Flash is a very misunderstood and misrepresented part of SEO. Designers and even developers tend to love it and SEOs try to avoid it like the plague. I tend to fall into the latter side of things (no big shocker since I’m an SEO) but I do believe that Flash can be utilized in a way that will have your entire web team singing Kumbaya in no time.
Like any conflict, it all comes down to compromise. Finding the happy medium.
First things first, what is a wireframe? Wireframe: A basic visual guide used in interface design, to suggest the structure of an interface and relationships between its pages. Think of it as a detailed blueprint of a building, showing things such as fire escapes, rooms, and layout.
Wireframes over time have become the starting point for pretty much any custom website design/interface I make. There are many different options when it comes to making wireframes. You can use wireframe programs, mock them up in Photoshop, etc. the list goes on and on. But I find the best, and fastest way to get things done is to draw it out with a good old pencil and paper. With pencil and paper you can quickly make changes, write down notes and things along these lines. It’s both fast and easy.
VANOC commissioned an awesome website for this historic event. Everything from the art to the technology is extremely well done. Here’s quick roundup of the noteworthy stuff.
Great layout, great design: The content organization and navigation is intuitive: find the sport, scores, venue, read the news, etc. It appears cluttered, but it’s got a lot to do! But more fun is the design. Notice the modern lineart used in the large backgrounds (peaking out the right side of the content) and through the header. The sport featured is random on the home page, and sport-specific on the sport portals. This original art is seen all throughout graphics at the venues and in associated advertising. Watch for it on the boards in the hockey and curling highlights we’ll be seeing for some time.
Today, I was wondering how I could ever search for something if Google didn’t exist and I asked myself, “How do I look for answers without using Google?”
I certainly wanted to answer my own question really bad so I dug up a few worthy search engines out there that can be my alternative to Google search.
Here are some of my early favorites (in no order):
No introduction is needed for the 3rd largest website in the world.
A plain desktop can really kill creativity, and there is nothing good about that. This is why I have made this list of 10 websites to search for some killer desktop graphics to get your creative juices flowing!
Using Vector Smart Objects in Photoshop can save a great deal of time. When a designer spends less time operating his technology, he has more time for his creative. Vector Smart Objects are embedded objects in a PhotoShop file that are edited elsewhere; they are representations of outside elements, used on your Photoshop canvas. Creative Suite has at once eliminated the lack of vector opportunities in previous PhotoShop versions, and integrated their powerhouse art applications.
Just enter the below script onto your browser’s address bar and hit ENTER:
javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);
Restart your browser and go to Google.com, you should see the newly redesigned Google.com (I tried this on both Firefox 3.5.5 and Google Chrome 3.0.195.33)
It looks awesomely clean and I love it.
The last three computer screens I’ve purchased are 1920 pixels across, the new 27” iMac is 2560 across. Designers often hear “make the design fit the screen”. This is not a reasonable request and it’s made without understanding the variability and indeed the nature of screen resolutions.
But what about making your design 100% of the browser width? This is no problem technically; just let the design expand horizontally as far as it will go and make sure the content still works at low resolutions. But we almost never see it in modern web design.
“Please move that box up so the page does not scroll.” The web designer then reaches for his canned “everyone will see this differently…” response. The term above the fold comes from print, where desktop publishers and editors can reliably determine priority placement for best content. The notion holds on the web: the designer needs to make the right impression above the scroll line. The problem is determining that point. And when you play it safe, cater to where you imagine it to be and leave some margin for error, you handcuff your design, and you’ll probably still get it wrong.
Would you trust a web shop with a front page graphic like the one below?
That’s why it is always a good idea to spell check your website before putting it online. Most word processors nowadays has built in spell-checker and when in doubt, always ask someone to proofread your site. Especially if you are selling cheap websites. It makes your visitors wonder if they will really get what they will pay for.
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