Category Archives: Web Design

Web Design

HOW TO SELECT THE BEST WEB DESIGN COMPANY FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

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Web designing, the construction and maintenance of websites, is a prerequisite for all business as well as non-profit organizations today. It is through a comprehensive and functional website that a firm reaches out to a vast array of customers and partners. Numerous web designing companies are available. Choosing the best possible company to create your website may feel like a daunting task. There are some must-have qualities which you must look for in a web design company for professional services. The ones mentioned below should make your job of choosing a company much easier: EXPERTISE: The most important factor to be taken into account should be whether the team that would create your website consists of qualified and experienced professionals or not. A company having experts would have substantial experience in all kinds of professional web designing, thus giving your website a professional look and feel, while at the same time making it user-friendly. INTEGRITY: The web design company must display a fair deal of integrity, in the sense that it must provide you high standards of service. It must also be sincere and honest in its work. SECURITY: Being able to trust a web design company with valuable information of your company is another important need. The company must place paramount importance to the privacy and security of information of customers. AFFORDABILITY: The best web design company would not charge exorbitantly but provide value for money. It would not be a wise idea to append a lion’s share of your firm’s capital on getting a website designed. Budget considerations need to be kept in mind while hiring any web design company. INTERACTIVITY WITH CUSTOMERS: Communication with customers is imperative in order to know exactly what they want. Frank and open interaction with clients makes a company customer-friendly, thus giving it a better work image. AN ATTRACTIVE PORTFOLIO OF PAST SERVICES RENDERED: Credibility of a company depends on the bouquet of services rendered earlier. Samples of past portfolio would give you an assurance that the company has expertise in your industry in particular and also has a good track record. This factor can give an edge to even relatively new companies who have good work history in their few years of existence.

An impaction and user-friendly website will go a long way in promoting your business. Hence, you must carefully select a company which will match up to your needs and aspirations for your new website.

Web Design

Html5 – Not Designed For Business Applications

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HTML5 – Not Designed for Business Applications

HTML5 is the next version of HTML to come along since version 4.0 in 1997.

HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language and HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of web pages. The Internet would not exist as we know it today without HTML.

But HTML is not a programming language at all. This concept is confusing to some people. Web pages rely on a scripting language such as JavaScript in order to respond to user input. Think of it as HTML being a car and JavaScript being the engine.

JavaScript was introduced in 1995 by Netscape and coincidentally, that’s when the web started to really “take off”. This is an important fact to consider before we dig deeper into HTML5.

The open source nature of HTML and JavaScript has contributed to the growth of the Internet as a whole. Source code and design ideas are often borrowed from around the web and even from competitor’s web sites. This is facilitated by the fact that HTML and JavaScript are impossible to hide or protect.

HTML5 is no different!

There has been a lot of talk about HTML5 over the past couple of years and developers think that HTML5 is “cool” and “fun” to work with. But the logic ends there.

As usual with most new technologies, there has been confusion and misinformation over when HTML5 should be used and for what purpose. We aim to enlighten you about what HTML5 can and can’t do in this article.

New Features Same Old Concept

HTML5 includes new features such as the “Canvas” element, along with audio, video and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) content, some of which replace the “object” tags of HTML4. There have also been some modifications and standardization of tags such as (a, cite, menu) but the basic concept of HTML remains the same in HTML5.

Who’s Promoting HTML5?

HTML5 was originally proposed by Opera Software (makers of the Opera web browser) and designed by the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C.

An important point is that the W3C has been criticized as being dominated by larger organizations and thus writing standards that represent their interests.

The large organizations (Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Google and Facebook) have promoted HTML5 as the most up to date technology for web development. In fact the late Steve Jobs termed HTML5 as the win-win solution for consuming any kind of web content on all types of web platforms. But it is important to note that Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook each have an incentive for promoting HTML5; each own and operate very profitable “app” stores such as the Windows Marketplace, Google App Store, iTunes App Store, Facebook Canvas Apps, etc. Protection of intellectual property and trade secrets is of little or no concern to those companies and in fact it is almost a conflict of interest.

Fact #1: HTML5 is based on JavaScript, which is impossible to protect. Yes, that’s a fact!

As we discussed a moment ago, JavaScript is the core “language” of HTML5, whose source code is impossible to protect. The most evident reason is that anyone can view HTML5 and JavaScript source by just a simple click. JavaScript was never intended to be anything more than an engine for client-server communication and re-useable web content, including menus, buttons, tabs and the like.

Developers may argue that they can mangle JavaScript source code by obfuscation and pseudo-encryption (such as “minification”, where the code is compressed and “minified”). But this is a dangerously false sense of security. Any skilled developer can reverse engineer a “minified” or “obfuscated” JavaScript application. By design, JavaScript cannot be encrypted and it cannot be hidden. JavaScript files must be downloaded in order to run in a web browser.

To make matters worse, JavaScript also cannot be locked down to a specific web domain.

The code is accessible to be hacked by any competitor. No matter how many steps are taken to hide the JavaScript, the web browser eventually downloads the JavaScript file to run it within the client’s web browser.

For comparison, hacking a Flash or Silverlight application just by viewing the source is not very easy but anyone with a little knowledge of HTML5 can do it in minutes.

The hacks of famous HTML5 games like AngryBirds, Texas Holdem and many others are excellent examples of the insecure techniques employed by HTML5 developers. All security measures are useless once the code has been obtained and reverse engineered. No matter what any HTML5 or JavaScript developer may claim, these facts are true and irrefutable!

Fact #2: The concept of HTML5 Canvas is nothing new.

As we discussed already, HTML5 is based on the same concepts of HTML4. The most useful and talked about feature of HTML5 is the new “Canvas” object. Canvas makes it easy for JavaScript developers to “paint” within a web browser, simplifying the design of applications that utilize graphics. But you may be surprised to know that this functionality has been available in a simulated manner with very little attention since the release of HTML4.

Fact #3: There is a widespread misconception about HTML5

HTML5 has been labeled as a “cross platform programming language” which is a serious misconception. It is true that HTML5 is capable of running on all types of platforms such as Windows, Linux, Android and other mobile operating systems but let’s not forget that HTML5 is nothing more than web page markup, which is controlled by JavaScript. Classifying HTML5 and JavaScript as a true programming language would be incorrect. It is a browser integrated language that cannot utilize all the features of the underlying operating system.

When Should You Use HTML5?

The answer is quite simple. Use HTML5 when you do not care about your source code, intellectual property, or trade secrets. If you do not care that a competitor may steal your source code after it has been uploaded to your web site then use HTML5. As you can see, HTML5 is perfect for buttons, menus and website specific content, for which it was designed.

The Bottom Line – Better Options Available

The bottom line is that HTML5 and JavaScript are great for a lot of things, but you can’t effectively protect anything that you develop with them. This clearly doesn’t add up if you are using these technologies for developing business applications, which they were not designed for.

If you are developing a web application then consider using Flash or Silverlight, both of which run in all popular web browsers for desktop operating system, including Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you are developing a mobile application, there are far better options for iPhone, iPad and Android development that afford better protection of trade secrets, better security, performance and usability for the end user and also allow you to take advantage of the native features of the underlying operating systems. For iOS (iPad and iPhone), use the Object C programming language. For Android, use the Java programming language.

For Windows development, consider C++, C#, Delphi or other proven languages.

Although slightly more difficult to develop with, Objective C, C++, C#, Java and other low level languages are always the best option no matter if you are developing desktop, web, or mobile applications.

Permission to Redistribute

Copyright (c) 2012 by Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc. http://www.modulusfe.com All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute the article providing this copyright notice remains in place.

About the Author

Richard Gardner is Founder/CEO of Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc. In addition to his leadership role of the firms team members, Richard is an influential member of the financial technology industry at large, a globally-respected professional trader and software engineer, a guest speaker at industry conferences and among the inventors on over 70 technology patents.

Web Design

Web Templates Explained

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Introduction of web templates, what is a web template?

Web templates are readymade designs. User can make modification to it or use it as a base to jump-start their web site building. A correctly optimized web template can bring lots of convenience to web designer and web developer. A quality web template allow one to jump start the design process and quickly move on to content building, allowing one to save time in the process of web site building.

Purpose of web templates in contents building

One important purpose of web site templates is that it is used for generating massive number of web pages by means of a schematic layout. Template based web designing is best when one requires building a site that has lots of pages and navigation link. It is ideal to use a web template if the site needs to be update from time to time.

Advantage of web templates in web designing

There are numerous advantages of using web templates. A quality designed web template allows user to modify and publish web site with ease. Web templates can also benefit web designer as it provide inspiration and a base to jump start to content building without wasting time in the design phase. Besides that, one can also take advantages of using few different web templates and by using the design elements provided inside the web templates to create a fresh new unique design. Web templates can provide numerous advantages if used properly.

Quality & Inferior web templates

There are many web sites offering web templates on the internet today. It is important that one must understand how to differentiate between quality and inferior quality web templates. A quality web template has the following feature,

1.Search engine optimized.

2.User friendly. (Easy to edit)

3.Should be professionally designed and include of all the required source files, such as required font files, psd files and etc.

4.Should additional contents need to be added to the optimized HTML file, the structure of the design should not be affected.

5.If the web template is from a premium web templates provider site, a quality support should provided by the company.

An inferior web templates will tends to have the following problem,

1.Badly written HTML code, beginner will have problems using such template, as it requires reoptimization of the HTML code. An example of badly written HTML code will be, if additional contents are required to be added to the HTML file, the structure of the design break when there are more contents than the original sample contents provided in the template.

2.Required files not included with the templates, some free templates provide only the HTML file of the template but no editable source (eg, .psd files, .fla files etc) files are included. This cause serious problem to user who uses the template, as user is unable to modify the design further. Some provided only the design file either in psd format or other format, this create problems for user who does not know how to convert the psd format into HTML format.

3.And other problems that caused the template hard to use.

Different type of web templates

There are many different types of website templates out there, below is a few most popular templates on the internet today along with description.

1.Web Templates or WebSite Templates (This is the most common type of templates, quality web templates consist of a editable source file, usually .psd files, required font files and etc. A quality web template also come with an optimized HTML file, usually coded in traditional table type coding or XHTML tableless coding)

2.XHTML Templates (XHTML templates share the same similarity with web templates, only thing is that a quality XHTML template should come with an optimized HTML file that validated with W3C standard. A XHTML template should also be tableless as possible and the design layout and other design features should controllable by a css file.)

3.Wordpress Templates (WordPress templates are templates that designed for the WordPress blogging script, a quality designed wordpress template should be easy to edit and easy to publish with WordPress.)

4.Drupal Templates (Templates that designed for use with Drupal content management system, quality Drupal templates should be easy to edit and publish.)

There are free and premium web templates site on the internet today. An example of free templates site will be Webtemplateportal.com. There are also numerous of free web templates site out there. If one is seeking for more professional service and support, one can opt in for premium Web Templates Company. An example will be DeonixDesign where the company offers thousands of professional premium web templates. DeonixDesign work as after user subscribed their service, they will have unlimited access to all the available templates. Doing a google search will also list numerous different type of web templates provider web site.

Web Design

Online Universities That Offer Web Designing Certificate Courses

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Web designing is a very interesting subject that involves the look and feel of the website, the technology that can be used, display of content on the web page, the navigation on the website, the pictures, and the multimedia shown on the website. There are several online web designing certificate courses and here we have listed ten of them and described in short their uniqueness.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas – The Graphic Design Certificate course will help the student understand the intricacies of web page designing, how to make or break the rules of design to suit the look of the website, and is a generic online web design course. This web design course is a step towards becoming a good web designer and requires you to do your project work using software of your choice.

University of Phoenix – In the Visual Communication Certificate course they start with the introduction of computers, you are taught about image editing, publishing, e-learning course design, and multimedia. Hence you are able to make proficient web pages after doing this course. The web design course includes graphic design and technology tools to create amazing visual communication. Hence the skills learnt in the online web design course can be used in web sites, corporate reports, advertising, business presentation, instructional materials, electronic publications, and animated movies.

Kaplan University – The Internet and Website Development Certificate is a complete course if you want to learn the making of website for online businesses. The web designing course covers everything e.g. data concepts, design, tools required to make website, and multimedia. The cost of this web designing course is $353 for a credit hour and you require to complete 36 credit hours for getting certificate.

The Art Institute of Pittsburgh – The Web Design (Certificate) will tutor you to the basics of web site design, graphics, and animation development specifically for the web. You will be coached during this web design course in various web site design models used in commercial, personal, and government web sites.

The Art Institute of Charlotte – The Web Design – Certificate offers a dynamic mix of technology and art. The students are given enough exposure to scripting and programming skills required for content display on the websites. This online web design course prepares you for entry level jobs in the web design industry.

Strayer University – The Web Page Development course requires you to cover 4.5 credit hours. The course requires you to have completed the Computer Programming Design before starting this course. This web designing course is an interesting course where you are taught how the web pages can be made lighter so that they load quickly, about links, HTML, and XML to create the web pages.

University of California, Irvine – Web Development with HTML will cost $650. You will be taught about how HTML works. Three scheduled WebEx discussions along with the online teaching make the course very innovative.

University of Massachusetts – Certificate in Website Design and Development lets you gain 12 credits for Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology. The web design course gives you good fundamentals to make dynamic websites.

Westwood College – The Web Design & Multimedia (Bachelor’s) course believes that the internet is here to stay. You will learn to develop web sites and become comfortable in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, HTTP, and Actionscript. Search engine optimization, web marketing, design, composition, and layout are some topics covered in this web designing course.

Full Sail University – The Web Design and Development (Bachelor’s) course highlights include Web Standards design, flash design and animation. The focus of the online web design course is mainly on front-end and techniques to make the websites.

Web Design

Converting PSD to WordPress Important for Web Traffic

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WordPress is considered as one of the most sought after program for website that has social media elements. WordPress is an open source content management system based on PHP and MySQL. It is web-based tool, which is available free to download from the internet. It helps create websites wherein websites owners can easily manage the content themselves. Converting PSD to WordPress format is important for the development of a website as it helps websites owners to keep it updated time-to-time. The web developers make a code that make website compatible with the different browsers. When the code is developed and conversion is over, the appearance of a website changes automatically. Once the website is converted in WordPress, it becomes more attractive and easy to use, which automatically improve the number of users. There are various website emerged on daily basis entailing different designs, styles, patterns, and theme. To maintain edge on the competitors, a website owner gives special attention to the websites presentation and content management. The conversion of PSD to WordPress helps convert images into more reliable format that can easily be incorporated in the website. With the conversion, websites run smooth with leaving any effect on the appearance of the website. To create a website on the WordPress theme, web-developing companies buy readymade Zen cart theme templates in order to install in the website.

The Zen cart is created on the framework of OSCommerce using significant scripting language. Zen cart helps developers in uploading a theme instead of installing the entire system repeatedly while changing the templates. It is very important to install Zen cart design in the website to make development process easier. The WordPress renders professional look and compatibility with the search engines and browsers to a website. While converting PSD files, nevertheless, a designer must keep quality of website in mind.

To improve the traffic of internet users towards the website, the web design must be easy to download as well as attractive so that users can stay on the website for a while after visiting. Various techniques and tools web coders use to improve the functionality and usability of the website, which indirectly boosts the chance of increasing number of visitors on the website. The better design definitely helps website owners to realise the profits in the form of return on investment. There are various companies offering PSD to WordPress conversion services in various countries at reasonable rates.

The author is an experienced Content writer and publisher for Business Development. Visit at http://www.xhtmldevelopers.com/ to know more about Converting PSD to WordPress, Zen cart theme and Zen cart design.

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