ROI Blog

These days website design keeps getting better and better thanks to the increase of ability to design what you can invasion. For example, CSS3 is emerging as one of the best tools a designer could want. With the new functions and features available, your ability to be as creative as you want has finally become a reality. Some of the new features include:

Borders
border-image
border-radius
border-color
box-shadow

Background
background-origin
background-clip
background-size
multiple-backgrounds

Color
HSL colors
HSLA colors
Opacity
RGBA Colors

Text Effects
text-shadow
text-overflow
word-wrap

Interface
box-sizing
resize
outline
nav-top
nav-right
nav-left
nav-bottom

Attribute selectors, media queries, multi column layout, web fonts, speech, etc.

For those of you familiar with web design and coding, you probably have a good idea of what these things might be able to do, for the rest of you, this means that as developers, we can do much more today than we could, lets say, last year.

CSS3 combined with the new attributes in html 5 opens doors for web design in a way that most designers never thought possible.

Author - Simon

The years pass by so fast that I don't even know what just hit me smack in the face sending me reeling to the floor. I'm not even past my third decade of living on this planet and I feel like a geezer in the world technology. Yes, I experienced MSDOS and fabulous floppy disks games that were on 5 separate disks for one tiny entertaining 2-dimensional adventure. Then AOL came along and offered us that lovely screeching sound that helped connect us to the World Wide Web and Instant Messenger. Mind you it wasn't as widely known then and I still envy those current dial up users who have such incredible patience with the "eeeeeeaaaaaooooosssccreeeetcchchh" sound today.

And that is where it all started, at least in my world. The wonderful world of social networking, connecting to the outside world and retrieving massive amounts of information in a matter of minutes (Thank you Google, I now know how build a lamp, garden, and make delicious Japanese soup). I did watch the world of technology quickly rise to a common household commodity. Now social media sites are flooding the Internet with the obvious Facebook and MySpace social media websites and then there are love connection websites such as Match.com. They are mentioned in movies and television shows, there was even a movie made about Facebook. Talk about adding a massive contribution to society.

I mean these things have taken over our lives, but this can be a double edged sword. Are people ever going to leave their homes? Or are we all going to rely on relationships based on text messaging and friending people on Facebook? Will this obsession ever end? But lets not get so pessimistic, it's always a good thing to look on the brighter side of things, you know the glass is still half full, right?

This gives you, the business owner, the ability to advertise to a much more targeted audience and at a much friendlier cost. You now have options such as Pay Per Click and Display Advertising which resides on social media sites that this generation so whole heartily obsess about. You also have the option of advertising on blogs that are targeted for your specific audience.

It's actually been quite an exciting time for the growth of technology and you should utilize it as much as you can. It is the simplest way to reach your customers, fans, and get new customers on board. The most important thing this day and age is to establish an online repertoire and turn your visitors into customers. We offer Social Media Training to help you on your journey. Also check out our free downloadable articles to get you started. We are in the age of technology so embrace it and jump on board.

Author: Amberlie

As most of you know Osama Bin Laden was captured and killed not even a week ago and many controversies are already asserting themselves on the world wide web. One controversy is that of an alleged quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that started appearing on many Facebook page updates, tweets, and blogs at lightning speeds. The quote began to circulate the web and within 24 hours it went viral.

Here is the quote that was shared among millions of Facebook users:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

After doing bit of research it was revealed that the quote was indeed partially fabricated. It seems that the last part of the quote turned out to be true and was quoted in MLK's book "Strength and Love" that was published in 1963, but the first sentence were the words of a Penn State graduate currently living in Japan. Apparently, along this statements long journey through cyberspace the quotation marks were removed, but the words successively kept spreading at an even faster rate.

This just goes to show the power of the world wide web and how social networking can make or break you and your business. This is a lesson of how fast and easy (and inexpensive) you can utilize the Internet to boost your business.

Author: Amberlie

First, lets take a peek at a little background information about HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). Html was continuously developed and implemented until 2004 by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), also known as the International Organization of Standardization (ISO). During that time an HTML working group decided to begin evolving the web toward today’s HTML 5 standards, after they became worried that the W3C was not considering the evolving needs the real world demanded of HTML.

Today HTML 5 is here to address the needs of web application developers as well as attempt to fix specific issues found in HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0.

Some new features include:

• New tags to support specific targeted elements like the navigation, body content, headers and footers of a page.
• For example: <nav>, <header>, <footer>, <section>, <article>, <aside> and <figure> are some of the new tags created to give these areas of a page a semantic meaning. Now browsers will identify many areas specifically instead of viewing them as meaningless div tags with unique names.
• Easily created dynamic web pages by web developers with features like menu tags, command tags , href-less <a> tags and a very helpful async attribute that will allow browser to asynchronize a script so that the rest of the web page is loaded before the ever impatient viewer steers away from the site!
• New elements like the <video> <audio> and <canvas> tags that will allow developers to quickly add video, audio and drawing space on a web page.
• Tags like <time>, <mark>, <meter> and <progress> are used as in-line elements to semantically markup content.
• New form types like time, month, email and url, among others, are added to the existing list of form types.
• Many fading and unused page elements from past HTML versions have been removed, including frames and framesets.

Although these are all great attributes being added to the HTML family, like any new technology, there are concerns that have arisen within the web developing community. For one, not all browsers support HTML 5 and as hard as it has been with past HTML versions to create cross browser compatible websites, the limited use of HTML 5 supporting browsers by the average person is discouraging.

It is safe to say that although the everlasting struggle between developers and old-Explorer-browser-using-individuals is never ending, browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Opera have strong support of the new HTML 5. And best of all, HTML 5 was created to stay ‘backward compatible’ with old HTML versions!

Author: Adrian

Designers, being the creative individuals that they are, not only have to come up with visually compelling web designs, more importantly, they must take into consideration how a user will interact with any final web design layout. A designer must address various cognitive factors in their design; perception, memory, learning and problem solving play a key role in every user web page interaction. The user’s tasks, goals and needs should be facilitated through an easy to use interface experience.

Here are some important pointers to keep in mind to design a successful user-oriented web page interface:

1.     Users should be able to predict the effects of their actions. In other words, users should know what they can and cannot do by glancing at a page’s navigational elements.

2.     These elements should be consistent throughout the site and users should recognize their functionality without having to remember exactly what they do.

3.     New elements should relate to the ones the user has already used and experienced.

4.     For every user action, a corresponding reaction should take place. (Links or what seem like links should work at all times)

5.     Information should be quickly and easily accessible, grouped in small digestible pieces, meaningfully organized and easily scan able.

6.     Many web users report becoming lost at one point or another while visiting a site. Therefore make sure to use descriptive links and clear page IDs with a clearly structured indication of their relationship to other pages. (Note: more than 60% of users use the ‘back’ button as their primary navigation source! Therefore do not open relative links onto new windows or tabs.)

 7.     Bodies of text are most effectively used with sans-serif fonts and moderate line spacing. Break ongoing blocks into smaller chunks. And DO NOT use all caps, italicized or ornamented fonts as bodies of text because they are difficult to read.

 8.     Sentences should consist of short, simple and everyday words to avoid ambiguity. Since the web has crossed cultural and natural boundaries, ambiguity can lead to an offensive misunderstanding.

9.     The structure of a page should be laid out on a grid-based system like the ‘960’ system.

10. Use color carefully and conservatively because it evokes emotion. Consider the beauty of white space as it gives the user a resting space for their eyes.

Overall, your page designs should allow the user to feel comfortable in its usability holding the pages content to be reliable and trustworthy. Follow these tips, but as a designer do not forget that one of your primary goals is to keep the attention of the user without discouraging them with the use of eye-catching graphics.

Author: Adrian

With all the the new mobile products available these days, like smartphones, notebooks and iPads; its time to start thinking about not only designing for computers, but also for mobile devices. It has been speculated by the experts that mobile devices will outsell computers in 2011 and that has brought up great concern about how sites will render on these mobile devices.

In the past, you may have thought to design a separate site all together for mobile devices, this is no longer necessary and it won't satisfy your end user's expectations. Most sites built for mobile devices will offer the visitor the option to visit the original site, and if the original site is not optimized to mobile standards, you may loose visitors quicker than you think.

Mobile web design has taken a big leap forward with the introduction of CSS 3, there have been a few attributes added to help us develop for all types of devices based on screen size. Media queries allow you to design a whole site and let your coding to conform to the user’s viewing device.

Here are a few examples of good website design that adapt to mobile devices:





Author: Simon

In 2010 and 2011, the introduction of more decorative font faces have been implemented into web design as an alternative to the default web browser fonts like Arial and Georgia.

Although web fonts have been available for a few years now, users that did not have a specific font downloaded onto their computer would not be able view them correctly on the web. Now with more browser support like Google Web Fonts, designers can either embed the desired font on their webpage, by downloading the font and implementing a sample code, or by simply adding a unique stylesheet link to their site and using the font through css code.

For most designers in general, they have spent many excruciating hours in and outside of design class learning the art of typography. For the most part, these rules were the focus of static design. As soon as you learned to appreciate these rules, instructors would give you the opportunity to break them within the creative boundaries of visual communication.

Now we have the best of both worlds. Before, decorative textual elements on web pages could only be accomplished using images that were first laid out with software programs like Photoshop or Illustrator and then uploaded. Now, as designers, we can use resources like Google Web Fonts, among others, to successfully design beautiful web pages using our extensive typographic training.

Not only will viewers of a webpage find a new typographic experience, the semantic language that html5 and css3 are aimed at creating will be one step closer to becoming fulfilled. The once static and meaningless images, displaying typographic art, will come alive, in a sense, with words that are search engine recognizable. These words will also have positive influences on landing page design, both visually and semantically.

Author: Adrian