Archive for September, 2008

Adobe Systems Inc. plans to unveil the latest version of its flagship Web-publishing software Tuesday.

The new software, called Creative Suite 4, is intended to make it easier to design Web sites that combine different types of media, such as animation and live video. These features are becoming increasingly important as Web sites evolve from the text-filled pages and static images that dominated the Internet’s early days.

“It used to be that video on the Web was enough to make you say ‘Wow,’ ” says Johnny Loiacono, senior vice president of the Adobe business unit responsible for the software. “But now it takes richer and richer experiences to keep our attention.”

Creative Suite 4 is made up of 13 individual software products, including the San Jose, Calif., company’s Photoshop for photo editing, Dreamweaver for Web-site design, and InDesign for desktop publishing. The new software runs 20% to 50% faster than its predecessor, says Mr. Loiacono. The different products are also more integrated with one another so a designer can now work with a video made with Adobe’s Flash technology while using InDesign, a task that previously required separate software.

The new software will cost $1,699 to $2,499.

Businesses are increasingly buying or developing visually compelling software that employees or customers can access over the Web, says Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst at Forrester Research. As the line between Web design and software development blurs, Adobe faces increased competition from technology giants like Microsoft Corp., whose Silverlight video software competes with Flash.

Some web sites receive hundreds or thousands of unique visitors a day, whilst others only get a handful or none. The reason is often because the web designers or Webmaster has built the site in one �really bad way’ or other. This can end up hindering the potential success of the web site. If you want to make sure your site is not a �traffic flop’ then here are some simple rules to follow.

Bad Move 1: Build the site using a frameset.

Framesets may save designers time but are bad news for search engines. They can struggle to follow links into the web site or read text on the page unless you use a no frames tag effectively. In addition to this, if an engine does keep a cache of a site with frames it will often pick up the individual frames/ pages and not the complete frameset. The downside of this is that you may lose your navigation for many of your pages, which is likely to turn visitors off. Whilst one or two partial fixes to framesets are out there, it’s still no wonder that many web site promoters still cry �Please No Frames�. For more information on why framesets can cause problems visit http://www.html-faq.com/htmlframes/

Bad Move 2: Build the site purely in flash.

Flash intros and web sites can be visually stunning, but at the same time they can be rather limiting when it comes to search engines. If your main site is all one flash site it will typically play in just one html page. Some search engines simply can’t read Flash and so your web site to them is just one relatively empty HTML page. If your competitors web site has 15 or 20 pages in HTML talking about their good sand services then they will have a big advantage on you. If you must have a Flash site for graphical reasons then it would be wise to budget for a separate HTML web site to have along side the Flash so your site content can be read and indexed by search engines.

Bad Move 3: Decide that graphics are more important than words

Be careful. As great as some images can be, try not to let designers convince you that you don’t need copy on your web site or that a few lines is enough. Only very occasionally is there ever an excuse to fill your web site with graphics at the expense of text. If the graphics look great, then match them with great copy. Sales copy is important to tell your audience why your goods and services are important. Search engines also like to index plenty of useful copy too. 250-500 words is a sensible starting guide for most pages or ½ of the amount you would place in a brochure. Text copy is important and will always be so make sure web site has some!

Bad Move 4: Leaving out the Meta tags

This is a bad move as Meta Tags are important to search engines. Clear and concise title tags should be written for every page reflecting what it contains. Avoid writing things like �Home’ or �welcome’ as it’s fairly meaningless. If you page is selling blue widgets then get �blue widgets’ in the title and keep the title to 10 words or less.

In addition to this create a well-written objective Meta description for each page, and list your Meta Keywords. These keywords should also reflect the content on your web page. Leaving these 3 things out, or doing them badly can be disastrous. The impact of Meta tags on rankings may vary from engine to engine, but without them your pages could be ignored. Most HTML editors allow you to easily insert Meta Tags into your web page and it only takes a few moments to add to a page. So there are no excuses. Make sure you have good Title tags, Meta Description and Meta Keyword tags on your pages today!

Bad Move 5: Use lots of JavaScript

Search engines have a few problems understanding JavaScript in pages. At the best of time they struggle with it, at worst they may even ignore it. On its own, it can be an unreliable way to make web site navigation. If you must use JavaScript for your navigation make sure you have some alternative ways to get to pages by using HTML text links at the bottom of the page. If you have a large amount of JavaScript think about linking to it as a separate JavaScript file.

Bad Move 6: Don’t have sites linking to yours

Unless you want your web site hidden from the outside world you want to be found right? Well search engines ideally find a new web site by following a link from another site. This happens when people link to you and this kind of underpins the Internet. By having sites link to you search engine crawlers will find your web site and you never need to submit your web site to the likes of Google. It is still the case that web sites that rank highly on Google and Yahoo for relatively competitive key phrases often have scores if not hundreds of web sites linking to them Google help to explain the importance of linking here http://www.google.com/technology/ . So �think links� and be sure to get your site listed in some quality web directories as part of the process.

Bad Move 7: Focus on submitting your web site to thousands of search engines and forget the ones that matter

Now and then you will see some companies attempting to promote this idea – often by using Bad Move 8! It is true that there are thousands of search engines but the highest volume of traffic comes from less than 10 major search engines. The logic of �If I get one hit a day off each of the 1000 mini search engines I’ll get a 1000 visitors a day� unfortunately in practice does not ring true. It is a fact that a huge volume of search engine traffic comes from a small handful of search engine: most notably the Google, Yahoo and Msn.

Bad Move 8: Using unsolicited/ Spam email

This may seem obvious that this is not the best way to promote your business but is always worth stating. If you’re in any doubt simply ask yourself: �Do I like getting Spam emails?� It’s common sense to avoid using techniques that annoy people or damage your brand. Using unsolicited email campaigns could result in complaints and at worst your ISP could ban you. If you want a successful email campaign it is advisable to target genuine opted in newsletter subscribers and to always offer an opt-out button in every email.

What makes any web site successful? What increases the number of your visitors, making them coming back again and again? The answer is simple – surely, web graphics on your web site! If you have a professional web design you may consider to have half the battle on the business battlefield! Bright and efficient graphics on your web pages will catch an eye, help to promote your business, serve as your visiting card and generally make the first impression about your business and its owners. The elements of graphics on your web site must be loaded simultaneously with the page and then be reflected properly in the web browser.

All the graphics elements should be placed in the same folder named IMG or images. Then the IMG folder is copied into the html-pages catalog. Now the person involved in professional web deisign and web development may think about how to implement the the image into the web pages. We use the attribute SRC to specify the location of the image resource. SRC stands for “source”. The value of the SRC attribute is the URL of the image you want to display on your page. In other words, the attribute SRC shows the file’s location. Here is how the syntax of a defined image should look like: <img src=”url” > where URL stands for image location (i.e. where the image is stored). However, besides this one, there are other attributes responsible for different additional features related to image placement on the web pages.

The ALIGN attribute serves to align the graphics on your web page. The attribute allows two values assigned – left and right. The value LEFT makes the web browser place an image on the left of the text as well as the value RIGHT allows to place the image on the right relative to the text. You should note that if the attribute ALIGN has already been used to align the text relative to the graphics on your specified page, you will not be allowed to set the parameters of text flow around the image. The attribute ALIGN allows to place the text between two graphical images. In this case the tags describing the image shall be placed over the text that is to be enclosed between them.

The ALT attribute helps to add comments that will be reflected if the web browser cannot load the graphics on your web page. The attributes WIDTH & HEIGHT help to assign the width and the height of the image you are placing. However, these attributes are not recommended to be used for the images in jpg format since an incorrect value assignment may result in deterioration of graphics quality. So before you insert any graphics on your web pages you should correct its parameters with the help of any graphics editor. If the while background of the page is not what you really want, you can put any graphical background on your page with the help of the attribute BACKGROUND of the tag <BODY>. Since the web browser automatically places the image copies the way they fill in the whole page, so the image you apply for your background may be done small in size.

You should remember that while creating a graphical background of your page you should use such images that provide interesting visual effects and at the same time that would not disturb your customers from reading the text itself. For example, placing a text on the page with tiger background would result in lost of interest to your content since the reading would be completely uncomfortable in this case. A good image being repeated multiple times looks “smooth”, without any seams or joints. Don’t forget to pay attention to the color and size of your font if you make a graphical background to achieve absolute easiness in reading. The attribute BORDER helps the designers to assign the frame’s size around the graphical image. Experienced web graphic designers recommend to use gif format for graphics web site elements such as menus and banners and for jpg format for full-color images. Anyway, whatever you apply, keep in mind the fact that you are creating your professional web design for your potential customers and your web site should be easy to use from the point of web graphic design and web development.