In this post I’ll go over the different eCommerce platforms I have used and will give my opinions on ease of use and management. These are simply my persoal choices for clients when they come to me wanting to sell something online. So let’s jump right in.

1. VirtueMart – I found VirtueMart to be very simple to use and maintain, plus it’s FREE. Importing and exporting products can be a problem since that’s an additional plugin which I find tiedous and that isnt very user friendly. As far as setup goes I found it easy to configure and add taxes, shipping details, payment processors. Good templates can be hard to find and alot of the better ones are for sale. There are tons of addons, plugins, etc. The only downfall is you need “Joomla” which isn’t as easy to manage, for all of you non-joomla users, Joomla is a content management system to control your website. But if you have a Joomla website already getting VirtueMart installed and working isn’t a daunting experience.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Dowload

2. Prestashop – Prestashop is an Open Source all in one eCommerce solution from the get go. Providing a very basic Content Management System built in, Newsletters, and Ajax functionality to add Products and Categories. The import and export abilities function pretty well (in the newer versions) and I was able to get categories and products added to the cart immeditely. Prestashop The only downfall to this software solution is the lack of free modules and themes, I also feel the admin interface still reminds me of osCommerce which I hate.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

4. Zen-Cart – Zen-Cart is an Open Source shopping cart system that has been around for a while now since 2003. Zen-Cart offers similar features to Prestashop however it is even more basic and the interface reminds me of osCommerce. Besides that their import/export feature is a good one and I was able to get a basic store up in minutes with minimal effort. They list a huge database of websites using Zen-Cart for every category, so it’s easy to find a site similar to what your looking to create.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

5. Drupal e-Commerce – For those of you who are not familiar with Drupal it is a Open Source Content Management System similar to Joomla in features but with a totally different interface. This is the shopping cart system I have the least experience in but it still goes down as my top 5 because of it’s versility and resources that are provided for it. Drupal has a huge community following them with a huge database of plugins and themes to follow suit. Drupal eCommerce is similar to other CMS eCommerce plugins it integates easily. I was able to setup a basic cart with categories and products in around 30-45 minutes. It’s simple to configure and easy to manage I did not test the import and export functions.

Themes: Download Themes
Download: Download

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Download it Now | View Demo

Features and Benefits
-Eliminates the need for additional software
-Easily revised with clients on-the-fly
-Clickable anchors with visible URLs
-Design process results in working HTML code

So let’s get started.
If you want to add it to your personal profile you must approve the application by visiting http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=105603572335 and click on ‘Go To Application’ it will require you to login and allow the application to be added. If you want to place it on your fan page click in the top left menu where is says ‘Add To My Page’ then add it to your fan page from the popup box.

Once you approved it then it will bring you to a screen like so:

On this screen we see our details and a bunch of different boxes. The only fields you need to pay attention to are ‘Background’,'Font Color’,'Background Color’,'Stylesheet’, and ‘Content Box’.

Now to customize your page you need to first design a cool custom background. The size is 760px W x 775px H once you have your background design go ahead and upload it. My example background is below:

Ok so we have our background and it’s uploaded lets test it out. The first thing you need to do is edit the application settings to show the tab on your profile or fan page. This is done very easily two ways depending on how your setting it up. Goto ‘Applications->Edit Applications’ from your facebook toolbar if your placing it on your profile or if you are using it on a fan page you will need to click ‘Edit Page’ from your fan site then scroll down to find My Fan Site and click on ‘Application Settings’. Once clicked it will popup a box which will allow you to add the tab to your page. It should look something like below:

I must also mention this page above is also where you will ‘Edit’ the Fan Site as well. Now that we have it approved a tab on your page should appear which says ‘Fan Site’ and the page should load your custom background cool!. Now comes the fun part…More Customization!

So as I mentioned before the Stylesheet box and Content Box being important, are next.

Make sure you DO NOT add <style></style> to the Stylesheet Box it will automatically add them. Let’s start with some simple code place this in your ‘Stylesheet’ Box:

1

#content-box{position:absolute;width:200px;margin-top:343px;margin-left:66px;}

This code above will position our ‘content-box’ 343 pixels from the top of our uploaded design and 66 pixels from the left of it. So if you have certain areas you want to feature text you can do so by positioning them around your background design.

Make sure your css is all one line of code for optimum performance of your fan site. Sometimes I notices issues with link breaks. Now let’s add our content. In the ‘Content Box’ we add the following code:

1

<div id="content-box"><h1>Test Title</h1><p>Testing some content</p></div>

Then click ‘Save Settings’ or ‘Create Fan Site’ if you just added the application. Your settings will be saved and your fan page will be customized with some text positioned over your design. This is however very basic usage of this application and as we grow it into something even more special this tutorial should get you on the right track.

Check out our Facebook Site and Become a Fan: http://www.facebook.com/benzingtech

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However, SWFAddress is really only as good as your implementation of it. A sloppy implementation makes it more of a liability than a benefit. So let’s show you the right way to get it working.

SWFAddress can be quickly added to a Website that uses SWFObject only by inserting the JavaScript files into your header section like this:

<script src="swfobject/swfobject.js" type="text/javascript"><!--mce:0--></script>
<script src="swfaddress/swfaddress.js" type="text/javascript"><!--mce:1--></script>

Now the internal implementation of SWFAddress is somewhat simple and straight forward. Once a Flash movie containing the library is embedded in an HTML page, it automatically initializes itself and provides the developer with notification of state changes that need to be implemented. This might not be the easiest task for everybody, but SWFAddress streamlines the process by fully supporting testing workflow inside the Flash Program and Standalone Player. URL changes can be invoked from mouse-click events, frame actions, or HTML links.

Here is sample code that can be added to a MovieClip button:

this.onRelease = function () {
 
      SWFAddress.setValue("/portfolio");
}

For links in HTML-formatted TextFields, the following approach should be used:

<a href="asfunction:SWFAddress.setValue,/portfolio/">Go to Portfolio</a>

SWFAddress has a single onChange event where the navigation logic needs to be coded. The complexity may vary depending on the Website, but if it’s planned from the beginning, it may improve maintainability by centralizing all the controller actions.

Here is an example of a running logic for the onChange event:

SWFAddress.onChange = function () {
 
      var navigation = new Object();
      navigation.home = {frame: 1, title: "Welcome"};
      navigation.about = {frame: 10, title: "About Us"};
      navigation.contact = {frame: 20, title: "Contact Us"};
 
      var value = SWFAddress.getValue();
 
      website_mc.gotoAndStop(navigation[value].frame);
 
      SWFAddress.setTitle(navigation[value].title);
}

The setTitle method allows you to add unique titles to every section of the Website and they will appear in the browser’s titlebar. It should be used inside the onChange event in order to correctly display the initial title value when the page loads.

With SEO in mind SWFaddress covers this flawlessly. It enables the generation of real links that expose the appropriate content to search engines. The magic happens with some interesting URL rewriting and some trivial server-side code. The following is an example how it works for a Website located at http://www.domain.com that contains a portfolio section.

SWFAddress uses http://www.domain.com/#/portfolio/. The URL that can get indexed is http://www.domain.com/portfolio/ and therefore it should exist as a link in the HTML code of the page. When someone visits the indexed address, the rewriting functionality makes a redirect to the URL that SWFAddress expects. Everything happens on the server side so no user interaction is required.

The situation is different when the same link is followed by a search engine bot (spider). In this case the address is rewritten without any redirection to http://www.domain.com/?swfaddress=/portfolio/. The page that handles all this should use a server-side technology in order to generate the appropriate content depending on the “swfaddress” parameter value.

Page requests containing GET parameters (?var=something) such as http://www.domain.com/#/portfolio/?desc=true&year=2001 are handled similarly. The search engines will index http://www.domain.com/portfolio/?desc=true&year=2001 and the script will expect http://www.domain.com/?swfaddress=/portfolio/&desc=true&year=2001.

The result is a fully indexed Flash Website with deep linking support. This works great and the result is even better. Now we can all have search engine friendly Flash sites. YAY!

While this approach improves the usability of Flash content over the Web, it also requires an additional effort, such as some manual work for static html websites and some smart code for dynamic ones. The best case will be a Flash Content Management System that automates the whole process.

SWFaddress promises to continue adding interesting functionality like AJAX support, transparent user tracking with Google Analytics, and enhanced event handling. It should definitely be considered for your next Flash project.

Download SWFaddress: HERE
View an Example Site: HERE

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1. Quantcast

Quantcast is one of the 3 major websites dedicated to website traffic and audience. Quantcast provides publishers, marketers and agencies unmatched capabilities to measure, organize, discover and transact based on directly-measured traffic and inferred audience data.

2. Alexa

Alexa is one of the first ranking websites with advanced data regarding target population, country rank and others. The problem with these statistics is that they are provided based on Alexa Toolbar. Again, this fact makes Alexa’s data inaccurate.

3. Compete

Compete is a site similar to Quantcast. Compete’s ranking is based on the stats of +2.000.000 US citizens – this means that Compete is not so accurate outside of US. Anyway – check out Compete for your ranking and compare your results with your competitors’.

4. Dataopedia

Dataopedia.com is a web service that provides comprehensive information (50 different sources) about websites available on the Internet.

5. BuiltWith

This tools is quite complex – it shows various information about your site or any particular site (technologies used, seo, etc.) and it helps you optimize your site. Very useful when you don’t know much about SEO. It has a paid version as well with a lot more tips and info.

6. BizShark

BizShark is a direct competitor to Dataopedia. Both sites share the same concept and have similar information. You will have to decide which one suits you.

7. Website Grader

In my opinion, this is one of the most useful analysis websites. It has a great composition of information: social, seo, general, etc. It even gives you hints and a grade – to compare and further optimize your site.

8. Quarkbase

Quarkbase is another site that gathers its info from multiple sources, but here is their definition: Quarkbase is the best way to find website information contributed by website owner, lover and the Internet Community.

9. Popuri.us

This tools is a lightweight tool that gives you the most common ranks available on the web: Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Compete Rank, Technorati Rank etc.

10. XinuReturns

XinuReturns is a tool that shows you pretty much everything – Google Page Rank, Yahoo Links, FeedBurner subscribers,Technorati, DMOZ etc. It is perfect for a fast small popularity analysis.

11. Feedcompare

This website is useful when you want to compare your number of feed subscribers with the number of subscribers. For this you must have a FeedBurner account.

There are plenty of other sites as well with interesting results, but I think these ones are the most important.

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Generally speaking, these frameworks all play well together — you can mix and match framework functionality to your heart’s content, as long as you don’t mind the additional overhead of loading several libraries simultaneously. So you have a calendar widget in jQuery that you love, but you’re already using Prototype to animate your navigation bar? Don’t be shy… use both!

Of course, every once in a while you can run in to problems when combining JS frameworks — particularly (in my experience) when combining jQuery and Prototype. Luckily, jQuery was kind enough to provide us with a workaround.

The Problem: Sharing Syntax

The most common compatibility problem stems from both jQuery and Prototype using the same shortcut syntax: namely, the $().doSomething syntax. Here’s a sample line of code in jQuery:

$('#myelement').addClass('active');

And the same functionality in Prototype:

$('myelement').addClassName('active');

Note the basic similarity? Both frameworks claim the dollar sign notation for themselves, which can wreak havoc on snippets of code dropped willy-nilly into a website. If your jQuery code is grabbed up by Prototype, things will stop working fast. And similarly, if your Prototype code is snagged by jQuery, not even the awesome power of jQuery will be enough to overcome the code confusion.

The Solution: noConflict Mode

But not to worry! jQuery has provided us with a workaround called “noConflict mode.”

By default, there are two equally correct ways to call a jQuery function — the dollar sign notation, and “jQuery” notation:

$('#myelement').show();
jQuery('#myelement').show();

Both of the lines above do exactly the same thing. However, most people use and prefer the dollar sign notation. Why? Probably because it’s shorter, and if web developers didn’t care about brevity in their code, they probably wouldn’t have used a framework in the first place.

Of course, just using the longer jQuery notation isn’t enough. If jQuery has already claimed the dollar sign for itself, any Prototype functionality relying on that notation will still be grabbed by jQuery.

This is where the noConflict function comes in handy. Simply run the following line after both Prototype and jQuery have been loaded:

jQuery.noConflict();

This will cause jQuery to give up the dollar-sign notation, allowing the other library to take it over. And you can still use your jQuery snippet, provided you change all instances of $() to jQuery().
Keeping it Short

The noConflict mode does have one other bit of functionality that I’ve found useful in some of my projects: you can select a different variable to use instead of the standard “jQuery”. The usage looks like this:

var $j = jQuery.noConflict();

Now in addition to using the default jQuery() notation, I can also use the shorter $j() notation. This allows me to avoid running into problems with other frameworks, while still enjoying almost the same conciseness in my code.

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So get creative and submit your next design! http://www.webinspir.com/category/submit/

Securing cookies and sessions is vital to keeping an application secure. Many tutorials have been written on the subject, but as the internet (and browsers loading it) evolve so do the methods you can use to keep your application secure.

In this article we’re going to break down the various components of a cookie and what they mean for security. This will include limiting the cookie to certain domains and paths on those domains, choosing what information to store, and protecting the cookie from cross site scripting exploits. In a second article we will go into more depth in how to protect everyone’s favorite cookie, the session ID.

How Cookies Work

Cookies are simply key/value pairs that let us get around HTTP being a stateless protocol. When a developer has data they wish to last for more than one connection they can use cookies to store that data on the client side. While this tends to get handled by the programming language being used it is accomplished using HTTP headers.

When the server wants to set a cookie it passes back a header named “Set-Cookie” with the key-value pair and some options.

View larger

On subsequent requests the client will send along its own header to let the server know the name and value of its stored cookies. The server will not continue to send back the cookies, it will only send them if there is a change.

View larger

You can see all the headers for yourself using the LiveHeaders plugin for Firefox.
The Problem

This data is completely in control of the client- it is trivial to change the values of a cookie. That means that, just like post and get data, all cookie data must be validated in some way. At the same time you’ll want to avoid storing sensitive information, such as passwords, as cookies are stored in cleartext and anyone with access to the computer later can easily pick those up (I know of at least one security forum that was hacked in this way). It is also important to note that HTTP does not encrypt the headers in any way. If the connection isn’t over SSL then it will not be protected from snooping eyes.

Session cookies are no different than any other cookie- their value is just a simple ID. Those IDs are susceptible to all of the same limitations as other cookies. The real power behind sessions happens server side, where the ID is used to pull out data stored on the server. This has many benefits over storing data directly into the cookie itself- data can’t be manipulated by the user, large amount of data can be stored without having to send it back and forth with each request, and you can store data you otherwise wouldn’t want the client to have access to.
Getting Started

The first step towards securing your cookie is to restrict that cookie to only your application. This is especially important in environments that support multiple sites or applications (the type of shared hosting you often see on corporate or university domains). By restricting the cookie to only the applications that need it you reduce the chances of it being sniffed while also keeping the cookie namespaces clear for other applications that use them.

There are three options that can be sent along when creating a cookie that, when used properly, will keep the cookie limited to only your application. Before setting these options you will need to ask yourself a few questions-

• What parts of the website need access to the cookie?
• Will the cookie need to work across sub domains?
• Will the cookie need to persist if the user leaves an SSL portion of the site?

There is also a forth option used by newer browsers to restrict access to cookies by javascript.

As you will see, how exactly to restrict the cookie really does depend on the exact purpose for that cookie. A banking or ecommerce site may restrict their cookies to only SSL, while a blog or news aggregator may want to leave things more open.
Cookie Options

Send The Cookie To Only Your Application

The Path argument specifies what paths on the site to send the cookie. The default value of “/” means every request will get the cookie, while “/forums/” would limit the cookie to just that path. This path is going to be based on the actual URL the browser uses, before any mod_rewrite or other URL mapping.

Don’t Share With Sub Domains

The Domain option allows you to specify whether or not to send the cookie to subdomains. Setting “www.example.com” will mean only the exact domain “www.example.com” will be matched, while “.example.com” will also match again any subdomaim (forums.example.com, blog.example.com).

Require a Secure Connection

Using the Secure option you can tell the browser (or other http clients) to only send the cookie over SSL connections. This means the cookie will not be available to any part of the site that is not secure will not have access to the cookie, but it also makes it much less likely that you’ll accidentally send the cookie across as cleartext.

Protect Against XSS Exploits

This HttpOnly flag is used to tell the browser that it should not allow javascript to access the contents of the cookie. This is primarily a defense against cross site scripting, as it will prevent hackers from being able to retrieve and use the session through such an attack.

The HttpOnly option is not by any means full proof. As a client-side defense mechanism it relies on browser support to work, but is only supported by a few browsers (Firefox 3+ and IE 7+, with partial support from Opera 9.5, IE6 and Chrome).

Configuring the Cookie

In PHP, setting the arguments for cookies is done through some optional arguments on the “setcookie” function:

setcookie( name, value, expire, path, domain, secure, httponly);
 
// Open
setcookie( 'UserName', 'Bob', 0, '/', '.example', false, false);
 
// Locked Down
setcookie( 'UserName', 'Bob', 0, '/forums', 'www.example.com', isset($_SERVER["HTTPS"]), true);

To change the cookie values for the session cookie requires the “session_set_cookie_params” function, which needs to be called before the session is started.

session_set_cookie_params($expire, $path, $domain, $secure, true);
 
// Open
session_set_cookie_params(0, '/', '.example', false, false);
 
// Locked Down
session_set_cookie_params('o, /forums', 'www.example.com', isset($_SERVER["HTTPS"]), true)

Summary

Cookies remain the basic method of identify tracking on most websites and keeping them secure is a vital part to keeping applications as a whole locked down and secure. In this article we went over four methods for protecting cookies on a general level.

When using cookies its important to remember to:

• Limit the amount of sensitive information stored in the cookie.
• Limit the subdomains and paths to prevent interception by another application.
• Enforce SSL so the cookie isn’t sent in cleartext.
• Make the cookie HttpOnly so its not accessible to javascript.

Please check out the second half of this series, where we’re going to take the next step with an in depth guide to securing sessions.

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1. Keywords In Your URL’s – First word is best, second is second best, etc. Use hyphens to seperate words.

2. Keywords In Your Domain Name – Ranks very well same as above using hyphens to separate words.

3. Keywords In Title Tags – Keyword in Title tag – close to beginning
Title tag 10 – 60 characters, no special characters.

4. Keywords In Description Meta Tag - No more than 200 chars long. Google no longer “relies” upon this tag, but will often use it.

5. Keywords In Keyword Meta Tag – Use less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice. If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.

6. Keyword Density in Body Text – 5 – 20% (all keywords/total words). Some report topic sensitivity – the keyword spamming threshold % varies with the topic.

7. Individual Keyword Density – 1 – 6% (each keyword/total words).

8. Keyword in H1, H2 and H3 Tags – Use Header font style tags appropriately. Limit to 1 or 2 per page.

9. Keyword Font Size – “Strong is treated the same as bold, italic is treated the same as emphasis” – Matt Cutts July 2006

10. Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords) – Directly adjacent is best. Limit keywords so as to not get a negative for keyword stuffing.

11. Keyword Phrase Order – Does word order in the page match word order in the query?
Try to anticipate the search query, and match word order.

12. Keyword Prominence (how early in page/tag) – Can be important at top of page, in bold, in large font.

13. Keywords In Image Alt Tags – Should describe image message – Do NOT fill with spam
(Was part of Google Florida OOP – tripped a threshold – may still be in effect to some degree as a red flag, when summed with all other on-page optimization – total page optimization score – TPOS).

14. Keywords In Outgoing Links (anchor text) – Use title tags in links and keywords in link text.

15. Keywords In Internal Links – Same as above use keywords in title tags and link text.

16. Validate All Internal Links – Validate all links to all pages on site. Use a free link checker. I prefer to use this one by w3c.

17. Efficient Tree Like Navigation – TRY FOR two clicks to any page – no page deeper than 4 clicks.

18. Inter-Site Linking – Make sure you have appropriate linking to lower level sites so the spiders can find them easily.

19. Outgoing Links Should Be Relevant – Google patent - Link only to good sites. Do not link to link farms. CAREFUL – Links can and do go bad, resulting in site demotion. Unfortunately, you must devote the time necessary to police your outgoing links – they are your responsibility.

20. Outgoing Links Anchor Text – Google patent - Should be on topic, descriptive.

21. Link Stability Over Time – Google patent - Avoid “Link Churn” which basically means when one or more links provided by the document changes over time.

22. Less Than 100 Outgoing Links – Google says limit to 100, but normally accepts around 2000.

23. Domain Name Extension Top Level Domain – TLD – .gov sites seem to be the highest status, .edu sites seem to be given a high status, .org sites seem to be given a high status, .com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google.

24. Page Load and File Size - Try not to exceed 100K page size (however, sometimes there isnt much you can do, such as with larger textual pages). Smaller files are preferred <40K.

25. Fresh Content – Google patent - How your site changes over time. Newer the better – if news, retail or auction! Google likes fresh pages. So do I.

26. Amount of Content Change – New pages – Ratio of old pages to new pages.

27. Freshness of Links - Google patent - May be good or bad. Excellent for high-trust sites. May not be so good for newer, low-trust sites.

28. Frequency of Updates – Frequent updates = frequent spidering = newer cache.

29. Keyword Stemming – Use plural and non plural keywords, use phrases and narrow terms.

30. Site Size – Google likes big sites. As do most search engines.

31. Age of Page vs. Age of Site - Age of page vs. age of other pages on site
Newer pages on an older site will get faster recognition. Old is best. Old is Golden.

32. URL Length – Keep it minimized – use somewhat less than the 2,000 characters allowed by IE – less than 100 is good, less is even better just be sure to use keywords.

I hope this list can help you as much as it did myself. I have been researching SEO and optimization techniques for weeks now and found that this list is the best to follow in optimization for Google and other search engines that follow similar rule.

If you have more to add to this list or need help with optimizing your website feel free to comment or contact us.

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Compared to many other social networking sites, Myspace offers the most flexibility in the layout and design of a profile page. They provide a ton of customization options and make it easy to get a new look quickly.

There are some prerequisites before we jump into a fully custom design. You will need a photo hosting site account like flickr,photobucket,or picasa. This will host your background images or other media you want to put on your profile.

Let’s create a professional-looking page with the new Myspace 2.0.

Once you sign-in to your account, you’ll click to edit your profile.

Now, make sure that your profile is set to MySpace 2.0. If you already upgraded then you can skip this step.

You’ll now easily be able to browse around and interact with the theme editor at the top of the page. This is where the magic happens and you should play around with different settings to get the feel for how it works and what each selection in the theme editor does.

Now you can choose to use the themes that Myspace offers or upload a custom Myspace theme.

This is where your design skills come in handy and the creativity runs wild. To upload your professional Myspace theme, paste your own CSS code into the appropriate box. Don’t know how to write css? no problem. Get a brush up on CSS at W3Schools.

Make sure that you’ve clicked in the appearance box that you don’t want to choose a layout. Then input your CSS code in the textbox as seen above. Once you know what CSS is and have an idea on how to code it you need to know what codes in MySpace can be modified. Below is an example blank 2.0 CSS file:

/* body, main font properties, background of page */
body{
  background-color: #f8f8f8;
  font-family: helvetica, arial;
  font-size: 11px;
  color: #333333;
}
 
/* width of profile, second background color */
div.wrap{
  width: 60%;
  background-color: #fff;
  border-left: 1px solid #878787;
  border-right: 1px solid #878787;
}
 
/* header & navigation properties */
div#header, div#googlebar {background-color: #878787;}
#topnav {background-color: #878787;}
#topnav a {color: white;}
#topnav ul, #topnav ul li {border: none;}
#topnav ul li a:hover {background-color: #6C6C6C;}
 
/* global module properties */
div.moduleMid1 {background-color: #EFEFEF; padding: 5px; border: 1px solid #AFAFAF;}
 
/* basic details */
div.profileDemographics {background: white; border: 1px solid #AFAFAF;}
 
/* Interests, Blog Entries, Details, Friend Space & Comments */
h3.moduleHead{
  font-weight: bold;
  font-size: 16px;
}
 
/* general, music, status, ethnicity */
strong, h4 {font-weight: bold; color: #333333;}
 
/* link properties */
a:link {color: #333333; font-weight: bold;}
a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}
 
/* odd/even properties */
.interestsModule .odd, .detailsModule .odd, .commentsModule .odd {background-color: #F7F7F7;}
.interestsModule .even, .detailsModule .even, .commentsModule .even {background-color: #EBEBEB;}
 
/* footer properties */
div#footer {font-size: 10px;}

If you want to hide boxes and elements on your profile MySpace 2.0 Codes has a great reference of information to help you out. And a tutorial from Skeedio should get you up to speed on modifying the css files for MySpace 2.0

Once your done, click to publish your profile. Once published, click to view your profile and your Myspace page should appear like so:

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Fortunately, there are people working to create standards. Email Standards Project is a website that is at the top of the list working towards establishing these standards. Launched in November, the Email Standards Project is an advocate of the establishment of common standards for emails, and is probably the closest thing there is to a regulating body in this field. The site even offers a helpful rating system of various email platforms based on its own acid test.

Let’s jump into these Tip’s.

1. Go back to HTML – Scrap everything you’ve learned in recent years about tableless CSS structures and revert back to the HTML that your grand parents grew up with (its an exaggeration, but I swear it’s been that long since I’ve used tables). Now forget about positioning divs with CSS and rely on table cells to lay out your content as many email readers will not render positioning properly or at all.
2. Use Inline Styles – Most major email readers, whether they’re online, like Gmail and Hotmail, or desktop applications, like Outlook and Thunderbird, will ignore everything between the <head></head> tags, including your styles (whether you do it via <link> or <style></style> tags). This means you should style your HTML using inline styles. Be careful though there are many CSS properties that will not render properly, for example the ‘position’ property. A detailed report on how various major email readers performed against an Acid Test (which tests a handful of common CSS properties) can be found here.
3. Don’t Use Background Images – Using background images has become an essential tool on the designer’s belt. However, there is such an inconsistency between browsers that will actually display background images that it’s best not to use them. As an Outlook 2007 user, I know as a fact that no background images are displayed (this is true for Gmail as well). On the other hand, readers like AOL Webmail and Windows Live Mail (not Hotmail) will render background images correctly. Since it’s too difficult to predict what reader your audience is using, your use of background images should only be for enhancement and not as something your design depends on.
4. Expect Your Images To Get Blocked – For security purposes, many email readers will block images embedded in an email by default. This is because email applications are trying to help you eliminate spam and block bad images as well as Trojans that embed themselves into images. Today’s reader must opt-in on each email to display the images (though some may allow readers to set their preference). What this means is that you should NOT rely on your images to communicate your message. Avoid replacing too much text with images and make sure your email design still gets the point across even when images are not displayed. Use ‘alt’ attribute to display the same information in your images.
5. Use ‘Alt’ Attribute In Images – To avoid completely losing the message on an image when images are blocked, fill out the ALT attribute for each of your images. This ensures that the important content from the image (i.e. the text) is still passed along. This also helps in cases where the reader is using a text-only email client, as the image will be replaced by the ALT attribute.
6. Always Use Absolute Paths – Make sure to use absolute paths when referencing images. Relative paths (i.e. /images/my-image.jpg) will break as the email reader won’t know what the path to the image file is. Your image paths should look like this instead: http://www.mywebsite.com/emails/images/my-image.jpg. This is so simple that it can often be accidentally overlooked so make sure to double check your image paths before you send out your email.
7. File Size Matters – Using large images in your email design will slow down the download process on the reader’s end and may deter them from reading it all together. In some cases, exceptionally large emails may also be flagged for spam and viruses. To minimize these risks, optimize your images so that they have the smallest possible file size. This may require you to play around with JPG, GIF, and PNG formats to see which gives the highest image quality with the smallest file size. Where possible, use plain text to communicate your message.
8. Avoid Using Rich Media and Forms – In a browser, using Flash, animated images, and forms extends interactivity to the user experience. In an email, it bulks up the file size, raises security flags, or just doesn’t work at all. If there are interactive components attached to your email campaign, you are far better off linking the reader to your website than to attempt to embed them into the email itself. It’s an extra step but at least you can be sure that your rich media and forms will work. Also you can track links to your website this way.
9. Design For Minimalistic Reading – Just like designing for a web browser, you need to be considerate of screen resolutions and window sizes. In addition to this, email readers often have added sidebars and navigation on both sides of where your email content is displayed, further decreasing the amount of space you have to work with. I say keep the width of your email design at least within 800px (we commonly use 750 px or 640 px).

If you are considering doing an email campaign let us help you keep it simple and effective. Contact Benzing Technologies Today! (866) 980-2369

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With both sides of your brain working you will see how they both can be used to evaluate your website. Let’s start with design and then point out some functionality and content tips.

DESIGN
1. Is it inviting and welcoming?
2. Is the purpose of the site clear? Is it obvious who owns this site?
3. Is the page attractive? Does the visitor want to explore the site further?
4. Can you find your way around the site?
5. Is it easy to find your way back to the home page?
6. Are the pages attractive on monitors set to various resolutions, on various browsers and on both Macs and PCs?

FUNCTIONALITY
1. Can various users (with various computer skills) interact with the site in the desired manner without assistance?
2. Is technology (menus, scripting, animations, bells and whistles) used to aid communication (as opposed to confusing the visitor)?
3. Do all the links work? Do pages download quickly?
4. Is there an over abundance of flash or scripting?

CONTENT
1. Is the content interesting and appropriate to the site’s mission?
2. Is information helpful and relevant to the topic?
3. Is the content fresh (not outdated)?
4. Is there too much content and not enough visual elements?
5. Does it contain essential information? (Mailing address, telephone numbers, home/search/contents/contact buttons, keyword-heavy text, organizational news, quick launch links)

All of these listed above are answered with a well designed website. You must create the best overall experience while being compatible with people who’s skills range from none to uber geek. Now we can’t accommodate everyone who visits your website either due to language barriers or technology hindrances. So you must first decide who your target market is and how to accommodate that market on your website. Keeping in mind different methods for different cultures.

Choosing the right design agency is also key as they understand the ways to attract your visitors and keep them coming back for more. But how do I know who the right design agency is? Well, ask them questions. The more education you have on what your looking for and your needs the easier it will be for both you and the design agency your working with. If they have trouble answering your questions or you get confused with their process then look elsewhere.

If you are on a tight budget or are unsure about getting a website then you must first decide if your ready to go online. Do you have a residual client base? do you need to be online? how do your clients notice you? these are all great inital questions you need to answer first. I don’t always agree with “You get what you pay for” but it does show its value when you choose the right design firm. Finding that fine line between affordable and functional.

If you have any questions or comments about this post please feel free to contact us.

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Whether you decide to work with in-house staff or an outside design firm on your next Web design/redesign project, chances are you might not be familiar with some of the specialized language and terminology that designers and developers use when they discuss the project with you. Here’s a list of five types of down-to-earth, online resources to help you brush up—before or after the fact—on what they’re talking about.

1. Glossaries
One of the best ways to quickly learn about Web design concepts is to read a good glossary—that is, one with clear, concise definitions and descriptions of the terms and acronyms related to Web design. You can look up terms you’re not familiar with, or if the glossary is a short one, you might choose to skim all the entries for a quick overview. Here are several glossaries (the Web provides many to choose from—some good, some not so much) that you might find useful to cover all the bases:

• Web Design Glossary from Buzzle.com—A good short list of common terms and straightforward definitions—a really easy read
• Web Design Glossary from About.com—A longer list of terms, each of which links to a definition and additional resource articles from About.com
• The Motive Web Design Glossary—A very comprehensive, up-to-date list of terms, each of which links to a detailed definition, a list of related terms and additional information and references
• Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources—From Smashing Magazine, this useful guide also provides links to in-depth information and additional resources from other authoritative sites (as a bonus, you might make a hit with your designer/developer by recommending this resource to them)

2. Wikipedia
No list of resources would be complete without mentioning Wikipedia. If you’re looking for an encyclopedic-type overview of Web design topics that leans toward the technical with lots of internal links to more detailed information, a bit of historical background and a huge list of references, then Wikipedia might be your best bet.

3. Web Design Reference Guide
Peachpit Press’s Web Design Reference Guide provides a “30,000-foot view of Web design topics.” It’s a collection of short articles (originally blog posts) that describe all things Web design–related, from Web basics to usability and accessibility to Web site optimization and what happens on the backend server. Although some of the articles date back to 2003 and 2004, the straightforward, conversational-style explanations of core concepts make it worth a browse.

4. Web Style Guide
Yale University Press’s Web Style Guide, 3rd edition: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites is a practical, non-technical book about designing Web sites. The book tells you what you need to know about Web design in plain language, with easy-to-understand examples and a great reference section. Now in its third edition (published January 2009), the Web Style Guide emphasizes fundamentals and contains all the latest information about Web design. And best of all, the book is viewable in its entirety online.

5. Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine launched in 2006 with the goal of providing useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. You’re not a designer/developer, you say? No worries—the magazine provides information suitable for people with various levels of expertise, from non-designers to newcomers in the design field to seasoned experts. The glossary mentioned previously is a good example of the type of helpful information you can find on the site.

The magazine also specializes in presenting the latest trends and techniques in Web design. For example, Web Design Trends for 2009 lets you get up to speed quickly on some of the new design features your Web designer might suggest for your site. Whether or not you understand all the technical details, the examples give you plenty of ways to see new features in action.

Raise Your Web Design IQ
Regardless of your role in your company, if you’re involved in a Web design project at any level, it’s advantageous to arm yourself with the basic knowledge you’ll need to understand and communicate effectively with your designers/developers. If you don’t find the information you need from the suggested resources don’t hesitate to contact us at Benzing Technologies.

ARTICLE SOURCE – ACS Creative – http://blog.acscreative.com/blog/top-of-mind/0/0/making-sense-of-web-design-lingo

before we jump into this i would assume you have a basic working knowledge of htaccess, but if you need to freshen up check out this article by Joseph Pecoraro.

Ok lets start…

1. Prevent Hotlinking

Hotlinking, or inline linking, is when one web site links directly to an object on another site. This costs the hosting site bandwidth to provide the image on the page of the second site. On popular photo sites (photobucket,picasa,flickr,etc.) this can be a major problem.

There are ways to fix this growing problem using htaccess. First here is the image we are trying to protect.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
 
#domains that can link to images
#add as many as you want
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?demo.collegeaintcheap.com [NC]
#RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?noahhendrix.com [NC]
 
#show no image when hotlinked
RewriteRule \.(jpg|png|gif)$ - [NC,F,L]

We will step through this line-by-line.

1. First we need to turn on the rewrite engine in Apache, this allows us to redirect the user’s request.
2. Next we start setting our conditions using RewriteCond. This is a function that takes two arguments: TestString and CondPattern. TestString is the string we want to check our CondPattern against (using regular expressions). ${HTTP_REFERER} is a variable provided by Apache that holds the domain the request came from, in this instance we want to allow requests from blank HTTP referrers to protect users who are on a proxy server that sends blank referrers.
3. Next we set the domains from which we will allow our images to be linked using the same syntax except now we provide a URL. The [NC] flag at the end of the command simply instructs the engine to ignore casing. You can add as many lines domains as you’d like here, using the same syntax. For the sake of example I added my personal domain, but commented it out.
4. Finally, the last line is the RewriteRule we wish to use if any of the conditions above are not met. It takes two arguments as well Pattern and Substitution, where pattern is a regular expression match and substitution is what we want to replace any matches with. In this case we are looking for requests that end in jpg, png, and gif; if found we want to use a blank substitution. However in the flags we tell it furthermore what we want to be done, NC means no case, F sends a 403 forbidden error to user, and L tells the engine to stop rewriting so no other rules are applied.

This is fairly straightforward, but perhaps we are interested in telling the user we don’t want them to hotlink our images, so let’s redirect all hotlinked requests to an image instead of sending a 403 forbidden error. This is done by replacing the last line with this code.

#show an alternate image
RewriteRule \.(jpg|png|gif)$ http://demo.collegeaintcheap.com/envato/htaccess/hotlink/images/hotlink.jpeg [NC,R,L]

You can change url to any image path you’d like on your domain, but remember it needs to not end in jpg, png, or gif as it will reapply the rule and send the server into a never-ending loop. I chose to use the older .jpeg extension to fix this. The R flag that replaced F simply sends a redirect.

2. Block User By IP Address

This is a great little tip if you have a spammer on your website. If you can find their IP in your logs, simply add it to an htaccess file.

# Order Deny,Allow
Deny from 24.121.202.23
# Deny from 0.0.0.0

Using the Order directive in the mod_access module we can specify IPs to deny and allow. Simply using the syntax Deny from IP ADDRESS we can forbid those users from accessing our directory.

3. Error Documents

All production ready sites should use custom error pages for a professional touch. This is easy using the ErrorDocument directive in Apache’s core. A custom page is far better than the default Apache error pages.

ErrorDocument 404 http://demo.collegeaintcheap.com/envato/htaccess/errors/404.html
ErrorDocument 403 http://demo.collegeaintcheap.com/envato/htaccess/errors/403.html
ErrorDocument 500 http://demo.collegeaintcheap.com/envato/htaccess/errors/500.html

ErrorDocument takes two arguments error-code and document. In the code above I created error documents for the 3 most common HTTP errors: 404 not found, 403 forbidden, and 500 server error. Then you can provide the full URL or relative path to your error documents. You could also them redirect to a PHP script that logs the errors in a database or emails them to you (might get annoying though). This is a great way to take control of errors in your web application, be sure to check out Smashing Magazine’s 404 error page showcase for inspiration.

4. Redirect While Performing Upgrades

If you are performing a major site upgrade you most likely should redirect users to a page informing them. This prevents users from seeing broken pages or potential security holes while the application is uploading. One caveat to consider is that we want to allow certain IP addresses into the site for testing before it goes live all of this can be achieved in an htaccess file.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/upgrade.html$
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^24\.121\.202\.30
RewriteRule $ http://demo.collegeaintcheap.com/envato/htaccess/upgrade/upgrade.html [R=302,L]

We are using the rewrite engine again to do this, but in a kind of reverse way. First we need to set a condition that excludes the document describing the upgrade otherwise our server start a never ending loop. Next we exclude a single IP address from being redirected for testing purposes. Finally we use the rewrite rule to send users to an upgrade page. The flags we have looked at before, except this time we setting the redirect to a 302 status code, telling the browser that the page has temporarily moved and to handle caching accordingly. Smashing Magazine, again, has a great showcase of Effective Maintenance Pages.

5. Hiding Directory Listing

For numerous security reasons it is a good idea to restrict directory listing, the default behavior in Apache. This can be done with a simple line in our htaccess file we can prevent visitors from seeing our directory listings.

Options -Indexes

Now users who request a directory that doesn’t have an index file it will show them a 403 forbidden error page.

Conclusion

These are several of my favorite uses of htaccess. Leave yours in the comments! I am available for help in the comments or on twitter.

ARTICLE SOURCE – NETTUTS+ – http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/other/5-fun-and-practical-htaccess-solutions/

HTML5 is the next edition of the highly successful HTML4 which is about 10 years old now. The word is being spread around, though slowly, on the topic of merging to the next progressive web experience. A bunch of questions circle my head on how profitable web design will become when HTML5 is released.

With HTML5 the difference is staggering enough to notice in the code from HTML4, as you can see in our previously posted article. The benefits range from less code to easier formatting to more CSS control of the user interface.

HTML 5 provides a number of new elements and attributes that reflect typical usage on modern Web sites. Some of them are semantic replacements for common uses of generic block (<div>) and inline (<span>) elements, for example <nav> (website navigation block) and <footer>. Other elements provide new functionality through a standardized interface, such as the <audio> and <video> elements.

Now back to my original question how profitable will HTML5 be? with new tags and easier formatting will it be easier for garage designers to pull off? Will any geek with a keyboard and a Redbull be able to program a website? My thoughts are this…if code is becoming simpler to design more people will start to think they can do it themselves. Competition will become even heavier and only the best of the best would survive. This doesn’t mean their websites will look good because design is not everyone’s forte. But technically the code is simple enough for joe smoe to create a header,footer, add a video and type some text.

The real money in the future of web design is creative design and backend programming of websites. Web Designers are a dime a dozen unless they can save you money or better help you generate money. Now of course the information I discussed above is only my opinion. HTML5 is a ways away yet and yes there is complexity to HTML5 as seen here.

User interface experts are often suspicious of the role of visual aesthetics in user interfaces—and of designers who insist that graphic emotive impact and careful attention to a site’s visual framework really contribute to measurable success. Underneath the arguments, I see a fundamental culture clash. In academia, text (and lots of it) is the only way serious people make serious arguments, and very polished presentations are often seen as prima facie evidence that the presenter may be hiding a weak argument with graphic frou-frou.

Many eyetracking studies conclude that large graphics and graphic elements attract few “gaze fixations,” but can we really conclude that large, aesthetic, tone-setting graphics have no lasting effect on the user’s attitudes toward a site? To put it bluntly, are designers who create visually compelling sites simply wasting time and treasure on graphic indulgences that obstruct efficient e-commerce and communication?

Perhaps not. Another body of web user experience research shows that website users are powerfully influenced by aesthetics, and that positive perceptions of order, beauty, novelty, and creativity increase the user’s confidence in a site’s trustworthiness and usability. Recent design writing and interface research illustrate how visual design and user research can work together to create better user experiences on the web: experiences that balance the practicalities of navigation with aesthetic interfaces that delight the eye and brain. In short: there’s lots of evidence that beauty enhances usability. [1]

What can we learn from user experience analysis tools such as eyetracking? Eyetracking is great for analyzing and understanding how users see, interpret, and use information. However, I disagree with usability researcher Jakob Nielsen, who asserts that, since his research subjects (apparently) pay little attention to large graphics on web pages, we can infer that those graphics have little influence on users — and that “useless” or “superfluous” images form “obstacle courses” for users. Nielsen isn’t talking about catalog images or other images closely related to merchandize or tasks, but about the images and other graphic content that designers use to create a site’s aesthetic ambiance. [2, 3]

I have no doubt that Nielsen and other researchers accurately report what their eyetracking study participants do in response to task-centric research on websites. Context is important here: In such studies, participants have a set of specific tasks to accomplish, and thus their gaze tends to focus on navigation links, titles, labels, and interface controls such as buttons and form fields. Expressive or visual tone-setting graphics are rarely useful in such tasks, and it’s not surprising that users performing these tasks (apparently) ignore most page graphics, as indicated by the infrequent gazes directed at large images.

To reconcile the differing views of the proper role of visual aesthetics, we need to understand how the brain processes images and responds to what we see.

It happens in an instant

Thanks to the work of the early 20th Century Gestalt psychologists—and to many studies since—we know that the brain’s response to images is extremely complex, and in many cases nearly instantaneous. The process seems semi-magical and therefore untrustworthy. How could something so complex happen so fast? How can we trust the results of a process we don’t thoroughly understand? Research confirms that users make aesthetic decisions about the overall visual impression of web pages in as little as 50 milliseconds (1/20th of a second). [4, 5] These instant visceral reactions to web pages happen in virtually all users, are consistent over visit length, and strongly influence the user’s sense of trust in the information. In short, users have made fundamental, consistent, and lasting aesthetic decisions about the credibility and authority of sites before major eyetracking events begin.

In intensely visual fields such as art history and diagnostic radiology, this kind of sophisticated, complex, near-instant Gestalt visual judgment is well-known and respected, although the exact neural mechanisms at work are not well understood. In Blink Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the Getty Museum’s famous kouros, a nominally ancient Greek statue now widely regarded as a modern forgery. Although the provenance and mineralogy tests seemed to provide definitive proof of the statue’s age, independent art history experts were almost universally negative in their first visceral reactions to the statue. Thomas Hoving’s immediate reaction to the statue’s unveiling was “fresh,” hardly the right word for a sculpture that had supposedly been buried for two thousand years. At first, the experts had only their gut visual reactions as proof, but their skepticism caused the Getty to reconsider, and the evidence supporting the statue’s age and provenance fell apart on closer inspection. [6]

Although Jakob Nielsen has been one of the most vocal skeptics of highly graphical sites, his business partner, Donald Norman, has best articulated the ways in which sophisticated visual design not only influences users, but also contributes to better usability.

Why attractive things work better

In psychology, emotional reactions to stimuli are called affective responses. Affective responses happen very fast, and are governed in an automatic, unconscious way by the lower centers of the brain that also govern basic instincts (food, fear, sex, breathing, blinking, etc.). Think of affective responses as the brain’s bottom-up reaction to what you see and feel. Cognitive responses are your brain’s slower, top-down, more considered responses. They’re governed by your personal cultural views, learning, experiences, and personal preferences that you are aware of and can easily articulate. Affective reactions assign value to your experiences; cognitive reactions assign meaning to what you see and use.

Affective and cognitive responses to visual stimuli are governed by a three-stage process in the brain, at visceral, behavioral, and reflective processing levels:

The visceral (“gut”) processing level reacts quickly to appearances. It’s the visceral reaction to web pages that researchers measure when they detect reaction times as fast as 50 milliseconds. It’s crucial to understand that these instant good/bad visceral-level affective responses are largely unconscious: it can take seconds or minutes to become consciously aware of your first, visceral reaction to a stimulus—particularly a stimulus as complex as a web page.

Behavioral-level processing involves the more familiar aspects of usability: it responds to the feel of using the site, the functionality, the understandability of the structure and navigation, and the overall physical performance of the site. At this level, users are consciously aware of their attitudes toward the behavior of the system, and their reactions (pleasure, for example, or frustration) play out over seconds and minutes as users interact with a site. It’s at this behavioral level that techniques such as eyetracking are most powerful and trustworthy, because they offer

detailed moment-by-moment evidence of what users consciously decided to look at and do to fulfill a given task.

Reflective processing of reactions is the most complex level, and typically involves a user’s personal sense of a site’s beauty, meaning, cultural context, and immediate usefulness. Reflective processing often triggers memories and encourages pragmatic judgments about the overall

aesthetic worth and value of what a user sees. Eyetracking and traffic logs are irrelevant at this level, but user interviews can give you insight into your user’s reflective judgments.

Visceral (affective) reactions can take a relatively long time to bubble up through layers of processing to enter conscious awareness at the behavioral or reflective levels, but that doesn’t mean that affective reactions don’t immediately influence thought. In fact, it’s the instant,

pre-conscious pleasure of seeing a well designed page that makes you predisposed to find a beautiful design easy to use—an effect that lingers long after the slower, conscious behavioral and reflective levels of processing kick in and make you aware of how you feel about what you see.

Classical and expressive aesthetics in web design

To explore viewer reactions to site design, user experience researchers need basic aesthetic models that simplify a complex subject, but nonetheless do offer some guidance to designers.

These models are often divided into “classical aesthetics” versus “expressive aesthetics.” [7] Users bring context, expectations, and intentions with them, and the extent to which a site’s visual design matches those expectations will strongly influence perceptions of the quality and reliability of information or site interactions.

Classical aesthetics

Classical aesthetics stress orderliness and clarity in design, and use familiar web and print conventions. Research shows that classical aesthetics strongly correlate with perceived usability. This model is most successful when users expect an e-commerce or content site to provide large amounts of information in a well-organized way, with a clear visual hierarchy and conventional headers, subheads, captions, and navigation—think newspapers, sophisticated magazines or e-commerce sites, or reference sites such as Wikipedia. The pleasure and trust that classical aesthetics generate seems to be centered in the higher and slower reflective level of processing. However, classically beautiful sites also generate instant positive visceral reactions as well, and this creates a lasting sense that a site is easy to use.

Expressive aesthetics

Expressive aesthetics emphasize the originality, creativity, and visual richness of the site design. Think about the kind of site that typically wins design awards from Print or Communication Arts. Successful expressive designs generate immediate, positive visceral reactions in most users. It is less clear that this immediate expressive response influences longer-term positive judgments as strongly as successful classical designs, particularly in perceived ease of use. Understanding your audience is particularly crucial in expressive designs: a “successful” design approach for foreign policy wonks may be less successful with fans of the Jonas Brothers.

Expressive and classical aesthetics seem to correlate equally with the general positive or negative attractiveness of a site, but user expectations and context influence longer-term responses. Users expect the aesthetic model to complement the purposes of the site, for example, and thus text-rich content sites seem to benefit more from the classical aesthetic approach. Carefully built designs contribute strongly to the sense that a site is trustworthy and credible, no matter which aesthetic model they use.

Using data in the context of design (and not vice versa)

The visual aesthetics that frame and define content are much more than simply a “skin” that we can apply or discard without consequence. Users react in fast, profound, and lasting ways to the aesthetics of what they see and use, and research shows that the sophisticated visual content presentation influences user perceptions of usability, trust, and confidence in the web content they view. [8] Those user judgments begin within 50 milliseconds of seeing the first page of your site.

Smart graphic design is always some balance of current expressive trends, information architecture, classical layout aesthetics, and detailed research on user preferences and motivations. You should never ignore solid user experience data, but mountains of data won’t auto-magically build you a successful site. Design is a synthetic activity. It can be informed by the results of analysis, but the tools of analysis don’t create beautiful designs. Douglas Bowman’s recent experience as a graphic designer among Google’s engineers who want “data” behind every aesthetic decision is instructive: data and user feedback are always important components of good design, but they are never its sole ingredients.

References

[1] Norman, Donald. Emotional Design. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

[2] Nielsen, Jakob. Eyetracking Web Usability. Fremont, CA: Nielsen Norman Group, 2006.

[3] Nielsen, Jakob. Eyetracking study of web readers. Alertbox, 2000.

[4] Lindgaard, G., G. Fernandes, and C. Dudek. “Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression.” Behavior & Information Technology, 25:2 (2006): 115-126.

[5] Tractinsky, N., A. Cokhavi, M. Kirschenbaum, and T. Sharfi. “Evaluating the consistency of immediate aesthetic perceptions of web pages.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 64:11 (2006): 1071-1083.

[6] Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little Brown, 2005.

[7] Schaik, P., and J. Ling. “The role of context in perceptions of web pages over time.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 67 (2008): 79-89.

[8] Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. “Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.” 2004.

Article Source: A List Apart – http://www.alistapart.com/articles/visual-decision-making/

In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.

Basic Web Standards Checklist

A. Quality of code
- Does the site use a correct Doctype?
- Does the site use a Character set?
- Does the site use Valid (X)HTML?
- Does the site use Valid CSS?
- Does the site use any CSS hacks?
- Does the site use unnecessary classes or ids?
- Is the code well structured?
- Does the site have any broken links?
- How does the site perform in terms of speed/page size?
- Does the site have JavaScript errors?

B. Degree of separation between content and presentation
- Does the site use CSS for all presentation aspects (fonts, colour, padding, borders etc)?
- Are all decorative images in the CSS, or do they appear in the (X)HTML?

C. Accessibility for users
- Are “alt” attributes used for all descriptive images?
- Does the site use relative units rather than absolute units for text size?
- Do any aspects of the layout break if font size is increased?
- Does the site use visible skip menus?
- Does the site use accessible forms?
- Does the site use accessible tables?
- Is there sufficient color brightness/contrasts?
- Is color alone used for critical information?
- Is there delayed responsiveness for dropdown menus (for users with reduced motor skills)?
- Are all links descriptive (for blind users)?

D. Accessibility for devices
- Does the site work acceptably across modern and older browsers?
- Is the content accessible with CSS switched off or not supported?
- Is the content accessible with images switched off or not supported?
- Does the site work in text browsers such as Lynx?
- Does the site work well when printed?
- Does the site work well in Hand Held devices?
- Does the site include detailed metadata?
- Does the site work well in a range of browser window sizes?

E. Basic Usability
- Is there a clear visual hierarchy?
- Are heading levels easy to distinguish?
- Does the site have easy to understand navigation?
- Does the site use consistent navigation?
- Are links underlined?
- Does the site use consistent and appropriate language?
- Do you have a sitemap page and contact page? Are they easy to find?
- For large sites, is there a search tool?
- Is there a link to the home page on every page in the site?
- Are visited links clearly defined with a unique colour?

F. Site management
- Does the site have a meaningful and helpful 404 error page that works from any depth in the site?
- Does the site use friendly URLs?
- Do your URLs work without “www”?
- Does the site have a favicon?