September 2nd, 2009
Designing and developing a website is a complicated process which requires taking into consideration huge number of elements and details. There are though few key features which every successful website possesses. Check if your website design has these features:
* Enjoyable Visual Design
As they say – fine dress helps to impress. The first impression is always the strongest one; if your website is poorly designed your visitor will most likely leave it in seconds. The question of what is an enjoyable visual design has of course a subjective answer. There is a number of good articles describing the web design trends of the year, I suggest you to read them. I would add for myself that you should know when enough is enough. Trends are good but overusing them is not good at all.
* Plain Navigation
Every good website is user friendly. You should always remember that you design for people, and people should be able to find where to click. The navigation is to be obvious and easy.
* Quality Content
Content is king. Always remember that when creating a website. People visit your web page to find information, so give it to them. A good visual design without a meaningful content won’t make you successful.
* Web Optimized Pictures
All the images you use when designing for web should be compressed to 72dpi. If you use Photoshop for designing just use a “Save for Web†feature that will compress your images automatically.
* Contact Information
Your website visitors should be able to easily get in touch with you to give you their feedback and suggestions. Thus do not hide your contacts from them. Make a simple contact page and include it to your main navigation.
* Search Feature
As said above – you design for people and people should be able to easily find what they are looking for at your website. No one likes browsing through hundreds of pages in search of a thing.
* Cross Browser Compatibility
If you use only Firefox it doesn’t mean that everyone out there uses it either. Do remember that your visitors might use other browsers and never forget to check your websites for cross browser compatibility.
Would you suggest more features every good website should posses?
Tags: cross browser compatibility, design trends, web design
Posted in General Talk | No Comments »
May 14th, 2009
It is hard to believe that not that long ago there were only few internet browsers to choose from, when today there are literally hundreds of them. Well, the technology is developing fast and we have to deal with it. While there are so many browsers for users to choose from, the presentation of your website on each of them becomes more and more unpredictable. You can say that the majority of people use Explorer or Firefox and don’t bother about the presentation of your website on the other browsers. But a website can be performed differently in the different versions of the same browser. And do you really want the users of those other browsers to go past your website? So, how do you actually check your website’s compatibility? Install all the browsers out there and check it manually? Well, I think it’s hardly possible. For those of you who prefer their websites to be perfect everywhere I arranged a list of the best and most comfortable tools for cross-browser compatibility testing. The other thing except being easy to operate you’d love about these tools is that they can be used for free.
* CrossBrowserTesting
A very convenient tool that allows a full testing of your website’s interactivity not just in screenshots. All you have to do is to log in and select a machine with the browser and begin testing.
* BrowserShots
Awesome tool that allows testing in almost any browser you can remember. The only thing that may diasppoint you about this testing tool is that it can sometimes be rather slow.
* Litmus
Tests on all major browsers and gives you a bug report to help you correct the errors if you’ve got any. Unfortunately the free version is rather limited.
* BrowsrCamp
Tests on Safari/Mac. You’ll really like the speed of rendering screenshots.
* IETester
This completely free tool tests on every version of Internet Explorer. Just download, install and specify which IE version you’d like to browse in. The tool allows to compare two versions side-by-side.
Feel free to add more cross-browser compatibility testing tools in the comments below.
Tags: cross browser compatibility, testing tool
Posted in General Talk, How To | 4 Comments »
