http://www.modernblue.com/web-design-blog/ Speed up your website and increase conversions: quotation“Something I have been thinking a lot about lately is website speed. The load times for one of my largest clients, OverstockDrugstore, were getting worse by the day. It was due to an increased amount of traffic coming to a website that wasn’t properly tuned. After taking…
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44: OF LATE, WE HAVE GROWN FAT
“Yet in the past few years, as wideband became the norm, every mainstream site and its brother started acting as if bandwidth didn’t matter. Why use 1K of web form when you could use 100K of inline pseudo-Ajax? Why load a new page when you could load a lightbox instead? Instead of medium-quality JPEGs with…
43: A few nice web tools online
Color contrast verification toolCalculate a measure of readabilityhttp://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/accessibility/webaccessibility/color_tool.html staircase gradations generatorhttp://slayeroffice.com/tools/color_palette/ Page Credibilityhttp://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html Free Web Performance Assessmenthttp://zoompf.com/free http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser. The load time of all objects is…
42: Expectation Threshold 2 to 3 seconds
“Today’s web applications are more content and feature rich than ever, providing an interactive user experience. In addition, users expect these applications to be delivered immediately on a variety of fixed and mobile devices and browser platforms. A recent Forrester study found that “two seconds is the new threshold in terms of an average online…
41: Online Button Makers
These links are helpful for when you are in a hurry or need a shortcut to produce a quick button. The output files are not optimized and can easily be reduce in half. This example was 9K after download and reduced to a 2.4K 8-bit PNG file. Creators of “microsites” have statistics showing larger “action”…
40: Get To The Point
In the last entry, “Web Impatience”, the quotes reinforce my philosophy of just publishing a “product or service positioning statement” on the home page and including simple navigation with minimum decoration. The user wants to know immediately what the point is of your website. “What’s in it for me?” “Why should I care?” There must…
39: Web Impatience
I did some studying about “web impatience.” Here are some good links: Web Visitors vs Users, Impatient vs Bored and how they affect Website Change ManagementAnd some quotes:Functionality vs Visual Design“For the most part, functionality wins over visual eye candy with users. Business users routinely put up with desktop applications that do what they need…
38: Image Optimization Links
Image optimization and compression: tools, tips and tricks Web Design Tips – How to Optimize Your Website’s Graphics For Speed Online image optimization, or taming robots 25% smaller PNG files Nicole Sullivan: “Design Fast Websites” Note: To get it right, you have to be brutal with images. You will notice the difference but the audience…
37: Optimizing a simple Frame landing page
This project is a simple website for a local print shop. First, I’ve used an existing color theme based on their business identity of red, black, and white. I don’t usually go for “pitch black” backgrounds. I prefer a dark gray because it’s easier on the eye. But the identity IS “pitch black.” This makes…
36: Large Backgrounds
As a best recommended practice use CSS screen-centered large images, above 1700 pixels in width to cover almost 95% of the display sizes available today. The best solution is to blend the images’ corners into the background HTML color, so that users with larger screen resolutions won’t notice it. This eliminates the hard edge if…
