Filed under Flash by Jeff Boulay | 0 comments
In the recent years flash has come under fire from accessibility and usability experts. I feel that flash gets a some bad wrap. While some of the arguements are valid I don’t feel that we should just opt to not use it.
I thought that I would highlight some of the good aspects and missconceptions of flash as well as some of the new technology that has some serious potentail to contributing to the future of the web.
When looking at when to use flash you should look at a few things.First you have to look at what is the value of using this technology. here are some great examples of when flash would be a great solution to use.
Integrated video: this has become a huge selling point for flash with its high ubiquity on browsers and now with flash 8 it is unparreled in what it can achieve with video. Some of the great features for video in flash are alpha transparency( for using blue screening and green screeening), skining the player with your own style, custom shaped video so you are not tied to a specific form factor, flash overlay to add aditional functionality to the video.
Interaction: Another one of flashes strong points is its ability to create interactions with your users. Don’t under estimate the power of being able to think out of the box with interaction. This is a great way to visually show your users presentations and how stuff works. Also with its powerful scripting language you could also provide complicated equations and graphs to illustrate your point. You can also update those results without refreshing the screen.
Shattering myths
Flash can not use the back button
In flash you actually can enable use of the back button. Application developers in flash will often leave this feature in active as it can actually confuse the user in complex application.
Deep linking
Many people don’t believe that you can not have a link to a section within a site using a url. this is actually false and it has been for some time now.
Filed under Online Marketing by Jeff Boulay | 0 comments
Meta is the little bit of hidden code at the begining of each page that tells the search engines what the page is about. It is import to fill this information out completely. In this post I will go over some of the basic info that you will need to put into your pages.
The Title tag
When creating a title you should come up with a single sentence to discribe the content on the page. You should also think about what keywords you are targeting on the page and try to use those as well in the sentence. Lets look at an example.
say we use my site as an example Fluid-logic. If I wanted to create a title tag for my services page it would look something like this:
“Fluid-logic offers a full line of web design services, ranging from custom designed webites to ecommerce.”
Notice that I used the name of the page, the name of the company, as well as featured some of the top keywords on that page. Over all this is a very easy section to write don’t over think it.
there are two location to see this tag. One is in the top of your browser when your on the page. Another location is on a search result that shows up in a search engine such as Google , Yahoo, MSN, ETC. In the search engines this is the linked text heading for your page.
Meta Description
This is similar to the title but you can go into a bit more detail. This discription is what shows up under the page title in the search engine results. When creating this section you should look to provide the user with a little bit of extra detail about the page.
meta Keyword
this is a list of both keywords and phases that are found on this page. The should be separated by commas and the search engines use these to help determine what the content is about.
Filed under Web Design, Clients Corner by Jeff Boulay | 0 comments
So you want to have a website for your company or for yourself here is a few things that will make the process a bit smoother.
First and foremost content. On the web “content is king”. When creating a site nine times out of ten the thing that holds the project up is the content. So when you are ready to have a site designed get you content together as soon as possible. Here is a brief list of content pages that most sites have: Homepage, about, contact, and services to name a few. It is best to get the content to your designer as soon as possible.
Design provides your content with a mood and can convey professionalism and trust in a site. When thinking about what your site should be you should ask yourself some questions:
Is this site an informational or a sales site?
This will dictate how your site is structured. A sales site such as an ecommerce site should funnel your users through the check out process. On the other hand an informational site can be better suited for browsing and so its structure would be different then that of a sales driven site.
What do you want the look and feel to be for the site?
do you want the site to have lots of smooth edges or sharp hard lines. It is important for the designer to know your taste. Also note that you should be doing market research to determine what the trends are in the industry so that you can make an educated choice in the matter.
What colors do you want to use for the site?
Color is a very important part of your website. Work with your designer to come up with what colors you should use for the site. Some things to think about are using contrasting colors for backgrounds and text so that the text is easy to read.
This should get you on the way to a great web site. The key to having a great looking website is not only a great designer but also putting the time into developing the sites structure and function. The old saying you can’t shine ” ” holds true in that a designer can only take poor content so far.