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Archive for the ‘Webmaster/Design’

Learn About HTML 5

March 09, 2010 By: lilybird Category: Webmaster/Design

HTML 5 – Coming To Browser Near You?
Yes, HTML 5 is on its way!

Most of the hardcore web community already knows that there is a new standard coming our way. This new programming language and yes I think I can get away with calling it that now that they have added some true commands, not just tags anymore, is HMTL 5. Web standards and usability is ever evolving system and the standards we use to create web pages is getting ready to take a huge leap forward. HTML 5 will be the newest version of the popular Hyper Text Markup Language for web site developers to take advantage of in there web development arsenal. The whole package is still being put together and there are many new features, capabilities and extendability options being considered and added.

Want to talk to other web masters about the coming changes? Join The Webmaster Discussion Here.

HTML 5 will make use of some familiar XML standards to extend it’s usability and functionality. It looks like there may be some carry over from some other popular web programming languages like Java and PHP as well. HTML 5 may prove to be a very versatile programming language for web developers and webmasters.

This may actually become the web developers language of choice in the near future, at least that is what the pros at Google are saying. Google is so exited about the new features that HTML 5 will be bringing to the table that they have made public that they are no longer going to put development hours into there own Google Gears API, but rather start developing on the new HTML 5 platform instead!

If you want to learn more about the new standards that HTML 5 will be coming soon, we suggest the following resource, as they have been a leader in web standards and are the most trusted source out there as far as we are concerned.

W3 – HTML 5 Specification

We are obviously very exited about what these new changes are going to bring to the Internet in the following months and years and hope that you are too. We will keep this page updated with more news on HTML 5 as we receive it.

HTML 5 For Vimeo and Youtube!

Will it work cross browser?
The videos will work natively in Safari and Chrome (well, YouTube would certainly have to, wouldn’t it?). They’ll also work in IE if you have ChromeFrame installed (which we all know is cheating). If you’re using a browser that doesn’t support HTML5 video it will default back to the Flash method they currently employ.

Both YouTube and Vimeo use the H.264 codec to encode the videos — and that’s where things start to get complicated.

Since no official codec is defined in the spec because browser manufacturers have chosen to use different codecs to render HTML5 video. Opera and Mozilla use the Ogg Theora codec (more on that later), while Apple and Google use H.264. Who knows which side of the fence Microsoft will come down on, but I feel duty bound to mention that the licensors of the H.264 codec include both Microsoft and Apple.

There’s one major problem here: Ogg Theora, the open source video codec supported by both Firefox and Opera, is not supported on either site. It’s a shame these browsers aren’t supported, especially since Firefox 3.6 was released last week and announced support for full-screen video in its native video player.
Why use Ogg?

As previously stated, Ogg is an open source codec, meaning it’s free to use and implement. By contrast, support for native H.264 decoding in a browser costs approximately $5 million per year. (See summary of AVC/H.264 license terms [PDF].) It also seems that people creating H.264 content will be liable for royalties starting in 2011.

Far be it from me to get into the ins and outs of the debate over which codec to use, but it seems that open source would be the better way to go. Silivia Pfeiffer (a contractor for Mozilla) claims that serving as Ogg Theora will reach more people than serving as H264.

Google, on the other hand, which owns YouTube has said that Theora is not a good enough codec, claiming “If ">" />This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

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DNS Propagation Check

March 03, 2010 By: lilybird Category: Webmaster/Design

DNS propagation is one of those things that anybody who has anything to do with hosting, domains, email servers, or other services that need to be accessed online will go through at some point in time.

When you modify your to your domains DNS zones there is a delay between when you make the change and when they become active around the globe, this process is known as DNS Propagation and takes varying amounts of time. Waiting for propagation to occur can often be time consuming and can incur loss of email when incorrect DNS changes are made that are not noticed early or when changes are made but are sent to users before they should be.

Due to this sometimes long time frame for DNS changes to fully propagate it can be quite beneficial to be able to check DNS propagation on a bunch of random servers that are located all over the world.

By using whatsmydns.net, users are able to instantly check DNS propagation on a range of different servers located around the globe, these servers are located in the US, UK, China, Russia, New Zealand and Australia among others.

Having the ability to run a DNS Check on propagation has many benefits. One of the biggest advantages is that if you have made changes to your DNS hostnames settings that are incorrect, you will have the chance to check these settings on other servers so that you have the chance to catch and fix the problem before they becomes more widespread and affects more users around the world.

Another great benefit of DNS checking is that you can specify when events happen more precisely. For for example advertising your new domain when you know that it can be accessed by everyone, or by activating your website over to use a new server once propagation has occurred – there’s nothing worse than launching a new advertising campaign or switching server configurations only to have half of the world not able to access your website, or losing important emails.

whatsmydns.net allows users to check a range of different record types which is useful for when adding additional services to your domain name such as email or reverse lookups. Currently supported records are A, CNAME, MX, AAAA, NS, PTR and TXT.

The most important thing about whatsmydns.net is that it’s entirely free to use, this means that anybody can use the tool whether they’re just starting their first website or if they’re a large company who needs to check many DNS records daily.

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Effective Design Procedures

February 23, 2010 By: lilybird Category: Webmaster/Design

Your own site is where your business lives — it is just like the headquarter of an offline business. Therefore, it is very important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the most number of site visitors and also sells to as much people as you possibly can.

You should definitely have clear directions on the navigation of your blog. The navigation menu needs to be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website with no confusion.

Cut down the number of pictures in your web site. They will make your blog load very slowly and usually they are very not needed. Any time you think that any graphic is crucial on your blog, always optimize them utilizing image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep the textual content paragraphs at a reasonable size. In case your paragraph is simply too big, you need to break it into seperate paragraphs to ensure that the text blocks won’t be too large. This will be significant just because a block of textual content that’s too large will certainly prevent website visitors from reading your content.

Make certain your blog complies to world wide web standards at www.w3.org and then be sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your blog views great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you are going to lose out on numerous prospective site visitors.

Stay away from scripting languages on your site unless it’s absolutely required. Make use of scripting languages to handle or manipulate information, not to create visual effects on your web site. Heavy scripts will probably slow down the loading time of your web-site and even crash a few browsers. Furthermore, scripts will not be supported across all browsers, so some site visitors may well miss critical information as a result of that.

Use CSS to style your page content due to the fact they save a lot of work by styling all elements on your web site in a single go.

Wordpress is the most popular and effective platform to use when creating your blog. Create unique wordpress themes in minutes without having to meddle with any form of coding by using this WP Theme Creator software.

Say Goodbye To Expensive Wordpress Themes or Designers!

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How to create your own tech site part 1

December 15, 2009 By: bretthexum Category: Webmaster/Design

So you want to create your own technology website just like this one huh? How do you get started? I’ll start the series with a quick article on how I got this site where it is. First off, this blog runs off Wordpress. It’s easily downloaded and installed off wordpress.org if you have your own hosting, or you can host it at the wordpress site at wordpress.com. I’d recommend getting your own hosting if possible. It makes the website look more professional with your own domain name. I host my sites at hostgator, which is very reliable. I actually only pay $10 per month and have 9 websites running off one account! Pretty good deal!!

After you get your site up and wordpress installed, you’ll need plugins and themes for wordpress. We’ll get into more detail with this later on – but the next step is getting content! I found a site where you can get a bunch of website (or tech) content. I’d check this site out here — Technology Articles.

More to come in the coming days. Enjoy!

Easy Tips For Designing A Highly Effective Website

November 26, 2009 By: lilybird Category: Webmaster/Design

When it comes to creating an attractive website, a less is more strategy may prove more effective than the over-the-top design approach. So be careful not to waste valuable time and resources on fancy graphics, clever designs, or cool music that may ultimately prove ineffective. Some of these “extra touches” can actually be distracting and even turn-off visitors.

When designing a website, keep in mind what people really want from a website. What is that you ask? In a word: information. If people are coming to a particular site for information building a home business, then all the fancy design and cool graphics in the world won’t placate them if they don’t find what they are looking for. Initially they may think, “Wow what a cool looking site!” but that will soon turn to frustration if the site lacks quality content.

Choosing a background color may seem like a simple enough thing to do but careful consideration should be taken when choosing a website background. Your industry is the primary consideration when coming up with a background color. For instance, if you are in the legal business a more subtle background with muted blues, grays, and blacks would probably work best. On the other hand, if you own a salon then bolder colors might be in order. But remember the background should not distract visitors from what it is they are looking for (pricing, services offered, hours of operation, etc).

Links are a very important component in creating a functional website. Links help your visitors get to the information they need so they should always be easy to find and readable. The information that a visitor would consider most important should be linked to on the home page. If you are selling a product or service, a link to a price list is a must since most visitors interested in buying a product would want to know how much that product costs. Other important links that should be readily available might include Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Company Info or Background, and Contact Information.

Frequent updating and tweaking of your website should also be done. Any broken links should be fixed immediately or removed. There is nothing worse than searching for information online only to link to a website that has not been updated in months or even years. It amazes me how many stale websites can still be found on the first page of Google (what a waste!). Don’t let this happen to you! Make sure all information and links on your site are fresh and current. All changes in your business should be reflected on your website.

Having an effective, functional, attractive website is not as tough as you might think. Just keep the aforementioned tips in mind and you should be well on your way to having a website that is the envy of your competitors.

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Using Starter Kits With The ASP.NET Web Development Environment

November 24, 2009 By: lilybird Category: Webmaster/Design

The fundamentals of The ASP.NET environment have the reputation of being quite easy and there are a number of additional ways of making a smooth start. There are many starter kits available for ASP dot NET Web Development. These kits are great if you want to get your web site up and running quickly and not having to worry about some basics that can easily be changed and customized. The kits provide you beginning products that have solid code which can be changed to create the web page you want.

There are five different types of starter kits that can be used; the time tracker, portal, commerce, reports and community kits. These kits contain codes that can be reused again and again to create completely new web sites. All the code can be easily customized to fit your needs.

While the ASP. NET has greatly simplified web development there are still some parts that will take some time and effort. These areas include developing reusable and solid code, a thorough testing system and a good design for the application. Many times individuals will have already accomplished what you are trying to so. So why not build upon their work instead of redoing everything over and over again.

You can easily gain access of these starter kits by downloading them from the Microsoft website. The available kits provide a community website, sample reports, portal site and time tracking applications. The source code is complete and you can chose what type of data storage you want to use as well as which version of the kit you want, the Basic, C# or J#.

The commerce starter kit creates an e-store for a fictitious company. It includes a shopping cart, forms authentication, caching and a three tier architecture form. There is also a B2B component and the whole kit is excellent if you are learning ASP. NET development. The portal kit creates a portal application for your new fictitious store.

You can use the portal kit with the commerce kit as the portal kit will provide you with a portal application for your new store.

Learn all about Web development using ASP.NET or ASP.NET training in London or anywhere in the UK?