Fluid-Blog: Web Design Blog

Well now old news I thought that I would write a bit on my take on the iphone from a web designers perspective. As I am sure you know Apple has released the iPhone its next generation devise that they are looking to hit a home run with. So why should we as web designers care other then now we don’t have to to carry both a smart phone and an iPod around.

One of the best features it boast (in a web designers eye) is the safari based web browser. The thing that makes this a bit different from other web browsers on mobile devices is that it is a fully featured web browser and can display the pages as a whole. Now I know your probably saying well that is no good because who the heck can read it . That leads me into why it is so different. It allows the user to be able to select a region of the web page and zoom in and view just that section. the user can then pan and scan around.

So what does this mean to us as web designers. First off this does make for slightly easier development for the iphone. The main thing that this technology does which is why I am excited is that it pushes the envelope of the mobile web. By doing this I see other mobile companies following suit and delivering more rubust support for there devices and a renewed interest in high speed connection. It also brings the mobile web back to the forefront of the consumers eye.

“Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug is a great introduction to web usability and usability testing. Steve Krug is a well known web usability expert and has a great low tech way of explaining things in this book. This book is geared toward web designers and web owners alike. While it does focus mostly on ecommerce site the principles are universal and easy to understand.

This book covers a wide verity of site pitfalls and stumbling blocks that sites have had. He does this by illustrating on sites that for the most part have gotten it right but these are the little extra things that will push them even farther along the road to a great usability with there users. Steve Krug brings his years of usability testing to this book in short easy to digest chapters. he keeps you interested with his short jokes and anecdotes that I found myself laughing at more then once.

Whats in this book
This book covers
How users really use the web with examples of what a user will see on the page and also covering different ways that users will navigate your site.
How to design a web page for scanning instead of detailed reading.
Why a user likes mindless choices and how to cater to your users by making what they want easily findable and at their fingertips when they want it.
Copywriting do’s and don’ts covering how to write copy that will keep your users interest and get them to where they need to be.
Designing navigation
Homepage design
User testing covering both how to conduct your own user testing and also how to justify user testing.
Accessibility thru CCS and webstandards
What to do when the client or your boss wants you do something that you know is not good for usability.

Verdict
This book is a must read for and web designer, developer and is also well within the reach of website owners. I highly recomend this book because it is an easy read which was also one of the authors goals. It is under 200 pages and could be read within a week or two.
Rating 5 out of 5

You have probably heard the terms CSS, Cascading Style Sheet, web standards, accessability thrown around by designers and developers alike, so what does it all mean. I thought that I would write up a quick cheat sheet to get you initiated into the world of semantic based markup.

First lets learn some of the terms what they are about and why you should be using them. First on the list CSS also known as “cascading style sheet”. Wikipedia defines CSS as:

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL. The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

so why do we want to use it. well what css is great for is separating design from content. This serves many functions from a design aspect it allows the designer much more control over the layout. Also it allows the code to remain clear of layout and design based markup. All design and layout based markup is stored in a CSS file and is linked to on the pages that want to use this stylesheet. This allows the designer to completely control the look and feel of all linked pages from one location.

Another reason why web owners should be pushing the designer to code using web standards is that since all of the design and layout markup is stored off in a separate file and is only has to load once the over all time it takes a user to load the page is decreased. Search engines also prefer css based websites marked up with semantic code because it makes it easier to determine what is important on your site.

I found a lot of my clients asking about RSS. I thought that I would write something up for the non technical people looking to learn a bit more about it and what it can do for your sites online marketing campaign.

What is RSS Anyway? RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is used to send out in a “Web Feed format” frequently published content such as this blog (which is a perfect example of when to use RSS). Users can then subscribe to these feeds using RSS Readers (AKA abrogators). Once a user is subscribed to a feed they can then get headlines from that feed delivered to them. You can also display RSS Feeds on a web page of a website and it can display linked headlines.

What else is RSS used for? I have already mentioned frequently updated sections of your website that you want people to “subscribe” to but you can also use RSS for podcasts both audio and video based, “widgets” and other small tools used to deliver content.

What should I be using it for? There are two ways that you should be looking to use RSS. The first way that you can use this technology is to set up “web feeds” on your website that will put links to headlines with relevant content. The search engines (i.e. Google freshbot) will like the fact that this content is constantly being updated on your site. They will also like the fact that the content that you are linking out (also known as outbound links) to is relevant to your site.

Another way that you can use RSS is to create a section of your site that uses RSS. Some good areas in your site for RSS are news, press releases, blogs, events, tips, and or any other section in your site that you are in control of that is being updated on a frequent and regular basis.