Don Lewis Designs

Joomla is an interesting and popular content management system. It is used to create websites and various other online applications with the combination of modules. You may begin thinking that this system seems to be difficult and complex but the reality is that Joomla has been designed in a very simple way and thus the working of this system is also simple.

Working with Joomla doesn’t need any special knowledge or skill. Following the given instructions, you can easily begin working on Joomla. Even if you have minimum web designing experience, using the several interesting modules of Joomla, you can build awesome websites and these modules can be used to publish content online.

Joomla is full of well-designed extensions which can be used to make website building an interesting and easy process. These extensions help in not only building websites but it also makes sure that other online applications can be built efficiently. Joomla is indeed a powerful system, which can be used for great applications.

The most interesting thing about Joomla is that it is an open source. Thus anyone can become a part of it. In fact the development of Joomla has mostly been caused by the many website creators. These website creators keep adding many helpful extensions to this system. These extensions are very useful and people can easily download these extensions for their use.

There are hundreds of different extensions for various applications. All of these applications are not free. Some website creator may charge a certain amount of fees as downloading charges.

As compared to several other content management systems, Joomla seems to be the best since it is extremely easy to use it. As already mentioned, one doesn’t need exceptional skills to use it. All you need to do is follow the instructions appropriately and you would soon begin designing websites.

You can get instant topic-specific joomla websites, joomla extensions, joomla templates, joomla video tutorials all at ReadyMadeJoomla.



By: bandeep

About the Author:

Website content

Flash is the dominant format for vector graphics and animation on the Web, and the best tool for creating them is Macromedia Flash. The first version of Flash, called FutureSplash back in those days, wasn’t much more than a strange little drawing package. With revision after revision, Flash has evolved into an animation package with extensive scripting capabilities – the closest thing the Web has to a fully featured multimedia-authoring tool.

The way this has been achieved is by keeping things small and simple. Although it’s predominantly a vector animation package, you can incorporate other media including sound and bitmaps in Flash files. They all benefit from sticking to the Web’s cardinal rule – compress everything.

Animated Antics

We’ll be looking more closely at the way Flash handles MP3 files, JPEGs and even video clips in future articles. For now, we’re going to concentrate on how Flash makes things move. Flash combines vector drawing capabilities with a Timeline that enables you to make changes to these drawings over a period of frames. When played back in sequence, this forms animation.

Flash has two ways of handling animation. The first method, familiar to ‘traditional’ animators, is ‘frame-by-frame’ animation. In a normal film or video, the camera takes a still photograph of a scene 25 or 30 times a second. When that sequence of still pictures is played back to us at the right speed, our crazy brains interpret it as motion. The same thing happens with frame-by-frame animation, except that each ‘picture’ is a drawing.

In Flash you can choose to import or draw pictures one Keyframe at a time and create animation that way. Some designers have taken advantage of this ability alongside Flash’s layer functions to create full cartoons of broadcast quality. The resulting files can be very large, though, and you need a lot of processing power.

We’re the Tweenies

The alternative method, and the most popular for creating animation on the Web, is known as ‘tweening’. With this technique you start with an image and place it at a start point on the screen, then define an end point on the screen where the image appears changed. Instead of having a specific frame for each stage of animation, Flash works out the animation Frames between the start point and end point automatically. These starting and ending points are called Keyframes because they represent key points in the sequence, and the name ‘tweening’ is a shortened version of ‘in-betweening’, because that’s what the computer does, working out the frames in-between.

Flash supports a number of different kinds of transition in tweened animations. From the start to the end point, an animated element might change its position on screen, its color, size, rotation, transparency setting and skew. These are designated as ‘motion tweens’, and can be constrained to stick to a certain path as they travel from frame ‘a’ to frame ‘b’.

In future articles we’ll be looking at more complex transitions.



By: Sandra Prior

About the Author:

Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress

Joomla is a system, which has been designed to make building websites and other online applications simpler for the user. It surely performs those functions and much more. It is difficult to accept it but it is actually possible that a system can be so helpful for our daily life. People quickly assume that this system will be full of complex instructions and functions. But you are in for a complete surprise.

Joomla is a wonderful creation, which had been designed in a simple way. You may think that you will have a lot of trouble working with Joomla but the reality is that this system will work for you completely and efficiently. Working with Joomla is not at all difficult. Nor do you need any special skills or knowledge to operate it. All you need to do is follow the simple instructions.

The features of Joomla can perform several great things but they are not difficult to understand. You just need to have complete information on the working of the system. Remember any lack of information can lead to several problems. So make sure that you follow all the instructions appropriately.

You can also check out various websites, which offer tips on how to use Joomla. They will guide you perfectly and you will soon be on your way to building those impressive websites. Joomla has become a must have in this competitive world. You need to be equipped with the very best and Joomla is truly the best.

Using the wonderful functions of Joomla and also its even more wonderful extensions, you can easily begin amazing and surprising your friends and family by designing awesome websites. Of course you need to be careful while using Joomla. It is simple to install and use it but it is as important to follow its rules to get best results.

You can get instant topic-specific joomla websites, joomla extensions, joomla templates, joomla video tutorials all at ReadyMadeJoomla.



By: bandeep

About the Author:

web design news

In the first part of our interview with Deirdre Zahl, Sparxoo’s Senior Designer, we outlined the basics of web design. We discussed the functionality of a web site, while touching upon the importance of aesthetic appeal. We also discussed the role of web designers in meeting the digital needs of customers and businesses.

In this second part of the interview, we will do a deep dive on splash pages, the future of advertising and the next frontier of design.



Several years ago, there was a lot of buzz about splash pages. What happened?

There was a magical element about the internet and splash pages. When the internet was in its infancy, there was a lot of mystery and expanding of boundaries. In many ways, splash pages encapsulated that magic. In today’s digital world, that magic is nearly gone as internet users want information faster and faster.

While it used to be “blow people away” with your amazing website, now it’s more “offer them a reason to return” with news on your company, personalized features, and areas they can really interact with. When each second is valued, splash pages are a huge barrier that can impede browsing. More and more, people are looking for information when they browse. In a age where information is everywhere, splash pages can deter return usage.

Advertising works a lot like splash pages. It’s about distracting users from their browsing. So how do you incorporate advertising in design?

Advertising is very much a double-edged sword. It is functional (webmasters need revenue), yet many users find excessive advertising obtrusive and annoying. There is also a lot less space and time to advertise. As information is one of the key drivers of internet browsing, it’s increasingly difficult for advertisers to wedge themselves into the page space.

What are the alternatives?

It’s about not being obtrusive. No one likes to be bombarded with advertising. So it’s helpful to be more subtle, such as cross-promotions with other brands or interacting with audiences. Lucky magazine had a very successful campaign called “Bag-a-day Giveaway” where they gave away a luxury handbag each day for a month. Every day you’d get an email and have to go play an interactive game for your chance to win the bag. If you “shared” the game with your friends you got another chance to play that day. It was very clever, and excellent exposure for both the brands involved and the magazine, plus it created a very valuable email database.

What is the new frontier for web designers?

Mobile will definitely play a large role. More and more people are relying on their mobile devices to find information. Smart phones are more popular than ever and with every generation of phone, graphics are getting better. There is an increasing need to optimize the mobile browser . There is even less space on mobile devices, necessitating an even greater need for tailored design layouts. In that same vein, there is also a need for mobile app design. Consider the eBay application. The site is so…

To read more about the web and advertising, go to Sparxoo, a digital marketing, branding and business development blog.



By: Sparxoo

About the Author:

web design news

 

Google Inc is set to introduce on Tuesday a new Web browser designed to more other complex Web programs or quickly handle video-rich, affectation challenge to browsers designed originally to handle graphics and text.

Google officials confirmed news of long-rumored plans to offer Blogoscoped.com its entitled Google Chrome, own Web browsing software in a company blog post after it incorrectly mailed details of the plan to a Google-watching blog.

They said the new web browser introducing a public trail for the Microsoft windows users. If you want to see more details about the browser visit tinyurl.com

The Internet search leader is also working on versions for Apple Macintosh users and for Linux devices, it said.

The launch of Chrome coincides with the recent introduction by arch-rival Microsoft of its Internet Explorer 8 last month. Internet Explorer holds roughly three-quarters of the browser market, followed by Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple Inc’s Safari browsers.

Google said its engineers have borrowed from a variety of other open-source projects, including Apple’s WebKit and the Mozilla Firefox open-source browser. As a result, Google plans to make all of Chrome software code open to other developers to enhance and expand, the company said.

“We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser,” Google Vice President of Product Management Sindar Pichai and Engineering Director Linus Upson said in a jointly authored blog post.

BUILT FOR SPEED

They said Google Chrome promises to load pages faster and more securely, but it also includes a new engine for loading interactive JavaScript code, dubbed V8, that is designed to run the next generation of not-yet-invented Web applications.

“What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build,” Pichai and Upson wrote.

A Google spokesman declined to comment beyond the blog post.

Microsoft said the recently upgraded version 8 of Internet Explorer offered many new privacy and user control features.

“The browser landscape is highly competitive,” Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, said in a statement.

“People will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, (it) puts them in control of their personal data online,” Hachamovitch said.

John Lilly, chief executive of Mozilla Corp, the organization behind the Firefox browser, said Google, which has been his non-profit organization’s biggest financial backer for several years, had recently renewed its support through 2011.

Mozilla recently introduced its own upgraded browser, Firefox 3, and has collaborated with Google on a variety of technical issues, including a system for reporting software crashes and to make software browsers more secure.

He said in a blog post that Mozilla and Google would continue to collaborate where it made sense for both organizations, but that Mozilla would also focus on its main mission of keeping the Web open and participatory by fostering its own commmunity-developed browser and other projects.

“With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc — there’s been competition for a while now, and this increases that,” Lilly wrote in commenting on news of Google Chrome.

GOING ‘INCOGNITO’

Google confirmed that it had prematurely mailed a copy of a promotional comic book detailing plans for Chrome to a blogger. Blogoscope’s writer, Philipp Lenssen, scanned and published the 38-page comic here

Chrome organizes information into tabbed pages. Web programs can be launched in their own dedicated windows. It also offers a variety of features to make the browser more stable and secure, according to the comic book guide.

Among Chrome’s features is a special privacy mode that lets users create an “incognito” window where “nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” This is a read-only feature with access to one’s bookmarks of favorite sites.



By: robertkewis

About the Author:

web design news

Why do you think Joomla is so widely accepted in the online industry today? There are many reasons to it. Let’s see some of the advantages a Joomla designing can offer a web master.

· It’s FREE: This is one of the biggest advantages. Joomla is a free open source open source content management system. It is available to anyone under the GPL license. Why would anybody outsource their website programming to a professional and spend a huge amount when you can do it yourself in a very professional manner?

· Large number of modules: Any CMS system is becomes competent if it is supported by modules to enhance their inbuilt capacity. Joomla has more than 2000 modules currently showing online.

· Available in many languages: Joomla is one of the few CMS which is multi-linguistic. You can design your website with different languages using Joomla.

· Maintenance: It can be bit of a task when it comes to managing a website. Even tech savvy professional find it difficult to maintain a website. Let alone a lay man. But websites designed by Joomla are not at all difficult to maintain as it is quite user friendly.

· Updating: Joomla is a self-updating application. You do not have to be on a look out for individuals or software to keep updating Joomla. A person with good knowledge of Joomla can look into updating the application on their own.

These are some of the advantages of a basic Joomla application. In case of advanced Joomla applications, one can find even more features which make a Joomla powered website more fun to work with. Since Joomla offers so many valuable advantages, people all over the world have well accepted it to create small time websites to large complex corporate websites or portals and community portals for gaming, blogging and profiles.

You can get instant topic-specific joomla websites, joomla extensions, joomla templates, joomla video tutorials all at ReadyMadeJoomla.



By: bandeep

About the Author:

Kansieo.com

Web Designing for Clients — Ask this questions first !

If you are a web designer and have just landed that plum web designing contract, to design an attractive website for a client, than you would have already started preparing yourself to deliver on the deal, but before you start web designing, ask the following questions to your client.

Asking these questions and getting proper answers for them will help you immensely as a web designer in understanding the client, his business and his sensibilities. Also it will help you a lot in selecting the suitable structure and colors for your web designing contract. It will give you a precise understanding of what needs to be done. You can either ask this questions to the client, face to face or you can send the questions to client and receive the answers by email. While at first it may seem a bit odd to ask questions regarding web designing, but it definetely helps in the long run.

1. Business

What business is the client in, and what type of website will suplement the clients business.

2. Purpose

The client already has a business, and probably it is running well right now, without a web design. Than what is the purpose of having a website.

3. Business Growth

How does the client expect the website to help them achieve growth in business. What message is the website supposed to give?

4. Target Audience

Who is the target audience of the clients website. Is it a B2B or a B2C website. What is the age group of the audience. What is geographical location of the audience.

5. Primary Goal

What is the primary goal of a website? Is it an information site, revenue generating website, ecommerce website or inquiry generating website?

6. Uniqueness

What is the USP of the client that the web design will offer to potential customers.

7. Web Knowledge

What is the depth of the clients knowledge of internet and world wide web. The answer to this question will be an indicator to the understanding the client possess about the overall working and web designing.

8. Web Hosting & Domain

Does the client need web hosting and domain registration services or has it been already subscribed and registered. If the domain is already registered, than are the registrant details correct with the registry.

9. Final Approval

After the website design is complete who will provide the final approval on the web design contract? If it is someone else than people on the team, than make sure that he understands the web designning concepts well and is kept upto date of the web designing progress.

10. Data Format

The data which is to be provided by the client is it in electronic format or does the web designer need to type all the content. If it is in electronic format than does the designer need to handle file conversions

11. Design or Resdesign

Has the website got to be designed from a scratch or is it to be modified or just redesigned. If it is to be modified, than what additions is the clinet looking to make to the existing web design.

12. Client Preferences

What are the client preferences regarding the look and feel of the website. If possible, the web designer should show a few samples to clients and give them references of the previous websites designed by the web designer.

13. Color Preferences

Does the client like any particular color? The color to be used on the website is to be matched with the colors of the existing stationery or marketing material.

14. Design Preferences

Is flash to be used ? or only HTML website will suffice.

15. Credit Link

Can the web designer provide a link to his website crediting that the client website is designed by him.

16. Maintenance

Who is going to care of maintaining the website, the client will do it in house or the web designer has to do it. Whoever takes the charge of maintaining the website should make sure that the conetnt on the website is relevant, good and fresh. Do remember to update the website atleast once in a week.

That should be all. If you ask the above 16 questions to your web designing client before starting to design a website, and get all your answers you will definetely design a fabolous website.

Web Design Temple, is a web designing company which provides web designing and search engine optimization services.



By: Akash Mehra

About the Author:

Create a video blog

As the new year (2010) aproaches and during the break many people are taking time to reflect, and plan.

2009 was a great year on the internet. The global economy had a direct effect on business and saw many start-up e-businesses.

As a result of the “great global economy crash” many people found their way to the internet and decided to use it as a way to communicate their business not only using the social network sites – Facebook and Twitter et al. but with their own dedicated web site.

This is good news but has problems. The more web sites out there the more competition every web site faces.  Therefore it is becoming more important to have a web site that people not only visit but is friendly.

Sounds obvious, but it is very easy to design a web site that annoys the people who visit it and much harder to create a site the same people like, love and will keep coming back to.

Fortunately, the most common website mistakes are very easy to prevent or fix.

The first and most important aspect of any web site design is to make sure it has something to offer visitors.

Too many people start with the design rather than with the content – remember this, a web page exists to provide something that’s useful or interesting to visitors. If your site doesn’t do/have that, then it has a big problem from the outset and you should rethink the project until you can offer something useful or of interest.

Having got over that hurdle you now have a site/site concept that is of interest to people – you are now in with a chance – so try not to annoy those valuable people further.

The next big thing – and I mean a really big thing – is one of understanding differences.  The web is a great leveler.  In theory a small company can compete with a big multi-national one but ………..can they really?

Most people have heard of the BBC, Shell, New York Times, Amazon, Exxon etc. they are familiar brand names, your business may be familiar in your locality but probably not on the web and with over 20 million websites, like me you are a small fish in a very big pond.

This means there are different design rules for us as small businesses.  We really need to be more content not design focused.  What a big business can get away with – and be expected to have in their design – is totally different to us small businesses.

The golden rule is content, content, content.

Which would you prefer:

To pay $1000 (or more – we heard of a small (emphasis small) business that paid $9000 for a site) for a great looking website that only gets a few visitors a day – or Pay $500-$1000 for a good looking but functional website that attracts 100 plus visitors a day.

I won’t answer for you but I suspect that most people would go for option no.2

Virtually everybody who designs websites (and those who run them) forget one thing.

The internet is the only media in the world where what is actually designed may not be what someone sees.

For varying reasons people change settings in their browsers – e.g. someone with poor eyesight that doesn’t use a screen reader may set their browser to show large text by default.  People can also set a default font, choose not to display images or multi-media etc.

We designed a site for one client, the client was really happy with it, it looked good (and incidentally performed really well increasing on-line sales by over 300% in 3 months).

The site was designed setting Arial as the default font in the CSS and a normal font size i.e. 100% which depending on the browser equates to either font size 14 or 16.

During the design stage the client’s wife was always on the phone complaining that we were not using the font Arial and that the text size was too big, she sent us screen dumps from here PC which clearly showed the font of Comic Sans and about font size 20.  What she forgot to say was that she had set these aspects as the defaults in her browser.

So a cautionary tale about being over fussy with design people change setting in their browsers.

I will say this now, and no doubt will repeat it again but design your web site for the people who will actually use it – not you and most certainly not your designer/programmer.  Just because you or your designer/programmer likes something doesn’t mean the people you are trying to attract will.

As a visitor too many web sites there are many frustrating things about the way people design their sites, many mean that I just “switch off” and look elsewhere for alternative content.

I am not alone, people go to a website for its’ content not to admire “add ons” like animation (graphics & text) and sounds that load automatically. These few items make it harder to concentrate on reading the site content.  Which would you rather have? someone who is focused on your content or a person who is being distracted and leaves?

Some addons may seem cool to have – but why? The big question is do they add value to the content – or are they just your designers’ way of showing off telling the world that they can add these aspects.  Don’t forget most designers include a link back to their site and quite possibly will show your site off in their portfolio.  Why do you think designers include so much that isn’t actually needed?

Consider your user.  I tell clients everyday and I will repeat it again here – make it easy for visitors to find the content (there’s that word again) on your site..

Having got them to your site what do you do?

Minimize clicking, remember people prefer 3 or less clicks to get to the information. Make sure there is a menu on each page, if not, at least a way to navigate to the home page, back a page and forward to the next page. Now we come to the content.  A sensible page will not be less than about 400 words, if it is (less) then why does it exist? You should either be adding more content to it or combining it with another page. In addition to minimal clicks, minimize scrolling.  Along with many others I find long pages frustrating and often difficult to find the information I am looking for. Try to keep a page length – that is totally different to content length) to 2 screens.  In other words people only have to scroll once to get to the bottom of the page and very importantly make sure that the ”meat” of the content is “above the fold” – that means within the first screen before people have to start scrolling. Long content should be split – page 1, page 2 etc.  If you are using WordPress or simlar blog software then this facility should be automatically built into your blog theme (if it’s not then ask why not) Think about the use of columns in the presentation.  Wide ones make it harder to read the content and narrower ones make a page longer.  Look at the way magazines and newspapers are laid out, they use columns to keep a reader focused on particular sections.

By: Russell Parrott

About the Author:

web design news

CSS is also beneficial for Google because of the following

* Lesser file size

* Management of page configuration

* Google gets the certain content even if it is hidden

A web page that uses CSS carries a small quantity of codes. Google and other search engines prefer web pages with small file sizes. Another benefit of CSS is that you can create data that are in line with HTML standards without sacrificing the quality of the page.

Web designers can also use CSS to create attractive pages and still be in line with certain design ethics. Many designers are still hesitant to create web pages according to standards and guidelines because they feel that sticking to such may result to just plain web pages. Google on the other hand gives credit to web pages that are well composed.

There are some browsers that do not accept CSS standards and some may read it differently. To address this make CSS suited for cross-browsing and be sure that in the absence of CSS the HTML page is still up to standard.

Another function of CSS is to manage how fundamentals of a web page are being use; example would be the size of the headings that will be used for HTML page.

CSS also caters to the most popular browsers in web such as Internet Explore, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Managing your web site with CSS have the following advantage:

CSS tends to make your web pages faster

Time is of the essence in browsing a web page, CSS and HTML codes can cut the time by matching the standards of ‘XHTML Transitional’ or ‘XHTML Strict’. It is the action of downloading the page and actual posting of the page on screen.

Unlike using the tables for layout, which tends to consume more time in showing the page, CSS and right DocType can display the pages fast.

In reality, using CSS on web sites can decrease the time needed to show such images by a quarter of a second. It may be that small amount of time, but it is relevantly important to users and patrons of the site.

CSS allows faster updates

Need to add something on your site or promote new products? CSS enables the web designers to update the site in few minutes or so. Having CSS can make updating easier and faster. Such suppleness offered by CSS enables web designers to incorporate changes one day and on the next can revert it to its original state all in one file change.

CSS is a Search Engine Optimization friendly

CSS decreases HTML from the web pages and majority of it is managed by CSS therefore a search engine can locate easily the textual content of the page.

Proper XHTML such as heading tags, bold or strong tags gives the search engines key words that are valuable on the page. As such, searching for match words on the pages increases and are given utmost importance.

CSS supports Disability Discrimination Act

CSS is not only convenient for web designers, but also for people with disability that uses the web site. Using CSS enables persons with disability to navigate through the pages in their own preferences –i.e. making fonts larger or smaller- giving the user satisfactory experience’s also adheres with the UK Disability Discrimination Act for accessing web sites.

CSS enables different device browsing

Demands of Web access through mobile phones or PDAs is slowly increasing year after year. CSS allows these devices to properly display the pages content effectively and easily. And as for web designers, incorporating them in theses devices is no sweat via the CSS.

Web Design Bangalore is one of the leading companies in the field of web design and development based in Bangalore, India. Visit www.WebDesign-Bangalore.com for web design and development, search engine optimization and internet marketing services.



By: sanjay kumar

About the Author:

Kansieo.com

If you are doing online business in the Midlands there are many others selling similar products or offering the services just like yours. If you wish to succeed, you need to set yourself apart from the others. By creating a unique web design Midlands businesses can a create distinct identity that gives them the cutting edge.

Web design plays a crucial role in creating brand awareness and building a strong brand identity. Through careful planning for web design Midlands companies can effectively inform web users about their products and services and clearly communicate their marketing message to their target audiences.

During website design Midlands businesses need to be aware that the average web user spends little more than a second on the Home Page of a website. If you wish retain the web user on your web site you need to have a web design that is interesting and persuasive. So try to make your Midlands website design attractive and impressive. This should make web users stay and browse through your web pages.

By putting some thought to website design Midlands businesses retain web users and can convert visits to sales. Midlands web site design needs to be user friendly and enticing with smooth and easy navigation through web pages. Web users want to be able to access relevant information quickly and efficiently.

Optimising your website for web users is quite easy to do. You can divide the website content into paragraphs, give headings, use bold text and italicise phrases to get things noticed. Also by using proper links to direct web users will help make your website design easy for Midlands users.

By using the above techniques in web design Midlands businesses can make their websites attractive and web user friendly. By choosing great web design Midlands customers can reap the profits from more web traffic and sales conversions. A great looking website can generate sales leads for your products and bring a drastic increase in your revenue generation.

If you wish to enjoy the benefits offered by great web design Midlands businesses may want to view what Globalgraphics has to offer. Globalgraphics are an experienced and professional Midlands web design company that cater for all website design needs and budgets.

At Globalgraphics you can get custom website design services for your Midlands or west Midlands business. This web design West Midlands company is highly efficient in designing brochure websites, full e-commerce website development, logo designing, web marketing including SEO and pay per click advertising, and web hosting.

For more information, please log on to globalgraphics.co.uk.



By: Phil Deeley

About the Author:

Create a video blog