I’d like to apologize if this post is haphazardly done. I’m away from my computer and in an internet cafe somewhere in the southern part of the country.

Now we’ll talk about one of the things that make web sites different from just another text full of words: hyperlinks or, for the sake of brevity, links. Specifically, link colors.
Read more

We were blogging about text : what to do with it, how to present it, how not to abuse it.

2. Colors. Text is for reading, so it’s important that it’s actually readable. You’d think that people would remember something as simple as that. Too often perfectly good text becomes unreadable when presented in unfortunate colors. Sure, you have a dark, gothic nature, but red text against a black background is not a way to convey it. What it does show is a lack of imagination and people will come to the conclusion that you’re as annoying as your web site.
   
   There’s a reason why most books are printed with black ink on white paper : the text looks nice, clean and crisp so the reader can focus on the content. So you’re better off sticking to dark text on a light background. Especially if you’re a beginner.
   
   Of course this applies to longish text. For titles, banners and menu buttons, you can go crazy a little.

Much is said about web site elements like design and navigation. It’s really not fair to text, as it is just as important as, say, images. Plus, it’s lighter than images, flash animation and wav files, and therefore more bandwidth-friendly. So I’m here to correct this oversight with a blog series on text.
Read more

(Via Slashdot)
Internet inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee now has a blog. So far, there’s been one entry — and around 169 comments.
Read more

There’s one item I forgot when I wrote the previous entry Test-drive your new web site.

5. Different monitor resolutions. Start with 800×600, as this is the lowest resolution one can reasonably expect viewers to be using (yeah, I know you can go 1280×1024 with your LCD monitor, hotshot, but not everybody has that). Then test your site with 1024×768 and higher resolutions.

Read more

If your non-IT company doesn’t have its own web department and you hire a web development firm to make your website, you will need to be a little tech savvy to make sure you end up with a site that’s well-made and suited for you.

Now, developers don’t really like the clients breathing down their necks while they’re working, so I wouldn’t suggest doing that. What you can do is test the product before you sign off. This way, you know if there are any final changes that need to be made before you go live with your site.
Read more

(Updated: 3p.m.)

As a rule, I’m not a rules kind of girl. SEO (search engine optimization, which is the science of making your webpages easier to find on Google et al), for instance, dictates certain things — not all of them I follow. I know them and I know they work, but I’m just so goshdarn stubborn about making compromises. Recently, I finally gave up on using clever post titles for more SEO-friendly ones (if I hadn’t this entry would’ve been titled “Rules schmulz”). That was hard, I tell ya.

Now another rule (well, guideline) is starting to nip at me: keywords in permalinks. Read more

I love RSS. As a voracious reader of blogs, my RSS aggregator (Mozilla’s Thunderbird) is one of my favorite tools running in my computer. With it, I am updated whenever any of the blogs on my watchlist has fresh content.

Yesterday, I got to wondering what might be the easiest, brainless, most cost-free way of creating an RSS feed for sites that are not blogs and are not running on any content management system (CMS). After all, one shouldn’t have to be forced to turn your corporate, hobby or personal website into a blog just so one may have an automatically updated RSS feed. Sure, you can go manual and make and regularly update an XML file to serve as your RSS, but not only does this require coding (and therefore, thinking), but it’s tedious.
Read more

Funny how advances in technology just create new ways of annoying people.

In a previous post I talked about how animated gif’s and embedded music are marks of an amateur’s web site. Of course these days, animated gif’s are quite old school, and flash is now the weapon of choice for over-dressing one’s web site. I was checking out the official Grey’s Anatomy web site and found my ears assaulted by the song’s theme. Of course they were nice enough to put an “off” button on the page, but really, no one likes it when a song starts to play without warning. I could be surfing in a room with my grandmother sleeping a few feet away, didn’t they think of that?

I have no problems with flash per se: it has some pretty cool applications, such as online games and playing videos on a movie site. Flash is kind of like a really sharp blade — useful if used for the right reasons, such as when a surgeon wields a scalpel, but if used for the wrong reasons, it could bring death and destruction upon its victims. OK, so I’m being melodramatic. As far as I know, no one has died from an overuse of Flash. At least not yet. But you get the idea.
Read more

Zamboanga.net opens with two of my pet peeves: a welcome page and a horizontally scrolling line of text.

What’s wrong with welcome pages, you ask? Before we get into that, I have a list of situations where I think welcome/splash pages are necessary:

1. Everything on the site is password protected, and the welcome page is also the login page.
2. The site has adult content, and you want to give your viewer adequate warning.
3. You’re a flash artist and you want your work (on a splash page) to be the first thing the viewers see.
4. The site is a film site, in which case it’s basically a web version of a promotional trailer.

Read more