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September 6, 2006 Next: In your address book, add If someone you know would like to subscribe, send them to our Newsletter page. Our mission for Neekdesign News is to provide internet technology information that may benefit our clients. Let us know what you'd like to read about. |
Welcome to Neekdesign News Issue No.9 Every one of you has made it possible for us to do great work while expanding Neekdesign and pursuing happiness - new staff, business and personal adventures and taking care of life's inevitable changes and needs. Thank you all. Cool Blue Convertible Mini Cooper S
Because those grapes come from various locations, we made the winery's site heavily product-centric, showcasing individual wines. The visual design complements the bottles' design and labels' slick, modern look and feel. The homepage photos refresh through each of the current releases.
We worked with Kim and Elaine to create a contemporary identity mark and a professional and exciting web design. We reorganized the information on the website to be more user-friendly and to quickly lead customers directly to products in the Nexternal online store. Each product area on the homepage rotates through four different products - these refresh each time you come to the homepage. Kim and Elaine can also use these areas as paid advertising spots, charging vendors for featured space on their homepage.
As many of you know, Neekdesign has a "patent-pending" ;-] way of coding our websites. We take our code very seriously. Why? Who Cares? Website creation software vs HTML editing software On the whole, there's nothing wrong with using these products (although, don't say that to Nicole, or she'll make a face and lecture you for an hour)... as long as you know what you're getting into. Beware of learning the functions of software vs learning HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). The difference is night and day. Website Creation ("Night") Website creation programs "cook" the HTML for you while online interfaces provide limited templates that are already coded. You drag objects into and around the page, and the software writes the code. While these methods seem cool and simple, they always come up short, leaving out important pieces such as meta tags for search-engine optimization. They also write mangled, bloated and/or non-compliant HTML code. So while you may have learned how to use the software, if you find that your page looks wrong in, say, a Firefox browser, you may have no idea how to fix it. Most important, if you want to add a new feature to your site later, and your HTML software can't accommodate that feature, you're likely to have to start from scratch with a different piece of software, a new learning curve, and a lot of headaches. HTML Editing ("Day") For Mac users, we recommend BBedit by BareBones Software (for HTML editing) and Fetch by Fetch Softworks (for FTP upload and download of files). For Windows users, we recommend either Dreamweaver by Macromedia (now Adobe) or Homesite (for HTML editing) and FireFTP by Mozilla (for FTP). FireFTP is a free plug-in to the FireFox browser. Understanding your site's code gives you insight into how your site can grow to accommodate future business goals. Lean, smart code and strict adherence to W3C standards means you're not locked into expensive proprietary software, and you can be sure that you please the maximum number of customers. More Information
Screen Resolution The display of a website's physical width and height are determined by two things. First, the website may be coded to a fixed pixel width. Second, a large or small display is determined by the screen resolution of your monitor. In this issue, we'll discuss how screen resolution effects the display of images. In the next issue, we'll discuss how image resolution effects the differences between images for the web and images for print. Visual Degradation Pixels The pixels, or color samples, that form a digitized image may or may not be in one-to-one correspondence with screen pixels. This relationship is dependent upon the resolution of your computer's monitor. Resolution Modern computer monitors are designed with a native (or default) resolution that will produce the sharpest picture capable from that display - the perfect match between the pixels in an image and the triads in your monitor (a group of red, green and blue phosphor dots on the inside of a computer monitor). These days, you have the ability to adjust your resolution to show a larger or smaller picture. Setting your monitor to a non-native resolution often causes the screen to look somewhat jagged or blurry. A display with a native resolution of 1024x768 pixels will look best set at a 1024x768 resolution (that is, displaying what you see on your monitor at a size of 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high). The monitor may display an 800×600 resolution adequately by drawing each pixel with more physical triads, but may be unable to display sharply at a higher resolution such as 1600×1200 due to the lack of physical triads built into that monitor. In other words, your monitor can shrink what you see and still make it look pretty good. However, if the monitor can only accommodate a certain amount of colors per pixel, trying to increase the size of the picture actually degrades the overall image. Why is this important? If you're users' monitors have a native resolution of 800x600 and you're website is designed at a fixed size of 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high, your users will have to scroll to the right and down to see all of your information. If their monitor resolution is set to 1600x1200, they may see extra space around the website's information. So why is my site designed for 800x600? Users with disabilities or accessibility issues may view your website with older equipment, larger or even smaller screens, screen readers, and so forth. Know your audience and view your site statistics. The lower setting makes images appear larger. For the 20 somethings in the audience, this may be no big deal. For those of us who prefer slightly larger type, the lower resolution makes reading and viewing websites much more comfortable. More Information |
I've regaled you with travel stories over the last few years, and many of you have asked where I'm going this year. 2006 has included and will include some fine trips within the States, but... I've been saving my pennies. The garage is now referred to as "the baby's room!"
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