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Development & Programming
Five Fast Steps to Improve Website Usability
Problem: Your website doesn't work like it should, and every day you're losing sales because of it. As much as you'd like to take the time to comprehensively study the problem, you've decided you...
Bells And Whistles, Or Accessibility Stop Signs?
With the advent of high-speed Internet, a treasure trove of possibilities presented themselves to the web developer. Java, embedded video, Flash and other coding options afforded online retailers the...
Interview: ICANN Official On The Domain Name Infrastructure
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers, or ICANN, coordinates the domain name system globally. ICANN was created in 1998 to perform various Internet administrative tasks previously...
Frameworks For Web Designers
I've written previously about frameworks and how they help developers build web applications. For the most part, my praise of frameworks has been directed at those of us who develop web applications,...
Determine Analytics Questions In Advance
Once a web analytics solution is installed, the most common initial use is to validate some past event. User testing shows that 80 percent of marketers focus on charts that go up and to the...
Testing Site Accessibility
Here's how to perform a standard test to see if your website and store are accessible to the vision impaired.
First, for PC users, open the Narrator program. For Mac users, use the APPLE+F5...
What Makes A Site Effective?
A client recently asked me to do a quick-and-dirty analysis of a half dozen competitor websites. I decided to look at each competitor site and then give it a good/fair/poor rating for certain...
Programming Notes: Importance of Hand Coding
Let's be honest. Most people do not go into website design because they enjoy writing code, or because they want to root through hundreds of lines of seemingly non-sensical expressions. That comes...
Software Frameworks
In broad terms, a software framework is a code library that is designed to facilitate software development. The idea is that all of the tedious, low-level details of creating a web application are...
Video Tutorial: Script.aculo.us Effects
Script.aculo.us is a JavaScript framework that is built upon the wildly successful Prototype JavaScript libraries. Script.aculo.us allows web designers to create engaging user interfaces quickly and...
Video Tutorial: Tabbed Content - Part 2
Tabbed content appears more and more frequently in web pages, and is an interesting way to simultaneously save page space and effectively present information. In part two of this two-part tutorial on...
Video Tutorial: Tabbed Content
Tabbed content appears more and more frequently in web pages, and is an interesting way to simultaneously save page space and effectively present information. In part one of this two-part tutorial on...
Video Tutorial: JavaScript Tooltips
You've probably seen those useful "tooltips" text boxes that are displayed on some websites when you roll over a specific link or graphic. These typically serve several purposes. Most likely, your...
Nine Simple Ways To Speed Up Tedious Tasks
Because I’m all about automation of the tedious of tasks, this month I’m offering up some key, yet very simple ways, to speed up tasks you’ve probably never given much thought to. While it may...
Video Tutorial: Validating A Form With JavaScript
In form validation two common questions often arise. The first is how do you ensure once you've asked for an email address on an online form, you actually get one? The second is how do you make...
TechSupport: "What's A Relational Database?"
Q: Our web developer tells us that our ecommerce site uses a relational database, but I don't understand what this means. Could you please explain?
At the foundation of nearly all web...
Site Search: Increases Conversion Rates, Average Order Value And Loyalty
If your online store has hundreds of products, you may want to consider implementing a more sophisticated site search to help your customers find what they need quickly. For those of you running...
Tech Support July 2007: Accessibility
I keep hearing about accessibility. What is it and why is it important?
Accessibility, in the context of a website, is the measure of how easily people with disabilities can perceive, navigate,...
Protect Data From Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks
Security is always going to be a concern for both developers and ecommerce business owners alike, since providing a secure environment for making transactions is not only a matter of gaining customer...
Video Tutorial: CSS Design, Part Two
In the conclusion of our two-part video tutorial on CSS layout and design, we will take the layout we created in the beginning of this tutorial and begin to apply graphics and other visual stylings...
Video Tutorial: CSS Design, Part One
Designing search engine friendly websites can be intimidating, particularly for designers who are just learning how to use CSS formatting. One of the most intimidating aspects to learning CSS design...
Web Conversion Strategy: When Design Dominates
A local business magazine had written an article reviewing the website designs of various local companies. As you may imagine, I read with dismay as the three-page article focused solely on graphic...
Critique Part Four: Site Search
The Problem: The results aren't always relevant.
The Fix: A search for "snowboard" returns wax as the top result — but no snowboard until the fourth page of results, even though the site has an...
Installing Google Maps On Your Site
Implementing Google Maps into your website is an easy way to provide rich, interactive map features that can help your customers find your business.
Of particular interest to brick-and-mortar...
Basic Definitions: Web 1.0, Web. 2.0, Web 3.0
"What do people mean when they talk about the Web 2.0?" is a query we receive repeatedly, and probably has as many answers as the number of people out there using the term. However, since talk about...
What is Ruby on Rails?
First there was Ruby, and now there is Ruby on Rails.
Ruby is an open-source web-programming language that was developed in Japan in 1995. Ruby resides on your web server and operates similarly to...
Why Authenticate Email?
Mail servers require a username and password authentication for outgoing mail (mail being sent from your computer to someone else) so the servers can maintain control over who is allowed to use the...
Diagnosing Site Performance Delays
When your site begins to experience performance drains, which usually show up as slow-loading web pages, the problem's diagnosis can be more challenging than its solution.
The first thing...
Will All My Windows Applications Run On A Mac?
This question relates to the new Apple computers that include Intel chips. Since the switch to Intel processors, it has been possible to load Microsoft's Windows operating system onto Apple hardware....
Tips To Hire The Right Website Designer
Websites don't just build themselves. The conundrum for the small business owner is that there is a host of choices as you establish an online presence. The decisions are important: They'll determine...
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