Tag Archive: development


Too often as developers, we ignore a crucial last step before launching a website: optimizing for performance.

Most developers now recognize that organized, valid code ensures maintainability and compatibility.

Anyone who doubts this merely has to speak to a developer who has picked up work on an old website that is littered with unorganized, uncommented spaghetti code.

Just as preparing our code to be read by other developers is important, so is preparing our code to be read by browsers. Great web development might start with great organization, but it ends with great optimization.

This article introduces best practices of front-end performance.

Read the rest of this post on WebDesignerDepot.com

Ok, so there are a lot of articles out there on HTML5, especially since Google Wave arrived (because it’s the first major app to run on the language), but all the information that you need to know in order to start using it now is either too complicated, or spread out over various websites / articles / tutorials. Hopefully in this article we’ll be able to amalgamate and condense a lot of this information so that anyone with basic HTML knowledge can start using it.

Before I start I’d just like to say a big thank you to the Speak the Web guys who put a series of talks on in the north of England over the last two weeks. The gigs each had a speaker from Opera (amongst others) who enlightened many of us to the true potential of HTML5, and why we should start using it sooner rather than later.

Read the rest of this post on www.whatcreative.co.uk

Recently, we talked about how to verify your store’s site with Google Webmaster Tools and why it’s important to do so.

Now let’s talk about how to start using the Webmaster Tools. The very first thing you should do is to upload your sitemap.

What are sitemaps and why are they important?

A search engine sitemap is an XML file, normally called sitemap.xml, that contains a list of all the pages on your site. This file normally sits at the top of your directory in your server and points the search engines to your site.

Most of the time, search engines can easily find your pages on their own, but sometimes they have problems crawling dynamic content or pages that aren’t linked together and need help. Google uses the data in your site map as sort of a road map, to ensure that they find everything you want them to find.

Read the rest of this post on corecommerce.com

The registration process should entail simplicity, great usability and a high-level of accessibility. With numerous sites wanting to focus on how attractive and eye-catching their sign-up forms are, they seem to “forget” one principle; how the user interacts with the registration form.

Below we’ve included a showcase of inspiration that solely focuses on one simple yet entirely effective characteristic, enhancing the registration and check out process using steps-left.

Enhancing Your Registration Process

Their purpose is mainly to guide and inform the user as to what’s to come in following steps.

Incorporating steps-left into the registration process has been around for quite some time. Their purpose is mainly to guide and inform the user as to what’s to come in following steps. It’s a clever way to make the process much easier, and in return you’ll yield higher conversion rates. A few years ago there were a number of websites who where already incorporating this method into their sign-up forms. The only problem with these were that most of them allowed you to choose which step you wanted to complete at your leisure. This meant you could skip in-between steps which caused the user to become confused and discouraged.

Read the rest of this post on SpyreStudios.com

You often hear developers talk about the importance of semantics, but do you know what “semantic” means? I’ve noticed that it tends to be an arbitrary word that’s thrown around the web by people trying to sound smart (I’m guilty of that too). You often hear that semantics are good for SEO and essential for proper and clean code, but what exactly is semantic code?

Semantics literally means description or meaning. Writing semantic code means writing code that’s self-describing, so that little comments are needed. To have semantic code, you need to properly name your IDs, classes, images and other items as descriptive as possible. (For example: “left sidebar”). Semantics also means that you use the code properly, i.e. styles go in CSS and not in HTML.

Read the full post on amberweinberg.com

So, you’re pretty good at what you do. You’ve been doing it for a while and most projects seem to flow pretty smoothly. Then BAM! It happens.

You’re faced with a task or a subject or an app that you’ve never heard of before. Panic-time, right?

Everyone knows that it’s important to be knowledgeable in your field. Generally speaking, the more knowledge that you have mastered the more that you have to offer to your client.

But, did you know that what you don’t know can also benefit your freelancing business? It seems counter-intuitive, but it’s true. If you approach what you don’t know with the right attitude, it can provide new opportunities for you and for your freelancing business.

In this post, we’ll discuss five surprising ways to leverage what you don’t know to the advantage of your business.

Read rest of post on freelancefolder.com

Part of being a small business owner is most likely being involved in the process of creating your website. What is really important to include when you are considering your website layout? Is there a specific layout that works better than others? When I work with small business owners, I encourage them to consider the following:

Read the full article on bauerhaus.com

This post is a collection of latest community news submitted on tripwire magazine by readers and other blog owners.  Most new posts in the web design and development community is included making this regular post a really fast and easy consumable overview of what is going on just now.

View rest of post on TripwireMagazine.com

Website Design and Layout

Finally, my personal website is coming together. I have been experimenting with themes, CSS (I purchased the CSS upgrade), widgets, media, links and many other tools that is WordPress. I think it is coming together nicely, although I’ll let you be the judge. I have asked an incredible graphic designer and friend, who works for the likes of Disney and Toyota, to create a new backdrop and logo for the site. This, I hope, will give me an edge against the competition and potentially attract clients to my services. The new graphics should be ready in a few days, with any luck.

I have also re-worded my about page a little to really put a gloss on it. I am no literary genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I hope that it is worded correctly at least.

I will be back to inform everyone, once the new backdrop and logo are in place. Until then, be safe..

Paul Jacobs

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a very complicated science. While no one knows exactly how Google ranks websites, we do have a lot of proven techniques.

Good SEO depends on several factors in your website, but when you usually think of SEO, you probably think of dealing with content and inward links. But did you know that there are several ways to improve your traffic and SEO by changing your code? Increasing traffic and rankings in code depends on three factors.

Read the Rest of the Post on FreelanceFolder

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