First of all Happy Halloween to everyone from the entire team of Webblog360 and Dzineblog360. May you have a fun time alongwith your friends and loved ones. Carving a pumpkin and making it into a jack-o-lantern is an integral and interesting part of the Halloween festival. People put a lot of effort and skills in carving the best and most scariest Halloween jack-o-lantern ever. Here are some Scary Ideas for Halloween Jack-o-Lantern. Enjoy!
Homepage of a website welcomes a visitor to the site. It is the page that contains all links to relevant pages, and represents the purpose of the site. Homepage creates the first impression of a visitor about the site. A poorly designed homepage can drive out the visitor whereas a well designed homepage increase chances of longer stay and return. As logo design is important for branding of company, homepage design is important for success of its website. This article focuses on some basic points that you need to verify about homepage of your site.
For building an effective homepage it is necessary to set clear goals and objectives. Homepage is the first encounter of a visitor with the site and they should easily find what they are searching. By defining the purpose of site you can develop a homepage that attracts more visitors and guide them precisely.
Purpose of a website is different from the topic. For example, if you are designing homepage for a hospital then make sure to include links that lead to departments, services offered, emergency contact numbers, list of doctors and their qualifications, etc. Purpose of the site in this case is providing necessary information to people about the services and the topic is “service” not providing health tips.
Such information is helpful in guiding people and making them interested in availing services of the hospital when required. However, make sure that purpose of the site is not to “sell” the services but “inform” about them.
If you are designing a homepage for an online portfolio site of a logo designer then purpose of the site should be “encouraging and impressing potential clients to make contact” rather than “to get jobs”. When you have decided to impress your client, homepage of your site can showcase thumbnail of logo designs crafted by the logo designer. It can attract visitors into checking out more pieces.
There are primarily two types of visitors – people coming to the site for first time and people returning to the site. While new visitors are welcome, a site can’t prosper without return visitors. There are two ways for enticing return visit. Make the content interesting and rich with relevant information and provide reminders (like RSS feeds) that remind interested visitors about latest developments in your site. Websites designed for children prefer using animated logo for drawing attention.
Homepages of sites that offer subscription and membership options are found to attract more repeat visitors. Website of Flickr has a great homepage that provide such opportunity. When you are logged out, the site draws your attention to “Create Your Account” button enticing you to become member. When the return visitors log in they are welcomed to a different page that guides them to participate effectively in the community.
It is imperative to determine the content that and components on homepage that are essential for serving purpose of the site. They should be arranged according to priority on a list. Priority depends on the purpose and goals you want to achieve.
The content should be arranged on the layout structure according to priority. While organizing the content make sure to follow the F-shape pattern. Most important content on the top left where the eye lands first then move on the right and proceed down. Logo designers love to see their logos in this area.
It is necessary to use several tricks for drawing attention of the visitors. You can increase contrast of the components from its background and surroundings, increase their size, go for a custom logo design or use negative space wisely. Avoid using excess widgets and navigational elements and make sure that every elements present on the homepage are functional and necessary. Check every element and verify its purpose, relevance and use.
Lowering page response time is essential for quick loading and viewing of page. Internet surfers are impatient by nature. When a homepage takes too long to load they may click away to another site. For quick loading of homepage optimize images and graphics used in designing it. It is desirable to combine several CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) files JavaScript files into one big file. One big file loads quicker than several small files. Minimize use of graphics while designing homepage of a site. Homepage of Amazon is excellent example of how you can use optimized images.
There are certain site components that users or visitors search when they land on homepage of a site. Logo and tagline is one such essential component. Logo design should be in proper format and size to fit the designated area. Many prefer to bring them at center, on top of the homepage. For instance, in case of the home page of certain company providing printing services, all elements of the company should be visible on the home page. It depends on the nature of site and designing scheme. Navigation menus should be clear, legible and easily noticeable. Have a look at the homepage of Mailchimp website. It follows all the principles of a good homepage design.
There should not be any broken links. Contact information should be clearly mentioned. Some sites prefer to create a separate Contact page and include it in navigation menu. Others provide it in the upper right hand corner or footer of the homepage.
Designing a homepage is an art that requires a balance between attention to details and creative thinking. You need to pay attention to the purpose of site as well as technical aspects like page loading time and use of optimized graphics.
Ajax is considered to the one of the very best friends of web developers all over the world. However, your web development experience can only be improved when you get hands-on expertise on Ajax and its different techniques. One of the most effective ways to gain our grip on web development is through Ajax tutorials. Here are 30 Ajax Tutorials for Better Web Development for all my web developer fellows out there!
Web 2.0 Cheatsheet for Ajax
Vote up or down on any particular link, giving an indication of how well an article has been received. In this tutorial, you learn how to recreate this unique voting system using jQuery, AJAX and PHP.
A to-do list that will allow you, or your user, to create, update, and delete items asynchronously.
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Create a dynamic ajax based shoutbox with jQuery from scratch!
Special tutorial for Drag-and-drop effects
In the course of this tutorial, we’re going to look at what Ajax can do. Then we’ll use a JavaScript class to simplify your first steps toward the ultimate in speedy user interactivity.
An Ajax enabled online calendar. Drag and drop events to change dates, drag the start/end of an event to create multi-day events, create and edit events without refreshing the page.
“Understanding Ajax, a productive approach to building Web sites, and how it works”
It uses FormCheck2 for validation of fields and NiceForms to style form objects.
Removing contents with Ajax is a useful tool to have in any web designers kit. Using a few lines of jQuery we can remove a div and simultaneously remove a record from the database with Ajax
One of the features I find most interesting in Google calendar is the possibility to create shared calendars, but also the availability of your calendar as XML or ICAL whether it’s a private or public one.
Create a calendar component using Ajax and PHP. Allows you to navigate months without refreshing the page.
In this script, you have a list of article titles at the right side. When you click on one of them, AJAX will be used to request the content of the article from an external file and show it in the main area
Tutorial demonstrating continuous pagination, in which the user keeps scrolling down rather than going to another page.
An introductory post for getting started with AJAX
This tutorial teaches you how to make those very cool input fields that auto complete based on what you type.
In this tutorial, you will create an AJAX-driven shopping cart and store all of the products in a MySQL database, using PHP to process the data. jQuery will deliver the AJAX on the page
Learn how to enable AJAX comments with client side JavaScript comment form validation on your WordPress blog.
This web slider will enhance your website and give it that extra something. This looks great, and is easy to make too!
Create your very own web chat using Ajax. This is pretty cool if you are looking to creating a live chat app for your website.
Every once in a while you find a great usage of Ajax. One great usage is the user name availability checker.
This tutorial shows how to build a zip code verifier.
This nifty little script allows users to rate just about anything you specify. It’s not tied to any platform, so you could literally use the script for anything that used PHP and MySQL.
Collection of Online Resources for Ajax Programming From Joshua Eichorn.
Build a calculator in AJAX!
An incredible Ajax instant messenger that works just like Yahoo! messenger or any other IM client, except it’s embedded on the website as opposed to a desktop client. Ajax IM is incredibly robust, and could add quite a bit to your user’s experience.
This article guides you through the AJAX basics and gives you two simple hands-on examples to get you started.
Build an AJAX-powered component that can upload a file to a dedicated server and monitor the progress of a file upload request in real time.
An easy tutorial teaching you how to make a simple Ajax file uploader Some neat graphics in this tutorial.
Learn how to create an Ajax contact form that emails the recipient without the page reloading.
The spooky scary festival of Halloween is just round the corner. Halloween festival, being celebrated on the 30th of October is one of the most exciting events all around the world in which people decorate their homes, schools and offices etc. wear scary and most wacky costumes and throw special Halloween parties to friends and family. Owing to its immense popularity, a good number of companies, brands and businesses play around the Halloween fest for their marketing purposes. Similar is the case with gadget industry where more and more companies try to cater to the growing Halloween fest fan base. Here are some Halloween Inspired Gadgets, Spooky Freaky Scary! for those who want the spooky spirit of Halloween in everything!!!
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This friendly mascot brings you daily a new deal at a great price on Inkydeals.com! Tell me this: wouldn’t it be nice to have someone that will provide you every day with the design resources you don’t have the time or the tune to create? Inky knows that creativity takes time, time is money and money makes the world go round.
Here are some more reasons why we think you will make Inky your best friend:
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These days, it seems like just about everyone is writing their own blog. However, if you’re yet to jump on the blogging bandwagon, then here are just a few reasons why you might want to consider doing do. Of course, most people have very different reasons for starting a blog, and for many it is a venture which tends to begin as a simple hobby.
1- If you’re a cooking enthusiast, for example, then blogging can be the best way of keeping a record of various meals and recipes that you’ve come up with.
2- If you’re a keen online gamer at sites like partypoker, then you might use your blog as a platform through which to share your insider knowledge with individuals who have similar interests.
3- A large number of people who start a travel blog do so simply as a means of keeping their friends and family updated in their adventures.
For many such bloggers, writing their posts is an enjoyable experience, and any opportunity to make a profit from doing so is simply as added bonus. However, there is now an every increasing number of business bloggers, who are using their blog as a means of enhancing the success of a particular company or product. If, for example, you own a DIY store, then you might be able to benefit from starting s DIY blog detailing how many of the products which you offer can be put to good use. Even if your business has a less practical focus, creating a blog can be a great way to reach huge number of people at very little cost.
This can be a great way to connect with potential customers, as well as others within your industry, and one which you might certainly consider taking advantage of.