Every day worldwide millions of people log onto the Internet for business, entertainment and information. Anyone who has a website will cover one of these three aspects, which brings me to the point of web design. If you want your website to be found and used by the general public then you will have to have a site that is designed to appeal to your users.

There are many ways that you can entice someone to do business with you such as offering them a cheaper service than your competitors but on the Internet if you want someone to do business with you then your website needs to be user friendly and designed in a way that will make people stay on your site long enough to buy the products or services that are on offer to them.

The design of your website is more important than many people realise and often people design their sites with the wrong people in mind. A lot of people when they are first setting up their website will design their site in a way that appeals to them and in a way that they feel best reflects the business; this is the first mistake to make. When you are designing your website you need to do so with your target market in mind. You need to identify who you are aiming your website at, for example if you are aiming your site at a younger audience then your website should be quite funky and can include more flash as this will draw your audience in. If however the products or services that your business offers can apply to anyone of any age, such as mobile phones, you have to be careful when it comes to the design of your site as you need to design it in a way that will apply to all members of the public. The best way to go about doing this is by keeping your site simple and using neutral colours.

Your website needs to promote your business, you need to make people get involved in your business merely by the design that you have used. This may sound like a difficult thing to do but when you know how you can go about this with no problem at all.

When you are designing your website you should use limited colour and coordinate your website. As well as this you also need to remember that you need good unique content that is original. Your web content is the backbone of your website and it should be search engine friendly. You need to make sure that your site is easily readable and easily accessible for your visitors.

The design of your website can be the difference between your business being a success online and your business being a failure. You need to make sure that any phone numbers are placed in the top right hand corner under the sites logo and that your contact page should be clearly labelled. All of your pages should navigate to each other and the back to the main home page.

If you are struggling to get your site designed then you should enlist the help of a professional web design company to get the design done for you.

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Meurig is a First Year Student on the BA/BSc (hons) Degree in Mobile, Web and Game Design, at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.

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Helen is the web master of Discount Domains, who offer professional Web Design and Web Hosting services as well as all of your Search Engine Optimisation needs.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Are You Looking for the Perfect Web Design?

Is your website accessible to people with disabilities? It seems like today, website owners are more concerned with mobile web design than they are with making their sites available to the millions of people around the world with disabilities. It makes sense from a business perspective to make your website as accessible as possible to everyone, but it is also becoming a legal matter and much for many businesses and organizations.

The World Wide Web is classified as a form of Information and Communications Technology, or ICT. Laws and policies regarding ICT accessibility that are already in existence are being considered in terms of the Internet. In addition, more and more legislation addressing ICT accessibility is being enacted around the world.

Although the Internet is for the most part unregulated, laws can apply to the Web as ICT. Many countries currently have government laws, policies, regulations and recommendations in place regarding Web accessibility. An abbreviated list of these countries includes: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Spain the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Americans with Disabilities Act and Internet Accessibility

In the United States, rulings regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) resulted in the determination that State as well as local governments and the business sector must provide “effective communication” during Internet communications.

A significant point of the ADA policy rulings is that communications in graphical format are almost impossible for people with visual disabilities to understand. Screenreaders cannot make sense of graphic images: text format is absolutely essential, including text for navigational tools, graphs, tables and charts.

You can find out more about the ADA and rulings regarding the Internet at the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) website.

Implementing Universal Design

Whether laws are governing your website today or not, it is in your best interest to make your site accessible to all Internet users – especially if it is a business website. How can you accomplish this? By implementing the elements of Universal Design on all of your web pages. Your entire website will then be available to the widest range of Internet users possible, regardless of the type of technology or equipment they use, disabilities, age, or level of education.

The following are some of the specific ways you can apply Universal Design principles to your website:

1. Provide text browser support

2. Present documents in text format rather than in frames or PDF

3. Avoid requiring visitors to download software to view information

4. Add “Alt” tags to your graphics so screenreaders can “read” images

5. Hyperlink all photos with descriptive text

6. Hyperlink video and audio clips with captioning

7. Provide email or voice/TTY phone number alternatives for on-line forms

8. Avoid relying on color to convey information

You can obtain more complete information about website accessibility guidelines from resources such as W3 online.

Depending on your skills, you may or may not need assistance redesigning or developing your next website for full accessibility. Whether you make changes to your website design yourself or rely on professional assistance, remember to evaluate the results.

There are many free evaluation tools available online that can help you test web pages on your site for accessibility. For a comprehensive evaluation that would ensure compliance with web accessibility laws, you will need to rely on the expertise of a knowledgeable professional as well as evaluation tools.

Additional Benefits of Web Accessibility

Whether you need to bring your website to full web accessibility standards to comply with legal requirements, or you’re primarily interested in providing access to those with disabilities, you’ll discover some surprising additional benefits.

A website with a flexible design is more accessible to people browsing the Web with limited technology, such as dial-up Internet connections or outdated computers. Your fully accessible website will also be available to those with temporary disabilities, such as people recovering from surgery or accidents. With the right equipment, even people with limited or no literacy skills will be able to browse your website.

Regardless of what type of website you have, focusing on web accessibility will benefit your visitors as well as your business in a variety of ways.

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Kia is a First Year Student on the BA/BSc (hons) Degree in Mobile, Web and Game Design, at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.

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My question is, how would I go about designing something that could do this. I know it's possible, but I don't have the knowledge yet to do it. I'm very proficient in Java (except apps relating to networking/mobile devices/internet, unfortunately). I'm willing to learn the syntax for other programming/scripting languages if I need to.

Can anyone give me some pointers or point me in the right direction? Thanks a lot.

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Find out how you can protect your intellectual property with copyrights, trademarks, and patents, including search functions.
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Because of the modern technology nowadays, mobile website design in York PA is rapidly developing. Since millions and millions of people all over the world are using the internet for researches, several websites are being made by expert web designers.

Designing in Penn

The White Rose City or York got its name from the Wars of the Roses. It is located in the South Central region of Pennsylvania with a population of nearly fifty thousand. It is one of the cities that claim on being the first capital of the United States. Although there has been no proof to the claim, the city is among the booming place in Penn, especially in terms of the modern technology. And like in the other states of the United States, web site designing is getting popular in York. 

What is a Web Design?

A mobile website design talks about what the website is all about, or simply stated, it depicts how you want others to see it. The contents, how it works, and how it appears—everything is decided on by web design York PA. Mobile web design represents the procedures you have undertaken in making the whole process. The design is dependent on the information you have collected in every topic or subject that you wish to be included. Designing the website is the process of arranging all the information through the creation of web pages. The web pages now contain the specific information showing why the web site was created. Similar to a book, the web page represents the pages of the book itself.

How to Design the Web Site?

The continuous development and growth of the Internet makes the process of mobile website design in York PA to take on different aspects, depending on how it is to be exposed and how the responses should be. Below is the typical process on how to go about with designing a web site:

1.    Content. Choosing a substantial and informative idea should always be the top consideration. Aside from this, the information must be generally relevant and must be able to attract the target area.

2.    Use. Never design a web at your own convenience only. As a web designer, the user of the site is given emphasis. Web design York PA should be user friendly and should be completely reliable. It should also be easy to navigate with a simple interface.

3.    Appearance. A perfect mobile website design must show consistency all throughout the web pages. Using a single style of texts and graphics make the website more appealing and professional.
4.    Visible. Importantly, the site must be noticeable and easy to find. Targeting most of the advertisement media and major search engines makes the website more eye-catching.

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Ian is a First Year Student on the BA/BSc (hons) Degree in Mobile, Web and Game Design, at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.

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Anybuddy interested pls email me at appuinangel@yahoo.com with their mobile phone number.

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The WebpageFX offers designs that you are guaranteed to hiring a professional mobile website design in York PA. You do not need to look elsewhere because the site caters to people who want the best and professional-looking websites.

Sony Ericsson Satio

Sony Ericsson have decided to really show off with his one. Groundbreakingly amazing is what some have called this handset with an impressive 12 megapixel digital camera built-in. A 12MP camera on a mobile phone? What’s the point? – Well, with that kind of resolution, you can take pictures big enough to go on a billboard poster (well nearly anyway!).

After hearing about the href=”http://www.mobilephonemegastore.co.uk/soon-paym-comingsoon/Sony+Ericsson+Satio/4/IDOU” target=”_blank”>Sony Ericsson Satio Mobile Phone’s 12MP camera it immediately occurred to me that with this high resolution camera, there must come a requirement for an extremely large amount of memory. That’s fine because bundled in the box with the Sony Ericsson Satio is an 8GB memory card.

So what else is in the box?

• Sony Ericsson Satio
• Battery
• Battery Charger
• 8GB Memory card
• USB cable
• Media manager
• Colour-matched stereo portable hands free
• User guide

Here’s the Sony Ericsson Satio Technical Data:

Sony Ericsson Satio Camera

• 12.1 megapixel camera
• Up to 12x digital zoom
• Auto focus
• BestPic™
• Face detection
• Geo tagging of photos
• Image stabilizer
• Photo feeds
• Photo fix
• Send to web
• Red-eye reduction
• Smile detection
• Touch focus
• Video light
• Video recording
• Xenon flash

Sony Ericsson Satio Music

• Album art
• Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)
• Media player
• Music tones (MP3/AAC)
• PlayNow™
• TrackID™

Sony Ericsson Satio Web

• WebKit web browser
• Bookmarks
• Web feeds

Sony Ericsson Satio Communication

• Call list
• Speakerphone
• Vibrating alert
• Video calling

Sony Ericsson Satio Messaging

• Conversations
• Email
• Exchange ActiveSync™
• Handwriting recognition
• Instant messaging
• On-screen QWERTY keyboard
• Picture messaging (MMS)
• Predictive text input
• Sound recorder
• Text messaging (SMS)

Sony Ericsson Satio Design

• Auto rotate
• Gesture control
• Media
• Picture wallpaper
• S60 5th edition Symbian™ OS
• Touch screen
• Wallpaper animation

Sony Ericsson Satio Entertainment

• HD and 3D games
• Facebook™ application
• FM radio with RDS
• Java
• Video streaming
• Video viewing
• YouTube™

Sony Ericsson Satio Connectivity

• Bluetooth™ technology
• Modem
• PictBridge
• Synchronisation
• TV out
• USB mass storage
• USB support
• In-built WiFi™

Sony Ericsson Satio Organizer

• Alarm clock
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Document readers
• Document editors
• Flight mode
• Notes
• Tasks

Sony Ericsson Satio Location-based services

• A-GPS
• Google Maps™
• Turn-by-turn navigation

So in all really, that’s a lot of features for a small hand-held phone. The Sony Ericsson Satio mobile phone should be released on May 28, 2009 and for sale in stores by August / September ’09.

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www.tom-rogers.com – In a lot of web design work designing for the mobile world is too often.

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Steve Peters is the event co-ordinator of Mobile Phone Megastore, a UK based online mobile phones retailer.

Owning a website is no longer a luxury but rather a necessity, in view of more and more people using the internet as a source of many needs connected with their daily lives. A website is necessary for any organization that wants to have online presence and visibility, and for this purpose, they need to own an attractive website that draws as many visitors as possible.

We are essentially a ww.getacompanywebsite.com/” target=”_blank”>website design development company based in Los Angeles, USA. Our specialty lies in web design development, web content management systems, Flash ActionScript development, and mobile phone applications.

For the reasons why you must choose Get A Company Website among the many similar companies, read below for the qualities we cultivate:

Enthusiasm: we are simply enthused by the passion of providing meaningful services and remaining ahead of our competitors.

Efficiency: our efficiency lies with the professional teams of personnel – designers, developers, programmers, content writers and editors, testers, SEO specialist that we keep to cater to every need of the clients.

Enterprise: we are an enterprising and energetic group of people fueled by the mission of managing and maintaining your web projects for mutual benefits.

Execution: what is the meaning of entrusting your project to someone who sits on it for considerable period and fails to complete it on time? We ensure timely delivery of all projects.

Our Ecommerce web solution services provide the most economical way of developing your business online. By developing your own e-commerce website, you can reach out to your potential customers globally and offer them your products and services directly through the Internet.

Since website design is the matter of collaboration between several teams, we keep the fully equipped experts like graphic, logo and Flash designers, software application developers and testers, network engineers, content managers, and many more.

We invite to entrust your web designing, development and maintenance work to us. You will not be disappointed.

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My only problem is the AMD Turion 64 Processor. I do graphic and web design, usually with a few programs open at a time.
alienware does not offer sli or a good graphics card with its Core 2 duo. (or green color).

Will this processor work ok for me.
These are the choices. i would prob get the 2ghz. (for cost)

AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML34 1.8GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache [-$300]
AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML37 2.0GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache [-$220]
AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML40 2.2GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache [-$150]
AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML44 2.4GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Ultimate Performance!

Thanks a lot for the advice….
I dont think you can get a macbook with a good graphics card like a nvidia go 7900GS or SLI..

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Author of this article is associated with professional corporate website design firm. His expertise in web design development makes this article more informative. Many articles have been published on web design development and online advertisement in various article directories.

And many remain like stagnant backwaters – constant, changeless, desolated, ignored and largely unvisited!

Websurfers are an impatient lot. They for excitement, constant variety and change. Nothing bores them more than a Website that stays the same day after day, week after week. Portals and community sites understand this fact and take advantage of it. Design changes come thick and fast. a-itindia.com/article_detail.php?aiid=45″ target=”_blank” title=”Website redesign”>Website redesign is a way of daily – or at least monthly – life for them.

So the question is not WHETHER your site needs a redesign but instead WHEN and HOW OFTEN? In this article, we will discuss the many issues to be thought out, the many questions to be answered, and the different steps to be taken to redesign your Website.

Give thoughts to this:

If you are a Web developer who designs Websites or consults with clients on their Web projects, you will doubtless be called in to modify and improve a site or maintain one needing frequent updates. If you own a Website or a business that has an online presence (and which ones don’t these days!), this information is invaluable when you plan improvements to your site.

So let’s get started. There are just three questions to ask yourself:

1. What’s lacuna or the problem with your site now?
2. Is there a scope for improvement?
3. How best can you do it?

What’s Wrong With Your Site?

There are many aspects to test for faults and drawbacks, and many ways to do it. You could:

• ask for feedback from users and visitors to your site
• conduct a formal usability test
• hire a consultant

Which you elect to use depends upon your needs, budget and the complexity of your business. There are websites like Wikepedia or Amazon.com that might hire a cosultant for some thousand dollars per hour!

With any of these methods some basic principles remain the same.

• Define the goals of your study before you start. If you want to see how well your site sells products to customers, focus on how quickly and easily users can locate a product they are looking for, how painlessly they can complete the ordering process, how effectively visitors are converted into paying customers, how many potential customers are lost (leave your site without buying anything) and how likely they are to return to buy something again.
• Determine your user profile. Then evaluate your site using a group as similar as possible to the ultimate user. If your site markets health resorts for rich Indian retired people, don’t test it out with the young teenagers in India!
• Schedule the project and study. Determine a convenient time and place. Make sure your Website is up and running normally at that time.
• Prepare a set of questions or define a set of tasks that volunteers must go through. For instance, you could ask them to order 2 pairs of green nylon socks of a particular brand off your site and see how easy (or difficult) it is to do.
• Evaluate the data generated by the study with a critical eye. How can you improve each step, make things easier for users?
• Implement changes. Act on the information you have received.
• Repeat the process again. Fine tune, tweak, modify – until you are near- perfect!

Factors to be considered for Redesigning

Just about EVERY aspect of a Website can be improved upon in one way or another.

The philosophy behind a redesign should be:

• respect for visitors to your Website
• near maximum accessibility
• a clean, attractive, distinctly recognizable appearance
• better scalability and ease of future maintenance

Before planning a redesign it may be worthwhile taking a hard look at the following areas:

• Design, layout, look-and-feel, brand
• Usability and navigation
• Audience reach
• Future expandability
• Ease of promotion
• Integrating new content, features and technology
• Revenue generating models

Designing Your Look and Feel

In the absence of face-to-face contact with your target audience the only way you imprint your image in a user’s mind is by your Website’s image. Regardless of your site’s purpose, a clean, uncluttered yet attractive layout can’t help but impress visitors.

One of the most common reasons to redesign a Website is to change the look and feel of the old site. How exactly this is achieved is too personal to generalize and depends entirely on the nature of your Website.

Some general principles apply:

• Your homepage could be simply decorative or instead be informative too.
• Consider minimizing the number of clicks a user needs to get to content.
• Use clear space around blocks of content to achieve a clean, uncluttered appearance.
• Employ graphics tastefully to enhance the user experience on your site.
• Don’t use technology for its own sake. But also remember that technology is expanding rapidly. More and more users have broadband internet access and desire a more visually appealing, immersive and interactive Web experience.
• Be obsessed with branding. Consistent use of colors, displaying your logo and tag-line on each page of your site and retaining a professional image helps users identify with your brand.

Usability and Navigation

As a Website grows with the addition of more content it becomes progressively more difficult to get around. Visitors are more likely to get lost in the maze and become increasingly frustrated. A Website redesign can do wonders for a site like this. By improving navigation tools and enhancing the user experience a redesign can magnify the site’s purpose enormously. Many excellent resources about designing Website navigation are available on this site.

Some concepts to keep in mind include:

• Keep navigation tools simple and intuitive. Deciding upon the choice of buttons and their placement on the page is important in reaching this end.
• To minimize the space taken up by long navigation menus, consider using Javascript or Java to create pop-up or pull-down navigation menus.
• The hierarchy must be ordered to minimize the number of clicks a user needs to make before reaching useful content.
• On extensive Websites an efficient search engine can make finding content a delightful task for users

Audience Reach

The Web is connected through out the globe. But its rate of growth is different around the world. Newer audiences come online every day and have their typical preferences, characteristics and interests. As your popularity grows more people hear about your Website and visit it. Your business – and Website – might need to attract this ever-changing online population. A redesign might be the answer.

How can a redesign help you capture a new audience?

• Your new target audience might have interests and needs that you can satisfy by adding or modifying content on your Website.
• Content you’ve already added to your site might attract new visitors who are potential customers for your other services and products.
• Language is a barrier that can be easily overcome. By translating your content into other languages you can become visible to new customers.
• Web surfers may suffer handicaps that keep them from experiencing your content. Simple redesign elements may make your site accessible to them. For instance, by intelligently mixing colors of text and background on a site you may be able to reach out to color-blind viewers. By enabling your Website with sound or by avoiding the use of fixed-size fonts you can let people with visual impairment access your content.
• On the technical side, issues of browser compatibility may be of importance in maximizing your Website’s reach. If your site is designed using the latest cutting-edge technology that is extremely bandwidth intensive, you are losing the majority of web surfers who have ancient computers hooked to the Internet via slow dial-up connections.
• Another point to remember during the redesign process is to keep the new site backward compatible with the older existing content.

Future Expandability

When you first created a Website perhaps you didn’t expect it to become as popular as it did. You plunged right in and did it. Now that it is generating so many page views, you want to make it better. What’s more, you now know how difficult it is to start from scratch. You’d like to set things up so that it becomes easy to scale up your site if it gets even more famous. A redesign is your best chance to plan for future expansion and growth.

There are two elements to keep in mind:

1. Organization of the entire site
2. Design, Coding and Programming

A well thought-out hierarchical arrangement of content on your Website should let you grow and expand with very little difficulty. Brainstorm the possibilities. Consider which parts of the site may justifiably become more important over the next few years. Then work out a way to factor in such growth into your site design and layout. The next part – which is aimed at making life easier for the person who is in charge of maintaining the Website over time – is to plan a system by which site-wide changes can be made quickly and with the least effort.

There are several options:

• Some HTML editors allow changes to be made across Webpages by modifying a single file or inserting code into all pages of a site. The altered pages however have to be uploaded one at a time.
• By using FRAMES in the site design for the header or navigation bar, changes can be made across the whole site by altering the content of that FRAME alone.
• The best methods however are using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Server Side Includes (SSI).

CSS are a set of rules that are applied to elements of a Webpage. There are three categories of CSS – embedded, inline and linked (or external). By using external style sheets on every page of a Website, changes to the site’s look and feel can be made by simply changing the CSS file containing the rules. If the CSS rule set controlling, for example, TEXT or LINK elements is changed, all textual content of a site can be displayed in different fonts, sizes and even colors while links can be formatted to be bold, underlined, or show up in different colors – all by making a single alteration in JUST ONE CSS file. The creative use of Server Side Includes can allow even more versatility to the Website layout. SSI’s allow a file (which may be an entire .htm page) to be inserted into a specified portion of another Webpage. By making changes to a single SSI, changes can be reflected across the entire site. For instance if an SSI file is used for the site’s navigation bar, by changing that single file alone the entire navigation system of the Website could be revamped.

Ease of Promotion

For many Websites, search engines are an important source of traffic. A high ranking in these engines is therefore very desirable. But Search Engines keep changing their positioning algorithms ever so often. To retain a prominent position on them, websites need to be redesigned often too. At the time of a redesign a decision must be made about optimizing Webpages for the different Search Engines. Addition of META tags, insertion of a generous sprinkling of keywords, re-writing content to gain higher keyword density and modification of design and layout (such as placing the navigation bar on the right side of the page so that it shows up AFTER content in a text browser) are all effective tools to use in a redesign.

Another issue relevant to increasing site popularity is the accessibility of the best parts of a Website. By carefully analyzing Website access logs and tracking the path a visitor takes through a site, it is possible to map out the best and most useful pages. During a redesign every effort must be made to get these pages in front of the reader soon after they reach the site. These pages also must be among the first to get optimized to secure a prominent position on Search Engines and directories.

Integration – Content, Features, Technology

Websites grow by adding content, including new features and implementing technology. Pretty soon there’s chaos. A redesign offers an excellent opportunity to consolidate and put things back in order.

Content Re-Engineering

For existing content on your Website, you may:

• Re-structure. Rethinking your strategy lets you make major structural changes to your Website’s layout, design and pattern of arrangement of content.
• Re-purpose content. Archived articles could become features for an ezine issue. Discussion forum threads could become the nucleus of a topic review. Photographs of art pieces could be collected into a virtual gallery.
• Re-arrange content logically. To illustrate the point, a news site might redesign its archives to group all stories related to an event rather than simply ordering them by date.
• Reference content scattered across the site. Individual pieces of content about a particular topic or issue distributed around a site might be more useful to visitors if grouped together.

Adding Features

With growth comes differing needs. When a content site reaches critical mass, adding community to it makes sense. An online merchant will benefit from building a mailing list to which s/he can announce special offers and deals. Launching an ezine lets a scientific research site inform members about recent developments. Starting discussion groups allows virtual communities to stay in touch.

From another angle, you may need to add features for a specific purpose. Recently it became mandatory to have a Privacy Policy displayed on your site in order to attract ‘Big Business’ advertisers. A legal disclaimer against liability becomes necessary as your business or nature of service evolves. Copyright notices may need to be added or modified over time.

Employing New Technology

Technology changes very rapidly on the Web. Some developments are exciting and revolutionary. Others fade away as suddenly as they arrived. Redesigning your site lets you experiment with new technology.

If your site offers stock quotes, the Mobile Wireless Internet gives you a chance to reach customers with the latest developments – instantly, anywhere. If you offer video movie downloads, the growing number of DSL subscribers is good news for you – and merits a redesign.

Revenue Generation

It is always a good idea to follow the revenue stream !

Although there are oh-so-many ways to make money from a Website, the sad truth is that most sites DO NOT. The reasons are varied, but essentially not every method of revenue generation is suitable for a given site. So when you’ve identified a money making strategy for your Website, you’d be best advised to make the most of it. Which means you need to redesign your site to leverage that advantage to the hilt.

If you notice banner advertisements working well for you, you might consider revamping the design to allow banner placement at the location most likely to be attractive to advertisers and generate the best response from users. However if the content on your site is its major attraction, your focus would be to make design changes to keep irrelevant elements like advertisements from obscuring the content.

On a shopping site the redesign process will be entirely different. The ultimate aim here will be to generate more sales from visitors. Streamlining the search and ordering process, and driving casual users towards the products most likely to interest them is the priority here.

How Best can you Redesign Your Website?

The choice is obvious – do it yourself or outsource it to a professional.
In the first instance, reference to the issues discussed earlier tempered with common sense, flexibility and an open mind will do wonders for your new-look site.
If you decide to outsource the job, there are a few more things to keep in mind.

1. Consider what you’d do differently. Make a list of the areas you’d like to redesign, and suggest the modifications you wish to see implemented.
2. Communicate these ideas effectively to the designer/developer.
3. Have a written contract signed by both sides to prevent litigation.
4. The agreement should define:

   • the job descriptions (who will do what)
   • how the work will be done and the time frame involved
   • the costs
   • who owns the material created, especially intellectual property.

Tips and Tricks For a Successful Redesign

• However you decide to carry out your redesign, make sure to do it all separately from your existing Website. The use of a development server mimics the live-environment in a realistic manner. Another option is to use a password-protected section of your own site or on a restricted Intranet.
• ALWAYS keep a backup copy of your old Website. Then in the unfortunate event of a disaster with the new design, you at least have the older version to fall back upon!
• Get feedback from a small subset of users before going “live”. This gives you an opportunity to fix any bugs and make some last minute tweaks to the new site.
• Create a Frequently Asked Questions section for existing customers and members that describes your redesign and explains any changes in the way your new system works.
• Check your competitor’s Website for ideas.
• Consider changing your Web hosting service or your Website’s operating platform if the changes you made necessitate it.
• Continue to request feedback from users… You’ll need it for the next redesign!

There is a saying: “Better late than never”. There is never the wrong time to redesign your website. So get started… Start giving a different look to your website!

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Dionne is a First Year Student on the BA/BSc (hons) Degree in Mobile, Web and Game Design, at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.

Help answer the question about mobile web design

The combination of knowing the variable names, their immediate contents, and the script that will be receiving these variables leaves a rather large security hole in a regular system. It wouldn't be difficult at all for a noobish hacker to set up a dummy page that issues a "Trojan post" (aka a spoofing attack) to my script, passing modified values in the HTML variables in an attempt to either gain higher access to, or damage / destroy, the system that I've developed.

Naturally I could write an encryption algorithm that would encrypt / decrypt the HTML variable names and their contents (encrypted before outputted to the client side, and then decrypted on the server side for processing). However, the URL of the server side script that receives these variables can not be made invisible under any means, therefore, there is still a slight insecurity in this system.

An alternative to this would be instead not to made a POST / GET at all, but to set up server session variables which will replace ant 'hidden' HTML variables being passed from the client page to the server script. No HTML variables will be outputted to the client page at all; whenever something needs to be stored between pages, a session variable is created before the HTML is outputted. However, a problem lies when this value to be stored is required to be entered by the user, as this requires communication between client and server. In this case, a HTML variable must be passed somehow to a server side script for processing, after which, it may be entered into a session variable. An AJAX injection may be in order here. However, AJAX code can still be viewed by the user so this is useless.

The last solution to prevent spoofing attacks is to query the 'referrer' on the server side script before any execution is made. The logic of this is:

IF referrer == your_page THEN
'do stuff
ELSE
print “Caught red handed!”
END IF

The main problem with this is it relies on the referrer to be known and to be correct. If by some means a hacker is able to modify his referrer ID, then this system will fail.

I've found its much more secure to use Adobe Flash technologies, as this system does not allow the user to view the source code behind the file. In addition to this, Flash websites are usually standalone solutions, and do not tend to “jump around” to other pages.

Flash alone can not interact with databases and shopping cart API's however, though it can perform a behind the scenes execution of another server side script in PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, CF, etc and retrieve the variables of this script using the AS function LoadVariables(…).

Whilst many 'old school' web developers claim that Flash use contains usability problems, Adobe is now boasting that 96% of browsers have immediate Flash support. In addition to this, via the Flash plugin, a Flash developer can be certain that his Flash application will render the same on any given browser on any given Operating System (other than mobile based devices, for which there is Flash Lite).

So realistically, the adoption of Adobe Flash as a web development technology is hitting two birds with the one stone- design problems AND security problems.

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Head SEO, Marketing at AIT India

Upgrade to Dreamweaver CS3? Or stick with Dreamweaver 8? This is a question that many web designers who own Dreamweaver 8 are asking themselves as they consider whether it would be worth their money or their Web Design company’s money to upgrade their design software. Since it is your job as a web designer to work with the software in question, the onus of deciding whether the new version will improve service and overall work quality or not. Many web designers are also wary of the fact that Macromedia has been acquired by Adobe and are wondering whether the new owners have improved or destroyed this piece of software. It is my opinion that there is no clear choice between the two. The choice you eventually make must be determined by what you require from your design software.

Web design feature #1: Adobe and Dreamweaver Together

Some web design companies may find the integration between the new Dreamweaver software and existing Adobe tools a good enough reason to purchase the Dreamweaver CS3. Images can easily be transferred from one software to another and some designers find this feature very attractive.

Web design feature #2: CSS Support Made Better

Designers will likely find that one of the best new features of Dreamweaver CS3 are the fresh and improved CSS layouts. The software code contains detailed commentaries related to how these layouts function so understanding how to use them is a relatively simple affair. There are currently 32 different layouts to choose from, in 1, 2, or 3-column designs, and in fixed or liquid design layouts. The starting position of the CSS is easily defined and subsequent movement is also simple and easy. Designers can simply style the tag directly into the HTML through a style attribute, then transfer it to their style sheet. In Dreamweaver CS3, “Convert Inline CSS to Rule” appears on a single right click of the tag and a custom class for that particular style or a full CSS selector is easily created.

Web design feature #3: Mobile Support

The incorporation of Adobe Device Central into Dreamweaver CS3 also makes designing pages for viewing on mobile platforms much easier than before. Although use of the mobile platform to view web pages has become increasingly popular, it was previously a rather challenging task to design pages that are compatible for viewing on both a mobile platform and a web browser one. Dreamweaver CS3 makes those challenges a thing of the past.

Web design feature #4: Ajax Implementation Now Made Possible

Adding Ajax widgets and effects to the web pages that you create is now possible through the incorporation of the Spry framework in to Dreamweaver CS3. A simple drag and drop operation will deposit them into your dataset. Transition effects such as shrinking, growing, highlighting and fading, integration of XML feed data and widgets for tables lists and forms are just some of the features of Spry that have been included in Dreamweaver CS3.

Web design feature #5: XLST Support

XLST support is a major feature of CS3 and both you and your design company will be delighted by the support included through the use of XML files as the database source. Viewing of the XML and integration into any HTML documents are made easy through XLST. Web designers who possess XML files of the same format can easily create a single template for them by using XLST.

Web Design feature #6: Support for Mac Intel Processors

CS3 is now also native to the Intel-based Macintosh platform, and load times have been significantly reduced. The company behind CS3 claims that, whereas Dreamweaver 8 previously required four minutes to load, CS3 now accomplishes the same feat in under one minute. However, these claims have yet to be verified by proper testing.

To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade

The question does not have an easy answer. Personally, I chose to upgrade and have not looked back since. The new CSS features, XLST support and Device Central are all wonderful new additions to the software. However, live databases and server side scripts are still difficult to use with Dreamweaver CS3 and this may discourage web design companies from purchasing the software. If, at the end of it all, you choose to upgrade, it is unlikely that you will regret the money spent.

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Ozzie is a First Year Student on the BA/BSc (hons) Degree in Mobile, Web and Game Design, at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.

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Moe Tamani is a Dallas SEO consultant for a leading Dallas Web Design company.