is a critical element of good design.

The Web's landscape has altered dramatically since its inception, when many websites completely ignored users with disabilities.

"Most project managers assumed that blind people could not use the Web anyway, so therefore they also could not use the specific website that was being developed," said Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

Read More Article...

How To Start Your Own Web Design & Development Company?

Internet marketing is comprises of a large number of options for people who want to make money online. There are many openings for those who are willing to work and are dedicated. The web designing is one of the Internet marketing options, which have a great scope. Although the work is not very simple but learning a couple of development tools can really provide help.

There is a number of software available in the market that allows the user design the web pages with ease. The tolls such as dream weaver and other are more of graphic user interface software that can be learnt quickly.

To start any business one need to have a good amount of knowledge on the related subject. Same is the case with web design and web development industry. The website designers are available in a large number and hence to select a few web site designers for your company from the large pool of designers you need to have a good grasp of the subject.

Read More Article...

Harnessing web 2.0 development

World has come closer and communication has become faster with the harnessing web 2.0, I won’t be wrong if I say ‘Network made easy with web 2.0’.

O'Reilly Media in 2003 coined the term Web 2.0 to emphasis a post-dot-com generation of sites and service that use web as platform. Web 2.0 is the new generation of web with new set of principles of web-based communities and hosted services for all its users. Web 2.0 is vanquishing the internet world because of its flexibility, usability and impetus that is driving various social communities.

Web 2.0 is quintessential internet online solution that has given web 1.0 a shove on one side and has foster mashups, banner Ads, wikis, file sharing, photo sharing, podcasts and technologies like weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds on other side; these technologies have gained more visibility, ultimately improving interactivity of web. We are observing major shift in web usage, new development paradigm has refined the overall process letting users to benefit from software continuously being refined without waiting for upgraded version or SDLC. Different applications that operate well off online (del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball) and offline (Flickr, Google Maps) have also helped to improve effectiveness of web.
Transition of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has consolidated different segments of web and now a website is not mere a website promoting its product and services but a good source of information exchange where visitors can maintain their own blogs and communities and share more information.

This new generation technology is synonymous for public communities, cloverleaf exchange of information, open communication; all these speak of its cosmopolitan nature in the market place and are serving web application to end users.

Broaden your web horizon harnessing web 2.0, for your help web is available as an open source where you can use and reuse the market and resources and have individual control, openly conversing and communicating, sharing your resources and views, and easily creating new corporate paradigm using readily available spontaneous modular elements. We also find remarkable growth in web economy as a result of web 2.0. Web 2.0 is data driven platform developed by independent developers and their participation, it creates network effects and very simple business paradigms driven by content and service unification.

The technical demography of traffic statistics shows increased figures from social media sites and rising trends in deployment of web 2.0 technologies. Recent statistics shows that social networking as the most popular tool, with 19% of companies having invested in it, followed by podcasts (17%), blogs (16%), RSS (14%), wikis (13%), and mashups (4%). When we sum up companies planning to invest in the tools, the percentages says: social networking (37%), RSS (35%), podcasts (35%), wikis (33%), blogs (32%), and mashups (21%).

In a nutshell I would say, Web 2.0 is a holistic approach that includes software for servers, content assimilation, standard based browser, rules for messaging, rich-interactive applications, and extensive use of folksonomies, all start with information inculcation, its management, storage and dissemination.

Article Source: http://www.1articleworld.com

Development India is an outsourcing website design and development company in India.

Rakhi, is a SEO copywriter at development India.

Web 2.0 Development Platform Goes Open Source

Once Technologies has released what it says is the first open-source browser-based Web 2.0 development platform

Australian software company Once Technologies has released what it claims is the first browser-based Web 2.0 development platform as an open source project.

The environment, dubbed once:radix, is a rapid application development system for intranet and extranets which allows developers with "basic programming skills" to create enterprise-grade applications.

Read More Article...

Demand is growing for multimedia production and Web site development

Ben Harrison could have taken an Old World route after high school and joined his friends trapping lobster off the coast of Maine.

He, instead, took a different path into an emerging industry using a skill set he had acquired as a youth.

"I was breaking into video games, modifying them and learning to make my own," he said. "But that was a really long time ago. I was a kid. I had to be about 10."

Embracing his knack for computer hacking, Harrison today creates Web pages, digital 3-D floating objects, video animations, and informational kiosks in museums in his role as creative director for Kamazar Multimedia Production in Albuquerque.

Read more Article...

Website Design: Keep it Simple

Keep it Simple One of the keys to a quality web site is simplicity. You've heard of the KISS principle? Keep It Simple Silly. This applies doubly for websites. Design Web Friendly It is inexperience than can make you want to use every bell and whistle, every feature and every new trick. It is nice to be able to create complex frames and tables, use large busy fonts, use flash and animated GIFs, but will end up with too many features competing against your message.

It's more than likely your audience is quickly going to be overwhelmed, rather than impressed. Just because you can create a flashy effect, doesn't mean you should. Ask yourself if the flashy addition is improving my page, my design. Decide if there is actual value in the addition and does it add with this technique? Is this the best way to communicate my message? A simple design doesn't necessarily mean uninteresting and dull. Lots of people confound fancy effects with effective communication. Keeping it simple means you should think about how people will be using your pages. Then present your information to them so it matches their requirements and expectations. Earn their attention Use technology and effects where appropriate and where they make for more effective communication. You're not designing web sites for yourself to look at. You're publishing a web page because you expect someone to stop by and visit it - your audience. The more you know about and understand your audience, the more effective you can gear your communication and marketing appropriately on your site.

Does your audience still use dial-up service that still relies on slow modems? Then be aware of file sizes and download times. Are they expecting to hear your band's music clips? Then you'd better think about an audio format. Ease of use is critical in web design, so above all else your site easy to navigate. Many small factors can quickly add up to create easy paths through your site. For example, one thing you can do is keep the number of choices small, that way people are less likely to become lost in a long list of options. Simple in design is simple design. Did you know that the average human mind sees five or fewer items as one group, but when it encounters more than five items it has to divide them into smaller sub-groups to process them? It makes sense, then, to try to keep your selections arranged in groups of five or less. That makes it easier for your readers to quickly see the options and select one.

Article written by Jason A. Neal.
graphic design seattle
seattle graphic design

Source : http://www.article99.com/

What users hate most about web sites

Too many organizations have web sites that are low on usability and high on annoyance.

Users have a short fuse when they are browsing the Web, according to Theresa Cunnington, senior usability consultant with services firm iFocus.

"It doesn't matter how cool a web site looks, if users find it impractical they will head to your competitor's site, which is only a click away," Cunnington said.

"Flash animations are an obvious, yet stellar, example of what users hate in a web site; the skip intro button is the most used button on the Internet.

Read more Article...