Website Design

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2010-11-19T22:12:00.001-08:00

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Website Design Tutorials Photoshop

2010-11-15T09:40:00.001-08:00

Creating a Website Header in Photoshop
Step 1. Getting the background together.

Let’s start by creating a new Photoshop file. Open Photoshop and create a new file that’s 770pixels wide by 180px high. Make sure the resolution is set to 72 dpi.

For our basic grey background I’ll need two components:

1. A Shape layer with a Gradient Overlay effect applied
2. A layer with a Pattern Overlay applied

Start by selecting the Rectangle tool and dragging out a rectangle to fill our empty document.

Next, go to the Layers palette and click on the “Add a Layer Style” icon at the bottom. Choose “Gradient Overlay” from the popup list. In the Layer Styles window, create a new gradient from black to grey (I used a hex value of 545454). It should look something like this:

Now I’m going to create a diagonal tiling background pattern. Create a new Photoshop document of 4px square. Zoom right in, and using the Line Tool, create a white diagonal line going from the top right corner to the bottom left. Hold down Shift as you draw to constrain it to 45 degrees. Double click on the background layer and hit OK to make the Background layer into a normal bitmap layer. Now turn that layer’s visibility off in the Layers palette. The document should look a little like this:

Choose Select > All from the menu and then go to Edit > Define Pattern. Choose an appropriate name if you like. Now head back to the original header document.

Create a new layer above the rectangle with the gradient and fill it with black. Double-click it to bring up the Layer styles and go to Pattern Overlay. Your new pattern should be in the drop-down list of patterns. Select it and you should see your pattern in place in the document. Click OK, and the adjust the layer’s opacity to around 5%, or whatever you think best. This has the effect of reducing the effect of the pattern to “just about visible” levels.

So now we have a nice basis for our header. The gradient and pattern serve as a backdrop for what comes on top. The pattern especially will really emphasize the effect of reduced opacity of any layer above it, and the gradient is practically essential in current web design thinking!
Step 2. Adding the logo.

I’ll be creating a header for a fictitious gardening social networking site, called “Grass is Greener”, so select the Type tool click on the image and type it out. In our example here I’ve used all lowercase, with no spaces to keep the modern feel. I’ve used Arial Bold at 48pt. I’ve also pulled in the Tracking to -50 to tighten the space between the letterforms a touch. For the colour I’ve chosen a really vivid yellow/green of d0e113.

To differentiate the “is” in the middle of the logo so it’s readable, I’m going to select just those two letters using the Type tool and make them white (choosing the colour either from the Options bar or the Character palette).

I’ll give the logo just a hint of a glow to make it “breathe” a little on the page. Click on the “Add a Layer Style” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose “Outer Glow”. You want a smallish yellow glow with a Size setting of 5, at quite a low opacity, so set that to 25%. You can see the settings and their effect below:

I’ll also add a tagline of “social gardening” to the logo. Again, use Arial Bold (or Helvetica Bold) with the Tracking set to -50. I’ve set the font size to 14pt and aligned it with the right of the logotype above. To add the same glow as we used in the previous step, go to the Layers palette, hold down Alt/Option and drag the layer style from the previous layer to our new tagline, like this:

Lastly, I’ll have a box framing the logo, which I’ll create using a Shape layer. Select theRounded Rectangle Tool and set the corner radius to 5px in the Options bar.

Click and drag to create the shape, until it’s a little wider than the logo, with about 15-20px of clear space in all directions. If it’s sitting on top of the logo, drag it down in the layers palette so that it sits beneath both the logotype and the tagline. I want to position it off the top of the image, so using the Move tool just drag it off the top a little to lose the top rounded corners. You could also use the shape editing tools to re-shape the top of the box, but it’s a waste of time in this instance.

For positioning, I’ll put the edge of the box 20px in from the edge of the image, and set the text 20px down from the top. Really I should align the top of the main text body (the “waistline” in typo-speak) at 20px down, but that feels too high, so in the end I think instead that pushing the top of the dot of the “i” 20px down suffices.

Now, we’ll use our “dragging Layer Styles” trick to drag the Gradient Overlay from the background to the new box. So Alt-drag the Layer Style to that box in the Layers palette, and you’ll see it take on the same gradient as the background. I want to see an illusion of transparency here, so I’ll drop the opacity of the layer to around 36% to allow the lines in the background to be visible.

Finally, double-click the layer to bring up the Layer Styles window, and now we’ll add just a tiny Bevel and Emboss effect to make the box “sit into” the background a touch. The settings for this are in the screenshot below.
Step 3. The Search box.

To preserve continuity, the search area has the same corner radius and Layer Styles as the background for the logo. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool again and make sure your corners are set to 5px. Click and drag out the search box until it’s around 30-35px high and 275px long.

Position the search area 20px in from the right, and align the bottom of the search box with the bottom of the logo background. Again, using the same margins and lining things up keeps everything neat.

Copy the Layer Style settings from the logo background to the search box using the Alt-dragging technique mentioned previously. This looks okay, but doesn’t really feel indented like a text area should. Double-click on the layer to bring up the Layer Style window, and click on“Inner Shadow” in the Styles menu on the left. We’ll use a Distance of 5px and a Size setting of 57px to give a deep shadow (see settings below). Set the Opacity to 100%. Click OK to commit the changes. To complete the search area, set the Opacity of the layer to 36% to allow some background through, and mirror the effect of the logo background.

I’ll add a user prompt to the search area in the shape of the inviting word: “search…”. This is just arial bold at 18pt. It’s worth noting at this stage that to actually implement a search field like this, you’ll have to use a background image in the final CSS.

Our final search area looks like this:
Step 4. The grass.

Now comes the fun bit – drawing the grass. Note that we’re not after photo-realistic grass here; just the suggestion of grass. I want a very stylized version, and I’ll build it up using three of layers of brushes and gradients.

To start, create a new layer in the Layers palette by clicking the “Create a new Layer” icon at the bottom of the palette. This is going to be my “background” grass, which will be quite a dark green. Changing the colours for each layer adds depth to the image. I’m going to choose 667e04.

To create the grass, I’ll use a brush. Click on the Brush tool, and from the Brushes palette, find the Grass preset. It’s a little big as it stands, so drop the size to around 45px. Your Brushes palette should look a little like this (Note I’ve turned off the Color Dynamics since I just want a solid colour at this stage):

Now I’ll “paint” with the brush to create a grassy border around 50px high at the bottom of the image.

I’m going to add another layer of grass above the first, but this time using the light yellow/green colour from the logo (chosen to add consistency). Use the Eyedropper tool to select it by clicking on the green in the logo, and reselect the Brush tool. Just brush it on as before to create a “highlight” layer.

Lastly, I’ll add a bit of a glow to the whole thing which just livens it up a little. Create a new layer above the previous two and select the Gradient tool from the Tools. If you followed the last step, you should have the light green from the logo as your foreground colour, but we want that to fade to transparent rather than another colour. In the Options bar, open the Gradient Picker and choose “Foreground to Transparent”, as below.

I’ll click at the bottom of the image and drag upwards until it’s just past the top of the grass, where I’ll release it. That effect’s too much, but now I’ll drop the Opacity of the layer to around 60% to soften the effect.

Finally, I’ll add a bigger grass stem in the background that will show through the translucency of the search box. This should really emphasize the depth in the image. On a new layer, I’ll use a bigger version of the grass brush we used previously. This time it will be around 230px in size, and use a dark grey colour. I’ll choose #282828 for this; not quite black as we want a slightly softer effect than the black would give us.

Drag the new grass layer in the Layers palette to just above the lines in the background, and add a couple of touches of the bigger grass to the layer so that it sits behind the search box. Try changing the size slightly between each dab of the brush to add more variety.

And that, as they say, is that! The final image should look something like this:
Wrapping up.

The end result of this tutorial should give you some grounding in how to apply abstract concepts like Layer Styles and Shapes to a real-world design example. Get a feel for what it looks like with different alignments, composition and colours to see how the various elements fit together, and play with those Layer Styles to get a feel for how they can affect the perception of depth and tone. Above all, have fun!

Web Design- A Tool To Carve A Successful Business

2010-11-15T09:39:00.004-08:00

You may try to spread information about the products available with you through advertising, SEO and many other methods. You certainly want to give your customer, the best product to make him come to you always for his needs. Establishing a good will of a company is important for the success and longevity of the business. In fact, it is always the first priority and a sky underneath which your dreams lie.

There is one tool besides all the mentioned ones here which people may underestimate or ignore. It is your ‘website’. Your website can bring in business and can also establish a report. How? Let’s see how.

If a website is designed the right way, it can do wonders for your business. It is that one thing which can speed the journey of success for you. It can take your business to the global level in a quick and easy way. Website designing is an art about the technicalities of which a layman may not know. There are companies and experts who can help you create website designs which could help you grow on a faster pace in every corner of the world.

To do this, you have to find a company which understands your needs, as well as your customer’s. A website design has to be user friendly. The website must not be cluttered with information as it can be confusing for the user. At the same time it must not have a dearth of information on it as incomplete information again leaves users confused. Not only pictures and pie charts, but the content also has a big role to play in a website. The website has to be interactive and fresh in order to leave a mark on the minds of users. All these things are not merely important for the beauty of a website. In fact they are also helpful in the online promotion of the website. There are many good web design and development companies providing online marketing solutions, web designs, Viral Marketing utilizing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), major social networking platforms, targeted and untargeted Email and SMS mobile marketing and many more such services. The combination of such services from experts and a good website design can take your website to the first page of leading search engines.

An expert can surely help you with all the details about useful techniques and ways to benefit the website and business. Your website is one of the biggest and economical ways to rule the industry.

Typography in Web Design:

2010-11-15T09:39:00.003-08:00

Typography in Web Design:

Typography in Web Design:

A very important but often underplayed element in website design is web typography. Typography itself is as old as the earliest writing systems and has since developed into a very specialised field.

Typography originated after the invention of printing from movable type in the mid 15th century and has come along way since then. Today we find a large number of typefaces on the web.

How you approach typeface in your design, will either enhance or diminish the visual impact of your website. Function and aesthetics are intrinsic in web design and how well your design works is just as important as how it looks.

New liberty in Web Design: sIFR Text

Creative uses for typeface in web design were limited until recently. Today’s new operating systems have made it possible for website designers to move away from the limitations of using standard system fonts.

Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, better known as sIFR text are giving many website designers creative leeway. In simple terms, sIFR text is a flash rendering technique whereby designers can replace on-screen text elements with flash equivalents. In order to display correctly on someone’s web browser, sIFR requires the following: JavaScript and a Flash plug-in.

sIFR allows website headings, pull-quotes and other elements to be styled in whatever font the designer chooses. It is Search engine friendly and will display the website content as text and not an image.

Important Typeface Tips:

The web is saturated with tips on website design and typography. Here are a few tips that can help you with the choice and placement of your typeface in web design.

Space:

Take note of the line spacing/ leading that you give your text. The space between your words will impact the readability of your copy.

Colour

Consider the colour of your design and choose the colour of your text accordingly. The colour of your text should neither overpower your design nor be consumed by it.

Font Size:

Consider the theme and style of your web design and choose the font size accordingly. Certain typefaces have been designed as small fonts and will therefore not have the same effect if it is too big.

Take into account that your text size should be readable to different users who are making using different browsers and technologies. Don’t make your text too small or too large.

Legibility

Take your user into account. The emphasis in web design today is on user-centric design. Remember that your website is there to communicate information. The objective is to encourage people to read the information on your site.

Too many fonts

Don’t use too many fonts throughout your website, rather make small adjustments to the existing font. This will help you to maintain a sense of continuity throughout your design. We suggest you use two types of font at most.

Font-smoothing

Any windows operating system lower than vista, does not apply “font-smoothing” as a default setting. This could radically change how the viewers see your text.

Lilo is a professional Website Design and Web Development company, based in London UK with offices in Cape Town, South Africa and more recently Sydney, Australia. We are a multidisciplinary agency, delivering expert and cost effective solutions that will meet a variety of your web development and website design requirements.

How to get interactive website design for your business

2010-11-15T09:39:00.001-08:00

In India if you have a basic website which is not found in Google for niche business keywords of your industry and you are earning not a single penny from it then you might be losing potential customers and wasting your time. Website play leading role in getting online business
successful and works perfect for you. It cost effective solution and very much like virtual assistant who works 24x7x365 days in a year.
In Delhi there are lots of website design companies found in google who provide various plans and different types of website template and design services at different price some companies offer cheap web design services one important comes in mind how to get best web design company delhi who provide cost effective solution at much affordable price. Remember your website should be customized according to your requirement and most importantly satisfying all basic requirements for visitor to easily convert them into customers. Web design firm like delhiwebhostingindia works under wire frame management make changes when required test your website in different phases and views so that not a single error there exist they knows what best for their customers is best for their customer clients.
Remember your website should be designed in such a way that it looks search engine friendly and it helps you got a big list building and hence improve customer base firms like delhiwebhostingindia provide online tools customized with your website when user sign up in newsletter they got weekly interactive email about your new product and services with special discounts and coupen codes for special occasion such as company inauguration, holiday festivals etc.
You can sell your products online web design delhi firm provide cost effective solution including shopping cart intergeration with paypal, ebookers etc they use various platform like content management system like Joomla, mambo and shopping site templates developed under php, ruby like magento, ecommerce, ecart etc. these platform have builtin analytics panel in which you can track what your visitors are doing and how many comes from which internet medium like search engines, directories, classified, advertising modes etc.
If your website is not found in Google then you are losing mass volume of potential customers. Your website should be search engine friendly it should have unique content and description in on-page optimization factors like meta tag, meta description, header tag, image alternate text, body text etc. millions of website are being developed each day and in internet there exist very competitive market ranking in google for long period required effective search engine optimization. In order to optimize our website in maximum keywords we should update our website with fresh content in the form of blog, articles, press release page, faq page etc.
You should think about it. When you do a search with Google, do you browse through the different pages of the result or do you reach a decision based on the first page. 9 times out 10 people do the same. If you get web design delhi service for your website with 100 % ethical white hat seo while following Google search engine guidelines definitely you will get good traffic of visitors and your interactive website will convert this visitors into customers.
Delhiwebhostingindia is Web Design Delhi company provide various services like logo design, web hosting, linux hosting
, window hosting, dedicated server hosting, domain registration, email hosting, website builder, digital certificates. We are leading Website Design Delhi company Contact us today to make your website money making machine for you

How Shady Web Design Sites Get High Search Engine Results

2010-11-15T09:38:00.003-08:00

There’s an unspoken understanding amongst web designers that the most valuable marketing real estate is Google’s "web design" front page. With over 300,000 searches monthly and thousands of dollars spent in search advertising on an hourly basis, the value of a top placement for terms like "web design", "website design", and "logo design" can often be financially crucial to web design businesses.

You’d think, then, that Google and other search engines such as Bing would spend their time monitoring the top web design pages for link spam and other unethical, black hat search engine marketing tactics. However, it appears that Google’s "web design" results are fairly unfiltered and loosely regulated, as a quick scan of their inbound link profile will show.

Armed with Yahoo Site Explorer and a desire to see what makes the most valuable keywords in the web design industry tick, I checked the first page for any unusual rankings, unethical marketers, and interesting search results.

What I discovered was quite alarming: The same black hat SEO tricks that have been used for years are still helping short-term search engine marketers make their way into the top search engine results page (SERP).

From link spam (also known as spamdexing) to manipulative page widgets, there’s an alarming amount of dark SEO tactics going on in the web design world.

This article discusses SEO techniques that a few disreputable web design companies are using, and what they mean for ethical web designers.
Backlinks from Blog Comments

Almost all of the top-ranked results for the search term "web design" showed some signs of proactive search engine optimization. Many used HTML and content optimized for search results. In other words, most had content that was specifically designed to target terms such as "web design" and "website design", and the majority made use of interlinked pages and cunning anchor text. That’s all well and good — I guess — at least in the eyes of Google’s auto-indexing bots.

What’s a little more surprising is that many of the top-ranked web design sites appear to have built at least some of their inbound link profile by using blog comment sections that allow the commenter to leave a URL, as well as placement of links in blogrolls–a list of other blogs that a blog recommends to readers. This tactic has been around for years and can be used to improve a website’s search engine ranking, but in Google’s terms, isn’t natural link-building.

Blog comments, sometimes automated, are still used by shady sites.Blog comments, sometimes automated, are still used by shady sites.

It’s quite unnerving to see such low-level SEO tactics working for these artificially promoted sites. Does this type of strategy really work for such competitive terms? While it makes up a small percentage of their total link profile, it’s still an interesting thing to see for an authority website.
Manipulation of Anchor Text

Google’s stance on manipulated anchor texts is somewhat murky. The search engine has punished websites in the past for exploiting inbound link texts (e.g. the fake credit card story of a few years back), but generally accepts that site owners will try to influence users into picking a specific link text. Some of the websites ranking for the term "web design", however, appear to be taking things too far; well beyond Google’s motto of "Don’t be evil."

These links were spotted in the footer of a client's website, and use an obvious manipulation of the designer's company name.These links were spotted in the footer of a client’s website, and use an obvious manipulation of the designer’s company name. Notice how the first letter of the company name was left out of the anchor text.

A quick scan of the backlink profiles of many top-ranked web design sites shows that unscrupulous web design firms are using their clients’ websites to build their backlinks.

While third-party websites produce links with normal, generic terms such as "website" or "info" to link out to commercial websites, most of the inbound links to design sites use ultra-specific anchor texts and appear to be self-created.
Social Media is Used to Manipulate Search Engine Results

Back in 2006, the SEO community was obsessed with manipulating PageRank through MySpace by using graphics and widgets. The images, often embedded in a table, would appear on profiles and other high-value pages with an outbound link placed below them. This could, theoretically, give a higher PageRank (PR) value to the linked website and increase its placement in search results.

For the most part, these manipulative tactics aren’t that effective anymore. Google’s algorithm has evolved beyond the days of PageRank manipulation, or at least the unsubtle manipulation seen in the days of MySpace.

While outdated PR-boosting techniques have died out, some shady web design companies have found a new way to gain inbound links and trickle-down PR through site widgets that display Twitter and Facebook updates.

More obvious anchor text manipulation; this time in a Twitter widget that's used on thousands of popular websites.More obvious anchor text manipulation; this time in a Twitter widget that’s used on thousands of popular websites.

Check the screenshot above for an example — the linked page has gained most of its "web design" links by distributing a branded Twitter widget. What’s interesting about this example is how their outbound link is displayed — while it’s technically branded as their business name, the first letters from their name have been excluded to ensure that PageRank is passed with the right anchor text. Shady, right?

This type of manipulative inbound linking has been used on all the major design-related terms, making it difficult for organic search engine results to break through.

While SEO is very much an effort-based marketing field, it’s unlikely that Google and other search engines appreciate this kind of PageRank manipulation. It would be interesting to see how long these types of links will remain valuable, as search engines tend to use disincentives and penalties to push down websites that manipulate their anchor text in this way.
Bad News for the Good Guys: Organic High Rankings Are Unlikely

What does this near-constant search manipulation mean for ethical web designers and web design companies? Unless you plan to target small, niche search terms like affordable web designers that love cats almost exclusively, the likelihood is that your website won’t rank well for volume-based keywords without the same SEO work.

Without an active SEO campaign, it's unlikely you'll rank for anything more than ultra-niche search terms.Without an active SEO campaign, it’s unlikely you’ll rank for anything more than ultra-niche search terms.

Are these disreputable web design companies affecting the relevancy in search results? Possibly. While there are some relevant results in the first page for terms like "web design" and "website design", such as the Wikipedia entry on web design and the About.com pages for web designers, many search results are of commercial websites that have participated in unethical SEO practices. It’s possible, though, that Google actively monitors some of the more popular web design keywords, which could potentially limit the effects of these black hat tactics.
Linkspamming and Other Blackhat SEO Tactics Are Still Effective

Comment backlinks, manipulative links, and self-created links are one thing — and their effectiveness is questionable due to no-follow rel attributes that most blogs implement — but spam, what’s known as link spam or spamdexing in the context of SEO, is another game entirely.

While most web design company sites appear to have gained their backlinks at least somewhat ethically, there are two results found on the first page alone that have gained their positions almost entirely through link spamming.

It's rare to see a service-based business resort to keyword spam, but this Chinese web design firm has succeeded in doing just that.It’s rare to see a service-based business resort to keyword spam, but this Chinese web design firm has succeeded in doing just that.

One is an offshore Chinese design site, which appears to have gained the bulk of its backlinks by publishing automated blog posts. It’s not often you see "web design" listed alongside common spam terms such as "levitra" and "Louis Vuitton Replica" if your backlinks are organic. Check the screenshot above for a quick look into this website’s backlink profile; it’s quite alarming on such a competitive search keyword.

What’s clear is that unethical search strategies — spammed links, PageRank manipulation, and other shady tactics — still work. And, often, very effectively. If it’s possible to gain a front-page SERP listing with little more than automated blog posts and spammy links, it seems unlikely that legitimate and ethical design company websites could ever rank well, let alone for a competitive and valuable search term like "web design".
Organic SEO campaigns Aren’t Likely to Succeed in Web Design

Can a natural link profile compete with the big players? Unlikely. Search appears to be an area that is lucrative for those with questionable ethics, given the amount of websites ranking for high-value terms in the web design industry.

It’s troubling and saddening to say this: It seems very unlikely that a small site, particularly one that hasn’t been aggressively marketed because of budget restrictions or because of ethical beliefs in artificially growing their search engine ranking, could ever rank well for major design keywords.

And that sucks because amazing web designers are out there, but are being outcompeted by those who would rather spend their budget in gaming the system rather than investing in things that improve their products (such as hiring talented designers).

It's difficult for an ethical design firm to compete with opponents that use linkspam, automated blogs, and other nasty tactics.It’s difficult for an ethical design firm to compete with opponents that use link spam, automated blogs, and other nasty tactics.

However, there’s still hope of success on the front page. Advertising is available through Google AdWords, albeit frightfully expensive for those based in large markets like ours.

Similarly, the amount of time and effort required to compete in organic search results just isn’t realistic for many small web design firms. Freelance designers and small boutiques studios, it seems, just can’t compete with big companies and shady spammers.
Is There Hope for Web Designers with a Conscience?

Possibly. At this point, it’s hard to tell how Google will react to the latest wave of link spam, although given their history, it appears that the links in question could be devalued.

A case about search results in the UK last year suggests that Google does take an active approach to monitoring specific keyword phrases, although with the quantity of design-related link spam, it probably won’t happen soon enough.

Google occasionally removes offending pages, although it's rare to see it in service-based industries like web design.Google occasionally removes offending pages, although it’s rare to see it in service-based industries like web design.

The ideal way to get good search results is by focusing on your products and hope that they’re good enough to gain organic links from high-ranking, reputable websites that deal with web design topics; but with the current situation, it seems even that isn’t enough.

Take Me to the Higher Ground Mr Cowen

2010-11-15T09:38:00.001-08:00

In the next few months Ireland as a nation is going to change as we will be experiencing one of our toughest budgets in the past 10 years. It will be a shock to the system for the majority of people in this country as they look into their purses and wallets and realise that they are going to have a lot less money than they have had in the past.
I think personally that this budget will be the official end of the Celtic Tiger for those who in the private sector have been lucky enough to keep their jobs and businesses going till now as they face higher taxes and charges for services that escaped in the past.
I am not an economist. I could dust off my MBA notes from the OU and try and fill these paragraphs with some sort of commentary but I wont bore you with this. All I know is that from a web design perspective it will become more and more competitive for me. A website is often seen as a discretionary marketing spend for many companies. I will not go into this argument again (suffice to say I disagree). I know that inquiries will possibly drop and people will want more for less. This is perfectly understandable as I am in that very same boat myself. I find myself looking at prices in the supermarket more closely, shopping around that little bit more and like you sometimes not spending where in the past I might have done so without question.
OK Where is the Sales Pitch?
Now I could slip in a special offer “Website for XX euro” and try and attract you to making a spend. However if you are reading this blog post you probably already have a website or at least the knowledge to do it without my help. As more and more media students are streaming out of colleges the competition is fierce and prices are hitting rock bottom. Surf around and you can get sites from 300-500 euro easily.
I don’t compete with these prices and value stream and as a result I have been thinking long and hard about my plans for the future in this space and have decided that I my strategy for 2010 and beyond is going to change. Of course I will still design websites and those queries are welcome and I will give you a product that you will be happy with. However my competencies lie beyond this. I have worked in IT and the Internet for over 20 years as a technologist, hosting expert and project manager.
I believe that there are customers out there that need people to help them understand what they are looking for in a website.and an on-line business solution. They are experts in their own niche but are unfamiliar with the best way to go with an on-line strategy. If they ring up a website design company no self respecting designer is going to say they cant deliver on their needs (god knows I have done it often enough myself), but for a large scale project they can often be disappointed and run the risk of failure.
Business owners need expertise to help them to make the right decision for their on-line strategy. They may know the answers but not the right questions. I have the questions that will save you picking the wrong people to deploy your solution. For a very modest fee I can show you the best approach, recommend the best website designers in your area (I exempt myself from this process of course), measure success and tell you how it should all work together. There are some fabulous website designers and graphic designers in the Cork area alone and I know most of them.
I can point you in the right direction, document a plan for you – give you the contacts and set you on your way with a high degree of comfort.
Why Should I Bother?
Why bother with this – is this another middle man in the process? You told me up top that I would have less money and now you want me to spend it on you – this sounds like a huge waste of money. ?? No it isn’t and I will explain why with a simple example. I am dealing with a customer at the moment who wants me to update their website as their original designer has moved on. However they do not have any hosting details or ftp information. To get this is going to take some time and add to the duration of the project.
It is also frustrating for the customer as they had not planned for this time to be part of the process. If when they had originally started the website and made certain that this information was documented then this stumbling block would have been removed. This is an example of a question that was not asked when this project was originally started.
If you call me and explain what you are looking for I can develop a website strategy document for you, supply yopu with a set of contacts that will help you succeed all for less than the cost of a small ad in a local newspaper. You will have a document and a plan at your elbow that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your project.

Selection of an Excellent Website Design Company

2010-11-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

The business identities are nowadays flocking to get websites published, registered and hosted on the internet. Seeing to the exponential demand, the marker is witnessing mushrooming of a number of website design and development companies.

Here are some key aspects that throw light on the criteria for selecting a website design company that can cater to your needs.

Experience: There is no better teacher than experience. Before selecting the company one needs to know whether the company has got any experience of designing a website for that particular industry. Since how many years is that web design company providing this service. The more the experience the more is the technical expertise and knowledge about increasing the utility of the website. This depends on the expertise of the workforce deployed by the web design company.

Testimonials:

The true worth of a website designer is known from the feedback of clients to whom he/she had provided the services. It is not reliable to trust 100% the client testimonials that are embedded on the websites. It is always better to contact the clients directly and ask their opinion about the services offered by the website designer.

Time:

While getting a web design prepared from a website designer developer, time is of prime importance. The more the time it takes to design the website, the more clients the website owner is losing. If the website is prepared in a hurry, just to get the business identity on the internet, it may be loss of time, money and energy. The web designing process should take neither a lot of time nor be done instantaneously. The time that is given for this should be justified.

Pricing:

Before placing the order with any professional web designer the business identity should calculate how much money is worth being spent on the website designing and developing. This directly depends on the projections of the maximum business that the website can bring to the organization. This is the maximum revenue that can be generated from the website after design and development. It is only after this that the quotations should be asked from the web design companies. One should not get carried away by anything offered for free or at cheap rate. The service charges levied by the company should neither be very cheap nor dear, but reasonable and justified. The inclusions of the packages should be made clear in the quotations. It is always better to get this aspect cleared before placing the order.

Comparison:

It is always better to seek quotations from two or three companies that offer web design services. The comparison of these services can throw light on the range of services offered, pricing and at times even on the satisfied clientele of that particular company.

Hope the above mentioned tips help you to select the best professional web design company.

Website Design and Maintenance Basics

2010-05-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

Now as you have designed and have launched your site, you are having a powerful marketing tool for the business. However, your site would be only useful as long as the content is current. Procedure for keeping the site current is known as web site design maintenance. It is necessary to keep the search engine as well as visitors supplied with the new information. As you maintain your car, you need to do web site design maintenance. Making changes in the site regularly, in order to allow smooth working of the business.

If you are worried about the outdated text or broken links then, design a web and maintenance should be the solution. Planning for website design and maintenance should be ideal for updating the website. One can easily find service provider for website design and maintenance. There are several service providers out there offering with high quality design a web and maintenance and that too at competitive prices.

The websites dealing with ecommerce, information needs to be updated regularly. For instance, the news related to the company, images, information on products, web content, prices and the content needs to be updated.

The sites that abstain from changing content and the overall appearance for a long period hold risk of losing interest of the visitors. For an old site, more changes in website design and maintenance needs to be done. It would also allow the site to maintain its freshness. Taking certain steps should allow you to take right decisions related to design a web and maintenance.

Some web beginners would charge on hourly basis, while the rest would charge on monthly basis. Sometimes, website design and maintenance can be planned in such a way so as to allow you to makes changes on own.

Decision regarding the usage of Macromedia's publishing program is quite important. The program offers with an array of advantages for the users. It would allow you to connect to live sites, yet make draft for the web pages where the changes need to be made, editing it and updating the work. After completing all of these steps, one can make it online to live site. 'Contribute' operates like any daily day-to-day desktop type of program. Using it is quite simple and would allow you to update without having any troubles. If you are looking forward to make changes on your own then, you should probably try out this program.

It is advisable to seek some professional help for website design and maintenance. The experts would help with design a web and maintenance the best way.

Irrespective of the path chosen for website design and maintenance, having a practical approach for keeping the site updated should be fine.

SEO Website Development Company is professional SEO specialist offering an array of excellent services - SEO, ecommerce website development, web designing, web development, web maintenance, web content development and quality assurance.

Link-Building Policy for Bing

2009-12-22T22:02:00.001-08:00

It’s easy for everyone to get caught up in obsessing about how to optimise your site & build links for Google, when trying to market through search. That’s certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google totally dominates the search market. But, there are still other search engines that some people are using, so it is wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too!

Obviously the other two engines are Yahoo and Bing and whilst Yahoo is seemingly declining fast, Bing is actually gaining a market share. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway. With the muscle of Microsoft behind Bing, you can be sure the search engine won’t be prepared to play second fiddle to Google for long!

However, unlike Google, we don’t hear much about what Bing wants out of a site for decent rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don’ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for complying with Bing’s policies, does not differ too much from the advice that Google would give you. It is however, still always nice to hear what they think, just to clear up any possible confusion.

Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. “Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution,” says DeJarnette. “You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time.”

What You Should Do!

DeJarnette shared some tips for getting more quality links. The following are Bing’s tips for effective link building (paraphrased):
1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently
2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content
3. Publish concise, informative press releases online
4. Publish expert articles to online article directories
5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable
6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)
7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content
8. Launch a blog/forum on your site
9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site

What You Should Not Do!

DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:
1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
3. Using hidden links in your pages
4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
5. Linking out to known web spam sites

“When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction,” says DeJarnette. “If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalised with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.”

Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any experienced search marketer is not already aware of, but it can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and not to do, to help webmasters get better rankings.

in reference to:

"Link-Building Policy for Bing"
- http://www.freshwebz.co.uk/blog/ (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Sidewiki entry by SEO Expert

2009-12-22T02:58:00.001-08:00

Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor’s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.

Teasing your curiosity

“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!

Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.

Simple integrated design

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?

Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.

Take part in the action

Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.

Back to Black and White

Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.

Get Out of the box

Have you heard about the mrfdesign.we.bs If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the milliondollarhomepage.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.

What about the next trends

What the

in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

eCommerce Website Design

2009-12-22T02:57:00.001-08:00

250 Free Business Cards

eCommerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – make an online purchase. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an eCommerce website.

Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website.

An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

1. Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
2. Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.
3. The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided

in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design

2009-12-22T02:56:00.003-08:00

Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

I was recently asked by a visitor to thesitewizard.com to take a look at her company's website, designed by a university student. I will not give the URL for that site, partly to protect the innocent, and partly because by the time you read this, it'll probably have been modified.

The site was heavy in its use of graphics with images adorning most parts of the page layout, to provide curved borders (to replace the sharp corners in enclosing boxes), different background images for different parts of the page, etc. It had a top navigation bar, driven entirely using JavaScript. The navigation bar mimicked the sort of menu bar you find in computer programs - there is a horizontal menu bar with different items listed. When you move your mouse over one of those items, the menu will automatically expand vertically. As you move the mouse cursor down the pop-up menu, the item beneath the pointer is highlighted. Click it, and you will be delivered to another page on the site.

In general, that site is typical of the kind of sites produced by newcomers to web design. It scores well in terms of prettiness and gadgetry (although only under one browser, it doesn't work well under other browsers), but fares dismally in terms of usability and search engine readiness. In fact, the reason my visitor wrote to me was because the website suffered a significant drop in the number of visitors after it was redesigned in its current form.

This article uses that site as a starting point for discussing some of the issues that a web designer needs to consider when creating a website that must exist and compete in the real world (as opposed to a site that is created merely to fulfill the course requirements of a school or university).
1. Appearance is Not the Most Important Issue

Over the years that I have dealt with newcomers to web design, it is my observation that they tend to focus excessively (and sometimes almost exclusively) on the appearance of a website. The site I mentioned earlier is a case in point: the designer tried hard to make the site look beautiful (and, if I may add, succeeded too - the site does indeed look pretty). However, as hard as it may be to believe (if you are a newcomer), appearance isn't the most important thing to look at when you are planning and creating your site.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that appearance is of no importance. Far from it. However, in this article, my intention is to address the excessive importance newcomers place on beauty. In fact, if you belong to the other extreme, discounting the value of the appearance of a website altogether, you might want to read my discussion of Two Common Web Design Myths at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/myths.shtml

Having said that, your site can still survive (or even thrive) if it is a plain-looking site like Google. This is not necessarily the case if you overlook the other important issues in web design.
2. Usability is Important for You to Achieve Your Purpose

All sites are created for a particular purpose. Some were created so that their owners can sell something. Others are information resources (like thesitewizard.com). Still others are designed to showcase their owner's talents (such as sites displaying the owner's resumes and portfolios).

The usability of your site is important to help you achieve that purpose. The basic question that you need to address when dealing with usability is: can your visitors easily access the information they need so that they can do the stuff that you want them to do? There are quite a number of things involved in this question.

1.
Information Availability

Is the information that your visitors need to make informed decisions available on your site? For example, before they can buy a product, they will want to know more about that product. A brief one-line summary about your product's features may work for your main page, but you will probably find that you get more buyers if you can p

in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design

2009-12-22T02:56:00.001-08:00

in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

Is Your Website Design Driving Away Your Customers? Some Basic Usability Tips for Commercial Websites

2009-12-22T02:55:00.001-08:00

Following my article on Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Friendliness in Web Design where I discussed the importance of looking at the usability and search engine visibility of a website, I have received countless messages from visitors to thesitewizard.com asking me to review their website. While I do not have time to answer such requests individually, I decided that an article outlining some glaring usability flaws that I have found in a number of websites in general would be helpful. This article thus deals with the myths and fallacies commonly believed when designing a website to sell a product or a service.
Make It Easy for Visitor to Check Your Price List

Some websites try to hide the price list for their products. Some of these sites only display the price of the item after you hit the "Buy" or "Order" button, or worse, only after you have created an account on their site. Others have a price list, but bury the link to the price list somewhere deep in their site in a place not easily accessible from the main page or the products page.

I'm not exactly sure what the reason behind this is. Possibly, they think that if the customer does not see the price until they click the "Buy" or "Order" button, they will be more likely to buy the item. This reasoning is fallacious.

There are many types of visitors arriving at your site. Let's take the case of the window shopper. If they see something noteworthy on your site, they may make a note of the price so that they can return later if they want the item at some point in the future. If the price of the item cannot be easily found on your site, do you seriously think that they will thoroughly search the site just to find that elusive price tag? Or do you suppose that such a visitor will click the "Buy" button, just so that they can find the price tag at the end of the process somewhere? Or will they go through the bother of creating an account, revealing their personal particulars, just to find the price of an item?

Like the serious shopper, if they cannot find the price, they will simply go to another site. Remember: this is not a brick and mortar store we're talking about, where you need to take time and put in effort to travel to another store. On the Internet, your competitor is only a click away. And the search engines are more than happy to yield thousands of other sites selling the same type of goods or services as you. I realise that there are some brick and mortar stores (usually small concerns) who think that if they don't put a price tag, the customer has to find out the price from a sales person, who will then have the opportunity to persuade him/her to buy that item. Whether or not that is a good idea for a brick and mortar store (and I can think offhand of some types of customers that you will lose even there), it is a bad idea for a web store.

No matter how you look at it, every customer and potential customer will need to know the price of a product. Even the corporate customer buying for his/her company works to a budget. Making it difficult for your visitor to find the price list is a quick way to drive a potential customer away. As has been observed by many usability experts - the average Internet user has the attention span of a flea. If they can't find what they want within the first few seconds of glancing at your page, they will leave. And your competitors will be more than happy to attend to them in your place.
Provide Descriptions and Pictures for Your Products

I realise that the new web designer is beset with contradictory advice about how best to design their site. One set of such conflicting advice is the requirement to be brief and to-the-point so that you can catch that Internet visitor who will only give your web page a few seconds glance before deciding whether to stay or go elsewhere. Contradicting that is the requirement that you describe your products in depth and place pictures of your product, or screenshots if yours is a software product.

The best way to resolve this, I think, is to take a leaf from Amazon.com's book. For ev

in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

Seven Easy Ways to Annoy Visitors to Your Website: A Satire

2009-12-22T02:53:00.001-08:00

1.

Place some (or all of) your content in a small frame and force your visitors to read the content through that window. Don't worry about what constitutes "small" here, since most of the time, even if you create a big frame, it'll be considered too small by most visitors. This trick has a high annoyance value since your visitors have to view the information through that small little box and scroll continuously to see the text while the rest of the browser window is filled with information they don't really want to read at the moment. With this strategy, visitors cannot resize or maximize the window to make their reading more efficient or pleasurable. This method will allow you to frustrate those hapless souls and, as a bonus, make them leave your site.
2.

Disable the right click menu of the browser. Nevermind that people need the right click menu for many purposes, and that they can access the same functions through the main menu bar even after you've disabled it. After all, if your aim is to annoy, you might as well make their visit to your site as unpleasant as possible.
3.

Play background music when they arrive at your page. If that's not enough of an annoyance, make sure you loop the music so that the visitors are plagued by it continuously while they are on your page. If you're feeling particularly sadistic, place automatically-playing music on many (or even all) pages of your site. You don't have to worry about choosing a horrible tune - choose your favourite piece if you like. Since one man's meat is another man's poison, any sort of music tends to annoy most visitors.
4.

Make every link on your site opens in a new window when your visitor clicks on it. That is, put a target="_blank" to every link. This will annoy visitors since every time they click on a link in your site, a new window or tab will open. Another benefit of this technique is that it makes your site look amateurish.
5.

Force your visitors to navigate your website using Flash. That is, place all your content in a Flash file - text, pictures, links, etc - even if Flash is not ideal for such content (a straight HTML page is best for those types of content). Make sure that visitors who don't have the Flash plugin enabled or installed cannot see anything or do much on your website. This effectively drives away all mobile users, a group of users that is growing in size, as well as cripple your visitors who have come to expect certain facilities to always be available in their browsers (such as the BACK key and the ability to bookmark specific pages) when they visit websites. Now they will be forced to work through the more limited Flash plugin of their browser with whatever subset of features you deign to provide. In fact, exclusively using Flash for your site content might even help you to drop to the bottom of search engine listings too, thereby reducing the number of visitors to your site. After all, if you don't have visitors, you don't have to think of new ways to annoy them.
6.

Load your site with pop-up windows that open when your visitor reaches your page as well as when they leave the page. In fact, if you want to annoy them even further, open a pop-up window when they click on links on your site.
7.

Reduce the navigational usability of your website. Don't put site maps or navigation bars with shortcut links to pages that your visitors will usually want to go such as the "Download" page if you're a software author. If you can annoy your visitors by forcing them to read whole pages of your text before they can find a link to move on to do what they really want to do, so much the better.

in reference to: The White House (view on Google Sidewiki)

How to Use Different CSS Style Sheets For Different Browsers (and How to Hide CSS Code from Older Browsers)

2009-11-18T06:24:00.001-08:00

In an ideal world, you only need one set of CSS style sheets for your website, and those styles will work with every browser currently being used. This, as every webmaster soon finds out when he/she uses CSS, is a pipe dream. The modern browsers all have uneven levels of implementation of the CSS standards. As though this isn't bad enough, their implementations are often buggy - and they don't share the same bugs! And when you have solved that tricky bit, you find that your site has certain visitors (often your best customers) who, for various reasons, are using older browsers that have only rudimentary support for CSS.

What most (if not all) CSS-using webmasters want is a way to specify that a certain style sheet is to be used by such and such a browser and not others, as well as to hide other style sheets from older browsers.

The Good and Bad News
The bad news is that there is no standard documented method to include or exclude style sheets from being used by every browser still being used on the Internet.

All is not lost however. The good news is that there are a number of tricks, workarounds and even non-standard but documented methods available that you can use to have your style sheet included by some browsers and not others. The workarounds often rely on known bugs in certain versions of specific browsers.

On the other hand, even with these workarounds and tricks, you will probably find that there are certain browsers that you want to code for but do not have any reliable means to detect and work around. However, at least with the help of the tips listed here, you should be able to design a CSS-based website that works with the most commonly used browsers

Preliminary Tips for Coding
Before you start coding your site using CSS for specific browsers, here are some tips that hopefully will make your life easier.

Design From Scratch
Most webmasters who have had to convert their existing website to CSS say that they find it easier to design their site from scratch in CSS than to try to find a way to reproduce their old layout in CSS.

Another reason for designing from scratch is that CSS allows you to do many things not possible using the old tables paradigm. Rethinking your entire design allows you to take advantage of the new possibilities.

Code to Follow the CSS Standards First
Many of the web designers hanging out in webmaster forums have found that it is far easier to develop their CSS code for a highly standards-compliant browser like Firefox first, and then only later add the workarounds to make their code work on IE, than to code for IE and then try to make it work for Opera, Konqueror, Safari and Firefox.

It is also logical to write for a more standards-compliant browser first: sooner or later, Microsoft is bound to issue a newer version of IE that will have the existing CSS bugs fixed. When they do so, all you have to do is to remove the workarounds which you created and you're done. If you write your main style sheet with styles that are coded in a non-standard way to deal with IE bugs first, you will wind up having to rewrite everything when Microsoft fixes the bugs.

This is not to say that Firefox does not have its own share of CSS bugs. As such, my personal recommendation is to code with the two (supposedly) most standards-compliant browsers first, ie, Firefox and Opera, while at the same time periodically making sure that your CSS code validates with the W3 Consortium's free style sheet validator. You can add the workarounds for IE later.

(If you are not sure what validation means, or how you can get it done, check out my article on HTML and CSS Validation: Should You Validate Your Web Page? at http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/htmlvalidation.shtml

Use External Style Sheets and Take Advantage of the "Cascading" Aspect of Cascading Style Sheets
One way to handle the bugs and omissions existing in different browsers is to put all your standards-compliant CSS code in a separate (external) style sheet file that is loaded by every browser.

Then, when you find th

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

10 Strategies To Make Your E-Commerce Website A Success

2009-11-18T06:22:00.001-08:00

E commerce websites have come of age. As customers realize the ease and benefits of online shopping, the popularity of e-commerce websites have soared like anything else. However, with the increase in the number of Ecommerce websites vying for attention, it has become important for them to devise strategies to be better than the competition and attract more traffic. Here are some new trends and techniques that can help your Ecommerce processes.

Focus on User Experiences

Often we concentrate so much on improving the usability of the website that we completely forget about the user experience. The way users feel on the website goes a long way in influencing their purchase options as well as their general perception of the website. Therefore, try to connect with the visitors on intimate level and then build up your branding through strategic marketing techniques.

Provide Customized Messages to Specific Audience Segments

The chances of sales increases when the audience is more targeted. When you segment your audiences, you know about their general common preferences and likes. This will also give you an idea about what segments are useful and most profitable. In turn, you can customize your sales message and make sure they receive more relevant and personalized information and offers.

Create Compelling Content

Content is the only source of direct communication with your website audiences. Therefore, make it as compelling as you can . The main objective of your product page should be sales conversions. Include product images and videos along with content that convinces them to hit the 'Buy' button.

Eliminate Unnecessary Page Elements

A majority of Ecommerce websites carry a bulk of undue weight because of unnecessary page elements like blinking banners, rotating graphics and annoying flash-animations. Attention grabbing works best on subtle levels. Also make sure the information you provide on the website is short and crisp.

Include Videos on the Website

Videos are an emerging source of product promotion with more and more website embedding videos on their websites to promote their businesses. You can upload videos that provide demonstrations of your products and show how they work, exhibit their different features and show how users can benefit from their use. Moreover, video inclusion has certain search engine benefits as well.

Involve your Website Audiences

The three main elements of a successful website are - Content, Communication and Commerce. You need to involve your audiences and make them feel that they are a part of the website. Include a form on audience interaction on your website. Provide them with an option to review the products and participate in forum discussions etc.

Provide Free Shipping Options

A little known secret of the e commerce industry is that shoppers often shy away from buying a product because of the additional shipping costs that are involved. Thus if you decide to waive of the shipping costs, you'll have more sales. If its not a profitable option individually, provide free shipping options for bulk orders.

Optimize Products for Local Searches

While it is great to business on a global scale and cater to international customers, you can get huge visitor traffic with localized search engine marketing. Promote the products on your website on domestic search engines. You can also customize your product descriptions, tutorials, public relations and ad campaigns to suit the tastes of the local markets.

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

How To Enhance The Usability Of Your Homepage Design

2009-11-18T06:20:00.001-08:00

The homepage of your website is the face of your online presence. It is what makes the first impression on online audiences about your company and business. When people type in the URL of your website, they reach your homepage. The homepage, should therefore present a brief introduction about the website and lure visitors to browse further within. The homepage is perhaps the most important page of the website and thus you need to take adequate measures to enhance its usability. Here are some tips to ensure the same.

Include a Crisp and Catchy Tagline

Draft a tagline for your website homepage that informs about the company and business in a simple sentence. When visitors enter the homepage, they should know what the website and the company is all about just by reading the tagline. In fact, by drafting a catchy tagline you can catch the attention of your visitors and make sure they don't forget you.

Draft a Meaningful Title Tag

The title tag of your homepage should have your company name followed by a very brief description of the website. Avoid using words like 'Welcome' or 'The' that just populate the space and do no value addition. Instead, try to include your relevant keywords and phrases in the title tags.

Cluster All Corporate Information

Website visitors generally don't bother reading about the company. However, there are times when they decide to do business with you only after they are convinced about the company. In such scenarios it is important to have good corporate information on the website. Create an About Us page on your website that is dedicated towards informing visitors all about your company and business and provide a link to it from the homepage.

Focus on Key Tasks of the Website

The homepage of your website should act as a guide for visitors and help them find a browsing route. It should provide a clear starting point to do what they want to do i.e. there should be clear links to the main areas of the website where visitors might be interested in going.

Include a Search Box

The search box is indispensable for any website. Internet users are an impatient lot and they love anything that cuts short the action steps. Search boxes enable visitors to search for the exact information that they need by just entering a query instead of browsing through categories to fins what they need. Make sure your search box is at least 25 characters wide so that it accommodates multiple queries.

Offer Snapshots of Inlying Content

The homepage of the website is where you can showcase things and lure visitors to further explore the website. A good idea is to place snapshots or post the topics of important content within your website. Whether it is a recent article or a report that you have on a certain web page, offer a preview on the homepage.

Use Meaningful Design Elements

The homepage of a website is important and should welcome visitors. However, that doesn't mean you can load the page with useless design elements and flash animations that offer no value but only increase the file sizes.

Kabir Bedi is the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a reputed offshore web development company that provides an extensive range of web design services and web Development services. He has completed several international web design projects for international clients.

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

Here's a different way to generate forms using PHP, and to take care of all the required field validation too. It might help someone:

2009-11-17T03:37:00.001-08:00

array(
"type"=>"select",
// attributes are an associative array
"attributes"=>array(
"mr"=>"Mr.",
"ms"=>"Ms.",
"miss"=>"Miss.",
"mrs"=>"Mrs.",
),
),
"first_name"=>array(
"type"=>"text",
"size"=>40,
"required"=>true,
"onclick"=>"alert('test');",
"style"=>"border:2px solid #CCCCCC; padding:4px; font-size:15px;",
),
"last_name"=>array(
"type"=>"text",
"size"=>70,
"required"=>true,
),
);

$errors=array();

if($_REQUEST['save']){
// do sql here...
$sql = "INSERT INTO foo SET insert_date=NOW()";
foreach($elements as $element_name => $el){
if($el['required']&&!$_REQUEST[$element_name]){
$errors[]="Required field missing: $element_name";
}else{
$sql .= ", `$element_name` = '".addslashes($_REQUEST[$element_name])."'";
}
}
if(!$errors){
// call sql:
// $res = query($sql,$db);
// $member_id= mysql_insert_id($db);
// redirect after post back
header("Location: example.php?member_id=$member_id");
exit;
}
}

global $elements;
function fb($elem){
global $elements;
$el = $elements[$elem];
if(!$el['name'])$el['name']=$elem;
if(!$el['value']&&$_REQUEST[$el['name']])$el['value']=$_REQUEST[$el['name']];
switch($el['type']){
case "textarea":
?>
$val){ if($key=="value")continue; ?> ="" >

$val){ ?> ="" >

$val){ if($key=="attributes")continue; ?> ="" >
- select -
$val) {
?>
selected >

Salutation:

First Name:

Last Name:

First name and last name are required fields. Try clicking save without filling them in.

View cod

in reference to: required field validator in php - Google Search (view on Google Sidewiki)

2009-09-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

Online Coin-Op Game
Play Online Computer Game
Online Kids And Teens: Gam
College and University
Art Voices
Online Board Games
Online Art History
Online Music
Online Writing
Television
News and Media
Yard, Deck, and Table Games
Hand-Eye Coordination
Paper and Pencil
Online Developers and Publi
Online Women in Gaming
Online Computer Science
Online Fonts
Online Human-Computer Inter
Online Speech Technology
Online Data Communications
Food and Related Products
Graphic Design
Online Libraries
Online Weblogs
Online Directories
Online Book Shopping
Chats and Forums
Web Rings
Birds And Blooms
Social Sciences
Methods and Techniques
Research Groups and Centers Online Bibliography
Open Access Resources
Knowledge Management
Ask an Expert
Online Questions and Answe
Trains and Railroads
Newspapers
Internet Broadcasts
Museums and Archives
Colleges and Universities
Online Headline Links
People and Society
School Time
Teen Life
Health Care
Your Family
Sports and Hobbies
Apartment Living
Do-It-Yourself
Online Home Business
Personal Organization
Online Rural Living
Online Domestic Services
Online Personal Finance
Online Healthcare Industry
Online Support Groups
Environmental Health
printed project
Spread Artculture
Watercolor Artist
Famous Magazine
Focus: Fine Art Photography
Nature's Best Photography
Team Handball
Autographs
Basketball
Video Games: Sports
Water Sports
Lifestyle Choices
Language and Linguistics
Consumer Goods and Services
Antiques and Collectibles
Beauty Products
Office Products
Online Shopping
Home and Garden
Earth Sciences
Online Software
Online Employment
Birds And Blooms
Dogs Today
Feline Wellness
Modern Dog
Traditional House Plans
Print Design Annual
India Art Collector
Design Issues
Gallery Guide
Google Home
Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual
Online Play-By-Mail
Online Gambling
Online Web Hosting
Play Online Video Games
Global Exec Women
Women's Health
Science and Nature
Online Jewelry
This Old House
Modern Painters
sandiya

Website

2009-01-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

A web site is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is

hosted on one or more web servers, usually accessible via the Internet.

A Web page is a document, typically written in (X)HTML, that is almost always

accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the Web server to

display in the user's Web browser.

All publicly accessible websites are seen collectively as constituting the "World Wide

Web".

The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a common root URL called the

homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages

organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the

reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different

parts of the site.

Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples

of subscription sites include many business sites, parts of many news sites, academic

journal sites, gaming sites, message boards, Web-based e-mail, services, social

networking websites, and sites providing real-time stock market data. Because they

require authentication to view the content they are technically an Intranet site.
History

The World Wide Web was created in 1990 by CERN engineer, Tim Berners-Lee.[1] On

30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.[2]

Before the introduction of HTML and HTTP other protocols such as file transfer protocol

and the gopher protocol were used to retrieve individual files from a server. These

protocols offer a simple directory structure which the user navigates and chooses files

to download. Documents were most often presented as plain text files without

formatting or were encoded in word processor formats.

Overview

Organized by function a website may be

* a personal website
* a commercial website
* a government website
* a non-profit organization website

It could be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and is typically

dedicated to some particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to

any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the

user, may sometimes be blurred.

Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup

Language) and are accessed using a software interface classified as an user agent.

Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer-based and

Internet-enabled devices of various sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs

and cell phones.

A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP

server, and these terms can also refer to the software that runs on these systems and

that retrieves and delivers the Web pages in response to requests from the website

users. Apache is the most commonly used Web server software (according to Netcraft

statistics) and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is also commonly used.

Website styles

Static Website

A Static Website is one that has web pages stored on the server in the same form as

the user will view them. It is primarily coded in HTML (Hyper-text Markup Language).

A static website is also called a Classic website, a 5-page website or a Brochure

website because it simply presents pre-defined information to the user. It may include

information about a company and its products and services via text, photos, Flash

animation, audio/video and interactive menus and navigation.

This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors, thus the

information is static. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients,

a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended

period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a

manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic

website design skills and software.

In summary, visitors are not able to control what information they receive via a static

website, and must instead settle for whatever content the website owner has decided

to offer at that time.

They are edited using four broad categories of software:

* Text editors, such as Notepad or TextEdit, where the HTML is manipulated directly

within the editor program
* WYSIWYG offline editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver

(previously Macromedia Dreamweaver), where the site is edited using a GUI interface

and the underlying HTML is generated automatically by the editor software
* WYSIWYG Online editors, where the any media rich online presentation like

websites, widgets, intro, blogs etc. are created on a flash based platform.
* Template-based editors, such as Rapidweaver and iWeb, which allow users to

quickly create and upload websites to a web server without having to know anything

about HTML, as they just pick a suitable template from a palette and add pictures and

text to it in a DTP-like fashion without ever having to see any HTML code.

MRF Web Technologies
Mrf Web Design
Web Management India
Web Design Devlopment
Web Solution Tools

World Wide Web

2009-01-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked

hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view

Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate

between them using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, the

World Wide Web was begun in 1989 by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee, working at

the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. In

1990, he proposed building a "web of nodes" storing "hypertext pages" viewed by

"browsers" on a network,[1] and released that web in 1992. Connected by the existing

Internet, other websites were created, around the world, adding international

standards for domain names & the HTML language. Since then, Berners-Lee has played

an active role in guiding the development of Web standards (such as the markup

languages in which Web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his

vision of a Semantic Web.

The World Wide Web enabled the spread of information over the Internet through an

easy-to-use and flexible format. It thus played an important role in popularising use of

the Internet, [2] to the extent that the World Wide Web has become a synonym for

Internet, with the two being conflated in popular use. [3]

How it works

Viewing a Web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL

of the page into a Web browser, or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource.

The Web browser then initiates a series of communication messages, behind the

scenes, in order to fetch and display it.

First, the server-name portion of the URL is resolved into an IP address using the

global, distributed Internet database known as the domain name system, or DNS. This

IP address is necessary to contact and send data packets to the Web server.

The browser then requests the resource by sending an HTTP request to the Web server

at that particular address. In the case of a typical Web page, the HTML text of the

page is requested first and parsed immediately by the Web browser, which will then

make additional requests for images and any other files that form a part of the page.

Statistics measuring a website's popularity are usually based on the number of 'page

views' or associated server 'hits', or file requests, which take place.

Having received the required files from the Web server, the browser then renders the

page onto the screen as specified by its HTML, CSS, and other Web languages. Any

images and other resources are incorporated to produce the on-screen Web page that

the user sees.

Most Web pages will themselves contain hyperlinks to other related pages and perhaps

to downloads, source documents, definitions and other Web resources. Such a

collection of useful, related resources, interconnected via hypertext links, is what was

dubbed a "web" of information. Making it available on the Internet created what Tim

Berners-Lee first called the WorldWideWeb (a term written in CamelCase, subsequently

discarded) in November 1990.[1]

Berners-Lee has said that the most important feature of the World Wide Web is "Error

404", which tells the user that a file does not exist. Without this feature, he said, the

web would have ground to a halt long ago.

Berners-Lee has also expressed regret over the format of the URL. Currently it is

divided into two parts - the route to the server which is divided by dots, and the file

path separated by slashes. The server route starts with the least significant element

and ends with the most significant, then the file path reverses this, moving from high

to low. Berners-Lee would have liked to see this rationalised. So an address which is

currently (e.g.) "http://www.mrfweb.we.bs /document/pictures/illustration.jpg" would

become http:/uk/co/examplesite/documents/pictures/illustration.jpg. In this format the

server no longer has any special place in the address, which is simply one coherent

hierarchical path.

History

History of the World Wide Web

This NeXT Computer used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server.

The underlying ideas of the Web can be traced as far back as 1980, when, at CERN in

Switzerland, Sir Tim Berners-Lee built ENQUIRE (a reference to Enquire Within Upon

Everything, a book he recalled from his youth). While it was rather different from the

system in use today, it contained many of the same core ideas (and even some of the

ideas of Berners-Lee's next project after the World Wide Web, the Semantic Web).

In March 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a proposal[4] which referenced ENQUIRE and

described a more elaborate information management system. With help from Robert

Cailliau, he published a more formal proposal (on November 12, 1990) to build a

"Hypertext project" called "WorldWideWeb" (one word, also "W3")[1] as a "web of

nodes" with "hypertext documents" to store data. That data would be viewed in

"hypertext pages" (webpages) by various "browsers" (line-mode or full-screen) on the

computer network, using an "access protocol" connecting the "Internet and DECnet

protocol worlds".[1]

The proposal had been modeled after EBT's (Electronic Book Technology, a spin-off

from the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship at Brown University)

Dynatext SGML reader that CERN had licensed. The Dynatext system, although

technically advanced (a key player in the extension of SGML ISO 8879:1986 to

Hypermedia within HyTime), was considered too expensive and with an inappropriate

licensing policy for general HEP (High Energy Physics) community use: a fee for each

document and each time a document was charged.

A NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee as the world's first Web server and also to

write the first Web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee

had built all the tools necessary for a working Web:[5] the first Web browser (which

was a Web editor as well), the first Web server, and the first Web pages[6] which

described the project itself.

On August 6, 1991, he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the

alt.hypertext newsgroup.[7] This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly

available service on the Internet.

The first server outside Europe was set up at SLAC in December 1991 [8].

The crucial underlying concept of hypertext originated with older projects from the

1960s, such as the Hypertext Editing System (HES) at Brown University--- among

others Ted Nelson and Andries van Dam--- Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu and Douglas

Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS). Both Nelson and Engelbart were in turn inspired by

Vannevar Bush's microfilm-based "memex," which was described in the 1945 essay "As

We May Think".

Berners-Lee's breakthrough was to marry hypertext to the Internet. In his book

Weaving The Web, he explains that he had repeatedly suggested that a marriage

between the two technologies was possible to members of both technical communities,

but when no one took up his invitation, he finally tackled the project himself. In the

process, he developed a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web

and elsewhere: the Uniform Resource Identifier.

The World Wide Web had a number of differences from other hypertext systems that

were then available. The Web required only unidirectional links rather than bidirectional

ones. This made it possible for someone to link to another resource without action by

the owner of that resource. It also significantly reduced the difficulty of implementing

Web servers and browsers (in comparison to earlier systems), but in turn presented the

chronic problem of link rot. Unlike predecessors such as HyperCard, the World Wide

Web was non-proprietary, making it possible to develop servers and clients

independently and to add extensions without licensing restrictions.

On April 30, 1993, CERN announced[9] that the World Wide Web would be free to

anyone, with no fees due. Coming two months after the announcement that the Gopher

protocol was no longer free to use, this produced a rapid shift away from Gopher and

towards the Web. An early popular Web browser was ViolaWWW, which was based

upon HyperCard.

Scholars generally agree, however, that the turning point for the World Wide Web

began with the introduction[10] of the Mosaic Web browser[11] in 1993, a graphical

browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at

the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (NCSA-UIUC), led by Marc Andreessen.

Funding for Mosaic came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications

Initiative, a funding program initiated by the High Performance Computing and

Communication Act of 1991, one of several computing developments initiated by

Senator Al Gore.[12] Prior to the release of Mosaic, graphics were not commonly mixed

with text in Web pages, and its popularity was less than older protocols in use over the

Internet, such as Gopher and Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS). Mosaic's graphical

user interface allowed the Web to become, by far, the most popular Internet protocol.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left

the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in October, 1994. It was

founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science

(MIT/LCS) with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

(DARPA)—which had pioneered the Internet—and the European Commission.

Standards
Web standards

Many formal standards and other technical specifications define the operation of

different aspects of the World Wide Web, the Internet, and computer information

exchange. Many of the documents are the work of the World Wide Web Consortium

(W3C), headed by Berners-Lee, but some are produced by the Internet Engineering

Task Force (IETF) and other organizations.

Usually, when Web standards are discussed, the following publications are seen as

foundational:

* Recommendations for markup languages, especially HTML and XHTML, from the

W3C. These define the structure and interpretation of hypertext documents.
* Recommendations for stylesheets, especially CSS, from the W3C.
* Standards for ECMAScript (usually in the form of JavaScript), from Ecma

International.
* Recommendations for the Document Object Model, from W3C.

Additional publications provide definitions of other essential technologies for the World

Wide Web, including, but not limited to, the following:

* Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), which is a universal system for referencing

resources on the Internet, such as hypertext documents and images. URIs, often called

URLs, are defined by the IETF's RFC 3986 / STD 66: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI):

Generic Syntax, as well as its predecessors and numerous URI scheme-defining RFCs;
* HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), especially as defined by RFC 2616: http://1.1

and RFC 2617: HTTP Authentication, which specify how the browser and server

authenticate each other.

Privacy

Computer users, who save time and money, and who gain conveniences and

entertainment, may or may not have surrendered the right to privacy in exchange for

using a number of technologies including the Web.[13] Worldwide, more than a half

billion people have used a social network service,[14] and of Americans who grew up

with the Web, half created an online profile[15] and are part of a generational shift

that could be changing norms.[16][17] Among services paid for by advertising, Yahoo!

could collect the most data about users of commercial websites, about 2,500 bits of

information per month about each typical user of its site and its affiliated advertising

network sites. Yahoo! was followed by MySpace with about half that potential and then

by AOL-TimeWarner, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and eBay.[18]

Privacy representatives from 60 countries have resolved to ask for laws to complement

industry self-regulation, for education for children and other minors who use the Web,

and for default protections for users of social networks.[19] They also believe data

protection for personally identifiable information benefits business more than the sale

of that information.[19] Users can opt-in to features in browsers from companies such

as Apple, Google, Microsoft (beta) and Mozilla (beta) to clear their personal histories

locally and block some cookies and advertising networks[20] but they are still tracked

in websites' server logs.[citation needed] Berners-Lee and colleagues see hope in

accountability and appropriate use achieved by extending the Web's architecture to

policy awareness, perhaps with audit logging, reasoners and appliances.[21]

Security

The Web has become criminals' preferred pathway for spreading malware. Cybercrime

carried out on the Web can include identity theft, fraud, espionage and intelligence

gathering.[22] Web-based vulnerabilities now outnumber traditional computer security

concerns,[23] and as measured by Google, about one in ten Web pages may contain

malicious code.[24] Most Web-based attacks take place on legitimate websites, and

most, as measured by Sophos, are hosted in the United States, China and Russia.[25]

The most common of all malware threats is SQL injection attacks against websites.[26]

Through HTML and URIs the Web was vulnerable to attacks like cross-site scripting

(XSS) that came with the introduction of JavaScript[27] and were exacerbated to some

degree by Web 2.0 and Ajax web design that favors the use of scripts.[28] Today by

one estimate, 70% of all websites are open to XSS attacks on their users.[29]

Proposed solutions vary to extremes. Large security vendors like McAfee already design

governance and compliance suites to meet post-9/11 regulations,[30] and some, like

Finjan have recommended active real-time inspection of code and all content regardless

of its source.[22] Some have argued that for enterprise to see security as a business

opportunity rather than a cost center,[31] "ubiquitous, always-on digital rights

management" enforced in the infrastructure by a handful of organizations must replace

the hundreds of companies that today secure data and networks.[32] Jonathan Zittrain

has said users sharing responsibility for computing safety is far preferable to locking

down the Internet.[33]

Web accessibility

Many countries regulate web accessibility as a requirement for web sites.

Java

A significant advance in Web technology was Sun Microsystems' Java platform. It

enables Web pages to embed small programs (called applets) directly into the view.

These applets run on the end-user's computer, providing a richer user interface than

simple Web pages. Java client-side applets never gained the popularity that Sun had

hoped for a variety of reasons, including lack of integration with other content (applets

were confined to small boxes within the rendered page) and the fact that many

computers at the time were supplied to end users without a suitably installed Java

Virtual Machine, and so required a download by the user before applets would appear.

Adobe Flash now performs many of the functions that were originally envisioned for

Java applets, including the playing of video content, animation, and some rich GUI

features. Java itself has become more widely used as a platform and language for

server-side and other programming.

JavaScript

JavaScript, on the other hand, is a scripting language that was initially developed for

use within Web pages. The standardized version is ECMAScript. While its name is

similar to Java, JavaScript was developed by Netscape and has very little to do with

Java, although the syntax of both languages is derived from the C programming

language. In conjunction with a Web page's Document Object Model (DOM), JavaScript

has become a much more powerful technology than its creators originally

envisioned.[citation needed] The manipulation of a page's DOM after the page is

delivered to the client has been called Dynamic HTML (DHTML), to emphasize a shift

away from static HTML displays.

In simple cases, all the optional information and actions available on a

JavaScript-enhanced Web page will have been downloaded when the page was first

delivered. Ajax ("Asynchronous JavaScript and XML") is a group of interrelated web

development techniques used for creating interactive web applications that provide a

method whereby parts within a Web page may be updated, using new information

obtained over the network at a later time in response to user actions. This allows the

page to be more responsive, interactive and interesting, without the user having to

wait for whole-page reloads. Ajax is seen as an important aspect of what is being

called Web 2.0. Examples of Ajax techniques currently in use can be seen in Gmail,

Google Maps, and other dynamic Web applications.

Publishing Web pages

Web page production is available to individuals outside the mass media. In order to

publish a Web page, one does not have to go through a publisher or other media

institution, and potential readers could be found in all corners of the globe.

Many different kinds of information are available on the Web, and for those who wish

to know other societies, cultures, and peoples, it has become easier.

The increased opportunity to publish materials is observable in the countless personal

and social networking pages, as well as sites by families, small shops, etc., facilitated

by the emergence of free Web hosting services.

Statistics

According to a 2001 study, there were massively more than 550 billion documents on

the Web, mostly in the invisible Web, or deep Web.[34] A 2002 survey of 2,024 million

Web pages[35] determined that by far the most Web content was in English: 56.4%;

next were pages in German (7.7%), French (5.6%), and Japanese (4.9%). A more

recent study, which used Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web,

determined that there were over 11.5 billion Web pages in the publicly indexable Web

as of the end of January 2005.[36] As of June 2008, the indexable web contains at

least 63 billion pages.[37] On July 25, 2008, Google software engineers Jesse Alpert

and Nissan Hajaj announced that Google Search had discovered one trillion unique

URLs.[38]

Over 100.1 million websites operated as of March 2008.[39] Of these 74% were

commercial or other sites operating in the .com generic top-level domain.[39]

Speed issues

Frustration over congestion issues in the Internet infrastructure and the high latency

that results in slow browsing has led to an alternative, pejorative name for the World

Wide Web: the World Wide Wait.[citation needed] Speeding up the Internet is an

ongoing discussion over the use of peering and QoS technologies. Other solutions to

reduce the World Wide Wait can be found on W3C.

Standard guidelines for ideal Web response times are:[40]

* 0.1 second (one tenth of a second). Ideal response time. The user doesn't sense

any interruption.
* 1 second. Highest acceptable response time. Download times above 1 second

interrupt the user experience.
* 10 seconds. Unacceptable response time. The user experience is interrupted and

the user is likely to leave the site or system.

These numbers are useful for planning server capacity.

Caching

If a user revisits a Web page after only a short interval, the page data may not need to

be re-obtained from the source Web server. Almost all Web browsers cache

recently-obtained data, usually on the local hard drive. HTTP requests sent by a

browser will usually only ask for data that has changed since the last download. If the

locally-cached data are still current, it will be reused.

Caching helps reduce the amount of Web traffic on the Internet. The decision about

expiration is made independently for each downloaded file, whether image, stylesheet,

JavaScript, HTML, or whatever other content the site may provide. Thus even on sites

with highly dynamic content, many of the basic resources only need to be refreshed

occasionally. Web site designers find it worthwhile to collate resources such as CSS

data and JavaScript into a few site-wide files so that they can be cached efficiently.

This helps reduce page download times and lowers demands on the Web server.

There are other components of the Internet that can cache Web content. Corporate and

academic firewalls often cache Web resources requested by one user for the benefit of

all. (See also Caching proxy server.) Some search engines, such as Google or Yahoo!,

also store cached content from websites.

Apart from the facilities built into Web servers that can determine when files have

been updated and so need to be re-sent, designers of dynamically-generated Web

pages can control the HTTP headers sent back to requesting users, so that transient or

sensitive pages are not cached. Internet banking and news sites frequently use this

facility.

Data requested with an HTTP 'GET' is likely to be cached if other conditions are met;

data obtained in response to a 'POST' is assumed to depend on the data that was

POSTed and so is not cached.

Link rot and Web archival

Main article: Link rot

Over time, many Web resources pointed to by hyperlinks disappear, relocate, or are

replaced with different content. This phenomenon is referred to in some circles as "link

rot" and the hyperlinks affected by it are often called "dead links".

The ephemeral nature of the Web has prompted many efforts to archive Web sites. The

Internet Archive is one of the most well-known efforts; it has been active since 1996.

Academic conferences

The major academic event covering the Web is the World Wide Web Conference,

promoted by IW3C2.

WWW prefix in Web addresses

The letters "www" are commonly found at the beginning of Web addresses because of

the long-standing practice of naming Internet hosts (servers) according to the services

they provide. So for example, the host name for a Web server is often "www"; for an

FTP server, "ftp"; and for a USENET news server, "news" or "nntp" (after the news

protocol NNTP). These host names appear as DNS subdomain names, as in

"www.mrfweb.we.bs".

This use of such prefixes is not required by any technical standard; indeed, the first

Web server was at "nxoc01.cern.ch",[41] and even today many Web sites exist without

a "www" prefix. The "www" prefix has no meaning in the way the main Web site is

shown. The "www" prefix is simply one choice for a Web site's host name.

However, some website addresses require the www. prefix, and if typed without one,

won't work; there are also some which must be typed without the prefix. Sites that do

not have Host Headers properly setup are the cause of this. Some hosting companies

do not setup a www or @ A record in the web server configuration and/or at the DNS

server level.

Some Web browsers will automatically try adding "www." to the beginning, and

possibly ".com" to the end, of typed URLs if no host is found without them. All major

web browsers will also prefix "http://www.mrfweb.we.bs/" and append ".com" to the

address bar contents if the Control and Enter keys are pressed simultaneously. For

example, entering "example" in the address bar and then pressing either Enter or

Control+Enter will usually resolve to "http://www.mrfweb.we.bs", depending on the

exact browser version and its settings.
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Web server

2009-01-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

1. HTTP: every web server program operates by accepting HTTP requests from the

client, and providing an HTTP response to the client. The HTTP response usually

consists of an HTML document, but can also be a raw file, an image, or some other

type of document (defined by MIME-types). If some error is found in client request or

while trying to serve it, a web server has to send an error response which may include

some custom HTML or text messages to better explain the problem to end users.
2. Logging: usually web servers have also the capability of logging some detailed

information, about client requests and server responses, to log files; this allows the

webmaster to collect statistics by running log analyzers on these files.

In practice many web servers implement the following features also:

1. Authentication, optional authorization request (request of user name and

password) before allowing access to some or all kind of resources.
2. Handling of static content (file content recorded in server's filesystem(s)) and

dynamic content by supporting one or more related interfaces (SSI, CGI, SCGI, FastCGI,

JSP, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Server API such as NSAPI, ISAPI, etc.).
3. HTTPS support (by SSL or TLS) to allow secure (encrypted) connections to the

server on the standard port 443 instead of usual port 80.
4. Content compression (i.e. by gzip encoding) to reduce the size of the responses

(to lower bandwidth usage, etc.).
5. Virtual hosting to serve many web sites using one IP address.
6. Large file support to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2 GB on 32

bit OS.
7. Bandwidth throttling to limit the speed of responses in order to not saturate the

network and to be able to serve more clients.

Origin of returned content

The origin of the content sent by server is called:

* static if it comes from an existing file lying on a filesystem;
* dynamic if it is dynamically generated by some other program or script or

application programming interface (API) called by the web server.

Serving static content is usually much faster (from 2 to 100 times) than serving

dynamic content, especially if the latter involves data pulled from a database.

Path translation

Web servers are able to map the path component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

into:

* a local file system resource (for static requests);
* an internal or external program name (for dynamic requests).

For a static request the URL path specified by the client is relative to the Web server's

root directory.

Consider the following URL as it would be requested by a client:

http://www.mrfweb.we.bs/index.html

The client's web browser will translate it into a connection to www.example.com with

the following HTTP 1.1 request:

GET /path/file.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mrfweb.we.bs

The web server on www.mrfweb.we.bs will append the given path to the path of its

root directory. On Unix machines, this is commonly /var/www. The result is the local

file system resource:

/var/www/path/file.html

The web server will then read the file, if it exists, and send a response to the client's

web browser. The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file

itself. ..........

Load limits

A web server (program) has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited

number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default

between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and TCP port) and it can serve only a certain

maximum number of requests per second depending on:

* its own settings;
* the HTTP request type;
* content origin (static or dynamic);
* the fact that the served content is or is not cached;
* the hardware and software limits of the OS where it is working.

When a web server is near to or over its limits, it becomes overloaded and thus

unresponsive.

Overload causes
A daily graph of a web server's load, indicating a spike in the load early in the day.

At any time web servers can be overloaded because of:

* Too much legitimate web traffic (i.e. thousands or even millions of clients hitting

the web site in a short interval of time. e.g. Slashdot effect);
* DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks;
* Computer worms that sometimes cause abnormal traffic because of millions of

infected computers (not coordinated among them);
* XSS viruses can cause high traffic because of millions of infected browsers and/or

web servers;
* Internet web robots traffic not filtered/limited on large web sites with very few

resources (bandwidth, etc.);
* Internet (network) slowdowns, so that client requests are served more slowly and

the number of connections increases so much that server limits are reached;
* Web servers (computers) partial unavailability, this can happen because of

required or urgent maintenance or upgrade, HW or SW failures, back-end (i.e. DB)

failures, etc.; in these cases the remaining web servers get too much traffic and

become overloaded.

Overload symptoms

The symptoms of an overloaded web server are:

* requests are served with (possibly long) delays (from 1 second to a few hundred

seconds);
* 500, 502, 503, 504 HTTP errors are returned to clients (sometimes also unrelated

404 error or even 408 error may be returned);
* TCP connections are refused or reset (interrupted) before any content is sent to

clients;
* in very rare cases, only partial contents are sent (but this behavior may well be

considered a bug, even if it usually depends on unavailable system resources).

Anti-overload techniques

To partially overcome above load limits and to prevent overload, most popular web

sites use common techniques like:

* managing network traffic, by using:
o Firewalls to block unwanted traffic coming from bad IP sources or having bad

patterns;
o HTTP traffic managers to drop, redirect or rewrite requests having bad HTTP

patterns;
o Bandwidth management and traffic shaping, in order to smooth down peaks in

network usage;
* deploying web cache techniques;
* using different domain names to serve different (static and dynamic) content by

separate Web servers, i.e.:
o

http://images.mrfweb.we.bs/
o

http://www.mrfweb.we.bs/

* using different domain names and/or computers to separate big files from small

and medium sized files; the idea is to be able to fully cache small and medium sized

files and to efficiently serve big or huge (over 10 - 1000 MB) files by using different

settings;
* using many Web servers (programs) per computer, each one bound to its own

network card and IP address;
* using many Web servers (computers) that are grouped together so that they act or

are seen as one big Web server, see also: Load balancer;
* adding more hardware resources (i.e. RAM, disks) to each computer;
* tuning OS parameters for hardware capabilities and usage;
* using more efficient computer programs for web servers, etc.;
* using other workarounds, especially if dynamic content is involved.

Historical notes
The world's first web server.

In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee proposed to his employer CERN (European Organization for

Nuclear Research) a new project, which had the goal of easing the exchange of

information between scientists by using a hypertext system. As a result of the

implementation of this project, in 1990 Berners-Lee wrote two programs:

* a browser called WorldWideWeb;
* the world's first web server, later known as CERN HTTPd, which ran on NeXTSTEP.

Between 1991 and 1994 the simplicity and effectiveness of early technologies used to

surf and exchange data through the World Wide Web helped to port them to many

different operating systems and spread their use among lots of different social groups

of people, first in scientific organizations, then in universities and finally in industry.

In 1994 Tim Berners-Lee decided to constitute the World Wide Web Consortium to

regulate the further development of the many technologies involved (HTTP, HTML, etc.)

through a standardization process.

The following years are recent history which has seen an exponential growth of the

number of web sites and servers.

Market structure

Given below is a list of top Web server software vendors published in a Netcraft survey

in September 2008.
Vendor Product Web Sites Hosted Percent
Apache Apache 91,068,713 50.24%
Microsoft IIS 62,364,634 34.4%
Google GWS 10,072,687 5.56%
lighttpd lighttpd 3,095,928 1.71%
nginx nginx 2,562,554 1.41%
Oversee Oversee 1,938,953 1.07%
Others - 10,174,366 5.61%
Total - 181,277,835 100.00%

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Modern programming

2009-01-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

Quality requirements

Whatever the approach to software development may be, the final program must

satisfy some fundamental properties. The following five properties are among the most

relevant:

* Efficiency/Performance: the amount of system resources a program consumes

(processor time, memory space, slow devices, network bandwidth and to some extent

even user interaction), the less the better.
* Reliability: how often the results of a program are correct. This depends on

prevention of error propagation resulting from data conversion and prevention of errors

resulting from buffer overflows, underflows and zero division.
* Robustness: how well a program anticipates situations of data type conflict and

other incompatibilities that result in run time errors and program halts. The focus is

mainly on user interaction and the handling of exceptions.
* Usability: the clarity and intuitiveness of a programs output can make or break its

success. This involves a wide range of textual and graphical elements that makes a

program easy and comfortable to use.
* Portability: the range of computer hardware and operating system platforms on

which the source code of a program can be compiled/interpreted and run. This depends

mainly on the range of platform specific compilers for the language of the source code

rather than anything having to do with the program directly.

Algorithmic complexity

The academic field and the engineering practice of computer programming are both

largely concerned with discovering and implementing the most efficient algorithms for a

given class of problem. For this purpose, algorithms are classified into orders using

so-called Big O notation, O(n), which expresses resource use, such as execution time

or memory consumption, in terms of the size of an input. Expert programmers are

familiar with a variety of well-established algorithms and their respective complexities

and use this knowledge to choose algorithms that are best suited to the circumstances.

Methodologies

The first step in most formal software development projects is requirements analysis,

followed by testing to determine value modeling, implementation, and failure

elimination (debugging). There exist a lot of differing approaches for each of those

tasks. One approach popular for requirements analysis is Use Case analysis.

Popular modeling techniques include Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD) and

Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a notation

used for both OOAD and MDA.

A similar technique used for database design is Entity-Relationship Modeling (ER

Modeling).

Implementation techniques include imperative languages (object-oriented or

procedural), functional languages, and logic languages.

Measuring language usage

It is very difficult to determine what are the most popular of modern programming

languages. Some languages are very popular for particular kinds of applications (e.g.,

COBOL is still strong in the corporate data center, often on large mainframes, FORTRAN

in engineering applications, and C in embedded applications), while some languages

are regularly used to write many different kinds of applications.

Methods of measuring language popularity include: counting the number of job

advertisements that mention the language[7], the number of books teaching the

language that are sold (this overestimates the importance of newer languages), and

estimates of the number of existing lines of code written in the language (this

underestimates the number of users of business languages such as COBOL).

Debugging
A bug which was debugged in 1947.

Debugging is a very important task in the software development process, because an

erroneous program can have significant consequences for its users. Some languages are

more prone to some kinds of faults because their specification does not require

compilers to perform as much checking as other languages. Use of a static analysis tool

can help detect some possible problems.

Debugging is often done with IDEs like Visual Studio, NetBeans, and Eclipse.

Standalone debuggers like gdb are also used, and these often provide less of a visual

environment, usually using a command line.

Programming languages

Main articles: Programming language and List of programming languages

Different programming languages support different styles of programming (called

programming paradigms). The choice of language used is subject to many

considerations, such as company policy, suitability to task, availability of third-party

packages, or individual preference. Ideally, the programming language best suited for

the task at hand will be selected. Trade-offs from this ideal involve finding enough

programmers who know the language to build a team, the availability of compilers for

that language, and the efficiency with which programs written in a given language

execute.

Allen Downey, in his book How To Think Like A Computer Scientist, writes:

The details look different in different languages, but a few basic instructions appear

in just about every language: input: Get data from the keyboard, a file, or some other

device. output: Display data on the screen or send data to a file or other device. math:

Perform basic mathematical operations like addition and multiplication. conditional

execution: Check for certain conditions and execute the appropriate sequence of

statements. repetition: Perform some action repeatedly, usually with some variation.

Many computer languages provide a mechanism to call functions provided by libraries.

Provided the functions in a library follow the appropriate runtime conventions (eg,

method of passing arguments), then these functions may be written in any other

language.

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Computer programming

2009-01-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

Computer programming (often shortened to programming or coding) is the process of

writing, testing, debugging/troubleshooting, and maintaining the source code of

computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language. The code

may be a modification of an existing source or something completely new. The purpose

of programming is to create a program that exhibits a certain desired behavior

(customization). The process of writing source code often requires expertise in many

different subjects, including knowledge of the application domain, specialized

algorithms and formal logic.
Overview

Within software engineering, programming (the implementation) is regarded as one

phase in a software development process.

There is an ongoing debate on the extent to which the writing of programs is an art, a

craft or an engineering discipline.[1] Good programming is generally considered to be

the measured application of all three, with the goal of producing an efficient and

evolvable software solution (the criteria for "efficient" and "evolvable" vary

considerably). The discipline differs from many other technical professions in that

programmers generally do not need to be licensed or pass any standardized (or

governmentally regulated) certification tests in order to call themselves "programmers"

or even "software engineers." However, representing oneself as a "Professional

Software Engineer" without a license from an accredited institution is illegal in many

parts of the world.

Another ongoing debate is the extent to which the programming language used in

writing computer programs affects the form that the final program takes. This debate is

analogous to that surrounding the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [2] in linguistics, that

postulates that a particular language's nature influences the habitual thought of its

speakers. Different language patterns yield different patterns of thought. This idea

challenges the possibility of representing the world perfectly with language, because it

acknowledges that the mechanisms of any language condition the thoughts of its

speaker community.

Said another way, programming is the craft of transforming requirements into

something that a computer can execute.

History of programming

See also: History of programming languages

Wired plug board for an IBM 402 Accounting Machine.

The concept of devices that operate following a pre-defined set of instructions traces

back to Greek Mythology, notably Hephaestus and his mechanical servants[3]. The

Antikythera mechanism was a calculater utilizing gears of various sizes and

configuration to determine its operation. The earliest known programmable machines

(machines whose behavior can be controlled and predicted with a set of instructions)

were Al-Jazari's programmable Automata in 1206.[4] One of Al-Jazari's robots was

originally a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain

guests at royal drinking parties. Programming this mechanism's behavior meant placing

pegs and cams into a wooden drum at specific locations. These would then bump into

little levers that operate a percussion instrument. The output of this device was a

small drummer playing various rhythms and drum patterns.[5][6] Another sophisticated

programmable machine by Al-Jazari was the castle clock, notable for its concept of

variables which the operator could manipulate as necessary (i.e. the length of day and

night). The Jacquard Loom, which Joseph Marie Jacquard developed in 1801, uses a

series of pasteboard cards with holes punched in them. The hole pattern represented

the pattern that the loom had to follow in weaving cloth. The loom could produce

entirely different weaves using different sets of cards. Charles Babbage adopted the

use of punched cards around 1830 to control his Analytical Engine. The synthesis of

numerical calculation, predetermined operation and output, along with a way to

organize and input instructions in a manner relatively easy for humans to conceive and

produce, led to the modern development of computer programming.

Development of computer programming accelerated through the Industrial Revolution.

The punch card innovation was later refined by Herman Hollerith who, in 1896 founded

the Tabulating Machine Company (which became IBM). He invented the Hollerith

punched card, the card reader, and the key punch machine. These inventions were the

foundation of the modern information processing industry. The addition of a plug-board

to his 1906 Type I Tabulator allowed it to do different jobs without having to be

physically rebuilt. By the late 1940s there were a variety of plug-board programmable

machines, called unit record equipment, to perform data processing tasks (card

reading). Early computer programmers used plug-boards for the variety of complex

calculations requested of the newly invented machines.
Data and instructions could be stored on external punch cards, which were kept in order

and arranged in program decks.

The invention of the Von Neumann architecture allowed computer programs to be

stored in computer memory. Early programs had to be painstakingly crafted using the

instructions of the particular machine, often in binary notation. Every model of

computer would be likely to need different instructions to do the same task. Later

assembly languages were developed that let the programmer specify each instruction in

a text format, entering abbreviations for each operation code instead of a number and

specifying addresses in symbolic form (e.g. ADD X, TOTAL). In 1954 Fortran, the first

higher level programming language, was invented. This allowed programmers to specify

calculations by entering a formula directly (e.g. Y = X*2 + 5*X + 9). The program text,

or source, was converted into machine instructions using a special program called a

compiler. Many other languages were developed, including ones for commercial

programming, such as COBOL. Programs were mostly still entered using punch cards or

paper tape. (See computer programming in the punch card era). By the late 1960s, data

storage devices and computer terminals became inexpensive enough so programs could

be created by typing directly into the computers. Text editors were developed that

allowed changes and corrections to be made much more easily than with punch cards.

As time has progressed, computers have made giant leaps in the area of processing

power. This has brought about newer programming languages that are more abstracted

from the underlying hardware. Although these more abstracted languages require

additional overhead, in most cases the huge increase in speed of modern computers

has brought about little performance decrease compared to earlier counterparts. The

benefits of these more abstracted languages is that they allow both an easier learning

curve for people less familiar with the older lower-level programming languages, and

they also allow a more experienced programmer to develop simple applications quickly.

Despite these benefits, large complicated programs, and programs that are more

dependent on speed still require the faster and relatively lower-level languages with

today's hardware. (The same concerns were raised about the original Fortran language.)

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, programming was an attractive

career in most developed countries. Some forms of programming have been increasingly

subject to offshore outsourcing (importing software and services from other countries,

usually at a lower wage), making programming career decisions in developed countries

more complicated, while increasing economic opportunities in less developed areas. It

is unclear how far this trend will continue and how deeply it will impact programmer

wages and opportunities.
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Dynamic web page production

2009-01-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

Dynamic web page production

The production of server-side dynamic web pages is one of the main applications of

server-side scripting languages.

One important alternative to use them, on a MVC framework, is using web template

systems. Any "not web specific" programming language can be used to manage

template engines and web templates.
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Server-side scripting

2009-01-10T11:06:00.001-08:00

Server-side scripting is a web server technology in which a user's request is fulfilled by

running a script directly on the web server to generate dynamic HTML pages. It is

usually used to provide interactive web sites that interface to databases or other data

stores. This is different from client-side scripting where scripts are run by the viewing

web browser, usually in JavaScript. The primary advantage to server-side scripting is

the ability to highly customize the response based on the user's requirements, access

rights, or queries into data stores.

When the server serves data in a commonly used manner, for example according to the

HTTP or FTP protocols, users may have their choice of a number of client programs

(most modern web browsers can request and receive data using both of those

protocols). In the case of more specialized applications, programmers may write their

own server, client, and communications protocol, that can only be used with one

another.

Programs that run on a user's local computer without ever sending or receiving data

over a network are not considered clients, and so the operations of such programs

would not be considered client-side operations.

Explanation

In the "old" days of the web, server-side scripting was almost exclusively performed by

using a combination of C programs, Perl scripts and shell scripts using the Common

Gateway Interface (CGI). Those scripts were executed by the operating system,

mnemonic coding and the results simply served back by the web server. Nowadays,

these and other on-line scripting languages such as ASP and PHP can often be executed

directly by the web server itself or by extension modules (e.g. mod perl or mod php) to

the web server. Either form of scripting (i.e., CGI or direct execution) can be used to

build up complex multi-page sites, but direct execution usually results in lower

overhead due to the lack of calls to external interpreters.

Dynamic websites are also sometimes powered by custom web application servers, for

example the Python "Base HTTP Server" library, although some may not consider this to

be server-side scripting.

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Server-side scripting

2009-01-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

Server-side scripting is a web server technology in which a user's request is fulfilled by

running a script directly on the web server to generate dynamic HTML pages. It is

usually used to provide interactive web sites that interface to databases or other data

stores. This is different from client-side scripting where scripts are run by the viewing

web browser, usually in JavaScript. The primary advantage to server-side scripting is

the ability to highly customize the response based on the user's requirements, access

rights, or queries into data stores.

When the server serves data in a commonly used manner, for example according to the

HTTP or FTP protocols, users may have their choice of a number of client programs

(most modern web browsers can request and receive data using both of those

protocols). In the case of more specialized applications, programmers may write their

own server, client, and communications protocol, that can only be used with one

another.

Programs that run on a user's local computer without ever sending or receiving data

over a network are not considered clients, and so the operations of such programs

would not be considered client-side operations.

Explanation

In the "old" days of the web, server-side scripting was almost exclusively performed by

using a combination of C programs, Perl scripts and shell scripts using the Common

Gateway Interface (CGI). Those scripts were executed by the operating system,

mnemonic coding and the results simply served back by the web server. Nowadays,

these and other on-line scripting languages such as ASP and PHP can often be executed

directly by the web server itself or by extension modules (e.g. mod perl or mod php) to

the web server. Either form of scripting (i.e., CGI or direct execution) can be used to

build up complex multi-page sites, but direct execution usually results in lower

overhead due to the lack of calls to external interpreters.

Dynamic websites are also sometimes powered by custom web application servers, for

example the Python "Base HTTP Server" library, although some may not consider this to

be server-side scripting.
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Client-side scripting

2009-01-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Client-side scripting generally refers to the class of computer programs on the web that

are executed client-side, by the user's web browser, instead of server-side (on the web

server). This type of computer programming is an important part of the Dynamic HTML

(DHTML) concept, enabling web pages to be scripted; that is, to have different and

changing content depending on user input, environmental conditions (such as the time

of day), or other variables.

Web authors write client-side scripts in languages such as JavaScript (Client-side

JavaScript) and VBScript.

Client-side scripts are often embedded within an HTML document, but they may also be

contained in a separate file, which is referenced by the document (or documents) that

use it. Upon request, the necessary files are sent to the user's computer by the web

server (or servers) on which they reside. The user's web browser executes the script,

then displays the document, including any visible output from the script. Client-side

scripts may also contain instructions for the browser to follow if the user interacts with

the document in a certain way, e.g., clicks a certain button. These instructions can be

followed without further communication with the server, though they may require such

communication.

By viewing the file that contains the script, users may be able to see its source code.

Many web authors learn how to write client-side scripts partly by examining the source

code for other authors' scripts.

In contrast, server-side scripts, written in languages such as Perl, PHP, and server-side

VBScript, are executed by the web server when the user requests a document. They

produce output in a format understandable by web browsers (usually HTML), which is

then sent to the user's computer. The user cannot see the script's source code (unless

the author publishes the code separately), and may not even be aware that a script

was executed. The documents produced by server-side scripts may, of course, contain

client-side scripts.

Client-side scripts have greater access to the information and functions available on

the user's browser, whereas server-side scripts have greater access to the information

and functions available on the server. Server-side scripts require that their language's

interpreter is installed on the server, and produce the same output regardless of the

client's browser, operating system, or other system details. Client-side scripts do not

require additional software on the server (making them popular with authors who lack

administrative access to their servers); however, they do require that the user's web

browser understands the scripting language in which they are written. It is therefore

impractical for an author to write scripts in a language that is not supported by the web

browsers used by a majority of his or her audience.

Due to security restrictions, client-side scripts may not be allowed to access the users

computer beyond the browser application. Techniques like ActiveX controls can be used

to sidestep this restriction.

Unfortunately, even languages that are supported by a wide variety of browsers may

not be implemented in precisely the same way across all browsers and operating

systems. Authors are well-advised to review the behavior of their client-side scripts on

a variety of platforms before they put them into use.

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Content development (web)

2009-01-10T10:52:00.000-08:00

Web content development is the process of researching, writing, gathering, organizing,

and editing information for publication on web sites. Web site content may consist of

prose, graphics, pictures, recordings, movies or other media assets that could be

distributed by a hypertext transfer protocol server, and viewed by a web browser.

Content developers and web developers

When the World Wide Web began, web developers either generated content

themselves, or took existing documents and coded them into hypertext markup

language (HTML). In time, the field of web site development came to encompass many

technologies, so it became difficult for web site developers to maintain so many

different skills. Content developers are specialized web site developers who have

mastered content generation skills. They can integrate content into new or existing

web sites, but they may not have skills such as script language programming, database

programming, graphic design and copywriting.

Content developers may also be search engine optimization specialists, or Internet

marketing professionals. This is because content is called 'king'. High quality, unique

content is what search engines are looking for and content development specialists

therefore have a very important role to play in the search engine optimization process.

One issue currently plaguing the world of web content development is keyword-stuffed

content which are prepared solely for the purpose of manipulating a search engine. This

is giving a bad name to genuine web content writing professionals. The effect is writing

content designed to appeal to machines (algorithms) rather than people or community.

Search engine optimization specialists commonly submit content to Article Directories

to build their website's authority on any given topic. Most Article Directories allow

visitors to republish submitted content with the agreement that all links are

maintained. This has become a method of Search Engine Optimization for many

websites today. If written according to SEO copywriting rules, the submitted content

will bring benefits to the publisher (free SEO-friendly content for a webpage) as well as

to the author (a hyperlink pointing to his/her website, placed on an SEO-friendly

webpage).
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Web design

2009-01-10T10:50:00.000-08:00

Web page design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution

of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies (such as

markup languages) suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other

web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

The intent of web design is to create a web site (a collection of electronic files residing

on one or more web servers) that presents content (including interactive features or

interfaces) to the end user in the form of web pages once requested. Such elements as

text, forms, and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs) can be placed on the page

using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics,

animations, videos, sounds) usually requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java

run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web pages by using HTML

or XHTML tags.

Improvements in the various browsers' compliance with W3C standards prompted a

widespread acceptance of XHTML and XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets

(CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements. The latest standards and

proposals aim at leading to the various browsers' ability to deliver a wide variety of

media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins.

Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.

* Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human

(web master or programmer) manually updates the page.

* Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on the

end-user’s input or interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time,

database modifications, etc.) Content can be changed on the client side (end-user's

computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, JScript, Actionscript,

media players and PDF reader plug-ins, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic

content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (PHP,

ASP, Perl, Coldfusion, JSP, Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex

applications.

With growing specialization within communication design and information technology

fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically

for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.
Web Site Design

A web site is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. Designing a

web site is defined as the arrangement and creation of web pages that in turn make up

a web site. A web page consists of information for which the web site is developed. A

web site might be compared to a book, where each page of the book is a web page.

There are many aspects (design concerns) in this process, and due to the rapid

development of the Internet, new aspects may emerge. For non-commercial web sites,

the goals may vary depending on the desired exposure and response. For typical

commercial web sites, the basic aspects of design are:

* The content: the substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the

site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.
* The usability: the site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation

simple and reliable.
* The appearance: the graphics and text should include a single style that flows

throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and

relevant.
* The visibility: the site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search

engines and advertisement media.

A web site typically consists of text and images. The first page of a web site is known

as the Home page or Index. Some web sites use what is commonly called a Splash

Page. Splash pages might include a welcome message, language or region selection, or

disclaimer. Each web page within a web site is an HTML file which has its own URL.

After each web page is created, they are typically linked together using a navigation

menu composed of hyperlinks. Faster browsing speeds have led to shorter attention

spans and more demanding online visitors and this has resulted in less use of Splash

Pages, particularly where commercial web sites are concerned.

Once a web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable

to the public over the internet. This may be done using an FTP client. Once published,

the web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic, or hits, that the

web site receives. This may include submitting the web site to a search engine such as

Google or Yahoo, exchanging links with other web sites, creating affiliations with

similar web sites, etc.

Multidisciplinary requirements

Web site design crosses multiple disciplines of information systems, information

technology and communication design. The web site is an information system whose

components are sometimes classified as front-end and back-end. The observable

content (e.g. page layout, user interface, graphics, text, audio) is known as the

front-end. The back-end comprises the organization and efficiency of the source code,

invisible scripted functions, and the server-side components that process the output

from the front-end. Depending on the size of a Web development project, it may be

carried out by a multi-skilled individual (sometimes called a web master), or a project

manager may oversee collaborative design between group members with specialized

skills.

Issues

As in collaborative designs, there are conflicts between differing goals and methods of

web site designs. These are a few of the ongoing ones.

Lack of collaboration in design

In the early stages of the web, there wasn't as much collaboration between web

designs and larger advertising campaigns, customer transactions, social networking,

intranets and extranets as there is now. Web pages were mainly static online

brochures disconnected from the larger projects.

Many web pages are still disconnected from larger projects. Special design

considerations are necessary for use within these larger projects. These design

considerations are often overlooked, especially in cases where there is a lack of

leadership, lack of understanding of why and technical knowledge of how to integrate,

or lack of concern for the larger project in order to facilitate collaboration. This often

results in unhealthy competition or compromise between departments, and less than

optimal use of web pages.

Liquid versus fixed layouts

On the web the designer has no control over several factors, including the size of the

browser window, the web browser used, the input devices used (mouse, touch screen,

voice command, text, cell phone number pad, etc.) and the size and characteristics of

available fonts.

Some designers choose to control the appearance of the elements on the screen by

using specific width designations. This control may be achieved through the use of a

HTML table-based design or a more semantic div-based design through the use of CSS.

Whenever the text, images, and layout of a design do not change as the browser

changes, this is referred to as a fixed width design. Proponents of fixed width design

prefer precise control over the layout of a site and the precision placement of objects

on the page. Other designers choose a liquid design. A liquid design is one where the

design moves to flow content into the whole screen, or a portion of the screen, no

matter what the size of the browser window. Proponents of liquid design prefer greater

compatibility and using the screen space available. Liquid design can be achieved by

setting the width of text blocks and page modules to a percentage of the page, or by

avoiding specifying the width for these elements all together, allowing them to expand

or contract naturally in accordance with the width of the browser.

Both liquid and fixed design developers must make decisions about how the design

should degrade on higher and lower screen resolutions. Sometimes the pragmatic

choice is made to flow the design between a minimum and a maximum width. This

allows the designer to avoid coding for the browser choices making up The Long Tail,

while still using all available screen space. Depending on the purpose of the content, a

web designer may decide to use either fixed or liquid layouts on a case-by-case basis.

Similar to liquid layout is the optional fit to window feature with Adobe Flash content.

This is a fixed layout that optimally scales the content of the page without changing

the arrangement or text wrapping when the browser is resized.

Flash

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a proprietary, robust graphics animation or

application development program used to create and deliver dynamic content, media

(such as sound and video), and interactive applications over the web via the browser.

Many graphic artists use Flash because it gives them exact control over every part of

the design, and anything can be animated and generally "jazzed up". Some application

designers enjoy Flash because it lets them create applications that do not have to be

refreshed or go to a new web page every time an action occurs. Flash can use

embedded fonts instead of the standard fonts installed on most computers. There are

many sites which forgo HTML entirely for Flash. Other sites may use Flash content

combined with HTML as conservatively as gifs or jpegs would be used, but with smaller

vector file sizes and the option of faster loading animations. Flash may also be used to

protect content from unauthorized duplication or searching. Alternatively, small,

dynamic Flash objects may be used to replace standard HTML elements (such as

headers or menu links) with advanced typography not possible via regular HTML or CSS

(see Scalable Inman Flash Replacement).

Flash is not a standard produced by a vendor-neutral standards organization like most

of the core protocols and formats on the Internet. Flash is much more self-contained

than the open HTML format as it does not integrate with web browser UI features. For

example: the browsers "Back" button couldn't be used to go to a previous screen in the

same Flash file, but instead a previous HTML page with a different Flash file. The

browsers "Reload" button wouldn't reset just a portion of a Flash file, but instead

would restart the entire Flash file as loaded when the HTML page was entered, similar

to any online video. Such features would instead be included in the interface of the

Flash file if needed.

Flash requires a proprietary media-playing plugin to be seen. According to a study,[2]

98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed.[3] The percentage has remained

fairly constant over the years; for example, a study conducted by NPD Research in 2002

showed that 97.8% of US Web users had the Flash player installed. Numbers vary

depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.[4]

Flash detractors claim that Flash websites tend to be poorly designed, and often use

confusing and non-standard user-interfaces, such as the inability to scale according to

the size of the web browser, or its incompatibility with common browser features such

as the back button. Up until recently, search engines have been unable to index Flash

objects, which has prevented sites from having their contents easily found. This is

because many search engine crawlers rely on text to index websites. It is possible to

specify alternate content to be displayed for browsers that do not support Flash. Using

alternate content also helps search engines to understand the page, and can result in

much better visibility for the page. However, the vast majority of Flash websites are

not disability accessible (for screen readers, for example) or Section 508 compliant. An

additional issue is that sites which commonly use alternate content for search engines

to their human visitors are usually judged to be spamming search engines and are

automatically banned.

The most recent incarnation of Flash's scripting language (called "ActionScript", which is

an ECMA language similar to JavaScript) incorporates long-awaited usability features,

such as respecting the browser's font size and allowing blind users to use screen

readers. Actionscript 2.0 is an Object-Oriented language, allowing the use of CSS, XML,

and the design of class-based web applications.

CSS versus tables for layout

When Netscape Navigator 4 dominated the browser market, the popular solution

available for designers to lay out a Web page was by using tables. Often even simple

designs for a page would require dozens of tables nested in each other. Many web

templates in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors still use this technique today.

Navigator 4 didn't support CSS to a useful degree, so it simply wasn't used.

After the browser wars subsided, and the dominant browsers such as Internet Explorer

became more W3C compliant, designers started turning toward CSS as an alternate

means of laying out their pages. CSS proponents say that tables should be used only

for tabular data, not for layout. Using CSS instead of tables also returns HTML to a

semantic markup, which helps bots and search engines understand what's going on in a

web page. All modern Web browsers support CSS with different degrees of limitations.

However, one of the main points against CSS is that by relying on it exclusively, control

is essentially relinquished as each browser has its own quirks which result in a slightly

different page display. This is especially a problem as not every browser supports the

same subset of CSS rules. For designers who are used to table-based layouts,

developing Web sites in CSS often becomes a matter of trying to replicate what can be

done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather cumbersome due to lack of

familiarity. For example, at one time it was rather difficult to produce certain design

elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using

absolute positions. With the abundance of CSS resources available online today,

though, designing with reasonable adherence to standards involves little more than

applying CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to properly structured markup.

These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering

and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people

continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for

graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers

are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming

the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from

converting to CSS design. However, the W3 Consortium has made CSS in combination

with XHTML the standard for web design.

Form versus Function

Some web developers have a graphic arts background and may pay more attention to

how a page looks than considering other issues such as how visitors are going to find

the page via a search engine. Some might rely more on advertising than search engines

to attract visitors to the site. On the other side of the issue, search engine

optimization consultants (SEOs) are concerned with how well a web site works

technically and textually: how much traffic it generates via search engines, and how

many sales it makes, assuming looks don't contribute to the sales. As a result, the

designers and SEOs often end up in disputes where the designer wants more 'pretty'

graphics, and the SEO wants lots of 'ugly' keyword-rich text, bullet lists, and text

links[citation needed]. One could argue that this is a false dichotomy due to the

possibility that a web design may integrate the two disciplines for a collaborative and

synergistic solution[citation needed]. Because some graphics serve communication

purposes in addition to aesthetics, how well a site works may depend on the graphic

designer's visual communication ideas as well as the SEO considerations.

Another problem when using a lot of graphics on a page is that download times can be

greatly lengthened, often irritating the user. This has become less of a problem as the

internet has evolved with high-speed internet and the use of vector graphics. This is an

engineering challenge to increase bandwidth in addition to an artistic challenge to

minimize graphics and graphic file sizes. This is an on-going challenge as increased

bandwidth invites increased amounts of content.

Accessible Web design

Main article: Web accessibility

To be accessible, web pages and sites must conform to certain accessibility principles.

These can be grouped into the following main areas:

* use semantic markup that provides a meaningful structure to the document (i.e.

web page)
* Semantic markup also refers to semantically organizing the web page structure

and publishing web services description accordingly so that they can be recognized by

other web services on different web pages. Standards for semantic web are set by IEEE
* use a valid markup language that conforms to a published DTD or Schema
* provide text equivalents for any non-text components (e.g. images, multimedia)
* use hyperlinks that make sense when read out of context. (e.g. avoid "Click

Here.")
* don't use frames
* use CSS rather than HTML Tables for layout.
* author the page so that when the source code is read line-by-line by user agents

(such as a screen readers) it remains intelligible. (Using tables for design will often

result in information that is not.)

However, W3C permits an exception where tables for layout either make sense when

linearized or an alternate version (perhaps linearized) is made available.

Website accessibility is also changing as it is impacted by Content Management

Systems that allow changes to be made to webpages without the need of obtaining

programming language knowledge.

Website Planning

Before creating and uploading a website, it is important to take the time to plan

exactly what is needed in the website. Thoroughly considering the audience or target

market, as well as defining the purpose and deciding what content will be developed

are extremely important.

Purpose

It is essential to define the purpose of the website as one of the first steps in the

planning process. A purpose statement should show focus based on what the website

will accomplish and what the users will get from it. A clearly defined purpose will help

the rest of the planning process as the audience is identified and the content of the

site is developed. Setting short and long term goals for the website will help make the

purpose clear and plan for the future when expansion, modification, and improvement

will take place.Goal-setting practices and measurable objectives should be identified to

track the progress of the site and determine success.

Audience

Defining the audience is a key step in the website planning process. The audience is

the group of people who are expected to visit your website – the market being

targeted. These people will be viewing the website for a specific reason and it is

important to know exactly what they are looking for when they visit the site. A clearly

defined purpose or goal of the site as well as an understanding of what visitors want to

do or feel when they come to your site will help to identify the target audience. Upon

considering who is most likely to need or use the content, a list of characteristics

common to the users such as:

* Audience Characteristics
* Information Preferences
* Computer Specifications
* Web Experience

Taking into account the characteristics of the audience will allow an effective website

to be created that will deliver the desired content to the target audience.

Content

Content evaluation and organization requires that the purpose of the website be clearly

defined. Collecting a list of the necessary content then organizing it according to the

audience's needs is a key step in website planning. In the process of gathering the

content being offered, any items that do not support the defined purpose or accomplish

target audience objectives should be removed. It is a good idea to test the content

and purpose on a focus group and compare the offerings to the audience needs. The

next step is to organize the basic information structure by categorizing the content and

organizing it according to user needs. Each category should be named with a concise

and descriptive title that will become a link on the website. Planning for the site's

content ensures that the wants or needs of the target audience and the purpose of the

site will be fulfilled.

Compatibility and restrictions

Because of the market share of modern browsers (depending on your target market),

the compatibility of your website with the viewers is restricted. For instance, a website

that is designed for the majority of websurfers will be limited to the use of valid XHTML

1.0 Strict or older, Cascading Style Sheets Level 1, and 1024x768 display resolution.

This is because Internet Explorer is not fully W3C standards compliant with the

modularity of XHTML 1.1 and the majority of CSS beyond 1. A target market of more

alternative browser (e.g. Firefox, Safari and Opera) users allow for more W3C

compliance and thus a greater range of options for a web designer.

Another restriction on webpage design is the use of different Image file formats. The

majority of users can support GIF, JPEG, and PNG (with restrictions). Again Internet

Explorer is the major restriction here, not fully supporting PNG's advanced transparency

features, resulting in the GIF format still being the most widely used graphic file format

for transparent images.

Many website incompatibilities go unnoticed by the designer and unreported by the

users. The only way to be certain a website will work on a particular platform is to test

it on that platform.

Planning documentation

Documentation is used to visually plan the site while taking into account the purpose,

audience and content, to design the site structure, content and interactions that are

most suitable for the website. Documentation may be considered a prototype for the

website – a model which allows the website layout to be reviewed, resulting in

suggested changes, improvements and/or enhancements. This review process increases

the likelihood of success of the website.

First, the content is categorized and the information structure is formulated. The

information structure is used to develop a document or visual diagram called a site

map. This creates a visual of how the web pages will be interconnected, which helps in

deciding what content will be placed on what pages. There are three main ways of

diagramming the website structure:

* Linear Website Diagrams will allow the users to move in a predetermined

sequence;
* Hierarchical structures (of Tree Design Website Diagrams) provide more than one

path for users to take to their destination;
* Branch Design Website Diagrams allow for many interconnections between web

pages such as hyperlinks within sentences.

In addition to planning the structure, the layout and interface of individual pages may

be planned using a storyboard. In the process of storyboarding, a record is made of the

description, purpose and title of each page in the site, and they are linked together

according to the most effective and logical diagram type. Depending on the number of

pages required for the website, documentation methods may include using pieces of

paper and drawing lines to connect them, or creating the storyboard using computer

software.

Some or all of the individual pages may be designed in greater detail as a website

wireframe, a mock up model or comprehensive layout of what the page will actually

look like. This is often done in a graphic program, or layout design program. The

wireframe has no working functionality, only planning, though it can be used for selling

ideas to other web design companies.
Web Management India
Web Solution Tools.
Mrf Web Design

Mrf Web Development
Mrf Web Development

Business development

2009-01-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

In the field of commerce, the specialist area of business development comprises a

number of techniques and responsibilities which aim at gaining new customers and at

penetrating existing markets. Techniques used include:

* assessment of marketing opportunities and target markets
* intelligence gathering on customers and competitors
* generating leads for possible sales
* advising on, drafting and enforcing sales policies and processes
* follow-up sales activity
* formal proposal or presentation management and writing
* pitch and presentation rehearsals
* business model design

Business development involves evaluating a business and then realizing its full

potential, using such tools as:

* marketing
* information management (sometimes conflated with knowledge management)
* customer service

A sound organization aiming to withstand competitors never stops business

development[citation needed], but engages in it as an ongoing process.

Successful business development often requires a multi-disciplinary approach beyond

just "a sale to a customer". Some consultants[who?] frequently recommend a detailed

strategy for growing a business in desirable ways, which may involve financial, legal

and advertising skills. Business-development practitioners cannot reduce their activities

to simple templates applicable to all or even most situations faced by real-world

enterprises. Creativity in meeting new and unforeseen challenges may help sustainable

growth.

Business-development roles may have one of two modes:

1. sales-oriented (client-facing); or
2. an operational function to support sales.

In a sales role, business development could concentrate on developing

strategic-channel relationships or on general sales. This emerges from analysis of the

varied job descriptions found in job-search engines, especially in the UK. In the US, the

term "capture management" appears as an alternative job or role title, typically used

when describing business development as an operational function to support the selling

function of a company. The Association of Proposal Management have produced the

Capture Management Lifecycle that describes the process in three broad stages:

1. pre-bid phase
2. bid phase
3. post-bid phase

Small to medium-sized companies often do not establish procedures for business

development, instead relying on their existing contacts. Or people in such companies

may assume that because they know people in high places that this will solve any

business-development problems and that somehow new financial transactions will

come to them. Such thinking can have significant ramifications if one cannot exploit

those relationships, which very often[citation needed] remain personal or weak. Such a

situation may result in no new sales in the pipeline.

Business-development professionals frequently have had earlier experience in financial

services, investment banking or management consulting; although many find their

route to this area by climbing the corporate ladder in functions such as operations

management or sales. Skill-sets and experience for business-development specialists

usually consist of a mixture of the following (depending on the business requirements):

* marketing
* legal
* strategy
* finance
* proposal management or capture management
* sales experience

The "pipeline" refers to flow of potential clients which a company has started

developing. Business-development staff assign to each potential client in the pipeline

a percent chance of success, with projected sales-volumes attached. Planners can use

the weighted average of all the potential clients in the pipeline to project staffing to

manage the new activity when finalized. Enterprises usually support pipelines with

some kind of CRM (customer relationship management) tool or CRM-database, either

web-based (such as the salesforce.com software-as-a-service solution) or an in-house

system. Sometimes business development specialists manage and analyze the data to

produce sales management information (MI). Such MI could include:

* reasons for wins/losses
* progress of opportunities in relation to the sales process
* conversion (win) rates
* top performing salespeople/sales channels
* sales of services/products

For larger and well-established companies, especially in technology-related industries,

the term "business development" often refers to setting up and managing strategic

relationships and alliances with other, third-party companies. In these instances the

companies may leverage each others' expertise, technologies or other intellectual

property to expand their capacities for identifying, researching, analyzing and bringing

to market new businesses and new products, business-development focuses on

implementation of the strategic business plan through equity financing,

acquisition/divestiture of technologies, products, and companies, plus the

establishment of strategic partnerships where appropriate.
Web Management India
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Mrf Web Design

Mrf Web Development
Mrf Web Development

Our Services

2008-12-30T21:54:00.000-08:00

There are different things you will have to do to increase rankings on
search engines. I will try and briefly define some:
On Page Optimization:
1. Meta Tags and Alt Tags
2. Content Optimization and Keyword Integration
3. Interlinking within the website
4. Check for broken links

Off Page Optimization
1. Link Building: One Way and Reciprocal
2. Directory and Article Submissions
3. Blog and Forum participation

Web Development Company
Web Management India
Web Solution Tools.
Mrf Web Design

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Mrf Web Development

Cascading Style Sheets Limitations

2008-11-24T03:37:00.000-08:00

Limitations

Some noted disadvantages of using "pure" CSS include:

Inconsistent browser support
Different browsers will render CSS layout differently as a result of browser bugs or lack of support for CSS features. For example Microsoft Internet Explorer, whose older versions, such as IE 6.0 - IE 8.0 BETA, implemented many CSS 2.0 properties in its own, incompatible way, misinterpreted a significant number of important properties, such as width, height, and float. Numerous so-called CSS "hacks" must be implemented to achieve consistent layout among the most popular or commonly used browsers. Pixel precise layouts can sometimes be impossible to achieve across browsers.
Selectors are unable to ascend
CSS offers no way to select a parent or ancestor of element that satisfies certain criteria. A more advanced selector scheme (such as XPath) would enable more sophisticated stylesheets. However, the major reasons for the CSS Working Group rejecting proposals for parent selectors are related to browser performance and incremental rendering issues.
One block declaration cannot explicitly inherit from another
Inheritance of styles is performed by the browser based on the containment hierarchy of DOM elements and the specificity of the rule selectors, as suggested by the section 6.4.1 of the CSS2 specification. Only the user of the blocks can refer to them by including class names into the class attribute of a DOM element.
Vertical control limitations
While horizontal placement of elements is generally easy to control, vertical placement is frequently unintuitive, convoluted, or impossible. Simple tasks, such as centering an element vertically or getting a footer to be placed no higher than bottom of viewport, either require complicated and unintuitive style rules, or simple but widely unsupported rules.
Absence of expressions
There is currently no ability to specify property values as simple expressions (such as margin-left: 10% - 3em + 4px;). This is useful in a variety of cases, such as calculating the size of columns subject to a constraint on the sum of all columns. However, a working draft with a calc() value to address this limitation has been published by the CSS WG, and Internet Explorer 5 and all later versions support a proprietary expression() statement, with similar functionality.
Lack of orthogonality
Multiple properties often end up doing the same job. For instance, position, display and float specify the placement model, and most of the time they cannot be combined meaningfully. A display: table-cell element cannot be floated or given position: relative, and an element with float: left should not react to changes of display. In addition, some properties are not defined in a flexible way that avoids creation of new properties. For example, you should use the "border-spacing" property on table element instead of the "margin-*" property on table cell elements. This is because according to the CSS specification, internal table elements do not have margins.
Margin collapsing
Margin collapsing is, while well-documented and useful, also complicated and is frequently not expected by authors, and no simple side-effect-free way is available to control it.
Float containment
CSS does not explicitly offer any property that would force an element to contain floats. Multiple properties offer this functionality as a side effect, but none of them are completely appropriate in all situations. As there will be an overflow when the elements, which is contained in a container, use float property. Generally, either "position: relative" or "overflow: hidden" solves this. Floats will be different according to the web browser size and resolution, but positions can not.
Lack of multiple backgrounds per element
Highly graphical designs require several background images for every element, and CSS can support only one. Therefore, developers have to choose between adding redundant wrappers around document elements, or dropping the visual effect. This is partially addressed in the working draft of the CSS3 backgrounds module, which is already supported in Safari and Konqueror.
Control of Element Shapes
CSS currently only offers rectangular shapes. Rounded corners or other shapes may require non-semantic markup. However, this is addressed in the working draft of the CSS3 backgrounds module.
Lack of Variables
CSS contains no variables. This makes it necessary to do a "replace-all" when one desires to change a fundamental constant, such as the color scheme or various heights and widths. This may not even be possible to do in a reasonable way (consider the case where one wants to replace certain heights which are 50px, but not others which are also 50px; this would require very complicated regular expressions). In turn, many developers are now using PHP to control and output the CSS file by either CSS @import/PHP require, or by declaring a different header in the PHP/CSS document for the correct parsing mode. The main disadvantage to this is the lack of CSS caching, but can be very useful in many situations.
Lack of column declaration
While possible in current CSS, layouts with multiple columns can be complex to implement. With the current CSS, the process is often done using floating elements which are often rendered differently by different browsers, different computer screen shapes, and different screen ratios set on standard monitors.
Cannot explicitly declare new scope independently of position
Scoping rules for properties such as z-height look for the closest parent element with a position:absolute or position:relative attribute. This odd coupling has two undesired effects: 1) it is impossible to avoid declaring a new scope when one is forced to adjust an element's position, preventing one from using the desired scope of a parent element and 2) users are often not aware that they must declare position:relative or position:absolute on any element they want to act as "the new scope". Additionally, a bug in the Firefox browser prevents one from declaring table elements as a new css scope using position:relative (one can technically do so, but numerous graphical glitches result).

Advantages

By combining CSS with the functionality of a Content Management System, a considerable amount of flexibility can be programmed into content submission forms. This allows a contributor, who may not be familiar or able to understand or edit CSS or HTML code to select the layout of an article or other page they are submitting on-the-fly, in the same form. For instance, a contributor, editor or author of an article or page might be able to select the number of columns and whether or not the page or article will carry an image. This information is then passed to the Content Management System, and the program logic will evaluate the information and determine, based on a certain number of combinations, how to apply classes and IDs to the HTML elements, therefore styling and positioning them according to the pre-defined CSS for that particular layout type. When working with large-scale, complex sites, with many contributors such as news and informational sites, this advantage weighs heavily on the feasibility and maintenance of the project.

When CSS is used effectively, in terms of inheritance and "cascading," a global stylesheet can be used to affect and style elements site-wide. If the situation arises that the styling of the elements should need to be changed or adjusted, these changes can be made easily, simply by editing a few rules in the global stylesheet. Before CSS, this sort of maintenance was more difficult, expensive and time-consuming.
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Cascading Style Sheets

2008-11-24T03:30:00.000-08:00

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.

CSS can be used locally by the readers of web pages to define colors, fonts, layout, and other aspects of document presentation. It is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation (written in CSS). This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design). CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. CSS specifies a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more than one rule matches against a particular element. In this so-called cascade, priorities or weights are calculated and assigned to rules, so that the results are predictable.

The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Internet media type (MIME type) text/css is registered for use with CSS by RFC 2318 (March 1998)

Syntax

CSS has a simple syntax, and uses a number of English keywords to specify the names of various style properties.

A style sheet consists of a list of rules. Each rule or rule-set consists of one or more selectors and a declaration block. A declaration-block consists of a list of semicolon-separated declarations in braces. Each declaration itself consists of a property, a colon (:), a value, then a semi-colon (;).

In CSS, selectors are used to declare which elements a style applies to, a kind of match expression. Selectors may apply to all elements of a specific type, or only those elements which match a certain attribute; elements may be matched depending on how they are placed relative to each other in the markup code, or on how they are nested within the document object model.

In addition to these, a set of pseudo-classes can be used to define further behavior. Probably the best-known of these is :hover, which applies a style only when the user 'points to' the visible element, usually by holding the mouse cursor over it. It is appended to a selector as in a:hover or #elementid:hover. Other pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements are, for example, :first-line, :visited or :before. A special pseudo-class is :lang(c), "c".

A pseudo-class selects entire elements, such as :link or :visited, whereas a pseudo-element makes a selection that may consist of partial elements, such as :first-line or :first-letter.

Selectors may be combined in other ways too, especially in CSS 2.1, to achieve greater specificity and flexibility.

[edit] Use of CSS

Prior to CSS, nearly all of the presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup; all font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders and sizes had to be explicitly described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS allows authors to move much of that information to a separate stylesheet resulting in considerably simpler HTML markup.

Headings (h1 elements), sub-headings (h2), sub-sub-headings (h3), etc., are defined structurally using HTML. In print and on the screen, choice of font, size, color and emphasis for these elements is presentational.

Prior to CSS, document authors who wanted to assign such typographic characteristics to, say, all h2 headings had to use the HTML font and other presentational elements for each occurrence of that heading type. The additional presentational markup in the HTML made documents more complex, and generally more difficult to maintain. In CSS, presentation is separated from structure. In print, CSS can define color, font, text alignment, size, borders, spacing, layout and many other typographic characteristics. It can do so independently for on-screen and printed views. CSS also defines non-visual styles such as the speed and emphasis with which text is read out by aural text readers. The W3C now considers the advantages of CSS for defining all aspects of the presentation of HTML pages to be superior to other methods. It has therefore deprecated the use of all the original presentational HTML markup.

[edit] Sources

CSS information can be provided by various sources. CSS style information can be either attached as a separate document or embedded in the HTML document. Multiple style sheets can be imported. Different styles can be applied depending on the output device being used; for example, the screen version can be quite different from the printed version, so that authors can tailor the presentation appropriately for each medium.

* Author styles (style information provided by the web page author), in the form of
o external stylesheets, i.e. a separate CSS-file referenced from the document
o embedded style, blocks of CSS information inside the HTML document itself
o inline styles, inside the HTML document, style information on a single element, specified using the "style" attribute.
* User style
o a local CSS-file specified by the user using options in the web browser, and acting as an override, to be applied to all documents.
* User agent style
o the default style sheet applied by the user agent, e.g. the browser's default presentation of elements.

One of the goals of CSS is also to allow users a greater degree of control over presentation; those who find the red italic headings difficult to read may apply other style sheets to the document. Depending on their browser and the web site, a user may choose from various stylesheets provided by the designers, may remove all added style and view the site using their browser's default styling or may perhaps override just the red italic heading style without altering other attributes.

File highlightheaders.css containing:

h1 { color: white; background: orange !important; }
h2 { color: white; background: green !important; }

Such a file is stored locally and is applicable if that has been specified in the browser options. "!important" means that it prevails over the author specifications.

History

Style sheets have existed in one form or another since the beginnings of SGML in the 1970s. Cascading Style Sheets were developed as a means for creating a consistent approach to providing style information for web documents.

As HTML grew, it came to encompass a wider variety of stylistic capabilities to meet the demands of web developers. This evolution gave the designer more control over site appearance but at the cost of HTML becoming more complex to write and maintain. Variations in web browser implementations made consistent site appearance difficult, and users had less control over how web content was displayed.

To improve the capabilities of web presentation, nine different style sheet languages were proposed to the W3C's www-style mailing list. Of the nine proposals, two were chosen as the foundation for what became CSS: Cascading HTML Style Sheets (CHSS) and Stream-based Style Sheet Proposal (SSP). First, Håkon Wium Lie (now the CTO of Opera Software) proposed Cascading HTML Style Sheets (CHSS) in October 1994, a language which has some resemblance to today's CSS. Bert Bos was working on a browser called Argo which used its own style sheet language, Stream-based Style Sheet Proposal (SSP). Lie and Bos worked together to develop the CSS standard (the 'H' was removed from the name because these style sheets could be applied to other markup languages besides HTML).

Unlike existing style languages like DSSSL and FOSI, CSS allowed a document's style to be influenced by multiple style sheets. One style sheet could inherit or "cascade" from another, permitting a mixture of stylistic preferences controlled equally by the site designer and user.

Håkon's proposal was presented at the "Mosaic and the Web" conference in Chicago, Illinois in 1994, and again with Bert Bos in 1995. Around this time, the World Wide Web Consortium was being established; the W3C took an interest in the development of CSS, and it organized a workshop toward that end chaired by Steven Pemberton. This resulted in W3C adding work on CSS to the deliverables of the HTML editorial review board (ERB). Håkon and Bert were the primary technical staff on this aspect of the project, with additional members, including Thomas Reardon of Microsoft, participating as well. By the end of 1996, CSS was ready to become official, and the CSS level 1 Recommendation was published in December.

Development of HTML, CSS, and the DOM had all been taking place in one group, the HTML Editorial Review Board (ERB). Early in 1997, the ERB was split into three working groups: HTML Working group, chaired by Dan Connolly of W3C; DOM Working group, chaired by Lauren Wood of SoftQuad; and CSS Working group, chaired by Chris Lilley of W3C.

The CSS Working Group began tackling issues that had not been addressed with CSS level 1, resulting in the creation of CSS level 2 on November 4, 1997. It was published as a W3C Recommendation on May 12, 1998. CSS level 3, which was started in 1998, is still under development as of 2008.

In 2005 the CSS Working Groups decided to enforce the requirements for standards more strictly. This meant that already published standards like CSS 2.1, CSS 3 Selectors and CSS 3 Text were pulled back from Candidate Recommendation to Working Draft level.

[edit] Difficulty with adoption

Although the CSS1 specification was completed in 1996 and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3 was released in that year featuring some limited support for CSS, it would be more than three years before any web browser achieved near-full implementation of the specification. Internet Explorer 5.0 for the Macintosh, shipped in March 2000, was the first browser to have full (better than 99 percent) CSS1 support[citation needed], surpassing Opera, which had been the leader since its introduction of CSS support 15 months earlier. Other browsers followed soon afterwards, and many of them additionally implemented parts of CSS2. As of July 2008, no (finished) browser has fully implemented CSS2, with implementation levels varying (see Comparison of layout engines (CSS)).

Even though early browsers such as Internet Explorer 3 and 4, and Netscape 4.x had support for CSS, it was typically incomplete and afflicted with serious bugs. This was a serious obstacle for the adoption of CSS.

When later 'version 5' browsers began to offer a fairly full implementation of CSS, they were still incorrect in certain areas and were fraught with inconsistencies, bugs and other quirks. The proliferation of such CSS-related inconsistencies and even the variation in feature support has made it difficult for designers to achieve a consistent appearance across platforms. Some authors commonly resort to using some workarounds such as CSS hacks and CSS filters in order to obtain consistent results across web browsers and platforms.

Problems with browsers' patchy adoption of CSS along with errata in the original specification led the W3C to revise the CSS2 standard into CSS2.1, which may be regarded as something nearer to a working snapshot of current CSS support in HTML browsers. Some CSS2 properties which no browser had successfully implemented were dropped, and in a few cases, defined behaviours were changed to bring the standard into line with the predominant existing implementations. CSS2.1 became a Candidate Recommendation on February 25, 2004, but css-21 was pulled back to Working Draft status on June 13, 2005,and only returned to Candidate Recommendation status on July 19, 2007.

In the past, some web servers were configured to serve all documents with the filename extension .css as mime type application/x-pointplus rather than text/css. At the time, the Net-Scene company was selling PointPlus Maker to convert PowerPoint files into Compact Slide Show files (using a .css extension).[citation needed]

Variations

CSS has various levels and profiles. Each level of CSS builds upon the last, typically adding new features and typically denoted as CSS1, CSS2, and CSS3. Profiles are typically a subset of one or more levels of CSS built for a particular device or user interface. Currently there are profiles for mobile devices, printers, and television sets. Profiles should not be confused with media types which were added in CSS2.

CSS 1

The first CSS specification to become an official W3C Recommendation is CSS level 1, published in December 1996.[5] Among its capabilities are support for:

* Font properties such as typeface and emphasis
* Color of text, backgrounds, and other elements
* Text attributes such as spacing between words, letters, and lines of text
* Alignment of text, images, tables and other elements
* Margin, border, padding, and positioning for most elements
* Unique identification and generic classification of groups of attributes

The W3C maintains the CSS1 Recommendation.

CSS 2

CSS level 2 was developed by the W3C and published as a Recommendation in May 1998. A superset of CSS1, CSS2 includes a number of new capabilities like absolute, relative, and fixed positioning of elements, the concept of media types, support for aural style sheets and bidirectional text, and new font properties such as shadows. The W3C maintains the CSS2 Recommendation.

CSS level 2 revision 1 or CSS 2.1 fixes errors in CSS2, removes poorly-supported features and adds already-implemented browser extensions to the specification. While it was a Candidate Recommendation for several months, on June 15, 2005 it was reverted to a working draft for further review. It was returned to Candidate Recommendation status on 19 July 2007.

CSS 3

CSS level 3 is currently under development.[9] The W3C maintains a CSS3 progress report. CSS3 is modularized and will consist of several separate Recommendations. The W3C CSS3 Roadmap provides a summary and introduction.

[edit] Browser support

A CSS filter is a coding technique that aims to effectively hide or show parts of the CSS to different browsers, either by exploiting CSS-handling quirks or bugs in the browser, or by taking advantage of lack of support for parts of the CSS specifications. Using CSS filters, some designers have gone as far as delivering entirely different CSS to certain browsers in order to ensure that designs are rendered as expected. Because very early web browsers were either completely incapable of handling CSS, or render CSS very poorly, designers today often routinely use CSS filters that completely prevent these browsers from accessing any of the CSS. Internet Explorer support for CSS began with IE 3.0 and increased progressively with each version. By 2008, the first Beta of Internet Explorer 8 offered support for CSS 2.1 in its best web standards mode.

An example of a well-known CSS browser bug is the Internet Explorer box model bug, where box widths are interpreted incorrectly in several versions of the browser, resulting in blocks which are too narrow when viewed in Internet Explorer, but correct in standards-compliant browsers. The bug can be avoided in Internet Explorer 6 by using the correct doctype in (X)HTML documents. CSS hacks and CSS filters are used to compensate for bugs such as this, just one of hundreds of CSS bugs that have been documented in various versions of Netscape, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer (including Internet Explorer 7).

Even when the availability of CSS-capable browsers made CSS a viable technology, the adoption of CSS was still held back by designers' struggles with browsers' incorrect CSS implementation and patchy CSS support. Even today, these problems continue to make the business of CSS design more complex and costly than it should be, and cross-browser testing remains a necessity. Other reasons for continuing non-adoption of CSS are: its perceived complexity, authors' lack of familiarity with CSS syntax and required techniques, poor support from authoring tools, the risks posed by inconsistency between browsers and the increased costs of testing.

Currently there is strong competition between Mozilla's Gecko layout engine, the WebKit layout engine used in Apple's Safari, the similar KHTML engine used in KDE's Konqueror browser, and Opera's Presto layout engine - each of them is leading in different aspects of CSS. As of 2007, Internet Explorer's Trident engine remains the worst at rendering CSS as judged by World Wide Web Consortium standards. [14] [15] In April 2008 Internet Explorer 8 beta fixes many of these shortcomings and renders CSS 2.1.[citation needed] The IEBlog claims that it passes some versions of the ACID2 test.
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XMLHttpRequest (XHR)

2008-11-24T03:19:00.000-08:00

XMLHttpRequest (XHR) is a DOM API that can be used by JavaScript and other web browser scripting languages to transfer XML and other text data between a web server and a browser. This type of AJAX architecture should not be confused with (XDR) XMLDomainRequest which is a lightweight form of XMLHttpRequest design by Microsoft which doesn't utilize XML-RPC.

The data returned from XMLHttpRequest calls will often be provided by back-end databases. Besides XML, XMLHttpRequest can be used to fetch data in other formats such as HTML, JSON or plain text.

XMLHttpRequest is an important part of the Ajax web development technique, and it is used by many websites to implement responsive and dynamic web applications. Examples of web applications that make use of XMLHttpRequest include Google Maps, Windows Live's Virtual Earth, the MapQuest dynamic map interface, Facebook, and many others.

Methods

abort()
Cancels the current request.
getAllResponseHeaders()
Returns the complete set of HTTP headers as a string.
getResponseHeader(headerName)
Returns the value of the specified HTTP header.
open(method, URL)
open(method, URL, async)
open(method, URL, async, userName)
open(method, URL, async, userName, password)
Specifies the method, URL, and other optional attributes of a request.

* The method parameter can have a value of GET, POST, HEAD, PUT, DELETE, or a variety of other HTTP methods listed in the W3C specification.[2]
* The URL parameter may be either a relative or complete URL.
* The async parameter specifies whether the request should be handled asynchronously or not – true means that script processing carries on after the send() method, without waiting for a response, and false means that the script waits for a response before continuing script processing.

send(content)
Sends the request. content can be a string or reference to a document.
setRequestHeader(label, value)
Adds a label/value pair to the HTTP header to be sent.

Properties

onreadystatechange
Specifies a reference to an event handler for an event that fires at every state change
readyState
Returns the state of the object as follows:

* 0 = uninitialized – open() has not yet been called.
* 1 = open – send() has not yet been called.
* 2 = sent – send() has been called, headers and status are available.
* 3 = receiving – Downloading, responseText holds partial data (although this functionality is not available in IE [3])
* 4 = loaded – Done.

responseText
Returns the response as a string.
responseXML
Returns the response as XML. This property returns an XML document object, which can be examined and parsed using W3C DOM node tree methods and properties.
responseBody
Returns the response as a binary encoded string. This property is not part of the native XMLHttpRequest wrapper. For this property to be available, the XHR object must be created with an ActiveX component. A JScript example:

if(typeof ActiveXObject != "undefined") {
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP");
xmlhttp.open("GET", "#", false);
xmlhttp.send(null);
alert(xmlhttp.responseBody);
} else {
alert("This browser does not support Microsoft ActiveXObjects.")
}

status
Returns the HTTP status code as a number (e.g. 404 for "Not Found" and 200 for "OK"). Some network-related status codes (e.g. 408 for "Request Timeout") cause errors to be thrown in Firefox if the status fields are accessed.[4] If the server does not respond (properly), IE returns a WinInet Error Code (e.g 12029 for "cannot connect").
statusText
Returns the status as a string (e.g. "Not Found" or "OK").

History and support

The XMLHttpRequest concept was originally developed by Microsoft as a server side API call for Outlook Web Access 2000. At the time, it was not a standards-based web client feature; however, de facto support for it was implemented by many major web browsers. The Microsoft implementation is called XMLHTTP. It has been available since the introduction of Internet Explorer 5.0[5] and is accessible via JScript, VBScript and other scripting languages supported by IE browsers. In JScript, Internet Explorer versions prior to 7.0 require XMLHTTP to be invoked as an ActiveXObject, so they cannot instantiate the XMLHttpRequest class without help as follows:

// Provide the XMLHttpRequest class for IE 5.x-6.x:
if( typeof XMLHttpRequest == "undefined" ) XMLHttpRequest = function() {
try { return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.6.0") } catch(e) {}
try { return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP.3.0") } catch(e) {}
try { return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP") } catch(e) {}
try { return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") } catch(e) {}
throw new Error( "This browser does not support XMLHttpRequest." )
};

The Mozilla project incorporated the first compatible native implementation of XMLHttpRequest in Mozilla 1.0 in 2002. This implementation was later followed by Apple since Safari 1.2, Konqueror, Opera Software since Opera 8.0, iCab since 3.0b352, and Microsoft since Internet Explorer 7.0.

The World Wide Web Consortium published a Working Draft specification for the XMLHttpRequest object's API on 15 April 2008.[6] Its goal is "to document a minimum set of interoperable features based on existing implementations, allowing Web developers to use these features without platform-specific code". The draft specification is based upon existing popular implementations, to help improve and ensure interoperability of code across web platforms. As of April 2008, the W3C standard was still a work in progress.

On 25 February 2008 published a Working Draft of XMLHttpRequest2 object's API with some extended functionality (such as progress events, cross-site requests, handling of byte streams).

Web pages that use XMLHttpRequest or XMLHTTP can mitigate the current minor differences in the implementations either by encapsulating the XMLHttpRequest object in a JavaScript wrapper, or by using an existing framework that does so. In either case, the wrapper should detect the abilities of current implementation and work within its requirements.

Traditionally, there have been other methods to achieve a similar effect of server dynamic applications using scripting languages and/or plugins:

* Invisible IFrames (or Netscape Navigator's equivalent ilayers)
* Remote Scripting
* Netscape's LiveConnect
* Microsoft's ActiveX
* Microsoft's XML Data Islands
* Adobe Flash Player
* Java applets

In addition, the World Wide Web Consortium has several recommendations that also allow for dynamic communication between a server and user agent, though few of them are well supported.[citation needed] These include:

* The object element defined in HTML 4 for embedding arbitrary content types into documents, (replaces inline frames under XHTML 1.1)
* The Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Load and Save Specification.

Example Code

Here is a cross-browser general purpose example of an AJAX/XMLHttpRequest JavaScript function. See the history and support section for compatibility with versions of Internet Explorer prior to 7.0.

function ajax(url, vars, callbackFunction) {
var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("POST", url, true);
request.setRequestHeader("Content-Type",
"application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

request.onreadystatechange = function() {
var done = 4, ok = 200;
if (request.readyState == done && request.status == ok) {
if (request.responseText) {
callbackFunction(request.responseText);
}
}
};
request.send(vars);
}

[edit] Known problems

Caching

Most of the implementations also realize HTTP caching. Internet Explorer and Firefox do, but there is a difference in how and when the cached data is revalidated. Firefox revalidates the cached response every time the page is refreshed, issuing an "If-Modified-Since" header with value set to the value of the "Last-Modified" header of the cached response.

Internet Explorer does so only if the cached response is expired (i.e., after the date of received "Expires" header). This raises some issues, since a bug exists in Internet Explorer, where the cached response is never refreshed.[9]

It is possible to unify the caching behavior on the client. The following script illustrates an example approach (See the history and support section for compatibility with versions of Internet Explorer prior to 7.0):

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", url, false);
request.send(null);
if(!request.getResponseHeader("Date")) {
var cached = request;
request = new XMLHttpRequest();
var ifModifiedSince = cached.getResponseHeader("Last-Modified");
ifModifiedSince = (ifModifiedSince) ?
ifModifiedSince : new Date(0); // January 1, 1970
request.open("GET", url, false);
request.setRequestHeader("If-Modified-Since", ifModifiedSince);
request.send("");
if(request.status == 304) {
request = cached;
}
}

In Internet Explorer, if the response is returned from the cache without revalidation, the "Date" header is an empty string. The workaround is achieved by checking the "Date" response header and issuing another request if needed. In case a second request is needed, the actual HTTP request is not made twice, as the first call would not produce an actual HTTP request.

The reference to the cached request is preserved, because if the response code/status of the second call is "304 Not Modified", the response body becomes an empty string ("") and then it is needed to go back to the cached object. A way to save memory and expenses of second object creation is to preserve just the needed response data and reuse the XMLHttpRequest object.

The above script relies on the assumption that the "Date" header is always issued by the server, which should be true for most server configurations. Also, it illustrates a synchronous communication between the server and the client. In case of asynchronous communication, the check should be made during the callback.

This problem is often overcome by employing techniques preventing the caching at all. Using these techniques indiscriminately can result in poor performance and waste of network bandwidth.

If script executes operation that has side effects (e.g. adding a comment, marking message as read) which requires that request always reaches the end server, it should use POST method instead.

Workaround

Internet Explorer will also cache dynamic pages, this is a problem because the URL of the page may not change but the content will (For example a news feed). A work around for this situation can be achieved by adding a unique time stamp or random number, or possibly both, typically using the Date object and/or Math.random().

For simple document request the query string delimiter '?' can be used, or for existing queries a final sub-query can be added after a final '&' – to append the unique query term to the existing query. The downside is that each such request will fill up the cache with useless (never reused) content that could otherwise be used for other cached content (more useful data will be purged from cache to make room for these one-time responses).

Reusing XMLHttpRequest Object in IE

In IE, if the open method is called after setting the onreadystatechange callback, there will be a problem when trying to reuse the XHR object. To be able to reuse the XHR object properly, use the open method first and set onreadystatechange later. This happens because IE resets the object implicitly in the open method if the status is 'completed'. For more explanation of reuse: Reusing XMLHttpRequest Object in IE. The downside to calling the open method after setting the callback is a loss of cross-browser support for readystates. See the quirksmode article.

Cross-browser support

Microsoft developers were the first to include the XMLHttp object in their MSXML ActiveX control. Developers at the open source Mozilla project saw this invention and ported their own XMLHttp, not as an ActiveX control but as a native browser object called XMLHttpRequest. Konqueror, Opera and Safari have since implemented similar functionality but more along the lines of an identical XMLHttpRequest. Some Ajax developer and run-time frameworks only support one implementation of XMLHttp while others support both. Developers building Ajax functionality from scratch can provide if/else logic within their client-side JavaScript to use the appropriate XMLHttp object as well. Internet Explorer 7 added native support for the XMLHttpRequest object, but retains backward compatibility with the ActiveX implementation.[5] To avoid excess conditionals, see the source code in the history and support section.
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Rich Internet applications

2008-11-24T03:12:00.000-08:00

(RIAs) are web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications. RIAs typically form a stateful client application with a separate services layer on the backend.

RIAs typically do the following:

* run in a web browser, or do not require software installation
* run locally in a secure environment called a sandbox
History

The term "rich Internet application" was introduced in a white paper of March 2002 by Macromedia (now merged into Adobe), though the concept had existed for a number of years earlier under names such as:

* Remote Scripting, by Microsoft, circa 1998
* X Internet, by Forrester Research in October 2000
* Rich (web) clients
* Rich web application

Traditional web applications centered all activity around a client-server architecture with a thin client. Under this system, all processing is done on the server, and the client is only used to display static (in this case HTML) content. The biggest drawback with this system is that all interaction with the application must pass through the server, which requires data to be sent to the server, the server to respond, and the page to be reloaded on the client with the response. By using a client side technology which can execute instructions on the client's computer, RIAs can circumvent this slow and synchronous loop for many user interactions. This difference is somewhat analogous to the difference between "terminal and mainframe" and client-server/fat client approaches.

Internet standards have evolved slowly and continually over time to accommodate these techniques, so it is hard to draw a strict line between what constitutes an RIA and what does not. But all RIAs share one characteristic: they introduce an intermediate layer of code, often called a client engine, between the user and the server. This client engine is usually downloaded as part of the instantiation of the application, and may be supplemented by further code downloads as use of the application progresses. The client engine acts as an extension of the browser, and usually takes over responsibility for rendering the application's user interface and for server communication.

What can be done in an RIA may be limited by the capabilities of the system used on the client. But in general, the client engine is programmed to perform application functions that its designer believes will enhance some aspect of the user interface, or improve its responsiveness when handling certain user interactions, compared to a standard Web browser implementation. Also, while simply adding a client engine does not force an application to depart from the normal synchronous pattern of interactions between browser and server, in most RIAs the client engine performs additional asynchronous communications with servers.

Benefits

Although developing applications to run in a web browser is a much more limiting, difficult, and intricate process than developing a regular desktop application, the efforts are often justified because:

* installation footprint is smaller -- overhead for updating and distributing the application is trivial, or significantly reduced compared to a desktop or OS native application
* updates/upgrades to new versions can be automatic or transparent to the end user
* users can use the application from any computer with an internet connection
* many tools exist to allow off-line use of applications, such as Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Curl, and other technologies
* most RIA techologies allow the user experience to be consistent, regardless of what operating system the client uses.
* web-based applications are generally less prone to viral infection than running an actual executable

Because RIAs employ a client-side engine to interact with the user, they are, when compared with "traditional" web applications:

* Richer. They can offer user-interface behaviors not obtainable using only the HTML widgets available to standard browser-based Web applications. This richer functionality may include anything that can be implemented in the technology being used on the client side, including drag and drop, using a slider to change data, calculations performed only by the client and which do not need to be sent back to the server, for example, a mortgage calculator.

* More responsive. The interface behaviors are typically much more responsive than those of a standard Web browser that must always interact with a remote server.

The most sophisticated examples of RIAs exhibit a look and feel approaching that of a desktop environment. Using a client engine can also produce other performance benefits:

* Client/Server balance. The demand for client and server computing resources is better balanced, so that the Web server need not be the workhorse that it is with a traditional Web application. This frees server resources, allowing the same server hardware to handle more client sessions concurrently.

* Asynchronous communication. The client engine can interact with the server without waiting for the user to perform an interface action such as clicking on a button or link. This allows the user to view and interact with the page asynchronously from the client engine's communication with the server. This option allows RIA designers to move data between the client and the server without making the user wait. Perhaps the most common application of this is pre-fetching data, in which an application anticipates a future need for certain data and downloads it to the client before the user requests it, thereby speeding up a subsequent response. Google Maps uses this technique to load adjacent map segments to the client before the user scrolls them into view.

* Network efficiency. The network traffic may also be significantly reduced because an application-specific client engine can be more intelligent than a standard Web browser when deciding what data needs to be exchanged with servers. This can speed up individual requests or responses because less data is being transferred for each interaction, and overall network load is reduced. However, over-use of asynchronous calls and pre-fetching techniques can neutralize or even reverse this potential benefit. Because the code cannot anticipate exactly what every user will do next, it is common for such techniques to download extra data, not all of which is actually needed, to many or all clients.

Shortcomings

Shortcomings and restrictions associated with RIAs are:

* Sandboxing. Because RIAs run within a sandbox, they have restricted access to system resources. If assumptions about access to resources are incorrect, RIAs may fail to operate correctly.

* Enabled scripting. JavaScript or another scripting language is often required. If the user has disabled active scripting in their browser, the RIA may not function properly, if at all.

* Client processing speed. To achieve platform independence, some RIAs use client-side scripts written in interpreted languages such as JavaScript, with a consequential loss of performance (a serious issue with mobile devices). This is not an issue with compiled client languages such as Java, where performance is comparable to that of traditional compiled languages, or with Flash, Curl, or Silverlight, in which the compiled code is run by a Flash, Curl or Silverlight plugin. Several web browser manufacturers have released or are working on new JavaScript engines to accelerate execution of JavaScript, for example TraceMonkey, the Javascript engine used in Mozilla Firefox, will be optimized using "Trace Trees" in version 3.1 of the browser, and Google Chrome web browser has the V8 JavaScript engine, which also accelerates JavaScript execution. These two technologies have both evolved due to the increasing usage of JavaScript and the growth of rich internet applications.

* Script download time. Although it does not have to be installed, the additional client-side intelligence (or client engine) of RIA applications needs to be delivered by the server to the client. While much of this is usually automatically cached it needs to be transferred at least once. Depending on the size and type of delivery, script download time may be unpleasantly long. RIA developers can lessen the impact of this delay by compressing the scripts, and by staging their delivery over multiple pages of an application.

* Loss of integrity. If the application-base is X/HTML, conflicts arise between the goal of an application (which naturally wants to be in control of its presentation and behaviour) and the goals of X/HTML (which naturally wants to give away control). The DOM interface for X/HTML makes it possible to create RIAs, but by doing so makes it impossible to guarantee correct function. Because an RIA client can modify the RIA's basic structure and override presentation and behaviour, it can cause failure of the application to work properly on the client side. Eventually, this problem could be solved by new client-side mechanisms that granted an RIA client more limited permission to modify only those resources within the scope of its application. (Standard software running natively does not have this problem because by definition a program automatically possesses all rights to all its allocated resources).

* Loss of visibility to search engines. Search engines may not be able to index the text content of the application.

* Dependence on an Internet connection. While the ideal network-enabled replacement for a desktop application would allow users to be "occasionally connected", wandering in and out of hot-spots or from office to office, special platforms (e.g. Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Curl) are required to allow off-line functionality for RIA applications.

* Dependence on Bandwidth. RIAs may not function as desired over low-bandwidth connection such as dial-up modems, thereby generating very poor user experience. However this is not a problem with broadband connections.

* Accessibility. There are a lot of known Web accessibility issues in RIAs, most notably the fact that screen readers have a hard time detecting dynamic changes (caused by JavaScript) in HTML content. The WAI-ARIA suite provides a solution for this problem (via Live Regions); as well as providing a way of adding critical role, state and property information to DHTML based user interfaces.

* No deployment. In general, rich internet applications cannot be deployed the way traditional desktop applications can be deployed. There are, however, some exceptions to this (e.g. Adobe AIR and Curl).

* Security Concerns. Several RIA frameworks, such as Adobe AIR, provide much more access to a user's local operating system than the older technologies they are built upon, such as Adobe Flash. This added power in the hands of developers creates the potential for RIA applications to enable traditional web vulnerabilities, like Cross Site Scripting, to be used to attack desktop users and possibly spread Malware.

Software development complications

The advent of RIA technologies has introduced considerable additional complexity into Web applications. Traditional Web applications built using only standard HTML, having a relatively simple software architecture and being constructed using a limited set of development options, are relatively easy to design and manage. For the person or organization using RIA technologies to deliver a Web application, their additional complexity makes them harder to design, test, measure, and support.

Use of RIA technology poses several new service level management (SLM) challenges, not all of which are completely solved today. SLM concerns are not always the focus of application developers, and are rarely if ever perceived by application users, but they are vital to the successful delivery of an online application. Aspects of the RIA architecture that complicate management processes are:

* RIA architecture breaks the Web page paradigm. Traditional Web applications can be viewed as a series of Web pages, each of which requires a distinct download, initiated by an HTTP GET request. This model has been characterized as the Web page paradigm. RIAs invalidate this model, introducing additional asynchronous server communications to support a more responsive user interface. In RIAs, the time to complete a page download may no longer correspond to something a user perceives as important, because (for example) the client engine may be prefetching some of the downloaded content for future use. New measurement techniques must be devised for RIAs, to permit reporting of response time quantities that reflect the user's experience. In the absence of standard tools that do this, RIA developers must instrument their application code to produce the measurement data needed for SLM.

* Asynchronous communication makes it harder to isolate performance problems. Paradoxically, actions taken to enhance application responsiveness also make it harder to measure, understand, report on, and manage responsiveness. Some RIAs do not issue any further HTTP GET requests from the browser after their first page, using asynchronous requests from the client engine to initiate all subsequent downloads. The RIA client engine may be programmed to continually download new content and refresh the display, or (in applications using the Comet approach) a server-side engine can keep pushing new content to the browser over a connection that never closes. In these cases, the concept of a "page download" is no longer applicable. These applications are commonly known as refreshless. These complications make it harder to measure and subdivide application response times, a fundamental requirement for problem isolation and service level management. Tools designed to measure traditional Web applications may -- depending on the details of the application and the tool -- report such applications either as a single Web page per HTTP request, or as an unrelated collection of server activities. Neither description reflects what is really happening at the application level.

* The client engine makes it harder to measure response time. For traditional Web applications, measurement software can reside either on the client machine or on a machine that is close to the server, provided that it can observe the flow of network traffic at the TCP and HTTP levels. Because these protocols are synchronous and predictable, a packet sniffer can read and interpret packet-level data, and infer the user’s experience of response time by tracking HTTP messages and the times of underlying TCP packets and acknowledgments. But the RIA architecture reduces the power of the packet sniffing approach, because the client engine breaks the communication between user and server into two separate cycles operating asynchronously -- a foreground (user-to-engine) cycle, and a background (engine-to-server) cycle. Both cycles are important, because neither stands alone; it is their relationship that defines application behavior. But that relationship depends only on the application design, which cannot (in general) be inferred by a measurement tool, especially one that can observe only one of the two cycles. Therefore the most complete RIA measurements can only be obtained using tools that reside on the client and observe both cycles.

Current status of development

RIAs are still in the early stages of development and user adoption.[citation needed] There are a number of restrictions and requirements that remain:

* Browser adoption: Many RIAs require modern web browsers in order to run. Some RIA platforms depend on advanced JavaScript engines in the browser if they use techniques such as XMLHttpRequest for client-server communication, and DOM Scripting and advanced CSS techniques to enable the rich user interface. Other RIA platforms require the inconvenience of a one-time installation of a plugin, but then have an advantage of running consistently across a wider range of browsers.

* Web standards: Differences between web browsers can make it difficult to write an RIA that will run across all major browsers. The consistency of the Java platform or other platforms (i.e. Adobe AIR, Curl, Silverlight) using a plugin and installed runtime environment makes this task much simpler.

* Development tools: Some Ajax Frameworks and products such as Curl, Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight provide an integrated environment in which to build RIAs.

* Accessibility concerns: Additional interactivity may require technical approaches that limit applications' accessibility.

* User adoption: Users expecting standard web applications may find that some accepted browser functionality (such as the "Back" button) may have somewhat different or even undesired behavior.

[edit] RIA Related Topics

[edit] RIA with real-time push

Traditionally, web pages have been delivered to the client only when the client requested for it. For every client request, the browser initiates an HTTP connection to the web server, which then returns the data and the connection is closed. The drawback of this approach was that the page displayed was updated only when the user explicitly refreshes the page or moves to a new page. Since transferring entire pages can take a long time, refreshing pages can introduce a long latency.

Demand for localised usage of RIA

With the increasing adoption and improvement in broadband technologies, fewer users experience poor performance caused by remote latency. Furthermore one of the critical reasons for using an RIA is that many developers are looking for a language to serve up desktop applications that is not only desktop OS neutral but also installation and system issue free.

RIA running in the ubiquitous web browser is a potential candidate even when used standalone or over a LAN, with the required webserver functionalities hosted locally.

Client-side functionalities and development tools for RIA needed

With client-side functionalities like Javascript and DHTML, RIA can operate on top of a range of OS and webserver functionalities.

User interface languages

Instead of HTML/XHTML, new user interface markup languages can be used in RIAs. For instance, the Mozilla Foundation's XML-based user interface markup language XUL - this could be used in RIAs though it would be restricted to Mozilla-based browsers, since it is not a de facto or de jure standard. The W3C's Rich Web Clients Activity[4] has initiated a Web Application Formats Working Group whose mission includes the development of such standards [5]. The original DARPA project at MIT which resulted in the W3C also resulted in the web content/programming language Curl which is now in version 6.0.

RIA's user interfaces can also become richer through the use of scriptable scalable vector graphics (though not all browsers can render those natively yet) as well as Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL).

Other techniques

RIAs could use XForms to enhance their functionality.

Using XML and XSLT along with some XHTML, CSS and JavaScript can also be used to generate richer client side UI components like data tables that can be resorted locally on the client without going back to the server. Mozilla and Internet Explorer browsers both support this.

The Omnis Web Client is an ActiveX control or Netscape plug-in which can be embedded into an HTML page providing a rich application interface in the end-user's web browser.

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Ajax framework

2008-11-24T03:09:00.000-08:00

An Ajax framework is a framework that helps to develop web applications that use Ajax, a collection of technologies used to build dynamic web pages on the client side. Data is read from the server or sent to the server by JavaScript requests. However, some processing at the server side may be required to handle requests, such as finding and storing the data. This is accomplished more easily with the use of a framework dedicated to process Ajax requests. The goal of the framework is to provide the Ajax engine described below and associated server and client-side functions.

Benefit of a framework

In the article that coined the "Ajax" term, J.J. Garrett describes the technology as "an intermediary...between the user and the server."[1] This Ajax engine is intended to suppress the delays perceived by the user when a page attempts to access the server. A framework eases the work of the Ajax programmer at two levels: on the client side, it offers JavaScript functions to send requests to the server. On the server side, it processes the requests, searches for the data, and transmits them to the browser. Some frameworks are very elaborate and provide a complete library to build web applications.

Types of frameworks

Ajax frameworks can be loosely grouped into categories according to the features they offer and the skills required of the user:

Direct Ajax frameworks

These frameworks require HTML, CSS and Ajax expertise: a developer is expected to author pages directly in HTML, and framework APIs deal directly with HTML elements. Cross-browser APIs are provided for a variety of purposes, commonly including communications, DOM manipulation, event handling, and sizing/moving/animating HTML elements.

These frameworks are generally smaller. They are commonly used for a web site such as a shopping experience, but not for a web application such as web-based email, at least not without further frameworks layered on top.

[edit] Ajax component frameworks

These frameworks offer pre-built components, such as tabbed panes, which automatically create and manage their own HTML. Components are generally created via JavaScript or XML tags, or by adding special attributes to normal HTML elements. These frameworks are generally larger, and intended for web applications rather than web sites.

Some component frameworks require the developer to have extensive HTML/CSS/Ajax experience and to do cross-browser testing. For example, grids, tabs, and buttons may be provided, but user input forms are expected to be authored directly in HTML/CSS and manipulated via Ajax techniques. Other frameworks provide a complete component suite such that only general XML and/or JavaScript abilities are required.

Ajax component frameworks can enable more rapid development than direct Ajax frameworks, but with less control, hence it is key that an Ajax component framework provides the following:

* customization APIs, e.g., an event that fires when the user stops editing within a grid
* skinning facilities, where appearance can be changed without affecting behavior or layout
* programmatic control, e.g., dynamically adding tabs or dynamically creating components based on user data
* extensibility—creation of new components based on other components, so that the benefits of a component-based framework are not lost

[edit] Server-driven Ajax frameworks

Several frameworks offer a server-side component-based development model with some degree of Ajax support.

Components are created and manipulated on the server using a server-side programming language. Pages are then rendered by a combination of server-side and client-side HTML generation and manipulation. User actions are communicated to the server via Ajax techniques, server-side code manipulates a server-side component model, and changes to the server component model are reflected on the client automatically.

These frameworks offer familiarity for server-side developers at the expense of some degree of power and performance. Ajax frameworks that handle presentation completely within the browser offer greater responsiveness because they handle many more user interactions without server involvement. In a server-driven model, some UI interactions can become chatty, for example an input field that is dynamically enabled or disabled based on server-side code may cause many network requests. Furthermore, server-dependent Ajax frameworks will never be able to offer offline support. Still, this approach is popular, especially in situations where the benefits of a full Ajax architecture can't be captured anyway.

Extending such a framework may require the developer to understand which parts of the presentation are handled on the client vs on the server, and to write a mixture of Ajax and server-side code.
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Ajax (programming)

2008-11-24T02:59:00.000-08:00

AJAX" redirects here. For other uses, see Ajax.

Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), or AJAX, is a group of interrelated web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page.[1] Data is retrieved using the XMLHttp object or through the use of Remote Scripting in browsers that do not support it. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript, XML, or its asynchronous use is not required.
History

While the term Ajax was coined in 2005, techniques for the asynchronous loading of content date back to 1996, when Internet Explorer introduced the IFrame element. Microsoft's Remote Scripting, introduced in 1998, acted as a more elegant replacement for these techniques, with data being pulled in by a Java applet with which the client side could communicate using JavaScript. In 1999, Microsoft created the XMLHttpRequest object as an ActiveX control in Internet Explorer 5, and developers of Mozilla and Safari followed soon after with native versions of the object. On April 5, 2006 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first draft specification for the object in an attempt to create an official web standard.

Technologies

The term Ajax has come to represent a broad group of web technologies that can be used to implement a web application that communicates with a server in the background, without interfering with the current state of the page. In the article that coined the term Ajax,[3] Jesse James Garrett explained that it refers specifically to these technologies:

* XHTML and CSS for presentation
* the Document Object Model for dynamic display of and interaction with data
* XML and XSLT for the interchange and manipulation of data, respectively
* the XMLHttpRequest object for asynchronous communication
* JavaScript to bring these technologies together

Since then, however, there have been a number of developments in the technologies used in an Ajax application, and the definition of the term Ajax. In particular, it has been noted that:

* JavaScript is not the only client-side scripting language that can be used for implementing an Ajax application. Other languages such as VBScript are also capable of the required functionality.
* XML is not required for data interchange and therefore XSLT is not required for the manipulation of data. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is often used as an alternative format for data interchange, although other formats such as preformatted HTML or plain text can also be used.

Advantages

* In many cases, the pages on a website consist of much content that is common between them. Using traditional methods, that content would have to be reloaded on every request. However, using Ajax, a web application can request only the content that needs to be updated, thus drastically reducing bandwidth usage and load time.
* The use of asynchronous requests allows the client's Web browser UI to be more interactive and to respond quickly to inputs, and sections of pages can also be reloaded individually. Users may perceive the application to be faster or more responsive, even if the application has not changed on the server side.
* The use of Ajax can reduce connections to the server, since scripts and style sheets only have to be requested once.

Disadvantages

* Dynamically created pages do not register themselves with the browser's history engine, so clicking the browser's "back" button would not return the user to an earlier state of the Ajax-enabled page, but would instead return them to the last page visited before it. Workarounds include the use of invisible IFrames to trigger changes in the browser's history and changing the anchor portion of the URL (following a #) when AJAX is run and monitoring it for changes.
* Dynamic web page updates also make it difficult for a user to bookmark a particular state of the application. Solutions to this problem exist, many of which use the URL fragment identifier (the portion of a URL after the '#') to keep track of, and allow users to return to, the application in a given state.
* Because most web crawlers do not execute JavaScript code, web applications should provide an alternative means of accessing the content that would normally be retrieved with Ajax, to allow search engines to index it.
* Any user whose browser does not support Ajax or JavaScript, or simply has JavaScript disabled, will not be able to use its functionality.[12] Similarly, devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, and screen readers may not have support for JavaScript or the XMLHttpRequest object. Also, screen readers that are able to use Ajax may still not be able to properly read the dynamically generated content.
* The same origin policy prevents Ajax from being used across domains, although the W3C has a draft that would enable this functionality.
* The lack of a standards body behind Ajax means there is no widely adopted best practice to test Ajax applications. Testing tools for Ajax often do not understand Ajax event models, data models, and protocols.
* Opens up another attack vector for hackers that web developers might not fully test for.

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Website

2008-11-24T02:57:00.000-08:00

Since the mid-1990s, web development has been one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In 1995 there were fewer than 1,000 web development companies in the United States alone, but by 2005 there were over 30,000 such companies.[1][citation needed] The web development industry is expected to grow over 20% by 2010. The growth of this industry is being pushed by large businesses wishing to sell products and services to their customers and to automate business workflow, as well as the growth of many small web design and development companies.

In addition, cost of Web site development and hosting has dropped dramatically during this time. Instead of costing tens of thousands of dollars, as was the case for early websites, one can now develop a simple web site for less than a thousand dollars, depending on the complexity and amount of content.[citation needed] Smaller Web site development companies are now able to make web design accessible to both smaller companies and individuals further fueling the growth of the web development industry. As far as web development tools and platforms are concerned, there are many systems available to the public free of charge to aid in development. A popular example is the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), which is usually distributed free of charge. This fact alone has manifested into many people around the globe setting up new Web sites daily and thus contributing to increase in web development popularity. Another contributing factor has been the rise of easy to use WYSIWYG web development software, most prominently Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Studio (formerly Microsoft Frontpage) . Using such software, virtually anyone can develop a Web page in a matter of minutes. Knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), or other programming languages is not required, but recommended for professional results.

The next generation of web development tools uses the strong growth in LAMP and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide the Web as a way to run applications online. Web developers now help to deliver applications as Web services which were traditionally only available as applications on a desk based computer.

Instead of running executable code on a local computer, users are interacting with online applications to create new content. This has created new methods in communication and allowed for many opportunities to decentralize information and media distribution. Users are now able to interact with applications from many locations, instead of being tied to a specific workstation for their application environment.

Examples of dramatic transformation in communication and commerce led by web development include e-commerce. Online auction sites such as eBay have changed the way consumers consume and purchase goods and services. Online resellers such as Amazon.com and Buy.com (among many, many others) have transformed the shopping and bargain hunting experience for many consumers. Another good example of transformative communication led by web development is the blog. Web applications such as WordPress and b2evolution have created easily implemented blog environments for individual Web sites. Open source content systems such as Typo3, Xoops, Joomla!, and Drupal have extended web development into new modes of interaction and communication.
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About css Website design

2008-11-05T00:03:00.000-08:00

When Netscape Navigator 4 dominated the browser market, the popular solution available for designers to lay out a Web page was by using tables. Often even simple designs for a page would require dozens of tables nested in each other. Many web templates in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors still use this technique today. Navigator 4 didn't support CSS to a useful degree, so it simply wasn't used.

After the browser wars subsided, and the dominant browsers such as Internet Explorer became more W3C compliant, designers started turning toward CSS as an alternate means of laying out their pages. CSS proponents say that tables should be used only for tabular data, not for layout. Using CSS instead of tables also returns HTML to a semantic markup, which helps bots and search engines understand what's going on in a web page. All modern Web browsers support CSS with different degrees of limitations.

However, one of the main points against CSS is that by relying on it exclusively, control is essentially relinquished as each browser has its own quirks which result in a slightly different page display. This is especially a problem as not every browser supports the same subset of CSS rules. For designers who are used to table-based layouts, developing Web sites in CSS often becomes a matter of trying to replicate what can be done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather cumbersome due to lack of familiarity. For example, at one time it was rather difficult to produce certain design elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using absolute positions. With the abundance of CSS resources available online today, though, designing with reasonable adherence to ,;;' standards involves little more than applying CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to properly structured markup.

These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from converting to CSS design. However, the W3 Consortium has made CSS in combination with XHTML the standard for web design.
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About Websites

2008-11-04T23:08:00.000-08:00

A web site is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. Designing a web site is defined as the arrangement and creation of web pages that in turn make up a web site. A web page consists of information for which the web site is developed. A web site might be compared to a book, where each page of the book is a web page.

There are many aspects (design concerns) in this process, and due to the rapid development of the Internet, new aspects may emerge. For non-commercial web sites, the goals may vary depending on the desired exposure and response. For typical commercial web sites, the basic aspects of design are:

* The content: the substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.
* The usability: the site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable.
* The appearance: the graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant.
* The visibility: the site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media.

A web site typically consists of text and images. The first page of a web site is known as the Home page or Index. Some web sites use what is commonly called a Splash Page. Splash pages might include a welcome message, language or region selection, or disclaimer. Each web page within a web site is an HTML file which has its own URL. After each web page is created, they are typically linked together using a navigation menu composed of hyperlinks. Faster browsing speeds have led to shorter attention spans and more demanding online visitors and this has resulted in less use of Splash Pages, particularly where commercial web sites are concerned.

Once a web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable to the public over the internet. This may be done using an FTP client. Once published, the web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic, or hits, that the web site receives. This may include submitting the web site to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, exchanging links with other web sites, creating affiliations with similar web sites, etc.
We Have Accecpt all type website design and development work

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