Digital Toolz

6 Tips Website Design

2011-11-09T15:26:00.002+08:00

1. Use CSS (cascading attraction sheets). If you follow through not apperceive CSS, ferret out it. CSS allows you to maintenance the formatting of your town (e.g. the color or size of a blonde of text) on a disparate at variance page - a CSS document. Thus, with CSS you can impinge the formatting of a common-element by simply updating one piece of code on one page, rather then updating all the pages of your site. For example, if you want to change the back-ground color of your website, you could just change your one CSS sheet and your entire website's background color would change. Another great aspect of CSS is that you can use it to set the default properties of HTML tags. This can be used to counter browser compatibility problem - that different browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) use different default settings.

2. Test your website in all browsers. Just now your website displays a singular rubric in one browser, doesn't cruel it commit an act that disposal in also browser. You should permit that your website displays properly in all of the primary following browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Netscape, and Opera.

3. Use produce inception software and freeware, if you need to plunge into a energizing website. Even if you undergo influential languages (such as JavaScript, PHP, and CGI) absolutely enough to lead your receive software and features, you do not want to do that if you are a beginner. There's no reason to create your own dynamic scripts (e.g. shopping carts, chat-rooms, etc.), if you can find full-functioning customizable freeware. A great benefit of this method is that the customization options will separate the code that changes your website's look and feel from the functioning code. If you design the code yourself, you'll be tempted to mix the look and feel with the functioning aspects. So, if later you want to update the look and feel, you'll have to dig through the long software scripts. If you're going to be using freeware or any other code that you didn't design yourself, you should still be familiar with that language.

4. Don't benediction for free or tasteless web-hosting. Okay, this isn't necessarily a start tip. However, hosting is twin to design. Free hosts may emit your website with awkward ads. So, you won't be adequate to task your region as is. Also, free and cheap hosts often don't support dynamic websites. Unless you're website is supposed to be a joke, don't use a free host.

5. Don't compose your email superscription on your website. If you have a phone bear or mailing directions that your customers can betterment to discharge you or your business, make public that on your website. Website's with a phone embrace or mailing directions loom much more reliable and honest than websites without contact information. However, don't publish your email address, because spammers will use web-crawlers will to pick it up. Instead, design a form on your website that customers can use to send messages or questions without giving your email address.

6. Take it slow. Unfortunately, the own disposal to alter to an brilliant designer is considering experience, but your vim can't render sloppy pages. Don't go to generate confused and dynamic websites without the ability. If you try to design a code, but find it hard and the code begins to come out sloppy, don't hesitate to just throw it out. It's better to have a simple, sleek, and functional website, than to have a complex, sloppy, dysfunctional website.

Debate: Learn HTML, Or Use A WYSIWYG Editor

2011-09-21T12:46:00.000+08:00

When I first started designing web pages back in 1997, it was necessary for me to learn the HTML markup language. At that particular time, there were some what you see is what you get editors, but almost everyone that design web pages used raw HTML and understood how it worked. Now, seven or eight years later, we find that be market is flooded with editors such as Dreamweaver that allow anybody to design web pages as easily as they can create a Microsoft Word document.

Whenever I take someone under my wing, and start teach them about Internet marketing, and designing web pages, the first thing that I tell them is that they should learn the basics of HTML. While I recommend that they use Dreamweaver for most of their web page designs, it's always helpful to be able to go into the code view and understand what they are looking at. It also helps whenever viewing the source code of other people's web pages, to see how they did one thing or another with their code. This would be nearly impossible if you did not understand at least the basics of HTML.

Another benefit of knowing HTML is that you can go in and clean up your code. After you design a page in a program like Dreamweaver. A lot of times, there is weird formatting that goes on behind the scenes in it what you see is what you get editor. It makes it difficult, sometimes even for those of us that know HTML to go into the document, and know where we are at inside the code. However, if you understand HTML, it's easier to go in, make your code neater and more manageable, and then save it in that format so that it's easier to go in and edit in the code view in the future.

While there's no doubt that using programs such as Dreamweaver can make beautiful web pages that function fully without even going into messing with the HTML at all, I still think that it's a good practice to understand the basics of the HTML markup language and to make sure that you use it on a regular basis so that you keep this skill. Not only does it help you when you're in a code pinch, but he keeps you from being what I like to call a lazy web designer.

Good Links: 7 guidelines how to improve website usability

2011-06-26T16:47:00.001+08:00

How you write and design your links is crucial to your visitors clicking them or not. Write them badly and they leave, write them well and they stay. Who knows, they might even do exactly that what you created your site for. Following are 7 guidelines how links should be written to improve the usability of your site.

What seems to be missing in your web page?

2011-06-08T15:12:00.000+08:00

As the number of visitors to the World Wide Web soars exponentially, the number of web pages goes with the increase. Perhaps, you have been wondering why with the multitude of visitors that comes day in and day out your site has been left out. There can be lots of reason behind.

Having a catchy and engrossing web page is a big deal. This is because of the demanding nature of e-commerce services. Visitors stay and are loyal to a site that can give them all that they ask for – all that they need. As the owner of a web site, you have this responsibility to make your site updated, functional and 'delicious' to your probable visitors. Thus, you have to avoid the clichés and taboos and create the best web page you can have.

The flow of e-commerce services is getting faster and tougher. This will surely keep you thinking – what seems to be missing in my web page?

To keep you well abreast, here are some of the must have:

1. Good Layout and Design. Do not overuse images. Do not bore your visitors by plain texts. Layout and design must be catchy. Fonts must be readable, colors pleasant to the eyes and images attractive. Organization and function with a brush of art can make the visitors stay longer and satisfied.

2. Perfect Content. It must be interesting and engrossing. Something that is not tedious to read and understand. Content must also be original. Otherwise, you are exposing yourself to the intellectual property violation which is plagiarism. Another, be sure that the content is free from grammatical errors and incorrect spelling. Read, proofread and edit.

3. An air of your Personality. Your web page should share a part of your self - part of your personality. The moment a visitor enters your site, he must be able to grasp a bit of who you are or what kind of company or business you have. You can give biographical information, company information and all sorts that can further give your background and outlook.

4. Dive into its Depth. Web pages must not be superficial. It must have something beneath its facade. A good web page is worthy of exploration. Nonetheless, you need not make numerous pages. Try using hyperlinks and hot lists.

Make the most out of your web page. It will surely benefit you!

Mobile Web Development Resources

2011-01-18T13:02:00.003+08:00

Mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and Android devices has now become the new frontier of the information superhighway. With the advent of this new internet platform, mobile web designing has also started to become the newest endeavorer of both web designers and web developers. Luckily for most of use we have collected some of the best tutorials and resources on mobile web designing.

Read more after the jump

Mobile Web Development Articles

Mobile Device Detection PHP Script by Andy Moore

Mobile Screen Size Trends - Part One / Part Two
Designing for the Mobile Web by Brian Suda

Books and Ebooks

Mobile Web Design (Paperback) by Cameron Moll - Get the digital version here

Building Mobile Web Sites by Richard Yates
Mobile Web Development by Nirav Mehta
dotMobi Mobile Web Developer's Guide - free with registration on site
Mobile Design Showcases (free 11-page eBook)

Guides Frameworks and Platforms

W3C Best Practices

Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web
PhoneGap- Create Applications with HTML and Javascript - read our blog post
Yahoo! Blueprint Mobile Platform
Wapple Hosted Platform
iWebKit for iPhone and iPod Touch
mobiSiteGalore - free website builder
Mobile Elements - read our blog post
jQTouch - jQuery for mobile WebKit
MoFuse Mobile Platform - read the blog post
Mobify Hosted Platform - read the blog post
Mobi10 Hosted Platform

Testing, Validation and Emulators

ready.mobi page/site check

W3C mobileOK Checker
Mowser - View the mobile version of any site
Nokia N70 / Sony K750 Emulator
Opera Mini
Device Anywhere - supports 1,500+ devices

iPhone/iPod Touch / iOS Web Development

iPhone SDK

Safari Web Content Guide
Official Apple Documentation for Web Apps
iPhone PSD Vector Kit
iUI Design Toooolkit
GUI Photoshop Design Template
Liveview: iPhone Prototyping Helper
Vector iPhone Application Icons
Tutorial- Building an HTML 5 iPhone App
iPhoneWebDev.com - Community of developers helping each other build web apps for the iPhone
A List Apart series - Part One and Part Two
Tutorial - Building a site for the iPhone
How to Create iPhone Webclip Icons
iPhone Development Bits Blog
PhoneGap - read this blog post
iPhone screencasting tools- iSimulate and SimFinger

Color Palette Generator

2010-12-31T09:04:00.000+08:00

Color Palette Generator is an awesome tool generates a dull and vibrant color palette from a photo or image you input. Really handy if your stuck for colors to use.

20 Downloadable Free Grafitti Fonts for Designers

2010-08-13T16:39:00.001+08:00

Graffiti fonts can be wonderfully useful in design, whether it’s for a print commercial, logo design, 3d graffiti style text, or another type of design. Graffiti has existed since the Classical period of the Greek & Roman Empires, but nowadays, is largely created using spray paint to generate unique & recognizable artworks. By tagging various locations with their graffiti, artists can gain think about recognition for their graffiti prowess.

For designers, graffiti fonts can provide a unique & edgy feel to lots of forms of design, so in this post, Peter Olexa has rounded up 20 awesome urban & graffiti fonts for designers. Best of all, they’re free.

Download the Grafitti Font here

Make an Elegant and Simple Blog Web Layout Using Photoshop

2010-08-13T16:28:00.001+08:00

This web design tutorial will show you the process of developing a PSD mockup of a neat and simple weblog layout. They will be generating the design of the front page of the weblog. The next part of this tutorial will walk you through coding the PSD to HTML/CSS.

More Here.....

Source: SixRevisions.com

9 Easy Steps to Learn How to Draw

2010-08-13T16:19:00.000+08:00

There are lots of times when they say that I cannot draw. But are you interested in learning how to draw & would you are interested in learning it? Are questions you ought to ask yourself? In case you have answered 'Yes' to both these questions, then it is for sure that you can learn drawing without much difficulty. You have the spirit & the confidence to learn drawing.

Why Designers should embrace HTML 5

2010-04-26T02:26:00.000+08:00

As a Web designer, we are in constant searching for ways to improve our web page design not just from the aesthics aspect of the design but also the back-end or the coding part. With Google now considering page loading as a part to rank a website's page rank, page loading optimization is now a MUST if you want your website to remain "search engine friendly".

HTML 5 is the newest web standard that can satisfy those requirements as the new format is basically "direct to the point", virtually having lesser codes than it's predecessor HTML 4 and xHTML.

HTML 5 can also help web designers (and developers) lessen the dependence on third party applications (e.g. online media sites like Youtube ditching Flash in favor of HTML 5 ) due to the new html tag on which embeds videos without additional parameters that would cramp up your coding.

As of now, HTML 5 is on it's transitional stage on becoming a web standard, as a designer/developer having to learn this HTML 5 ahead of time would be an advantage.

The Ultimate Guide To Cloning In Photoshop

2010-04-05T10:21:00.000+08:00

Photoshop's wide array of cloning tools is the cause of many of the absolute best and worst works created with the application. In a skilled and experienced hand, these tools lead to phenomenal results. In the hands of a careless artist, Photoshop cloning can be disastrous to the credibility of the result. This article introduces the several cloning tools available in Photoshop and goes over the proper usage and best practices of each.

Read more...

5 Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code

2010-02-18T00:28:00.000+08:00

I came across an article stating that there are still some web designers that can't code their own designs which is a bit shock on my part further more the author has written down in detail the Five Good reasons why Designers should code.

Read more...

HTML 5: An Introduction

2010-01-27T15:58:00.000+08:00

HTML4 has been with us for a while now, roughly ten years. And, it hasn't really seen a major update. Sure there's XHTML, but that did little more than make things slightly stricter - making you write better quality code if you were at all concerned with compliance. HTML 5 does more than that. For one thing, it adds a few new features. Not a huge amount, but the ones that it does add are very useful.

The Basics of Web Designing: A Basic History

2009-12-09T14:20:00.003+08:00

It every started in 1991 when the first website was launched. It was meet the base compounding of the Internet with hypertexts. Both had already been around for some time but it was only that time that both were utilised to create a website. Everything then was very basic, yet useful enough to provide users easy navigation.

Eventually, as profession progressed, so did scheme designing. solon and more languages were developed, every of which have their own respective advantages and disadvantages depending on what kind of website is being developed. From the base of texts, images and tables were already available to be used. Along with codes, more and more utilities have also been incorporated in scheme designing throughout its development.

Indeed scheme designing has come a long way, from the concepts of designing, the tools utilised and even as a business venture. Thousands of scheme organisation companies flourished globally especially in places where the labor outlay is not much.

If you put it simply, scheme designing is but incorporating creativity in presenting a set of contents to the rest of the World Wide Web community. Web designing is not far from graphic designing. In fact, the latter crapper actually be considered as a kind of the former. Web designing is responsible for generating satisfactory high-end client features and superficial characteristics of websites.

Web designing involves a aggregation of techniques. As the utilization of profession increases, more and more scheme designing techniques are also being used. Now, it is already possible to incorporate animation, SEO, marketing, pictures, animation, graphic design, more human involvement, among others.

To date, there are already a number of scheme designing techniques that people crapper choose from, depending on their expertise, the nature of the scheme site, the wants of the customers and the major content of the scheme site. Markup (HTML, XHTML and XML) and style sheet (CSS and XSL) language, client-side (Javascript) and server-side (PHP and ASP) scripting, database (MySQL and PostgreSQL) and transmission (Flash and Silverlight) technologies are meet some examples of the many techniques available that crapper be utilised in website designing.

With this kind of growth that scheme designing has experienced, no digit crapper rattling tell what kind of advancements crapper still happen in the future. What is sure though is the fact that whatever advancements our profession experience, it will surely revolutionize the way we do website designing.

4 stages of web site design

2009-11-05T22:04:00.001+08:00

Typically, web site designs evolve. In the beginning, many web site owners become enamored with "bells and whistles" that, on the surface, might appeal to their target audience. Flash movies, Java applets, animation and other rich media has become increasingly popular over the years.

However, in the rush to have the "coolest" site design, web site owners forget whom they are designing their site for: their target audience. Your audience might find that Flash movie irritating after viewing it multiple times. Your audience might not be able to find your site in the search engines. "Bells and whistles" are attributes of a web site that need to be measured and tested to see if they increase or drive away sales.

Below are the various stages of evolution web sites typically undergo:

* Stage 1 - Style Over Substance
* Stage 2 - Designing for Online Visibility
* Stage 3 - Designing for Your Audience
* Stage 4 - Site Redesign
* Conclusion

Read more...

Huge List of Photoshop Tutorials for Graphic Designers

2009-09-17T00:28:00.007+08:00

Adobe Photoshop is every designer's ultimate tool in terms graphic designing with that in mind, I compiled a very huge list of photoshop tutorials from various online resources sites for every graphic designers to have.

How to use Flash Effectively

2009-09-16T16:36:00.003+08:00

Flash can be an exciting, interactive element to a web site, or it can be a viewer’s worst nightmare. Using flash effectively depends on how you utilize the content and how obtrusive to the rest of the site it is. Here’s how to make the most of flash if you must use it, and why not to use flash in some cases.

10 Nice Solutions to Create Your Online Portfolio

2009-09-16T16:05:00.003+08:00

Want to create your portfolio but you don't have enough skills or the time to make one then you might wanna check out these 10 Solutions to create your online portfolio.

Krop
Carbonmade
Coroflot
Shown'd
Behance
DeviantArt
Flickr
WooThemes

Now is you DO HAVE THE SKILLS, then check out this How to Make Your Own Online Portfolio Site tutorial by Chris Spooner

Creative Boost: 18 Search Engines for Designers

2009-08-14T09:02:00.004+08:00

It's been a long while since my last post because of my busy schedule at work. But I am not gonna leave you guys without an update. I got this tweet from a friend on twitter entitled "18 Search Engines for Designers".

I thank Minervity for sharing this one.

10 Things Every Web Designer Beginner Should Know

2009-07-02T14:00:00.002+08:00

There are many aspects in term of doing web designs and each web designer
has its own style of workflow and coding and designing. Most of us learn from
experience some thru online tutorials. However, there are certain things in web
designing which is essential and can greatly help get the best output from their project.

You can read more about the 10 Essential Tips that Every Web Designer Should Know.

10 Useful Firefox Extensions to Supercharge Firebug

2009-06-22T11:57:00.003+08:00

I have blog about Firebug on previously post and for those who have haven't use Firebug, it is a revolutionary Firefox extension that helps web developers and designers test and inspect front-end code. It provides us with many useful features such as a console panel for logging information, a DOM inspector, detailed information about page elements, and much more.

and now I will share to you the 10 Useful Firefox Extensions to Supercharge Firebug.

Free Tools for Monitoring Your Site’s Uptime

2009-06-13T10:54:00.005+08:00

Creating a website is on is a bit hard task, maintaining a website on the other hand is more tedious in some ways. But thanks to Jacob Gube, he share 12 Excellent Free Tools for Monitoring Your Site's Uptime. Now this can help us maintain our websites very efficiently.

8 Layout Solutions To Improve Your Designs

2009-05-28T10:08:00.006+08:00

From Flickr.com

As Web Designers, we are in constant search of methods to improve our web design workflow and these article from Smashing Magazine entitled "8 Layout Solutions To Improve Your Designs" are just a few of those worthy solutions to our projects.

New Tools for Web Designers

2009-05-05T09:29:00.002+08:00

Hidden Pixels.com has share to us another set of tools for web designers can use. Check them out at HiddenPixel.com

Paint.NET Plugin Lets You Open Photoshop Files

2009-04-28T13:05:00.003+08:00

If Paint.NET is your editor of choice and you find yourself needing to open .PSD Photoshop files, this plugin will help you introduce .PSD images into your Paint.NET workflow.

The plugin doesn't replicate all of the numerous functions of the .PSD file, just the ones that relate to functionality within Paint.NET. You can work with layers, load masks, and open a variety of color modes and profiles. Because of the limited integration with the .PSD file, the plugin is best suited for pulling a .PSD file into Paint.Net and converting it to be used in your Paint.NET workflow. Working with it in Paint.NET and then trying to bring it back into Photoshop is a bit dicier as far as compatibility goes and can have unexpected results.

PSDPlugin is free and required Paint.NET 3.0+.

Download Paint.NET PSDPlugin

from Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick

More and More CSS Resources for Web Designers

2009-04-20T14:10:00.003+08:00

Still looking for CSS resources then here's another set of 84 Useful CSS Tips & Resources that you might wanna check out. The more the merrier. Have fun!

Linux for Graphic Designers?

2009-03-16T13:29:00.003+08:00

When you talk about graphic designing it usually associated with operating systems like Mac OS X or Windows because those are the "the best" platforms that your use because of Adobe Photoshop and other top commercial design softwares and applications. Any mention of Linux? well it's hardly every heard that a designer would use a platform which is basically not really good for designers

But one blogger has change that perception. His name is Eckhard M. Jäger and he has a blog called Linux for Designers. the blog is all about designing using open source graphic deisign softwares like GIMP, Inkscape , Blender etc.

A collection of CSS Code Snippets for Web Designers & Developers

2009-03-11T09:19:00.001+08:00

Who can resist anything free? There are plenty of CSS resource sites out on the net that offer free CSS Code Snippets. Why would you want to recreate code that has already been created. The time that you could save by using these already developed CSS codes could be better used surfing the net or going on a date. Check these sites offering free CSS codes.

Get it all here

Building HTML/CSS Sites: Use a Template

2009-03-06T16:17:00.003+08:00

If you are developing HTML/CSS websites with occasionally a little bit of JavaScript, it can be very un-productive to write your basic codes over and over again.

You better read this article for some time-solving solutions.

5 Steps of How to Optimize Your CSS Codes

2009-03-06T16:06:00.004+08:00

Having too much codes on your CSS that you didn't notice that your repeating some of the lines on other areas? Is your stylesheet having some bloated codes? Then your "un-optimized"CSS problems are now over, here are 5 Steps of How to Optimize Your CSS Codes

How To Use Icons To Support Content In Web Design

2009-03-05T10:14:00.001+08:00

Why use icons? Design is all about communication: it doesn’t matter how important or exciting the information that you’re sharing is if you fail to hook your visitors. When initially viewing a website, most users will first scan the page for visually interesting content, and only after something grabs their attention will they actually begin reading. Icons are a simple, effective way to draw users into the content of your website.

Icons serve the same psychological purpose as paragraph breaks: they visually break up the content, making it less intimidating. A well-formatted page, with text broken into easily accessible paragraphs and accented by icons, is easy to read and visually interesting enough to sustain the user’s attention. So, stop wasting time writing so much content that no one will read, and start using icons!

Read more about the beautiful examples and best practices of using icons to support content in web design. Please feel free to take a look at the showcases of navigation menus, search boxes, blockquotes and web forms.

10 Reasons Why Your Code Won’t Validate (and How to Fix it)

2009-03-04T11:21:00.005+08:00

W3C validation isn't very forgiving at times, but it allows you to see errors that are generated by your markup. Lots of errors and warnings thrown by the validator are a good indicator that your XHTML isn't in very good shape, and might not look consistent across different browsers.

Here are 10 sneaky validation problems that trip developers up, and how to avoid them.

Authored by:Glen Stansberry

Free Design Resouces for Graphic Designers

2009-03-03T15:13:00.003+08:00

With a lot of graphic design resources scattered all over the internet, I manage to collect these resources and use it on most of my design works. Now I'm gonna share to you these websites that share those usefull graphic design resources.

45+ Free Design Template And PSD Files

50 Free High-Quality Icon Sets

50 Free Rusted Metal Texture Backgrounds

30 Amazingly Creative Social Bookmarks Icon Sets

50+ textures for Your Design Appetite and lot more Resources

The Ultimate Collection Of Free Photoshop Patterns

45 Sites, Free Icons And PSD Resources For Web-Design

12 Free Online Background Pattern Generators

21 Typography and Font Web Apps You Can’t Live Without

More of these resources will be posted in the near future but these will do for now.
Enjoy!

10 Excellent Tools For Working with HTML & CSS

2009-02-12T16:34:00.005+08:00

Working with HTML and CSS can be quite time-consuming sometimes, there is of course but also all kind of tools that help you to save time with specific functions.

Grid designer

Online tool to quickly design grids for your templates. It makes it easy to quickly define the layout width, number of columns, margins and gutters, set the typography and export the whole thing.

Kotatsu
Simple HTML table generator. Very helpful as tables are probably one of the most boring things to handcode. In a few clicks you will be able to get the code for your table with the number of rows and columns you want.

CSS Redundancy Checker
Find CSS selectors that aren’t used by any of your HTML files and may be redundant. Comes handy when your CSS file gets complicated and you’re afraid to remove any selector from it.

CSS Menu Maker
Create and customize your CSS menus, horizontal or vertical, online for free.

CSS Color Editor
Easily replace the colors from your CSS file. All you need to do is to upload you file, replace the colours and generate the new file that you download.

CSS Super Scrub
Reduce the size of your CSS files in a few clics.

PX to EM
Convert font sizes in pixels to their equivalent in em and the other way around.

Deploy
Quickly deploy a web project framework with valid XHTML and CSS in only a matter of seconds.

CSS Text Wrapper
Easily make HTML text wrap in shapes other than just a rectangle. You can make text wrap around curves, zig-zags, or whatever you want.

PSDtoCSS online
Convert your PSD files to XHTML-CSS layouts. Just one quick upload is needed, then you can download your layout in a zip file.

HiddenPixels.com : Basic SEO Tips Web Designer should Follow

2009-02-10T22:51:00.006+08:00

Here are some basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips which every web designer should follow; it is good practice to design websites using this basic SEO Standards. (reposted from: HiddenPixels.com)

Use Correct Doctype: Document type defination(DTD) is also know as Doctype, doctype informs the browser how to interpret the content of the page. If the the doctype is not declared, the browser assumes you don’t know how to code, and goes into quirks mode. If you know what you are doing and include a correct HTML doctype, your page will be rendered in standards mode.
Make the code prettier than the design: When building the front end of your site, make sure to use semantic code. By using descriptive tags to structure your pages, search engines will be able to read and have a better understanding of your content. This will also make the process of styling your site much easier and cleaner.
Use Meta Content and Meta Keywords: Use proper keywords and content relate to your web site,
that helps search engine to crawl your web site.
Use Unique Page Titles: Each page on your web site should have a title attribute, and each title should be unique. If you use the same title for every page, search engines will think that every page on your site is about the same subject.
Use SEO Friendly Page name or URL: The page name or URL must consist of the relevant keywords as it gives an idea of what the page is all about, Try to maintain a suitable length for the page name, The words in the URL must not be joined. Try to use hyphen between words in the page. The robots can easily index the URL’s with hyphens. Try to avoid using underscores.
Use Alt tags for Images: Specify alt tag for image and that alt tag should be a keyword related to web site, because images you have placed on site can be seen by visitors but not by search engines, so alt tag help search engines to read, with the help of alt tags search engines display the image results.
Use Heading Tags: Use your main targeted keywords in H1 or H2 tags. These robots give a lot of importance to H1 tags.
Use Valid HTML and CSS code: Validate your html and css code and make your code w3c standard.

validate your html code here: http://validator.w3.org

validate your css code here: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator
Make your web site load fast: Don’t mess up your site with heavy images that makes your site heavy and slow, try to optimize images that reduces weight and helps to load fast.
Make a Detailed Sitemap: Make a detailed sitemap of a website. The search robots can easily go to any web page from this web page.
Use Footer links: Footer link must be designed properly so that search engine robots can easily navigate through the web pages.
Use DIVs instead of Tables: Try to avoid using tables. There are too many codes in tables and takes times to load page. Hence, try to use DIVs structure, which has less coding and takes less loading time. It has become highly search engine friendly because the robots can easily index it.
Use External JavaScript and CSS files: Maintain an External JavaScript files for scripting and Use External CSS rather than coding it in the main source file.

Tnomeralc Web Design Toys

2009-02-05T22:38:00.000+08:00

Pick the best toys for your children sitting in front of desktop.

Tnomeralc web design toys have indeed revamped one’s view on traditional toys. In fact children are the most creative people, whose creativity is seldom brought to foray by their parents. In today’s era of Tnomeralc Web Design toys, traditional toys exist just because for formality.

Tnomeralc Web design toys are the toys which users can choose from online, it can be customized, depending on look a child wants; in fact it gives child a much needed work to brain, sight and other senses etc

In fact in today’s online era, it has grown in stature steadily in children’s heart. It can offer children array of varieties right from their desktop. It offers edge from a traditional shopping because products get shipped from the toy store towards their respective houses. One can indeed make a effective Tnomeralc web design toys purchase, utilising oceanic review boards and consumer forums, to search and find the appropriate manufacturer. In today world it’s very difficult for a child to get gratified with traditional toys and engines. Don’t be out dated and give your child Tnomeralc web design boost to gratify their creative thirst and also analytical acumen.

Over 40 tutorials on Webpage Layouting

2009-02-04T15:24:00.003+08:00

Designing a good webpage matter during the initial layout of the webpage. SixRevisions.com has compiled 40 Useful Web Layout Tutorials using Adobe Photoshop which Web Designers and Front-end Developers can check out

Web Design Trends for 2009

2009-01-28T14:36:00.003+08:00

Every year Web Designing trends, this year another set of design trends are being set by various designers and I commend Smashing Magazine for sharing these nice articles on the latest Web Design Trends.

Update: Here's another post to another set of Web Design Trends

5 Easy Ways to Tackle IE6’s Transparency Issues

2009-01-08T15:04:00.002+08:00

You create the perfect site in Photoshop using the latest trends. Half of your backgrounds contain a nice 50% opacity to simulate depth. The only problem comes from that darn old IE6, and how it decides to display a nasty gray background. You try to search the web for a solution, but there are dozens of choices. How do you know which methods are the best?

This tutorial will show you five easy ways to deal with this issue.

Top 5 Techniques to get you started with CSS 3

2009-01-05T12:03:00.002+08:00

CSS is a well-known, widely used language to style websites. With version three in the works, many time-saving features will be implemented. Although only the most modern browsers currently support these effects, it’s still fun to see what’s around the corner! In this tutorial I’ll show you the 5 techniques to get you started with CSS 3.

2008 Roundup: Design Post,Tutorials and Resources

2009-01-02T10:57:00.002+08:00

2008 was a busy year, we have been watching great news, articles, tutorials, scripts, tips and lot of inspiration for web designers everyday. We thought it would be a great idea to wrap all those resources in one package where you can check to fuel your energy for creativity. Hopefully you will find some creative ideas that you can develop further in your future projects.

2008 Most Popular Design Tutorials and Resrources from Noupe.com

Optimized Css Files

2009-01-02T09:45:00.002+08:00

CSS optimization means removing the unnecessary and redundant parts of your code with the goal of reducing file size. Why is that important? Well, reduced file size means reduced download time. If you want your page to load quickly you will have to optimize. Also, if your site has huge traffic, the difference between 10 and 20 kb on each page view means a lot when it comes to your bandwidth.

As mentioned, CSS optimization can be done using some of the CSS online optimizers or it can be done by hand. Most common optimizing actions are removing line breaks, empty spaces and deleting comments. Other, more important actions you can take is taking really good care of your code in terms of using shorthand properties, smart class naming, using general styles and smart use of CSS selectors.

More about CSS optimization

10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs

2008-12-16T11:01:00.003+08:00

Web design consists, for the most part, of interface design. There are many techniques involved in crafting beautiful and functional interfaces. Here are 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs as written by Dmitry Fadeyev

10 Free Christmas Fonts for Graphic Designers

2008-12-12T14:31:00.003+08:00

Christmas is coming and what's better than a collection of 10 free Christmas fonts? Take a look at this list with some of my favourite Christmas fonts which you can download and use on your design projects.

10 Free Christmas Fonts for Graphic Designers

Vector Design Resources

2008-12-05T10:54:00.002+08:00

AiVault is a vector design freebies and resource blogsite in which you can find free tutorials, brushes and tools and other resources on Adobe Illustrator. They also showcase some Vector designs on their Vector Gallery.

SAMPLE DESIGNS on Aivault.com Vector Gallery

log on to: http://www.aivault.com

Over 40+ Useful Cheat Sheets for Graphic Designers

2008-12-03T13:54:00.002+08:00

Whether you need to learn something quickly or need a quick refresher on how to do certain tasks, cheat sheets allow you to do either one with relative ease. Print them out and decorate your workspace or save/bookmark them for later use, whichever way suits you best.

In this collection, you’ll find 40+ of the best cheat for graphic designers for either the Mac or the Windows operating systems. You’ll find cheat sheets for popular graphic design applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks. These cheat sheets available in various formats including PDF, PNG, and web-based (HTML) formats.

Get Those 40+ Graphic Designer's Cheat Sheets here

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended and Illustrator CS4 Review

2008-12-02T14:27:00.003+08:00

Adobe has recently released Adobe CS4 suites and as a web and graphic designer, I would like to share to you these detailed reviews of Photoshop CS4 Extended and Illustrator CS4 made by renowned tech blog Ars Technica

15 CSS Tricks That Designers Must Learn

2008-12-02T14:01:00.002+08:00

As web designers and developers, we have all come to learn many css tricks and techniques that help us achieve our layout goals. The list of these techniques is an ever expanding one, however, there are certain tricks that are essential to achieve your goal.

Today, we will review 15 excellent css techniques to keep in mind when developing your theme.

Screencast: How to Convert a PSD to XHTML

2008-12-02T13:40:00.003+08:00

Here's a nice screencast guide on how to convert a Photoshop design (PSD) into a fully functional xHTML/CSS/Javascript template.

Watch the Screencast here.

50 Incredible Fonts for Professional Web & Print Design

2008-11-19T14:39:00.003+08:00

A Good typography is one the essentials of a good web and graphic designs. I would like to share the 50 Incredible Fonts for Web and Print Design. This collection will sure help you improve your typography skills

Click here to see them all

9 Types of CSS Hacks

2008-11-17T14:03:00.003+08:00

Here's a nice RSS blog post that I found on my Google Reader which talks about the 9 Types of CSS Hacks. To be honest I didn't know that there are so many of this CSS hacks since my last post about CSS hacks. Thanks Insic 2.0 for this one. So without further ado, here are the 9 Types of CSS Hacks

Photoshop Tutorials To Improve Your Modeling and Design Skills

2008-11-11T16:42:00.004+08:00

by Vailancio Rodrigues

You have to use Adobe Photoshop for a really long time to understand its potential completely. There are many things you can do using its endless features. You need to discover them and decide how to use them in new and innovative ways to create the creative, beautiful and realistic digital art. In this article, we look at Photoshop in a different way: as a tool for designers to create realistic objects and 3D models.

So without further a do, here are some Photoshop Tutorials to Improve your Modeling and Design Skills

Design a Realistic Sandwich Bag

2008-11-11T16:10:00.004+08:00

Problem: I’m in need of a Photoshop/Illustrator routine in which I take photos of fruit or vegetables and make them look like they are inside of a plastic bag. I’ve been playing around with texture effects, but haven’t come up with a satisfactory routine.

Here's a nice tutorial on how to design a transparent Sandwich bag with some food from scratch.

Read More about the tutorial Here>>

15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have

2008-11-06T11:43:00.003+08:00

There are a lot of details to consider when designing and developing a web site. In reality, it can seem like an endless list — but if you look carefully you’ll see that there are certain elements that are more important than others, elements that are used consistently among the most successful sites.

Once you’ve completed the Planning Stage of your website, the rest of the elements fall into broad categories ranging from User Interface Design to Content Creation to actual Development. Of course, there are also the issues surrounding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — but we’ll save that for another day…

With that in mind, here are the 15 elements that should always be included on any top web site.

HTML 5: Features you want desperately but still can't use

2008-11-04T14:59:00.001+08:00

Here is a nice video about the features of HTML 5 format as elaborated by Google Developers

10 Things To Factor Into Your HTML

2008-10-15T08:38:00.001+08:00

Ahmed of Techsoapbox has come up with a short but sweet post on the 10 most important factors in developing HTML. At a glance, this consists of the following rules:

* Load Content First
* Load JavaScript Last
* Load Important Ads First
* Follow HTML Conventions / Standards
* Follow Best Practices For Title Tags (H1, H2, H3, < title >)< /title>
* Use UTF-8
* Use Outline:0
* Use Tabindex
* Optimize Your CSS
* Use CSS Sprites

These are 10 simple tips anyone can surely follow. Now if only everyone did, we can surely have a better web browsing experience.

GIMP 2.6 : Improvements Shows Promise

2008-10-03T23:09:00.002+08:00

The developers behind the GNU Image Manipulation Program, better known as GIMP, have released a new version that features a major overhaul to the program’s user interface. The result is a version of GIMP that behaves much more like Photoshop and makes a very capable replacement for those not locked into an Adobe workflow.

Read more about it....

GIMP 2.6 is free download for all platforms. Grab your copy from the downloads page.

10 Best CSS Hacks

2008-09-16T21:42:00.002+08:00

If you are front end coder you must know how important is to make cross browses, valid CSS and xHTML code. And also you must know how much time we are spending in all those hacks and fixes for various browsers. I've written about some of them earlier on PNG transparency issues, Yellow fields in web form, Vertical align div etc..

Here is the list of 10 hand picked CSS hacks and tricks which can help you in your CSS code and also save some time.

Free Hosting for Your Blogs

2008-08-20T04:45:00.001+08:00

To all my readers who are looking for a FREE HOSTING FOR YOUR BLOG, here's a nice webhosting service that you might wanna check out and it's called "HOSTING FOR FREE".

HOSTING FOR FREE offers FREE $0 cost hosting for bloggers. You get the hosting with all the standart features that regular hostings have BUT you DO NOT PAY for that! Register there - and get your own free hosting. No need to pay a single cent: - Unlimited bandwidth - 250Mb HDD - PHP + MySQL But it's 100% free! Now bloggers do not have to pay for hosting and can host their blogs for for free there.

Get Your own free Hosting on http://hostingforfree.us

Beneton Movie GIF

2008-06-19T22:16:00.002+08:00

Beneton Movie GIF (BMG) is a complete GIF editing tool made in Game Maker. It supports 48 file formats, such as BMP, GIF, JPG, and PNG. Use drag-and-drop to move frames quickly. Multiple frames selecting and many different effects make it easy to get the results you want in only a few clicks. Some rare but useful features are also included: you can save and load a batch of single-frame files (frame1.bmp, frame2.bmp, etc.). Finally, a built-in image editor offer you to easily edit your frames with many tools (pencil, shapes, airbrush, alpha brush, fill, selection, text, onionskin, and others).

Features

Supports 48 file formats such as BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, and AVI
Multiple frames selecting
Drag and drop frames for a quick editing
20 different effects, divided in 2 big categories: normal and animated
Supports individual frame properties: delay and transparent for each frame
Save and load a batch of frames (frame1.bmp, frame2.bmp, etc.)
A complete built-in image editor with many tools (pencil, shapes, airbrush, alpha brush, fill, selection, text)
A simple preview window that previews individual frames or the animation with options such as zoom, loop, etc.
Many others!
And its totally FREE!

Download

Download Beneton Movie GIF

Download size: 6.27 MB

Minimum requirements

3D Vase using Adobe Illustrator

2008-05-25T08:07:00.003+08:00

If you think you can create this nice 3D Vase design only on Adobe Photoshop then you wrong, you can also create this 3D vase design on Adobe Illustrator in just 5 minutes

Click here for the in-depth tutorial

Envelope Distort Tutorial

2008-05-25T07:58:00.002+08:00

You might wonder how did the graphic designer create this poster ad for Katherine Heigl's movie 27 Dresses? Here's the in depth tutorial on how to make this design.

Envelope Distort tutorial

Banner Design Tips

2008-04-30T11:14:00.003+08:00

An effective banner design can make the difference between an unsuccessful and successful banner ad campaign. Here are some banner design tips that can increase CTRs (click through ratios) and resulting sales. We hope these tips help you.

More about the tutorial here...

Paint.NET now has PSD file support

2008-04-19T21:16:00.004+08:00

I just recently read from a forum site that Paint.NET now can support PSD file format (albeit not all functions are available). I did test the plugin by extracting the dll file to the File Type folder of Paint.NET program. In deed I was able to save a design as PSD and was able to open the design on Photoshop without any mis-alignments or errors.

I was disappointed though that PSD files from the early Photoshop versions (version 7, I think ) where the only files that can open on Paint.NET without any errors.

You can download the photoshop plugin on this site.

Advanced CSS Style Switcher - Change the entire look of your site with one click

2008-04-02T01:52:00.003+08:00

by: sitereboot

Since we all know just how popular CSS design has become. With this small script, you or your visitors will be able to completely change the look of your site with one click. This does use strictly CSS, as well as some javascript.

Click here for the tutorial

CSS Dynamic Round Image Corners

2008-04-02T01:45:00.002+08:00

by: otutor

This is really an alternative way of making rounded corners on images online.

I think this way is unique, I have never seen people making rounded corners on images this way, or tutorial on doing it this way, so I made it my self.

There are good and bad things about my way of doing things.

The bad thing is, you cant right click the image and get its properties etc.

The good thing about that is, it gives a small copyright protection, (people cant right click your images and choose save image, they would only get the frame).

Click here for the tutorial

Create a Simple Glass Orb using Inkscape

2008-04-02T01:36:00.003+08:00

by: igmo

For this tutorial, you are creating a simple, glassy orb which could be used for a logo, button or even an icon.

Click here for the tutorial

Controlling the Spiders

2008-03-21T21:32:00.001+08:00

You can control the good spiders. Most search engine indexing spiders are good spiders.

Controlling the spiders means leaving instructions for them. Good spiders follow your instructions.

Rogue spiders ignore your instructions.

Really bad spiders go after directories and files you specifically disallow.

At the end of this article, I'll mention a way to control the really bad ones. But that's just a few paragraphs. Most of this article is dedicated to controlling the good spiders.

Read the rest of the article here...

source: willmaster.com

13 Lucky SEO Tips That Every Marketer Should Know

2008-03-17T22:00:00.003+08:00

1. Stay Current on Search Engine Optimization If you are reading this post you are already on the right path. Search engine marketing and SEO is rapidly changing. What works today, may not work tomorrow. The advents of universal search, local search, and new sites or competitors make SEO fast moving. Stay on top of the most up-to-date trends by subscribing to key blogs and RSS Feeds by the top influencers in the field. At the end of this post check out the additional resource section for a complete list of websites, books, blogs, and other worthwhile tools.

2. Back Linking In short, the more qualified back links you have pointing to different parts of your site, the better. However, make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible, don't just focus on your homepage. Good back links from other high ranking sites are used a barometer to gauge your site's credibility. Backlinks show the search engines that other websites value your site's content. Aaron Wall's post of 101 Link Building Tips offers a ton of good ways to generate content that is link friendly One note of caution, recently there has been a lot of buzz regarding paid links. Google's official stance is against paid links, and Matt Cutts of Google has publicly acknowledged the company's disdain for paid links. If you are going to by links - proceed with caution.

3. Alt Tags One of the first lessons in SEO 101 is to include accurate, key word focused descriptions for all your images in the alt tags. In addition to getting ancillary traffic directly through image searches (Google Image Search), this will benefit readers who use text only web browsers, overall alt tags have several SEO friendly benefits.

4. Keyword density Keyword density is the percentage of key words (total words/key word phrase) on a web page. Several experts note that this is an important factor in determining if a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase. There are varying opinions on what percentage, but several authors including SEO Mix advise title keyword density of around 50%, and no greater than 75%. If your primary keyphrase is three words long, you many wish to add another three-word phrase to your title, consisting of secondary keywords. It is important to strike a good balance between readability and keyword density.

5. Site Maps Whether you are a marketer for a small company or a larger corporation, your website should include a site map. Simply put- spiders won't index pages that can't be crawled. The site map is a tool that helps spiders find the most important pages on your site. The site map will also help the search engines understand your site's hierarchy. Larger sites with an established site structure should make several site map pages. Keep each one should include less than 125 links.

6. Podcasts While not exclusively a SEO tip, tagging podcasts will add value to your site and are also an easy way to provide additional detail and personalization around your company. Several companies are using podcasts as retention tools, value adds for visitors, and they are also being streamed for listening on the web. Podcast files are fully searchable via iTunes, this can drive additional traffic to your site. According to John Jantsch author of Duct Tape Marketing "podcasting is still unique enough in many industries that it can allow you to stand out a bit."

7. Flash on Your Site Plain and simple, search engine don't like Flash. If your site is predominately running Flash you should know that it is a difficult platform from which to optimize. More and more developers are now using CSS streamlined video in place of Flash. If you have to use Flash, be sure to optimize the page with other content. Eric Lander from Search Engine Journal has some additional information on Flash and there is a great post on Duct Tape Marketing regarding Flash and SEO.

8. Hidden Text and Black Hat Techniques Hidden text and other Black Hat Techniques can get you banned from search engines. What is black hat? According to Wikipedia black hat is a class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Hidden text is an old black hat technique that involves making font color the same as the background color, so that your visitors are not able to see the wording. A simple way to check if sites are doing this is to press Ctrl A. Another black hat tool is placing content on the page that no one would see but the search engines. As you can imagine search engines don't like this - if you are using these tactics proceed with caution!

9. Stock Product Descriptions If you are selling products then try to avoid using the standard manufacturer provider product descriptions. Customized descriptions with additional information can be a major factor in differentiating your content from others. Try exploring avenues which allow your customers to comment and create content about these products- this can build community plus give you some SEO benefits. Creating unique descriptions can be time consuming but the keyword-focused descriptions can help your SERPs.

10. Directories One popular strategy to get your site quickly indexed and to be listed among of competing sites is by submitting it to directories. Yahoo directory, Open Directory Project (DMOZ), and other vertical directories could be useful tactics. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch offers a great article discussing the directory submission process.

11. Leverage Social Media Social media and tools such as Digg, Stumbleupon, del.icio.us, reddit, can drive traffic to a site and expose your content to other publishers. This is prime link bait. The aforementioned sites as well as other niche tagging sites can add credibility to your site and expand the exposure of your content. Here is an interesting post from SEO Unique Blog that outlines ways to leverage Stumble Upon to increase page rank.

12. User Friendly URLs Use dashes between words not underscores. Several experts advise using dashes not underscores. An underscore _ is recognized as a character not a space divider. Matt Cutts of Google. I would recommend using dashes over underscores.

13. Content We saved the best for last. Content is King. Providing good quality content on a website should be standard regardless of your SEO strategy. Matt Cutts of Google confirmed this, and countless others have agreed. If you want to create a valuable site, that consistently ranks well, then develop new, high quality content that is very key word focused. According to SEO Theory.com one way to ensure that you are consistently developing new fresh content is to set a goal to add 5 pages of content to your site every week. Stay focused, develop good content, and offer value for your readers.

source: Marketing Prowess

Color Cop

2008-03-06T15:36:00.002+08:00

The ultimate colour picker for programmers and web developers.

This little chap is the bees-knees for the sometimes-tricky task of getting your web colours just right. It has a variable level zoom to help pin-point the colour you want. It can also average colours in a 3x3 or 5x5 block for you and snap colours to the neatest web-friendly value. Colours can be displayed in RGB, HTML, Delphi, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, or Visual C++ formats. You can have your chosen colour sent to the clipboard ready for pasting. There’s a colour history and more. There’s not a lot more you could ask of such a utility.

Click here to go to homepage.
Click here to download.

RGBtoHEX

2008-03-06T15:29:00.002+08:00

Always use the right colour with this quick colour to hex utility.

Ensure you always end up with the colour you were expecting with this simple and effective utility. There are three sliders and a palette box to mix your colours, the code for which is displayed, ready for you to cut and paste into your code. Or, you can type in the hex code and play about with the settings. It’s easy, quick and effective.

Click here to go the download page.

Make Money Blogging through Bloggerwave

2008-03-02T23:41:00.002+08:00

Do you have a blog and want to make money from your blogs? Then bloggerwave gives you the opportunity. Bloggerwave is aiming to be Europes biggest advertsing media on blogs and you can help us grow so more and more jobs will come.

Once your blogs are approved in the bloggerwave system, you are given access to opportunities from advertisers. Bloggers here get paid a minimum of $10 for each completed and approved post. Bloggerwave also pays on time.

Paint.Net: Open Source Replacement for Photoshop

2008-02-06T09:45:00.000+08:00

If all you want is a quick image retouch, Photoshop is overkill. Paint.NET, on the other hand, is an open-source freeware editor with all the essentials, including tools to crop, rotate, resize images, adjust colors, and create collages.

Paint.NET supports common image formats--JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and others--but not high-resolution RAW files. There are enough basic and intermediate effects and features to keep image-tweakers happy, though the red-eye removal tool is notably weak; those images may require manual attention.

Unlike most free image editors, Paint.NET supports layers and has an actions manager. The pleasing interface boasts semitransparent windows for ease of use.

Version 3 fixes many old quibbles, including a convenient thumbnail manager for handling multiple image editing, and improved program graphics. Paint.NET is far more advanced than Microsoft Paint, and given its free price, it's a must-have for anyone needing to fix images.

Update: Paint.NET functionalities and effects can be extended using plugins. You can download the plugins here.

License:Free
Requirements: Windows XP/2003 Server/Vista, Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

Download

Screenshots:

Paint.Net Tutorials Click Here

6 Must-Haves on a Website Design

2008-02-06T09:25:00.000+08:00

Designing a website is a tedious and critical work. There are just too many considerations that a web designer should take into when designing a site. Foremost of these, you need to consider the business aspect of the website design that plays in consonance with the demands and needs of the potential clients. This may sound so difficult to fuse with but understanding the 6 must-haves when designing a site, will make it a little easier for you. These are:

1. Try to understand the profile of the business. There are considerations that a web designer takes into on the basis of what the business is all about. Of course, if the business is trying to cater something for the children, a wed design that is appropriate to that should be something that is colorful, fantasy-based, and less of the earthly components that are usually seen on a corporate web design.

2. Try to understand the profile of the business clients. This is to determine the potential of making a parallel design based on the two profiles Ò¢" the company and the client.

3. Adhere to the basics of web designing that simple is better and classic is best. Although the web designing perspective is making a revolutionary switch, adhering to simplicity has not lost its touch and embarking on classic mood has never been out.

4. Study each section of the website and attack the design aspect based on the category of each section. This will make it easier for you to have a general concept of the whole design.

5. Follow what your client wants and set aside your own opinion and desire. It is best that you make your opinions your last suggested ones so that you can enforce to the client to extract their own ideas.

6. Make revision part of your system. No design was caught in perfection the first time.

by:G Allan Roberts

9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design

2008-01-20T20:20:00.000+08:00

Web design can be deceptively difficult. Getting a design that is both usable and pleasing, delivers information and builds brand, is technically sound and visually coherent...

Add to this, the fact that many web designers (myself included) are self taught, that web design is still novel enough to be only a side subject in many design institutions and that the medium changes as frequently as the underlying technology does.

So today I've put together my 9 principles for good web design, it's only my opinions and I've tried to link off to more reading on subjects so you don't only hear my voice. Obviously I have lots of disclaimers, rules are made to be broken, different types of design work differently, I don’t always live up to my own advice etc etc.

Read More about the Tutorial here

The Ultimate IE Hack Guide {reposted}

2008-01-16T10:08:00.000+08:00

You’ve designed the perfect website. You’re checking it in all browsers. Firefox - check, Safari - check, Opera - check, Internet Explorer - ah, am I looking at a website? We’ve all been there. Until Microsoft starts supporting web standards, properly coded websites are always going to look like crap in IE. That’s a shame because Internet Explorer is (unfortunately) the most popular browser. So, how do you make your website look great in Internet Explorer while maintain standards for all browsers? Here are some tips that I gather from various guides around the internet.

But before we go into these hacks, all of these hack will evolve around CSS. If you’re not using CSS and your trying to write standard compliant code, you’re in the wrong field. CSS is the way to do things nowadays on the web, and you should be using it. I won’t give you a whole explanation on how CSS works, so I’m assuming you know it. If you don’t you might want to check out this guide then come back here.

IE Specific Code

The most common problem with IE is it does things completely different than all other browsers. So, to overcome this problem you have to tell IE specifically what to do. Now there are two methods (that I like) that will overcome this problem. There is an underscore hack and a alternative style sheet hack. Each of these techniques have their own advantages and disadvantages, but in the end they will both function the same way.

he Underscore Hack

The underscore hack is particularly useful if you only have a few minor things that need adjustments. It’s also useful since you can keep your IE CSS with the real CSS, making it easier for adjustments down the road. Now you’re probably wondering how the underscore hack works.

Let’s say you a class called text, and you want to apply a 10 pixel margin to that text. The 10 pixel margin looks great in every browser but IE. To make IE look better you think it needs a 15 pixel margin. To accomplish that you need to give IE code that only it will understand. This can be done by the following code:



   .text {
    margin: 10px;
     _margin: 15px;  /* IE Hack * /
}

This hack works because IE is stupid. An underscore in CSS acts as a comment for that attribute only, and all browsers but IE honor this. Since IE doesn’t follow the underscore rule, placing the same attribute with an underscore after the real attribute will redefine that attribute for IE, while all other browsers will skip the second redefined attribute.

The Alternative Style Sheet Hack

By having a separate style sheet just for IE, you can keep all of the nasty invalid code from all other browsers. The IE style sheet also keeps your real style sheet clean and clutter free. The best part of it is that it’s really simply.

To use an alternative style sheet for IE, the first thing you’ll need to do is add an extra line in your HTML’s head section pointing to the IE style sheet. Basically what you’re going to be doing is adding a second style sheet, except using a CSS conditional comment to make that style sheet only apply to Internet Explorer. The code to accomplish the second style sheet will look like this:

<[link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="style.css">
<[! --[if IE]>< [link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="ie.css">< ![endif]-->

It should be noted that the IE specific style sheet needs to be after the original style sheet. That way any IE CSS will override the real CSS value. To finish off the alternative style sheet, create a new CSS file called ie.css and throw all the IE specific code in there. You don’t need to do anything special to the code; just treat any CSS code that you put in there like it’s a normal CSS file.

Now from this point on, I’m going to be assuming that any IE hacks you use will be put into this ie.css file. If you don’t want to use the alternative style sheet, you can modify the rest of the hacks to use the underscore hack, but this may cause invalid code, etc. So, it’s best to just stick with the alternative style sheet for the rest of these hacks.

IE’s Max-width

If you’ve ever tried to use the max-width CSS property, you’ll know IE doesn’t support it. Now some web developers will code around it, but I’m not one of those. Max-width to me is a very useful CSS property, and I’m going use it. So, how do you get IE to use a max-width? With some IE specific code of course!

This is a simple one line CSS addition to ie.css. Just add this line to any class or id where you would have normally used max-width:

.class {
 width: expression(this.width > 533 ? 533: true);
}

You’ll of course want to replace 533 with the maximum number of pixels you’ll be using, but beyond that it’s that simple.

Source: Cavemonkey50.com

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

2008-01-04T09:59:00.000+08:00

The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.

Here is the list:
1. Bad Search
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
4. Non-Scannable Text
5. Fixed Font Size
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
8. Violating Design Conventions
9. Opening New Browser Windows
10. Not Answering Users' Questions

For a detailed explaination of each mistakes you go to this site

Exceptional Free Photoshop Brush Resource

2007-12-30T20:52:00.000+08:00

1. Brusheezy
(http://www.brusheezy.com)

This is a somewhat new website (according to my knowledge, anyway) but it has a great amount of brushes, and pretty much all of them are user submitted! You may even come across some of my brushes on this website. Great way for users to get free traffic by submitting their brushes.

2. deviantART
http://www.deviantart.com/

Most probably the biggest resource for free Photoshop brushes on the 'net. deviantART has been around for like 6 years, and this category has probably been there for most of the time. There's thousands of brushes here, every kind.

3. MisprintedType
http://www.misprintedtype.com/

This site looks pretty old, but there's plenty of amazing grunge brushes here, I use them all the time.
4. TutorialBlog
http://tutorialblog.org/

This is an extensive article on free Photoshop brushes, like a larger version of this article right here.

graphic designs,web designs, tutorials, Adobe Photoshop, Web Designs, Web programming, Digital Toolz, SEO

The Origins of SEO

2007-12-30T20:48:00.000+08:00

We have been hearing a lot about SEO or the so called Search Engine Optimization. Have you ever thought were Search Engine Optimization started?

For the benefit of those people who are not yet familiar what Search Engine Optimization is, well here's a description I got for you to give you few information's regarding SEO. Search Engine Optimization is defined as a subset of the search engine marketing. It is a process of making improvements on the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via natural search results.

The SEO can target searches like the contextual search and local search and the industry-specific vertical search engines. Search engine optimization helps the internet users and visitors understand how search algorithms work and what internet users can search for, help them visit sites which make it interesting for them. Some search engine optimization helps in the optimizing of the site's coding, their presentation and structures. It also fix problems that may keep search engine indexing programs from fully speeding a site's also helps the content pages of the site to look more appealing to the users and visitors.
graphic designs,web designs, tutorials, Adobe Photoshop, Web Designs, Web programming, Digital Toolz, SEO
To make you more familiarize with the search engine optimization I'll give you a brief history about the origin of the search engine and what is the relationship of Search Engines to Search Engine Optimization.

Well to start of the origin of search engines, in the mid 1990's Webmasters and the content providers started optimizing their sites for the search engines. Before the responsibilities of webmasters is to submit a page or URI to other different engines which would send a spider to look a certain page, extract the links from the other pages and get the information's found on the page to be ready for indexed. What the spider does is simply download a page where certain information's will be stored on their own server where an indexer, known as second program extracts the information gathered. Time came that site owners are starting to recognize the importance of their site to be rank highly and visible in search engines. On the year of 1996 emails regarding SEO services were sent as spam which was posted at the Usenet.

Because of too much reliance on factors that are exclusively within the control of the webmasters early search engines started to suffer from manipulation of abuse ranking. Because of this site owners thought that they should think ways on how to provide better results to their users... Because of the high value and targeting of search results, a big potential for an adversial relationship between search engines and SEOs.

Then time came search engines also began reaching out to the SEO industry and are regular guests to the SEOs conferences, seminars and trainings. Then the rest was history.

Then in the year 2005 AirWeb, an annual conference was created to discuss certain issues about the damaging effects of web content providers who are known to be very aggressive. Because of these site owners and SEOs simply thought of ways or different techniques to improve their site for the users through the help they will get the domains which are banned from search engines.

SEO has the goal to give better results and reliable accurate information's to their online users and visitor.

source: Eliza Madevic

Time to Say Goodbye to Spam

2007-12-30T20:39:00.000+08:00

Having trouble finding good, relevant emails in your inbox?! Have you lost a couple of contracts just because you did not reply on time to your partners? This article should guide you through finding the best way to fight against spam on your website.
graphic designs,web designs, tutorials, Adobe Photoshop, Web Designs, Web programming, Digital Toolz,

Read more about it here

Photoshop Tutorial : Rippling Water Effect

2007-12-30T20:26:00.000+08:00

Calm water and wavy, you may fall in love with the latter, the other the former. Rough as you are, then bend the surface of the peaceful lake.
graphic designs, tutorials, Adobe Photoshop, Web Designs, Web programming

More about the tutorial here

Computer Support Specialists

2007-12-24T18:27:00.000+08:00

If you're from Dallas, you may need computer support at one time or another, and BNC is the leading Dallas computer support company of choice. They have a helpdesk that is open all day every day and also provide computer support analysis. Check out BNC today and I'm sure you'll see why they're one of Dallas' leading IT companies.

Akelos PHP Framework

2007-12-24T00:53:00.000+08:00

For fans those who are fans of Ruby On Rails implementation yet having a hard time migrating from PHP to Ruby, here's a framework for you.

The Akelos PHP Framework is a PHP port of the Web application framework Ruby on Rails. Like Rails, Akelos claims to simplify and improve the process of developing database driven web applications.

It allows to create applications writing less code than other similar Frameworks, requiring little or no configuration. It also has a code generating system for creating application skeletons or scaffolds that accelerates the process of creating CRUD applications.

Also known as Akelos, is an open source project written using the programming language PHP which is easier to deploy than Ruby. Applications written using Akelos follow the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern.

graphic designs, tutorials, Adobe Photoshop, Web Designs, Web programming

Illustrate Animated / Cartoon Image Into Vector

2007-11-09T09:53:00.000+08:00

by:Kai Loon

Here is a tutorial on how to illustrate and image into vector. Basically, it is quite simple to illustrate an animate rather than a real object. Its color tone is simple and easy to apply.

Details on the tutorial here

How To Create A Myspace Layout and Background

2007-11-09T09:04:00.000+08:00

For those of us who are looking to customize our own Myspace Layout without the use of a Myspace Generator, here is a tutorial on how to create a custom Myspace layout and background design.

Sample Custom Myspace Layout

Click Here to Read about the Tutorial

6 PHP coding tips to write less code

2007-11-08T10:40:00.000+08:00

PHP is a good language, but there are always surprises. This tip is useful to "lazy" developers who do not even think about variable names. They may prefer magic names like ${0} and 0 is good enough variable name, why not...

Here are a few tips that can make your code shorter and harder to read :-)

Read more

Search Engine Optimization for the Faint Hearted, the Lazy and the Dumb

2007-10-31T14:00:00.000+08:00

Search engine optimization or SEO is almost a dirty word that every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to apply to their website to make it findable to the common man. But for some of us, its not working is it?

SEO is a very daunting task and it's not easy, it's hard, it's boring, it takes time. You have somehow pulled together a site, slapped some ads on and you want people to go on it. Or even more, you have spent time to make a great site and no one goes on it. You will be lucky if get 20 visitors a day. In SEO terms that's a great start. Some webmasters don't even manage that. There are several ways to get visitors. Either some one looks up the search engines and finds the website because you happen to have your site on the first two pages of the search engine results page (SERP). Or you have your site all over the web and people are bound to bump into it. Here are 10 things you should do as an amateur search engine optimizer.

1. The number of keywords in your pages or key word density is important. This tells the search engine the relevancy of the webpage for a particular word or term. It should be around 3% appearing on a webpage; more than that it will be called keyword stuffing that could be penalized. If you know how to add Meta tags in HTML then do so as its important for search engines to accurately index and list your pages.

2. Links are the top most criteria for good search engine positions. More you have from relevant sites, the better it is. You can either ask related sites to place your link on their site or you could ask them for a link exchange. Some experts are not too keen on buying links but some say that done in the right way, can be beneficial. Best avoided.

3. Every website should have an RSS feed to keep it fresh with contents, making the site dynamic. It's usually in the form of a link or HTML code that you need to "cut-and-paste". If not, than you could always update your pages by adding more content, as search engines love content. Apparently they cannot read images.

4. Writing articles is a great way to get one way links. Write as many articles as you can on your subject of interest and then submit to several article directories. Webmasters hungry for content will use your articles and include you link. Make sure that you use your keywords as anchor text for your URL in the resource section. Try writing between 500-1000 as reading more can be really boring.

5. Go over to other blogs in your subject and leave comments. You can often leave your name and website address. Many would come to know you gradually if you are good making sure you don't spam them. Be good.

6. Submit your site to directories. Some would want money while some would want a link back. It's your call. DMOZ is a must but it's difficult.

7. Attach your site in your email signature.

8. Post your sites at classifieds sites such as Craigslist and Gumtree. But don't spam.

9. You might want to leave your URL at yahoo answers if it's helpful to the asker. Make a 360 page and add your links. Sometimes people like to see who the answerer is and might come across you site.

10. Join forums in your area of interest and add your website in the signature. Don't ask people to view or review your site. People will have a look if they are interested or if your answers are good or if you establish yourself as an expert.

If you follow these simple steps, you will make it. Be simple and straightforward. Don't spam; it's illegal and can be harmful. God bless.

Article by Shalini Singh

How to Implement the CAPTCHA with PHP and GD

2007-10-31T13:52:00.001+08:00

This article is a gas, it will show you "How to Implement the CAPTCHA with PHP and GD." All the necessary code is laid out nice and neat by the author who has also provided you with helpful graphics to make it easy to understand.

Read More About It Here

SEO: Real Black Hat Secrets Unleashed and How to Avoid it

2007-10-31T13:43:00.005+08:00

This is a very interesting article for anyone working on the internet - SEO: Real Black Hat Secrets Unleashed and How to Avoid It. The author explains all of the bad practices that you should avoid.

More about the article here

How to Make the Sony Ericsson Logo

2007-10-31T13:39:00.000+08:00

Yes! you too can "Draw the Sony Ericssion Logo." The author makes this tutorial quick and simple. You will marvel at the Photoshop acumen that this shorty can impart to you. And, it's fun, lots of pics

Details of the Tutorial here

Transformer Style Graphic Designing

2007-10-31T13:36:00.000+08:00

This Photoshop tutorial will help you to create a Transformer Style graphic for many possible uses. The product has a dark, high-tech or sci-fi look. The author made this lesson a snap.

More on the Tutorial Here

10 Tips On Designing A Fast Loading Web Site

2007-10-31T13:19:00.000+08:00

By: ENTHEOS WEB

The Number 1 rule that every web designer should follow is to create a fast loading web site. You might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. While designing a web site always think about how long it will take to load. Try out our tips to build a great looking web site that also loads fast.

Minimize the use of images - The key to a fast loading web site is to minimize the use of images. Images do enhance a page but don't make 80% of your web site only images. Instead break it down as much as possible to simple HTML. Notice the popular sites like Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon etc., they have very few images because the load time is more important. Very often simple designs are the best.
Optimize images for the web - Once you have decided on the images that you need on your site, make sure that it is optimized for the web. They should be in the gif or jpeg format. You can also minimize the size of the image by choosing the number of colors you need, from the color palette. The less the colors you choose, the less the size of the image. You can also use online tools like Gif Wizard to optimize your images or to get a recommendation on how to cut down the size of an image.
Use Tables creatively - You can get some great looking designs by using tables creatively . Tables load very fast because it is just HTML code. Tables can be used in the homepage, menus or anywhere you like. Check out our homepage and our menus to see how we have used tables in our site.
Read more on Using HTML Tables Creatively
Cut down the use of animated gifs - Don't use animated gifs unless it is necessary. Animated gifs take a long time to load and can also be very irritating. But since they catch your attention you could use small animated gifs to draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site.
Design simple icons - Instead of using big, bulky images use simple and small icons that add a little color and draw the attention of a visitor. We have used small icons in our homepage to highlight the main sections of our site.
Use background images instead of big images whenever possible - Use background images whenever possible. This is usually a very useful tip for headers and footers. Instead of using an image of width 580 which is a uniform design you can use just a part of that as a background fill. This reduces the size of the web page as the image is small. The code will look like this :
Try out CSS Styles - Have fun with CSS styles to get some cool text effects. Again, a CSS Style is simple HTML code so it loads very fast. You can create cool rollovers using CSS Styles.
Rollover the text on the right menu to see how we have used CSS Styles to get a simple but nice text effect.
Check out our CSS Styles tutorial for more cool tips on CSS Styles
Use Flash sparingly - There seems to be a lot of hype about Flash but I recommend that you minimize the use of Flash on a site. Don't make entire sites using Flash. It may look great but it takes hours to load and can really put off visitors. If you do want to use Flash use it within an HTML site and make sure it loads fast.
Design most of your site in HTML - As much as possible try to design your site using HTML. You can create great designs by just using HTML code. Use tables, CSS Styles and simple fonts to design your site. Minimize the use of animated gifs, Flash, bulky images etc.
Keep checking your load time - Last but not least, before you decide on the final design of your web site, check its load time on NetMechanic. This site gives you a free analysis of your web site which is extremely useful. We kept using it to improve our site till we got a report that said good loading time!

Web Developer Browser Add-On for Firefox

2007-10-26T11:45:00.000+08:00

The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock, Mozilla and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Get Your Here

APTANA WEB IDE

2007-10-13T09:47:00.000+08:00

For those web developer who are searching for an open source IDE for your web development, this IDE is for you.

"The Aptana IDE is an open source integrated development environment (IDE) for building JavaScript intensive web applications. It includes coding assistance for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, an outliner of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code structure, error and warning notification and the possibility to customize and extend the UI.

This Eclipse-based IDE is available as standalone on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Linux, or as a plugin for Eclipse."

Although it has no WYSIWYG feature but its a great IDE alternative for Adobe Dreamweaver.

You can download the software here

SmartDRAW Software Review

2007-09-23T12:55:00.001+08:00

With SmartDraw anyone can create great looking CAD Drawings in minutes, not hours.

SmartDraw anticipates your needs—giving you pre-drawn templates, automating design, and making it easy to turn your information into brilliant illustrations fast. SmartDraw is the perfect graphics software for:

CAD Drawings
Flowcharts
Org Charts
Project Timelines
Gantt Charts

Bar Graphs & Pie Charts
Forms
Floor Plans
Marketing Charts
and much more.

Download SmartDraw FREE Trial

Web Design Prices and Costs - How to Get A Fair Web Design Quote

2007-09-23T12:38:00.000+08:00

by:Stuart Mortimer

If you're looking at commissioning a web designer to build you a website, one of the first things that you will need to know, is the monetary cost. This article will explain to you why there is such a huge variance between web designers and their quotes and will give you some advice as to how much you can expect to pay to contract a competent web designer in the UK.

First of all you have to have a rough idea of what it is that you want from your website. You have to have thought of what you want to achieve with the website. What are its objectives? You will then need to have thought of a basic structure for your website. There are many website examples out there for you to have a look at; the important thing is to have an idea about what structure you want for the site - meaning a rough outline of the numbers of pages and the content (text and images) that will make up each page.

Once you have your project objectives in mind and a rough idea of your websites structure you are in a position to start contacting suppliers. There are multitudes of web design companies everywhere and in our particular area of the UK - Doncaster there are lots of web design companies to choose from. The key thing to remember is that everyone wants your business. The web design marketplace is completely saturated so you as the buyer have the upper hand!

As in all other industries there are people who provide excellent service, there are people who provide an average service and there are also cowboys (people who sell web design services without the necessary knowledge and experience to do so).

What you have to think to yourself is this: If a person promises me the earth for £1 does that mean to say that they can deliver it? The best advice I can give is to be realistic. There are lots of really good city based web design companies throughout the UK that provide excellent services. They are always there to take your calls and you even get your own personal account manager to handle your requests and hold your hand through the entire web design process. The services of such companies are wonderful but this obviously comes at a price. City based offices, account managers and admin staff are large overheads and the prices charged by large city based web design companies reflect this. If you have a modestly sized website, which needs to be under content management system control, don't be surprised if the web design quote runs into tens of thousands of pounds from a major city based web design company. If you are looking for a top quality 100% inclusive, comprehensive service and your company can afford this kind of bill then I would suggest using a big city company every time.

Then there are the smaller companies that are made up of just a few individuals. These types of companies have much lower overheads and frequently have very knowledgeable and capable staff. The service level can be much lower than that of major city based web design companies but you can get some excellent work done by such companies at a fraction of cost of the large city based companies.

A much overlooked group of web designers that can produce some excellent web designs are the wide community of freelance web designers. Freelance web designers are private, self employed individuals who work from small offices (they frequently work from home). Freelancers have very low (mostly non existent) overheads. As such they can provide quality web design work for much lower costs than larger web design companies. If you are looking for good quality web design for less money then it definitely work looking at using a quality freelance web designer.

The people that you really need to avoid are the web design cowboys. As stated above cowboys are people who sell web design services without the necessary knowledge and experience to do so. If you are unfortunate enough to have contracted someone like this in the past you will be aware of the low quality work that they produce and the lack of significant results that they achieve. Cowboys invariable promise you the earth for a £1. Use your common sense and if someone is quoting you £100 for something that 5 other companies are charging around £4000 for, you know that something is not quite right. Remember the old adage - buy cheap, buy twice!

Conclusion:

You will find a great deal of variance between web design quotes depending on what level of web designer you choose to contract and what level of service you require. Always make sure to get as many quotes and talk to as many people as you can so a) see what's available on the market and b) get an unbiased idea of the likely costs involved. There are lots of good web designers out there but there are also a lot of lesser skilled web designers and even some of the proverbial cowboys. Make sure to use good common sense and get a feel for the web designer's skills and experience when you meet them. No matter how charming a person is, experience is very hard to fake. Ask to see examples of their work and where they have done similar work to your proposed project. Remember - you have the upper hand!

Search Engine Friendly Web Design - 3 Ways to Use CSS

2007-09-23T12:28:00.000+08:00

by:Stuart Mortimer

This article will point out 3 simple and highly effective web design techniques that use cascading style sheets to improve your web design and make your website perform better in the major search engines.

First of all, what is CSS? CSS stands for cascading style sheets and CSS is a way of separating presentation code from your actual content in web design. Usually you build up a set of CSS style rules that are stored in a separate file that has a .css file extension. You then link to the CSS file from your web pages using an HTML link tag.

There are many, many web design advantages to separating your presentation code off into separate CSS files and this article will tell you 3 excellent ways that you can use CSS to make your web design more search engine friendly.

Web Design Technique 1 - Us CSS to Structure Your Document

Let's consider the facts that we know about search engines. They send their search engine robots to your site to read the content that you have there and the easier it is to find for them the better because they don't waste much time looking. So having said this, what is the point of bogging down your pages with lots of un-necessary presentation markup that could quite easily be stored off in a separate CSS file. Most often this means removed any extraneous table tags and replacing them with a smaller number of HTML div tags which can be formatted using CSS rules. This removes the vast majority of presentational markup and leaves you with nicely formatted content that the search engines can easily find and index.

Web Design Technique 2 - Us CSS to Style Your Header Tags

We also know that search engines place a huge amount of importance on the header tags - h1,h2,h3 e.t.c. that they find in your pages. The thing that puts most inexperienced web designers off using header tags is that by default modern browsers render them in massive black text that looks really ugly. This is where CSS comes in. CSS can be used to easily make your header tags appear in nicely formatted, attractive text that both scores well with search engines and is pleasing to the eye of the user - perfect!

Web Design Technique 3 - Us CSS to Create Rollover Images

Traditionally rollover images are created using 2 graphics for the on and off states that are toggled on and off using some complex JavaScript code. This JavaScript code can bloat your web pages and since it is not content and just appears as gibberish to search engines it can adversely affect your rankings to have lots of embedded JavaScript in your web pages. A much better way to accomplish the same web design effect is to use CSS. Your still need your 2 graphics but you actually create a normal text link in your (that can also have keyword targeted anchor text) and use CSS to format its appearance. This is as simple as making the link a block level element in your HTML, setting it a height and width and then defining it 2 different background images, 1 for when the link is in its 'off state' and when for when the user is hovering over the link.

Conclusion:

Cascading style sheets are a very powerful way of separating presentation code from your actual content and the search engine optimisation benefits the CSS will bring to your web design are undeniable. Why not put these CSS web design techniques to work on your website today?

Librenix View of the PHP vs. ASP

2007-09-14T15:34:00.000+08:00

While PHP is a runaway winner in cost as well as platform portability, there are several other good reasons to use PHP instead of ASP...

Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (Personal Home Pages) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version.

There are a lot of differences between ASP and PHP.

from Librenix.com

Interweaving Photo Strips

2007-09-14T15:22:00.000+08:00

Written By Steve Patterson, Photoshop Essentials.com

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to learn how to create an interesting photo effect by taking an image and turning it into a series of interweaving strips.

We'll be using a few layers and layer masks in the tutorial, as well as a couple of clipping masks and a layer style, and we'll be turning on Photoshop's grid to help us out.

The first time I saw this Photoshop effect, I thought "Wow, there's some really advanced stuff going on there!". But as with most things in life, after thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized just how simple it really is, as we'll see!

Read the rest of the tutorial here

The Art of Writing Maintainable Code

2007-09-14T15:15:00.000+08:00

Written by: by: Adam McKerlie in The Art of

if you’ve been programming for any length of time I’m sure at one time you’ve had the pleasure (or lack thereof) of wading through another persons code. It is definitely not a pleasurable journey when the code is new, written with the newest standards; but when the code is legacy it can be a downright hair-pulling experience.

The problem with a lot of code is that it isn’t written in a maintainable way. Now you may ask, what is “Maintainable Code”? Maintainable code is purely code that can easily be maintained throughout the years and on different platforms. If you asked 100 people that write code for a living you would probably get 100 different answers on how to write your own maintainable code.

Read the rest of the article here