Accessibility
Recently I wrote about my dismay over a local government’s website that is inaccessible for anyone with vision problems, and any government agency or institution that provides information to the public regarding services, etc. needs to consider accessibility in the design and coding of the website.
They specifically need to review the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) website regulations .
A few tools and resources include:
- TAW
- http://websitetips.com/accessibility/tools/
- SS Bart Group
- Color Blindness
- Sitepoint, Section 508 and Web Accessibility
If a government agency or institution that I previously mentioned think …
Splash Pages – Why Not?
I have never cared for splash pages. They are wasted web real estate. Nice door…who cares? Well I just read in the recent issue of HOW magazine (print version) that sites with a splash page have an immediate abandonment rate of 25%.
That is 25% of lost customers or clients.…
When to Fire Your Graphic Designer
Where I use to work a handful of local graphic designers were used primarily for print work. Well we sent off one print job to a local sign printer according to the specifications he requires. Not a problem. Right?! Well his “graphic designer” couldn’t work with the .eps file we sent (fonts were converted to outlines, etc. which is standard for sending a job to a printer). So he decided to change all of the artwork to “fit” him….it’s time for the print company to fire that guy’s ass. We …
The State of the “Web Design”
I subscribe to various industry newsletters, and I have to agree whole heartedly.
The crux of his disillusionment is that web developers’ “highly trained skills have been commoditized by market ignorance.”That is, clients don’t understand the web, so they fail to understand what they need, and don’t have the knowledge or the ability to identify what they need. The client also lacks the ability to differentiate the “right” solution or developer from a poor one.
As a result, clients often end up with a poor solution to their problem, because …
Importance of Clean Code
I know that many do not believe that clean code is all that important. I do though. An example is a shopping cart that I had to fix last week. It was written by an off-shore firm (and there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself). The problem was that the top include file (a server side include) had so much junk in it that the cart would not work in Firefox at all. As soon as the junk was cleaned out and what was left the cart functioned …
Web Standards
If you already have a website has it been done to the web standards and guidelines (HTML, CSS, XHTML or XML, 508)? Is it viewable, no make that usable, across all of the different browsers?
Web sites that are done according to the web standards and guidelines load quickly. Well they should load quickly. However, if the page involves several large graphics or there are server issues that can affect load time.
Do you know how well is your website coded ? Do you know what it looks like across …
Outdated: Yes, it is!
“Best viewed using…”
Well Internet Explorer is not the only browser. It currently does have a larger market share, but if a web designer cannot design for other browsers (see list below) then they aren’t very good at all or lazy or worst of all uninformed.
Browsers:
- Firefox (PC and Mac)
- Mozilla
- Netscape
- Opera
- Safari (Mac)
…
What’s In : What’s Out
What’s Out
Font tags, complicated nested tables, marquees, blinky things.
Okay, what is it with website designers still using <font></font> tags???
A friend that is also a web designer/developer is in the process of updating a website. On one page alone there were over 626 font tags. Aaaccckkk!
Using any uncessary code aka bloated code causes search engine spiders to slow down while roaming a site, adds weight to the page, and let’s not talk about how long it would take just to update all of them.
What’s In
CSS!!! …
Awards???
There is a local company that is promoting themselves as award winning. Well the award they won they won by default because no other company submitted their business to it for consideration. And I hate to say it but there are several typos and grammatical errors on their website.
Now I and my former employer have won legitimate awards for our work.…
Selecting a Hosting Company
Do not select a host until you have discussed your website with web designer. My personal recommendation is to stay away from Yahoo, MSN or similar hosts. Many have proprietary features and if you need to add something you can’t or you need to hire someone to implement it (and generally someone that can work with the later charge quite a bit of money).
A good to excellent host is:
Flexible and makes it easy to manage the account information
Numerous features
Install software applications (shopping cart, blog, CMS)
Setup …
