Archive of: 2005
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Don't make me think! Common sense web usability
22 December 2005 by
Don't make me think. It's a great title for a book – and the contents are good as well. Some simple but fundamental guidelines about website usability written in an easy-to-read style.
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Create a simple sitemap page
16 December 2005 by
You’ve just implemented a nice website JavaScript dropdown menu that consolidates all your webpages under specific categories. It looks real neat, you launch the website, the Googlebot visits – and 2 months later, none of your pages are indexed except for the homepage!
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Streamline your website code
11 December 2005 by
One reason for moving to a CSS-based website layout is to streamline the website code. This has a number of advantages….
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Why use web standards?
06 December 2005 by
Roger Johansson at 456 Berea Street has published Ten Reasons to Learn and Use Web Standards.
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Search engine optimisation and website stats
17 November 2005 by
It’s often difficult to measure the success of any website search engine optimisation. Whilst you can implement conversion tracking tools for ecommerce websites and for search engine Ad campaigns, this is not always applicable for brochure-type websites.
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Website design choices can be crucial
08 November 2005 by
What makes a website work? How do I increase sales through my website? These are questions that all business website owners are interested in.
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Using IE conditional comments for CSS
03 November 2005 by
Web designers using CSS need to be aware of browser differences in CSS implementation. In particular, Internet Explorer has various CSS ‘bugs’ compared to Firefox – and this can be a real headache. It would be great to be able to define specific styles only for IE. Well, that’s possible using IEs conditional comments feature.
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CSS XHTML web templates
30 October 2005 by
We’re keen to advocate the use of CSS-based fully XHTML-compliant websites and it’s always good to see web templates for sale with similar properties.
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CSS 2.1 selectors explained
25 October 2005 by
Roger Johansson at 456 Berea Street has written a great series of articles on CSS 2.1 selectors.
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Nice place to stay in France
13 October 2005 by
We recently completed a website for Auberge de Berger in Kergario, Morbihan, Brittany. It's a nice gite farmhouse.
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Style an image with CSS
18 September 2005 by
Want to get that ‘real photo’ effect on your images? You know, the one that looks like a holiday snap with its white border.
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Tables or CSS for webpage layout - 2
11 September 2005 by
Our earlier post on this subject was dictated by some of the practicalities that relate to small business websites in the UK. Since that post, we have increased our use of CSS-based non-table website layouts.
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Three things to avoid if you want a good Google ranking
08 September 2005 by
We were asked to look at a couple of websites recently and offer some advice about Google/search engine rankings. The websites were not being listed by Google despite the fact that the type of business was not particularly over-represented in the listings. Should be easy, right?
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Preview websites with a CSS style switcher
06 September 2005 by
There are several methods available where websites allow their web visitors to change website styles by clicking on a link.
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Do I need to use Google Sitemaps?
30 August 2005 by
Google Sitemaps is an interesting idea that is currently being Beta tested by Google. Well, actually anyone with an account can participate. As a web designer or webmaster, do you need to use it?
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Build a database website with PHP and MySQL
22 August 2005 by
This book was one of the books that inspired me to learn PHP and MySQL and it’s a great resource for learning how to build a database-driven website.
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CSS shorthand tips
19 August 2005 by
The increasing use of CSS for web design has meant that most websites have one (or several) stylesheets. Stylesheets are being used extensively, they can become quite large and it makes sense to make them as concise as possible. Shorthand CSS can make a big difference to the size of the stylesheet on larger websites and it can help to make any stylesheet easier to use.
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How important is Google PageRank?
18 July 2005 by
Google uses a method called PageRank (PR) to decide how important a website is – but just how important is this? We would say that it is becoming less important…
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Naming your CSS styles
10 July 2005 by
Stylesheets are more and more important for website styling and website layout. Gone are the days when only a couple of paragraph classes made up the .css file. It makes sense therefore to name CSS styles in a sensible way and to use a consistent naming convention.
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Website fonts, browser safe fonts
05 July 2005 by
Web designers often need to decide which text fonts to use. After all, if your web viewers do not have the same font, then they will not see your lovingly crafted website in the same way…
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CSS ecommerce template
27 June 2005 by
CSS and XHTML compliant shopping cart systems are definitely the way forward. Using tables for layout design purposes can lead to complex nested table layouts which are not as accessible as they might be.
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No tables layout for CVW Web Templates
13 June 2005 by
Recently, we have been working on a redesign of CVW Web Templates. It’s one of our main websites and we wanted to give it a different “look” using a non-tables based layout.
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Pubs near Horsham
24 May 2005 by
It's interesting how a personal interest can develop into something a bit more. When the Horsham Pub Guide website started, that's all it was. Just a bit of a hobby really. How that's changed!
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Testing websites in different browsers
10 May 2005 by
One of the problems that web designers/developers face is ensuring that websites look consistent over a range of browsers and operating systems. It is usually very time consuming to test a new website on more than a few browsers. We like to focus on the most popular browsers…
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Search engine friendly ecommerce templates
27 April 2005 by
We often get asked about search engine optimisation for existing ecommerce websites. Unfortunately, there is often no easy answer to this because search-engine friendly features need to be built into…
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Rounded corners with CSS
06 April 2005 by
A recent project needed some rounded corners as part of some of our page elements and we thought about a few ways of doing this. The only problem was that our new website should use CSS without the use of tables for layout purposes….
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Building an online shop (or three) with an ecommerce web template
28 February 2005 by
Things have been quiet on the blog front recently because we have been working on a few ecommerce websites for several clients.
We use an ecommerce web template which to some people sounds like an easy option. It is perhaps easy to imagine that a template will allow a store to be built in a day or less. That’s not really the case but the templates can allow rapid development of an online shop without too much hassle…..
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Dreamweaver for PHP/MySQL applications
29 January 2005 by
Macromedia Dreamweaver is used by many people to edit their standard HTML websites but it can also be used to develop PHP websites where information is pulled from a MySQL database….
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Tables or CSS for web page layout?
18 January 2005 by
A growing number of web designer now use CSS for web page layout. That’s great and it means that the websites are very efficient in terms of their code. In addition, the usual style sheet advantages apply and design changes can be made across the whole website by editing one file……
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Cliff Hotel Bude
16 January 2005 by
The Cliff Hotel website has been redesigned to give it a more modern look. One objective of the revamp was to enhance website usability and search engine friendliness.