HTML and CSS Cheatsheet

Feb 082010
 

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a new little tool for webmasters. It’s the W3C Cheatsheet. Though the page is lacking in luster when it comes to description (I had to guess what to do when first using it), it packs a fully loaded archive of all your HTML and CSS element attributes.

cheat

To use the tool you simply type in the HTML element you want to know more about, and W3C delivers all of the elements attributes. Knowing how to address those attributes is up to you, but I’m guessing will come in very handy for many of us.

Suggested Methods to Improve Browser Rendering

Dec 102009
 

Obviously, keeping your website pages small is a great way to ensure your site loads quickly. I’m also guessing many of you want to add a little flair to your site, so at some point you will have to say enough is enough. Hands down, you announce you have made your site load as fast as it can. Unfortunately, if you thought you were done speeding up your site by crunching file size, there is still more to do. Download time is one thing, rendering that download into a page the visitor sees is a whole new game.

Google’s advice to improve rendering speeds heavily relies on optimizing your CSS file. They also mention to make sure to specify image sizes as well. You know, with width=”this” and height=”that”. Continue reading »

Best Ways To Improve Your Site Quickly

Sep 142009
 

Yesterday, a new client found my site through a webmaster forum, and ordered my basic web usability and design analysis. What I found when doing the analysis was inspiration for this post, and a “oh man, they need to fix that” scenario. The site is Nibbo.com, and don’t let their current home page fool you. Give it a test search, and when the results page kicks in decide how much you like it then.

How did Nibbo inspire this post? It had an easy fix that could be applied to many sites, and I thought I would share that fix along with a few others. Continue reading »

Today’s Read

Jul 292009
 

Is that time again already? Every morning I like to read blogs and forums. Here are the top three I found of value today. Continue reading »

CSS Landing Pages

Feb 112009
 

landings

So what inspired today’s poll? A couple of things. I had just recently done a usability analysis on CSSLanding Pages.com, and after writing my three part post about parallel design it reminded me that this concept is even more effective when done on landing pages. If you are banking on a single, poor performing landing page, bummer. That’s time and money lost.

A Landing Page for a Landing Page Site, Yikes!

When I was first asked to do the analysis for this landing page templates site, my first impression was yikes! I would hate to have that job. No matter how effectively you designed the landing page, and no matter how wonderfully it works, you are just begging for scrutiny. I guess if you are into landing pages though, you understand the value of feedback, and use it to your favor. Point being, that is probably why the owner wanted the analysis. The more feedback, the better your site gets.

The Analysis

Overall, CSSLanding Pages.com, did very well on the analysis. Near the end of my review though, I noticed something huge. $19 didn’t buy you a template. It bought you a ton of templates. I’ve seen a lot of template sites, and have even done analyses on many. The usual going price is $50 to start, and that is for one template. This whole time I was thinking that they were selling one for $19. A good price, but nothing special.

The problem, fixed now, occurred because I saw two things. I quickly saw the site sold templates, and I quickly saw the prominent PayPal button to buy them for $19. What’s wrong with that? The benefits and significant details were hidden in the regular text. I skimmed content, like most visitors do, and missed the fine print. Knowing that I was doing a detailed analysis of the site, you can imagine what a first time visitor will read. The site page was selling ten templates with sixteen different themes each. Pretty huge difference, and a great deal. Interested parties will surely buy if they like some of the templates.

What I Missed

So would you rather order one template or get a package that has this for $19?

  • All 10 Landing Page Layouts in every color and style.
  • 15 Graphical Opt-In Box Templates
  • 1,600+ Website Graphics Package
  • The Landing Page Success Guide eBook
  • Instant Delivery!

A deal like that makes a desiscion a lot easier, and the sale a lot more likely. Note to self: Don’t hide the significant details.

Web Templates

Jan 302009
 

template

Instant website coming up. Building a website doesn’t have to be a major production. Can you say website templates?  If you are looking to start a new site, whether it be made from scratch, WordPress, Joomla, or whatever, there are ton of templates out there to get your site up and running in no time. Where are there a ton of them? The Template Kingdom.

Template Kingdom has a variety of templates. You can find Joomla templates, CSS, WordPress, and simple website templates. They have nearly fifty different categories to choose from, and most of them have over fifty or more different templates within. I found this looking for some Joomla templates for myself. For those of you unaware of Joomla, it’s kind of like WordPress in ease of setting up, but it is designed for websites, not blogs. Building a CMS site is the way to go these days, and using Joomla combined with a pre-designed template can certainly make things easier.

Template King offers a variety of free, and paid templates, and if you are template designer they are looking for you!

Author Note: Unfortunately the site has been down for several days so I removed the links in April 2009.

Cool Color Changes

Jun 272008
 

Sometimes a site is cool just because it is. Check out this webconferencing comparisons site. A pretty simple blog in regards to site design. So why do I like it? Cool color changes.

Webinar Faq is a blog about web conferencing. I’m not really into web conferencing though, that is more of my wife’s cup of tea. The cool feature they have on the site though, is located on the top right, and it allows you to easily adjust the sites theme colors with a simple click of the mouse. Don’t like blue? Switch to green or some other color. It’s a great little trick putting your CSS file to good use. The color changes the background, font colors, horizontal lines, and everything.

I see this feature often for font size, and you would think being a usability guy I would like that. I actually don’t. Just more crud for the user to figure out, and your browser should have the capability to change that feature already. In this case, a simple box with the color you want makes it an “easy figure”. Blogs are usually reading intensive, and in the case of color schemes, having something that works well for your eyes is a huge plus.

© 2012 Best Web Image Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha