Software is a great thing, rather, software can be a great thing. While it's made some tasks much more efficient and cost effective, such as accounting, programming and graphic design, it's also put tasks into the hands of people that in all honesty, should not be handling them. Just because you have a copy of Quick Books, it doesn't mean you are an accountant, and likewise, just because you have a copy of Adobe Photoshop, it doesn't mean you are a graphic designer. Alas, some businesses are started with literally no budget (and some particularly hard headed people insist on trying to do everything themselves) and are going to design their own logo no matter what, so for those people, here are some guidelines to follow:
Don't use photographic images in your logo. It will look amateurish and busy and will be ineffective. The purpose of a logo is to create instant and memorable recognition, enabling you to brand your company/product/service. It’s not supposed to tell you everything about the company — that’s what your marketing materials (web site, brochures, signs, etc.) are for.
Use a minimal number of colors. Your logo shouldn't resemble a kaleidoscope, remember, the key is instant and memorable recognition. The fewer colors, the better — aim for 1-5 colors.
Determine how your logo may be used before designing it. A drop shadow may look great when your logo is used on your letterhead, but it won't be able to be used on your embroidered shirts. If you start with the end in mind, you will run into fewer problems down the road.
Avoid illegible or over-used fonts. That fancy script font may look great on your monitor, but how will it look on a billboard at 65 miles per hour? How will it look scaled down to fit your business card? As for over used fonts, every soccer mom in America has a web site plastered with Comic Sans so don't even consider it for your logo. The same goes for Arial, Times New Roman, and Papyrus to name a few.
Design your logo in a vector format. This way, it can be scaled to any size with no loss of quality. IMPORTANT NOTE: Saving a raster file as an EPS does not make it a vector file! You must design it as a vector format from the start.
As soon as your budget allows, hire a professional designer. It will make a difference in how people perceive your company.
http://www.selfseo.com/story-18612.php
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Woes of a Big Site: And How to Prepare Your Site for Growth
I often read posts in forums and discussion lists by newcomers asking how their site can become big and well-known. Well, naturally this is every webmaster's dream - who ever creates a site hoping it will become obscure? However, what many newcomers fail to appreciate is that big and well-known sites face a number of problems. Problems which my other site, thefreecountry.com, has begun to face as a result of its rising popularity and size. This article mentions a few of those problems and some things that can be done to pre-empt them (which alas I did not do).
1. Traffic (Bandwidth) Problems
It's interesting how everyone faces traffic problems. The small site faces traffic problems - few people visit them. When the site increases in popularity, it too faces traffic problems, albeit a different kind: the expensive kind.
When a site is starting out, the typical data transfer (sometimes loosely, and incorrectly, called "bandwidth") allocation of (say) 5GB seems generous and a distant target that looks impossible to hit. But wait till it becomes popular. Suddenly that 5GB looks very skimpy, and you'll be frantically searching your web host's documentation for how they charge for "overages" (the amount by which you exceed your allocation).
One of thefreecountry.com's previous web hosts had a rather pathetic traffic "overage" policy. If the site exceeded its traffic allocation, it would be shut-down for a month. (Gee, how did I miss that in the fine print?) To prevent that, the owner has to pre-pay for additional blocks of data transfer. The trouble is, the host had no system of warning you in advance when you were nearing your limit, which meant that the webmaster had to monitor the traffic of the site closely. To add insult to injury, the additional data transfer you had to pre-pay for came only in blocks of 10GB. Let's face it: when you initially exceed the "bandwidth" limit, it is unlikely that you'll exceed by 10GB. The initial "overage" is likely to be at most 1 to 2GB (unless of course you had just embarked on an aggressive advertising campaign).
My recommendation: when scouting for web hosts - think ahead. Check out the "bandwidth" or data transfer policy. It should bill you according to the amount you actually exceed and you should not be required to have to pre-pay it. And read the fine print in all their policy statements carefully. Oh yes. For reasons mentioned in my article on "How to Choose a Web Host", it is probably best to stay clear of hosts that advertise "unlimited bandwidth". If you have not read that article, you can find it at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/findhost.shtml
2. Too Many Pages to Update
When I first designed thefreecountry.com, I did not plan for it to be the large site it is today. As such, I made no provision for keeping certain common features found on every page in a single location. Instead, things like the navigation menu, logo, etc, were inserted into every single page.
This was fine when thefreecountry.com was small. But it became a nightmare to maintain as the site grew. Just imagine - each time I wanted to change the design of the site, I had to manually go through the two hundred odd pages to modify them. I could not even use the search and replace feature of my editor to simplify my task - the changes often span multiple lines and are interspersed with page-specific information.
My suggestion is that even if you think your site is a small site in terms of number of pages, plan for its eventual growth. Put common design elements of your pages in a central location. There are many ways to do this: using Server Side Includes (SSI), using frames, dynamically generating it from a template, etc.
Don't think this will not happen to you. When I started the predecessor of thefreecountry.com in 1996, I only had 3 pages. Today it's a monster. True it is not as big as those sites with thousands of pages (shudder) - but I can tell you from experience that once you hit a three digit number for the number of pages, updating the design of the site isn't quite so enjoyable anymore.
3. Reliability
Usually when a site is new, the owners consider it little more than a hobby horse. As such they tend to simply find a cheap web host to dump it on, since in its infancy, the site is unlikely to generate much income anyway. This is what I did originally with thefreecountry.com.
It would have been fine except that I kept thefreecountry.com on the cheap web host far longer than I should have.
Cheap web hosts seldom have the margin they need to hire good, competent help. Now I don't mean technical support that responds to you fast. Anyone can do that - even that cheap host I was on. Their responses each time however display their ignorance. When I say competent help, I mean the kind that knows the server hardware, the various software that run on it, security issues, and how to fix software and hardware problems. You need that kind of competent help so that they can pre-empt (as far as possible) potential problems as well as handle any true crisis that arise (eg fixing new security holes in BIND or Sendmail, etc, or troubleshooting hardware problems).
When your site grows and gains more visitors, the "uptime" of the site becomes increasingly important. If the server goes "down" for a couple of hours when your site is new, you have lost at most a few visitors. But when your site is well established, every hour that your site is down loses you thousands of visitors (and the income associated with them).
If, like me, you placed your site on a cheap host when you started out, you should keep an eye out for good, reputable web hosts so that when your site grows, you'll know where to move it to. Such hosts may cost slightly more than a budget web host, but the stability you get is well worth the extra expense, especially when your site has a lot of traffic.
Unfortunately though, keeping up to date with the web hosting scene is not a one-time affair. If you have been following the changes in my "Which Web Hosts Do You Recommend?" FAQ page, found at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/webhosting.shtml you would have seen that good hosts do turn bad over time. This usually happens when they get too big, and have to hire additional help that do not have the commitment and competence of the original owner.
The verdict: budget hosts are fine when your site is small. But always be prepared to move. And you definitely should move when your site grows bigger and becomes a viable commercial venture.
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/bigsitewoes.shtml
1. Traffic (Bandwidth) Problems
It's interesting how everyone faces traffic problems. The small site faces traffic problems - few people visit them. When the site increases in popularity, it too faces traffic problems, albeit a different kind: the expensive kind.
When a site is starting out, the typical data transfer (sometimes loosely, and incorrectly, called "bandwidth") allocation of (say) 5GB seems generous and a distant target that looks impossible to hit. But wait till it becomes popular. Suddenly that 5GB looks very skimpy, and you'll be frantically searching your web host's documentation for how they charge for "overages" (the amount by which you exceed your allocation).
One of thefreecountry.com's previous web hosts had a rather pathetic traffic "overage" policy. If the site exceeded its traffic allocation, it would be shut-down for a month. (Gee, how did I miss that in the fine print?) To prevent that, the owner has to pre-pay for additional blocks of data transfer. The trouble is, the host had no system of warning you in advance when you were nearing your limit, which meant that the webmaster had to monitor the traffic of the site closely. To add insult to injury, the additional data transfer you had to pre-pay for came only in blocks of 10GB. Let's face it: when you initially exceed the "bandwidth" limit, it is unlikely that you'll exceed by 10GB. The initial "overage" is likely to be at most 1 to 2GB (unless of course you had just embarked on an aggressive advertising campaign).
My recommendation: when scouting for web hosts - think ahead. Check out the "bandwidth" or data transfer policy. It should bill you according to the amount you actually exceed and you should not be required to have to pre-pay it. And read the fine print in all their policy statements carefully. Oh yes. For reasons mentioned in my article on "How to Choose a Web Host", it is probably best to stay clear of hosts that advertise "unlimited bandwidth". If you have not read that article, you can find it at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/findhost.shtml
2. Too Many Pages to Update
When I first designed thefreecountry.com, I did not plan for it to be the large site it is today. As such, I made no provision for keeping certain common features found on every page in a single location. Instead, things like the navigation menu, logo, etc, were inserted into every single page.
This was fine when thefreecountry.com was small. But it became a nightmare to maintain as the site grew. Just imagine - each time I wanted to change the design of the site, I had to manually go through the two hundred odd pages to modify them. I could not even use the search and replace feature of my editor to simplify my task - the changes often span multiple lines and are interspersed with page-specific information.
My suggestion is that even if you think your site is a small site in terms of number of pages, plan for its eventual growth. Put common design elements of your pages in a central location. There are many ways to do this: using Server Side Includes (SSI), using frames, dynamically generating it from a template, etc.
Don't think this will not happen to you. When I started the predecessor of thefreecountry.com in 1996, I only had 3 pages. Today it's a monster. True it is not as big as those sites with thousands of pages (shudder) - but I can tell you from experience that once you hit a three digit number for the number of pages, updating the design of the site isn't quite so enjoyable anymore.
3. Reliability
Usually when a site is new, the owners consider it little more than a hobby horse. As such they tend to simply find a cheap web host to dump it on, since in its infancy, the site is unlikely to generate much income anyway. This is what I did originally with thefreecountry.com.
It would have been fine except that I kept thefreecountry.com on the cheap web host far longer than I should have.
Cheap web hosts seldom have the margin they need to hire good, competent help. Now I don't mean technical support that responds to you fast. Anyone can do that - even that cheap host I was on. Their responses each time however display their ignorance. When I say competent help, I mean the kind that knows the server hardware, the various software that run on it, security issues, and how to fix software and hardware problems. You need that kind of competent help so that they can pre-empt (as far as possible) potential problems as well as handle any true crisis that arise (eg fixing new security holes in BIND or Sendmail, etc, or troubleshooting hardware problems).
When your site grows and gains more visitors, the "uptime" of the site becomes increasingly important. If the server goes "down" for a couple of hours when your site is new, you have lost at most a few visitors. But when your site is well established, every hour that your site is down loses you thousands of visitors (and the income associated with them).
If, like me, you placed your site on a cheap host when you started out, you should keep an eye out for good, reputable web hosts so that when your site grows, you'll know where to move it to. Such hosts may cost slightly more than a budget web host, but the stability you get is well worth the extra expense, especially when your site has a lot of traffic.
Unfortunately though, keeping up to date with the web hosting scene is not a one-time affair. If you have been following the changes in my "Which Web Hosts Do You Recommend?" FAQ page, found at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/webhosting.shtml you would have seen that good hosts do turn bad over time. This usually happens when they get too big, and have to hire additional help that do not have the commitment and competence of the original owner.
The verdict: budget hosts are fine when your site is small. But always be prepared to move. And you definitely should move when your site grows bigger and becomes a viable commercial venture.
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/bigsitewoes.shtml
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Seven Easy Ways to Annoy Visitors to Your Website: A Satirical Look at Some Usability Mistakes Made by New Webmasters
Note: this is a satirical look at usability. Although it reads like a "Do" list, it is really a "Don't" list. If you follow it literally, your site is history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reduce the navigation 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.
There you have it. Seven quick ways that you can use to annoy, frustrate and irritate your visitors. They may even be effective in driving them away permanently. There are undoubtedly many other ways, but the methods listed above are easily doable by new webmasters.
WARNING: remember, the above is satire. It is a "reverse tutorial" if you will. You don't want to follow it.
http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/usabilitymistakes.shtml
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reduce the navigation 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.
There you have it. Seven quick ways that you can use to annoy, frustrate and irritate your visitors. They may even be effective in driving them away permanently. There are undoubtedly many other ways, but the methods listed above are easily doable by new webmasters.
WARNING: remember, the above is satire. It is a "reverse tutorial" if you will. You don't want to follow it.
http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/usabilitymistakes.shtml
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Design an Eye Catching Website
We all know that these days every one can design a website but the question remains how to design eye catching website . I have read many books ,articles and tutorials about web design and have realized that every web designer has his own way of designing websites.
After I read all of that and made extensive research , I decided to write something about it and to share some of my experience with you .
This is my first article and I must say I'm not a writer but I hope you will find it very informative.
Of course I wrote about something which you might already know about but I believe there is always someone out there who needs such information and tips and benefits from them .
In the article I have gathered and explained some good tips (Do's and Don't's) which will give you an astonishing results if you follow them well.
Below are the tips for designing an eye catching website which you will be proud of .
1 Consistency : It is always better to keep your design from page to page consistent so that the visitor knows that he is still in the same site and didn't jump to another site.
The page or site color scheme and navigation should be the same throughout the site.
2 Navigation : Always keep your navigation simple . Tell the visitor which page he is on . This can be done in many ways and the way which I think is the best way is to remove the link from the page which he is on .
For example, Let's suppose that you have the following navigation text on your home page ...
Home -- About Us -- Contact Us -- Services -- Order
Then suppose that the visitor clicked on the services page .
When the services page is loaded then the link which says services will not be a link instead it will be a normal text with different color . That helps the visitor know which page he is on .
If you are using graphic buttons then You can provide a different version of the button and make it without a link .
3 Use Browser Safe Colors : What are browser safe colors anyway? Browser safe colors are 216 colors which remain the same when displayed on any computer or browser.
Colors which are not browser safe may dither when displayed some computers ,meaning if a computer can't display a color 100% it will then display the nearest color to it instead.
So make sure that you use browser safe colors throughout your site.
4 Minimize the use of Graphics : A site with a lot of graphics will take forever to load. Even though graphics make sites better but it is always better to minimize the use of them for many reasons including but not limited to the following :
A lot of Graphics make your site or pages take forever to load which will make the visitor of your website close the page or hit the back button .
Search Engine Spiders have problems with graphics because they will not be able to index any page that has a lot of graphics .
Of course you can use small, yet fast loading graphics instead of the big ones . Also You can use them as a table or cell background but make sure that the text is readable before the background image is loaded.
And don't forget to use the ALT tag for all of your images .
5 Flash : Flash is is much like the graphics . Even though Flash brings your site to life but avoid using a lot of it on your site because that will make it load forever .
You can use small Flash animations and also You should give the url of the Flash Plug-in for the visitors who haven't got the Flash Player on their computer.
After all You want people to be able to see your Flash animations .
So don't over use it because they say Flash is evil.
6 Frames : Frames are not good for many things including but not limited to the following :
Search engines have problems with them .
The links can be opened into the wrong frame.
Distracting scroll bars are displayed when the content doesn't fit it.
and many other things but There are many reasons which make us sometimes use Frames on our websites which some are the following
Frames enable us to manage sites easily. Suppose you want to update the header of your website ,if you designed it with just an html then You will have to update all of the pages on the site but Frames made that easy by just updating one page and You will not have to update the rest.
There are many alternatives to the frames . You can use PHP Includes to include the desired file to the desired location .
You can use this code to do so .
. Where the filename.php will be the file name which you want to include. But The page which you are going to insert the code must be saved as yourpage.php and have .php file extension
Also You can use Extended Server Side Includes which is like the PHP by using the following code
But The page which you are going to insert the code must be saved as yourpage.shtml and have .shtml file extension.
So avoid using Frames on any part of your site.
7 Organize Your site files well : It is good to organize your site files well and divide them into categories for easy file management.
For example suppose you have a lot of products and then you can organize them as follows
products/product1/ or products/nameofproduct/
So the url of the product will be like http://yourcompanyname.com/products/product1 or http://yourcompanyname.com/products/nameofproduct/
In that way You can organize your web files easily .
8 Use Limited Colors only : Avoid using many colors on your site . Limit your colors to four or six .
9 Links : Your links should be descriptive . And should be readable . Also Use one color for all of your major links .
These were some tips which is necessary to use for designing an eye catching website.
After all We all want to design great sites .
I hope You have benefited from my first article and have enjoyed reading it .
For comments and suggestions please email me at webmaster@kooshin.com .
Your suggestions and comments are welcomed .
After I read all of that and made extensive research , I decided to write something about it and to share some of my experience with you .
This is my first article and I must say I'm not a writer but I hope you will find it very informative.
Of course I wrote about something which you might already know about but I believe there is always someone out there who needs such information and tips and benefits from them .
In the article I have gathered and explained some good tips (Do's and Don't's) which will give you an astonishing results if you follow them well.
Below are the tips for designing an eye catching website which you will be proud of .
1 Consistency : It is always better to keep your design from page to page consistent so that the visitor knows that he is still in the same site and didn't jump to another site.
The page or site color scheme and navigation should be the same throughout the site.
2 Navigation : Always keep your navigation simple . Tell the visitor which page he is on . This can be done in many ways and the way which I think is the best way is to remove the link from the page which he is on .
For example, Let's suppose that you have the following navigation text on your home page ...
Home -- About Us -- Contact Us -- Services -- Order
Then suppose that the visitor clicked on the services page .
When the services page is loaded then the link which says services will not be a link instead it will be a normal text with different color . That helps the visitor know which page he is on .
If you are using graphic buttons then You can provide a different version of the button and make it without a link .
3 Use Browser Safe Colors : What are browser safe colors anyway? Browser safe colors are 216 colors which remain the same when displayed on any computer or browser.
Colors which are not browser safe may dither when displayed some computers ,meaning if a computer can't display a color 100% it will then display the nearest color to it instead.
So make sure that you use browser safe colors throughout your site.
4 Minimize the use of Graphics : A site with a lot of graphics will take forever to load. Even though graphics make sites better but it is always better to minimize the use of them for many reasons including but not limited to the following :
A lot of Graphics make your site or pages take forever to load which will make the visitor of your website close the page or hit the back button .
Search Engine Spiders have problems with graphics because they will not be able to index any page that has a lot of graphics .
Of course you can use small, yet fast loading graphics instead of the big ones . Also You can use them as a table or cell background but make sure that the text is readable before the background image is loaded.
And don't forget to use the ALT tag for all of your images .
5 Flash : Flash is is much like the graphics . Even though Flash brings your site to life but avoid using a lot of it on your site because that will make it load forever .
You can use small Flash animations and also You should give the url of the Flash Plug-in for the visitors who haven't got the Flash Player on their computer.
After all You want people to be able to see your Flash animations .
So don't over use it because they say Flash is evil.
6 Frames : Frames are not good for many things including but not limited to the following :
Search engines have problems with them .
The links can be opened into the wrong frame.
Distracting scroll bars are displayed when the content doesn't fit it.
and many other things but There are many reasons which make us sometimes use Frames on our websites which some are the following
Frames enable us to manage sites easily. Suppose you want to update the header of your website ,if you designed it with just an html then You will have to update all of the pages on the site but Frames made that easy by just updating one page and You will not have to update the rest.
There are many alternatives to the frames . You can use PHP Includes to include the desired file to the desired location .
You can use this code to do so .
. Where the filename.php will be the file name which you want to include. But The page which you are going to insert the code must be saved as yourpage.php and have .php file extension
Also You can use Extended Server Side Includes which is like the PHP by using the following code
But The page which you are going to insert the code must be saved as yourpage.shtml and have .shtml file extension.
So avoid using Frames on any part of your site.
7 Organize Your site files well : It is good to organize your site files well and divide them into categories for easy file management.
For example suppose you have a lot of products and then you can organize them as follows
products/product1/ or products/nameofproduct/
So the url of the product will be like http://yourcompanyname.com/products/product1 or http://yourcompanyname.com/products/nameofproduct/
In that way You can organize your web files easily .
8 Use Limited Colors only : Avoid using many colors on your site . Limit your colors to four or six .
9 Links : Your links should be descriptive . And should be readable . Also Use one color for all of your major links .
These were some tips which is necessary to use for designing an eye catching website.
After all We all want to design great sites .
I hope You have benefited from my first article and have enjoyed reading it .
For comments and suggestions please email me at webmaster@kooshin.com .
Your suggestions and comments are welcomed .
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Vector and Bitmap Images
Bitmap images (also known as raster images) are made up of pixels in a grid. Pixels are picture elements; tiny dots of individual color that make up what you see on your screen.
Bitmap images are resolution dependent. Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image and is usually stated as dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels per inch). Bitmap images are displayed on your computer screen at screen resolution: 72 or 96 ppi.
Because bitmaps are resolution dependent, it's difficult to increase or decrease their size without sacrificing a degree of image quality. When you reduce the size of a bitmap image through your software's resample or resize command, you must throw away pixels. When you increase the size of a bitmap image through your software's resample or resize command, the software has to create new pixels. When creating pixels, the software must estimate the color values of the new pixels based on the surrounding pixels. This process is called interpolation.
Common bitmap formats include:
• BMP
• GIF
• JPEG, JPG
• PNG
• PICT (Macintosh)
• PCX
• TIFF
• PSD (Adobe Photoshop)
Popular bitmap editing programs are:
• Microsoft Paint
• Adobe Photoshop
• Corel Photo-Paint
• Jasc Paint Shop Pro
• Ulead PhotoImpact
Vector images are made up of many individual, scalable objects. These objects are defined by mathematical equations rather than pixels, so they always render at the highest quality. Objects may consist of lines, curves, and shapes with editable attributes such as color, fill, and outline.
Because they're scalable, vector-based images are resolution independent. You can increase and decrease the size of vector images to any degree and your lines will remain crisp and sharp, both on screen and in print. Fonts are a type of vector object.
Another advantage of vector images is that they're not restricted to a rectangular shape like bitmaps. Vector objects can be placed over other objects, and the object below will show through. See the example images on this page. The vector circle and bitmap circle appear to be exactly the same when seen on a white background. But when you place the bitmap circle over another color, it has a rectangular box around it, from the white pixels in the image.
Vector images have many advantages, but the primary disadvantage is that they're unsuitable for producing photo-realistic imagery. Vector images are usually made up of solid areas of color or gradients, but they cannot depict the continuous subtle tones of a photograph. That's why most of the vector images you see tend to have a cartoon-like appearance.
The most common reason for wanting to convert a vector to a bitmap would be for use on the Web. At this time, the most common and accepted format for vector images on the Web is Shockwave Flash (SWF). Another standard for vector images on the Web is SVG, a graphics programming language based on XML. Due to the nature of vector images, they are best converted to GIF or PNG format for use on the Web.
Common vector formats include:
• AI (Adobe Illustrator)
• CDR (CorelDRAW)
• CMX (Corel Exchange)
• CGM Computer Graphics Metafile
• DXF AutoCAD
• WMF Windows Metafile
Popular vector drawing programs are:
• Adobe Illustrator
• CorelDRAW
• Macromedia Freehand
• Xara X
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/aboutgraphics/a/bitmapvector.htm
Bitmap images are resolution dependent. Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image and is usually stated as dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels per inch). Bitmap images are displayed on your computer screen at screen resolution: 72 or 96 ppi.
Because bitmaps are resolution dependent, it's difficult to increase or decrease their size without sacrificing a degree of image quality. When you reduce the size of a bitmap image through your software's resample or resize command, you must throw away pixels. When you increase the size of a bitmap image through your software's resample or resize command, the software has to create new pixels. When creating pixels, the software must estimate the color values of the new pixels based on the surrounding pixels. This process is called interpolation.
Common bitmap formats include:
• BMP
• GIF
• JPEG, JPG
• PNG
• PICT (Macintosh)
• PCX
• TIFF
• PSD (Adobe Photoshop)
Popular bitmap editing programs are:
• Microsoft Paint
• Adobe Photoshop
• Corel Photo-Paint
• Jasc Paint Shop Pro
• Ulead PhotoImpact
Vector images are made up of many individual, scalable objects. These objects are defined by mathematical equations rather than pixels, so they always render at the highest quality. Objects may consist of lines, curves, and shapes with editable attributes such as color, fill, and outline.
Because they're scalable, vector-based images are resolution independent. You can increase and decrease the size of vector images to any degree and your lines will remain crisp and sharp, both on screen and in print. Fonts are a type of vector object.
Another advantage of vector images is that they're not restricted to a rectangular shape like bitmaps. Vector objects can be placed over other objects, and the object below will show through. See the example images on this page. The vector circle and bitmap circle appear to be exactly the same when seen on a white background. But when you place the bitmap circle over another color, it has a rectangular box around it, from the white pixels in the image.
Vector images have many advantages, but the primary disadvantage is that they're unsuitable for producing photo-realistic imagery. Vector images are usually made up of solid areas of color or gradients, but they cannot depict the continuous subtle tones of a photograph. That's why most of the vector images you see tend to have a cartoon-like appearance.
The most common reason for wanting to convert a vector to a bitmap would be for use on the Web. At this time, the most common and accepted format for vector images on the Web is Shockwave Flash (SWF). Another standard for vector images on the Web is SVG, a graphics programming language based on XML. Due to the nature of vector images, they are best converted to GIF or PNG format for use on the Web.
Common vector formats include:
• AI (Adobe Illustrator)
• CDR (CorelDRAW)
• CMX (Corel Exchange)
• CGM Computer Graphics Metafile
• DXF AutoCAD
• WMF Windows Metafile
Popular vector drawing programs are:
• Adobe Illustrator
• CorelDRAW
• Macromedia Freehand
• Xara X
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/aboutgraphics/a/bitmapvector.htm
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)