5 Tips for a Better User Experience on Your Site
Any good web publisher knows that it isn’t just content that keep readers reading and visitors returning. Interface design can be just as important as quality content. A bad website design can drive your audience away or seriously erode their confidence, just as they're coming through the door.
Without some sound design tactics you end up putting a lot of work into publishing for maybe a couple of unique visitors a day. If you are attempting to get opt-ins and generate revenue from your site and you miss some key design tips you are going to suffer and yourROI will go down the drain.
But just how do you design a clean, concise layout that is logical but also aids in producing results?
Creating your Own HTML and CSS Framework
A lot of developers like to make use of a framework when they code. While frameworks can save you valuable coding time, I think using pre-made frameworks to sometimes be limiting & unproductive.
While this may appear harsh, it’s true. If you’re business is based on handwritten, neat & available code, I personally feel like it’s cheating to make use of someone else’s code. It’s also seldom as neat because it’s someone else’s coding style mixed in to yours. To make use of one of these frameworks requires that you either change the code each time to fit your style, or that you change your style of coding to fit theirs. You’ll also finish up deleting lots of what’s included in the framework because you certainly won’t need it.
Of coursework, frameworks are great for saving coding time. So why not give yourself a leg up by generating your own barebones version? Making a custom framework lets you get the best of both worlds: you’ll save time when beginning a new site & the code will be optimized & neat & exactly the way you code anyways.
WebM Video Format
With Google's introduction of the WebM video format for online video and streaming videos is good news for most web developers as this would give us more options on how we port the videos on our web projects.
According to Google, the WebM video format is efficient enough to be played on a range of devices like netbooks and smartphones. WebM is completely open source and licensed royalty free under a BSD style license.
More about the WebM video format is discussed in details at the Project WebM Project website
Wordpress upgraded to 2.9.2
After months of holding off, I finally updated Wordpress to it's latest version which is version 2.9.2. The automatic upgrade was very fast and smooth I didn't even noticed it was done in less than a minute. I commend the developers on making this process easy for the bloggers and developers alike.
Gearing up for HTML 5
As a web designer / developer, we should be semantic about the ways we do our HTML coding so that I can be readable and understandable for you as the designer/developer as well as a project team mate (if your working on a project development group or team). xHTML is currently the standard but there's a new standard that will become the future of front-end web development.
Enter HTML 5
To be brief HTML 5 is the upcoming web standard is the best standard format ever created because of its coding semantics and (in my opinion) a very SEO-friendly format at best. As of this writing the latest browsers are now adapting this format to ease the transition from xHTML to HTML5.
Articles on Introduction to HTML 5
HTML 5 Tutorials
WPtouch: WordPress on iPhone, iPod, Android, Storm & Pre
More than just a plugin, WPtouch is an entire theme package for your WordPress website. Modeled after Apple's app store design specs, WPtouch makes your WordPress website load lightning fast on touch mobile devices, show your content beautifully, all while not interfering with your regular theme.
Happy New Year Everyone
It’s been a while since I updated this blog because of my day job but I want to greet you all a pleasant Happy New Year
