Tagged in: HTML

Web Team Roles And Responsibilities

Many people are involved in any web project. Different web projects require different web teams who have their roles and responsibilities.

Content Expert/Client:
Mostly a Content Expert is a Client who determines the project objectives, target audience and user needs, site information and its architecture, provides content materials and other additional resources, provide feedback on content, design and development. Client is the best person who knows the subject matters and requirements of the web site.

Requirements Modeler:
This person is responsible for the collection and maintenance of the system requirements. He is responsible to collect all necessary information of the requirements of the clients and understands how to utilize the design activities accordingly.

Project Manager:
Planning and management of all human and technological elements of the project. His responsibilities includes interaction with client, planning, budgeting, designing of basic concept, management of all other team members involved, supervising the content, technical development, site testing, release and its evaluation, and management of project completion within the time limit and within the budget.

System Architect:
Construction of structure on which the entire web project is to be build is the responsibility of System Architect. To perform this activity lot of skill is required which include excellent modeling skill and he should be experienced with various systems and various designs. His role includes deciding how to organize the content of the website, how to link different web pages and the navigation of all web pages.

System Developer:
He is responsible to build the functionality of the website. They are responsible for integrating components, developing new components and conducting the detailed design of the system.

Content Developer/Content Writer:
This person develops the content of the website that is the information to be provided on the website. His responsibilities includes knowing the content needs, designing the layout of content, research about the content and creating a new content, HTML coding and validating, processing images and maintenance of the content.

Web Designer:
Web Designer is responsible to configure the information and functionalities of the website for effective communication. They work with graphic designer and system developer to make the information and its layout more effective and more real.

Graphic Designer:
The responsibility of Graphic Designer is to prepare the content and layout for the final system which includes photographs, videos, music clips, and much more. He is responsible for developing the overall look of the website to make it more stylish and presentable. He solves the problems which are related to the graphic layout of the web pages, typography, color combinations and the overall consistency. Image processing and web optimization, developing HTML templates and browser/platform testing of the HTML layouts is also done by Graphic Designer.

Configuration Manager:
This person is responsible for the management of configuration which includes configuration identification, control, auditing and status accounting.

System Tester:
Verification and Validation of all the components of the system that whether they are constructed according to the requirements or not is done by system tester. He does the detailed study of each and every components of the website methodically.

All these persons are involved in the designing and development of the website and by the team work of all of them only it is possible to build a successful website which meets clients requirements.

Tasks Handled By A Web Design Company

Web design includes skills and techniques that help to produce and maintain good websites. Web designing may be done in many fields such as graphic designing,, interfacing and search engine optimization. The team that works with it designs the websites as per the requirement by the client. Web engineering is something that includes all the disciplines of web designing and the features required for the working. It is a set of guidelines that helps to form a good website and making it the most popular one.

Web designers have a variety of tools to work with. They are experts on what part is to be focused upon and how it is to be done. This field undergoes lots of changing from time to itme. The basics always remain the same but there are many updating in software and the principles associated with them. Use of vector and raster graphics is very common by web graphic designers for creating design prototypes.

What does a web design company do?

Web Design Company has basically a team of people whom it may hire called as web designers. Now a web designer is not someone like a computer programmer. He has basic programming skills. He may even be a web programmer who may not just create a page to be made available on the internet but also can create his own designs if he is an expert of programming. But the most important thing that a web designer does is to create beautiful and appealing web pages as per the need of the client. They are experts of soft wares like Photoshop and languages such as Java that helps them in animation. They are skilled to add other features to their websites such as sound or short film clips. At the end of the day the main aim of a web designer is to create eye-catchy websites having good graphics and sound-effects. He may even be flexible enough like if sometimes the demand of the client is to write some content so he may be able to do that even.

There lies not a hell of a difference between a web designer and a web programmer. The job of the programmer is implementation of designs by programming in HTML, XTML and some other languages. They are equipped with all the skills required to do intelligent and good programming. Same job can be done by a web designer as well provided he has some programming skills. In fact there are many web designers who offer both of them. They create beautiful WebPages and also help in the programming part. And a good web design company always keeps updating its designers from time to time. They keep in mind the current trend of the internet market and accordingly maintain the scenario of their developers. Since the demand of the clients also vary due to the changing trends in the market. So a good web design always keeps changing according to the demand and keeps adopting to the new technology .Further it also trains and guides its employees so that they give the desired output.

Web Design Company also keeps changing its customers this helps them to get in touch with the new technology and adapt to new skills.

Now there are some skills required for a web designer. Even some courses are also available for being a certified web designer. But a paper can never be a proof of any bodys skills. Degree may definitely add up to ones skills but its the knowledge and the talent that actually helps everyone to get through every hurdle. Theory always restricts you but being practical can help you to be more creative as well.
So before selecting a web designer check his ability in the practical aspect rather focusing on credentials. Check whether he fulfills all the skills you require rather having a good percentage of degree.

Following are some tips that should be kept in mind before selecting a good company. These tips will not only help you to make a right choice but also the things that you be beware of instead of getting into the wrong hands.

Money charged should be result oriented

Its never good to indulge in open ended billing system with designers till the maintenance phase is associated with the project.
Work sharing
A good web designer company always shares its work. You can see their testimonials and portfolios for the authenticity. So, beware of the false promises and high fees charged by companies.

Usage of time saving technology

The web designers who give quality outputs always have technology that is not only time saving but also inexpensive as well. Good companies believe in open source publishing and use of tools like word press. Usage of such tools helps to meet the proper standards thereby saving time and energy.

Maintenance of proper stock

Good companies always believe in smart work. They maintain stocks of template. This helps to maintain customer needs on time and especially at the time of urgency.

Distinguishing between web hosting and web designing

A good web design company would always maintain a difference between hosting and designing. Web host solutions are separate from web design services.

Some updates are left to clients

They develop such architectures that includes providing platform for publishing. This simplifies the process of making changes. And even they are also ready to make minor changes or launching of websites whenever required.

Proper standards and ease of accessibility

A good web design company meets standards such as interface design and ease to access the browser. Even the ones who have even little bit of experience in this field are also meets requirements of search engine optimization. And they are highly flexible as per the demands of the client.

Honesty about the cost

A good web design company is always honest about the time it requires to turn around with the results and also the costs that would be there for it. Unprofessional designers may give you hi-fi promises and even higher rates. But true designers would always tell you before starting any project on how much would be the speed and the rate of the data.

Know Your Options Before Selecting The Best Professional Web Design Company

The first look of a website is the core of success to any online business. Professional web design company holds the responsibility of making the website accustomed to potential buyers needs and that of search engines. Search engines too like the optimized and structured websites while ranking them in search results.

When the task of a website development is initiated, the very first challenge for the custom web designer and web owner is to select the right web development platform. Popular options are PHP, .NET and JSP. Each has some plus and minus points to be compared.

PHP is a popular open source text scripting language to be embedded with HTML pages. Extension of website is quite easy. ASP.NET is a proprietary platform of Microsoft. It is not free but it offers many unique features. Website constructed over this platform is considered more secured because HTML source codes are not visible. JSP is server side technology that is the proprietary platform of Sun Microsystems. It was introduced to compete with ASP.NET and PHP.

Selection of web design tools also creates a huge difference in the look of website. Fireworks, Adobe Dreamweaver, Panic Coda, Adobe Photoshop and Firebug are popular web design tools that most of custom web designers love to play with. Other options you may chose from are Adobe Flash, Notepad++, GIMP, Web Developer, Aptana and CSS Edit.

The selection of a professional web design company is as important as the entire business plan. It is not one time activity. Web owners need the web maintenance and web development support till they want to earn profits from that website. After getting the basic knowledge of web design and web development tools, select the best web designer. While conducting he searches, you will come across many terms like Website Designer, Website Programmer, Graphic Designer, Internet Marketing Consultant and SEO experts. Lots of custom web designers offer comprehensive services to take all your concerns for business development. So, you dont need to rope in different sources for variety of services needed at later stage. Here are some not to be missed important aspects while comparing your options:

KExperience

Expertise in particular platform

Trade repute

Profile for website development in same platforms

Diversity in clientele

It is not so that cost of website development is not important; it is important but do not limit your opportunities by opting for only the cheapest professional web design company. Open source options are simple and free but there may be some management and operational limitations. Also, you may come across many sources inviting and encouraging to build the website by self but experience counts everywhere.

Web Design Melbourne How Your Online Business Can Be Transformed Into A Thriving Cash Cow

If you plan to enjoy any online success, it is vital that you have a well-designed website. Such a site will look clean, neat and professional, and it will attract visitors. Sites that are well designed will leave a good impression with your customers, and it will be this impression that will keep them coming back to you repeatedly. If you do not want to spend time working on web design, or if you do not possess a whole lot of web design experience, then it is essential that you hire professionals to do the work. If you are starting an online business and are in need of top-of-the-line web design services and you reside in the Melbourne area, web design Melbourne companies will be able to provide you with what you need to succeed on the net.

A quality web design Melbourne company will make sure your site is designed to your specifications. However you want the web design company to construct your site let them know. They will make your dreams come to life on the web. The staff at a top notch web design Melbourne company are well trained in all web design and development languages, thus nothing will be too difficult for them to accomplish.

Another benefit to having your site built by a Web design Melbourne company is that your website will also be SEO friendly. Part of a good SEO campaign is to have your site designed in such a way that the search engines will be able to easily read it. This means that your site will have a properly designed sitemap, pages that are written in clean HTML, metatags, keywords in anchor text and headings, keywords in bolded text and keywords in the URL as well as the links. When your site is designed in this fashion, the rest of the SEO campaign will be a cinch. All you will need to do in order to obtain outstanding SEO results is focus on building your backlinks and come up with a strong off site SEO strategy. Then, you will be able to expect your profits to soar.

When you have a professional web design Melbourne company build your website for you, you will have the peace of mind knowing that your site is done right. You can also count on your site being search engine friendly, enabling it to be properly optimized for SEO campaigns. Your well-done, professionally designed, attractive website will be transformed into a thriving cash cow, as customers will come and want to remain your customer for life. They will refer others to you also, allowing your business to grow substantially.

Html5 – Not Designed For Business Applications

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.