The first thing that one needs if he wants to step into the Internet marketing is to have a website of his own where he can develop and present his idea and business proposals as well. To start a website you need a professional web designing company that offers you high end web design as well as help you through the search engine optimization contents to get published so that more and more traffic is generated to your website. The website is your online face and that means that seeing your website people will judge your work and experience. Not only the web design but the ease and convenience that you offer at your website for your visitors, will make them stay and come back.

Since website will set an impression of your business and efficiency, you will definitely like to have it designed in such a way that the impression in the visitors’ mind is notable and long lasting. For this you should keep in mind few points so that your website becomes attractive and useful. Since real estate is a business in which large investments are involved, your website should be transparent and easy for buyers. Along with a site’s name and appearance, your website should maintain search engine optimization also as it is very important for generating traffic to your website.

Web design for real estate website take a special skill as it is different from other web site designing styles. Also you should choose such web design services for real estate that offers sent percent satisfaction and even helps you support and uphold your business. So it is better you do some research work and choose the right company or person who not only designs your website attractively and professional looking, it also supports with latest techniques and information regarding web development and marketing strategies. You should put emphasis on your experience in this field and try to provide a sample of your work along with the client’s feedback.

While designing your website keep your database well organized and categorized so that when people visit your website they find exactly what they were looking for and a real helpful site. Now when your website is designed you need to concentrate on search engine optimization and get associated with such companies that will help you get top rankings in the search engines pages. This ranking is a real help in generating heavy traffic to your website which in turn results in flourishing your business.

Those who are engaged in online marketing know very well the importance of Internet marketing strategies. These are the tactics to develop and propagate your business on a worldwide platform. Today with immense use and popularity of Internet, it is very easy and cost effective to reach maximum number of people in minimum time and cost with the help of Internet. If you are involved in real estate business you can approach a company that is designed for custom web solutions.

Importance of high-end web design and search engine optimization cannot be ignored and disregarded. In fact both have their own importance and at any cost the company or the individual involved in Internet marketing should have a good and appealing website as that is considered as the effective and persuasive online portfolio of the individual or the company. Once you have developed this you can explore more and more strategies to enhance and sustain your business’s overall objectives related to marketing.

The website represents the company, sells its name, attracts more visitors, creates further business leads, promotes sales and services and so on. If you too want to prepare a website that is well designed and attractive and at the same time easy to navigate and full of relevant information, you should contact a company that works on professional web design projects. There are companies that will take the whole and sole responsibility of promoting your business and services.

In fact whether it is designing of the website or SEO content development the main intention is to attract visitors and generate more and more traffic so that it promotes sales and the concerned business. For this you need to select company that offers high-end web services and uses a state-of-the-art content management system to fulfill your dreams and aim. In fact this system is a collection of procedures that is applied to manage the workflow in a mutual environment.

There are web designing companies that make use of the latest technologies and they make sure that their designers use creative approach to design unique and specific website up to your satisfaction. They also assure to bring your website to the top rank of all the search engines and distribute your products or listings throughout the Internet world. There are companies that work for specific regions like Boston Internet marketing service, Boston web design or Boston SEO company and so on. Now it is up to your requirement and desire what you choose.

However the Internet is filled with lots of services and before dealing with any of them, you should get assured of the legitimacy of the company. This is important, because there are lots of fake individuals and Spam companies spread on Internet and to look for a genuine one, one needs some time, effort and research work. Look for an authentic service provider that deals with varieties of businesses and has a successful track record. It is also important that it gives you 100% satisfaction regarding the service and helps you promote your business as well.

Importance of high-end web design and search engine optimization cannot be ignored and disregarded. In fact both have their own importance and at any cost the company or the individual involved in Internet marketing should have a good and appealing website as that is considered as the effective and persuasive online portfolio of the individual or the company. Once you have developed this you can explore more and more strategies to enhance and sustain your business’s overall objectives related to marketing.

The website represents the company, sells its name, attracts more visitors, creates further business leads, promotes sales and services and so on. If you too want to prepare a website that is well designed and attractive and at the same time easy to navigate and full of relevant information, you should contact a company that works on professional web design projects. There are companies that will take the whole and sole responsibility of promoting your business and services.

In fact whether it is designing of the website or SEO content development the main intention is to attract visitors and generate more and more traffic so that it promotes sales and the concerned business. For this you need to select company that offers high-end web services and uses a state-of-the-art content management system to fulfill your dreams and aim. In fact this system is a collection of procedures that is applied to manage the workflow in a mutual environment.

There are web designing companies that make use of the latest technologies and they make sure that their designers use creative approach to design unique and specific website up to your satisfaction. They also assure to bring your website to the top rank of all the search engines and distribute your products or listings throughout the Internet world. There are companies that work for specific regions like Boston Internet marketing service, Boston web design or Boston SEO company and so on. Now it is up to your requirement and desire what you choose.

However the Internet is filled with lots of services and before dealing with any of them, you should get assured of the legitimacy of the company. This is important, because there are lots of fake individuals and Spam companies spread on Internet and to look for a genuine one, one needs some time, effort and research work. Look for an authentic service provider that deals with varieties of businesses and has a successful track record. It is also important that it gives you 100% satisfaction regarding the service and helps you promote your business as well.

After a long delay I finally found some time to write a new post. This time about CSS. I believe may people will find these tips useful, not only the beginners but also some experiences programmers since there is no limit to perfection

BTW most of the professional CSS editors have built in font collections. Enough of notepad programming already

Hello Everyone,

css

After a long delay I finally found some time to write a new post. This time about CSS. I believe may people will find these tips useful, not only the beginners but also some experiences programmers since there is no limit to perfection

1. Use global resets

Global reset is used for more or less similar website rendering in the different browsers. Different browsers have different default values for various elements. Global resets help you fight with these issues.

2. Differentiate id and class in elements

Id attribute specifies that this element is all alone – unique, for example there is only one header on a website. Class however describes a few elements with similar style and preferences.
3. Use short preferences

Using short preferences values is very convenient. Doing so will also reduce you CSS file size.

4. Organize your CSS files

A good alternative to dividing files is better commenting inside the actual files. It makes your code easier to read and edit.

5. Use CSS frameworks and toolboxes

Doing so will help you save time. You can use the existing framewfork or edit it to make it wok better with your project.

6. Avoid redundancy

You all know that tags td (tbody/thead/tr) is only allowed within the table tag. The same goes for li and ui. So instead of:

table td { … }   ul li { … }

you can write:

td { … }   li { … }

This is a very easy case, but I think you got the idea.

7. Don’t overuse !important

This flag raises the priority of the described preference, so if you have a contradiction down below the preference with !important will be prioritized. Some beginners like to abuse !important but remember you can always replace it with stricter inheritance.

8. Differentiate media types

Media types with connected CSS files allow you to correct website rendering on different platforms (monitor, cellphone, printer). Using media types is cross-referenced with using different files, using these will make your website more accessible.

9. Specify multiple fonts

Every time you specify fonts make sure to specify more then one since different platforms use different fonts.

font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

BTW most of the professional CSS editors have built in font collections. Enough of notepad programming already

10. Use tools to check CSS in the browser. it will make your work easier and faster.

I hope everyone found the article useful. I hope it will make your coding better (at least a little)

Please feel free to add more points in the comments!

The rumor has it that the information leaked from the developers themselves breaking the NDA. Official release will be announced on MIX09.

You can download the program here

The preview version only has different IE version and free. The picture provided is for Expression Web 3 and is not a free option.

Hey web design gurus, you really need to drop this kind of archaisms….

The material I placed here is written in a really easy format so even a non-professional will understand this.

DIV style document structure

Once upon a time it was really easy to use tables for slicing HTML documents – block style just did not allow using some mocks. But once the CSS came to life table slicing became a symbol of retrogress.

Major disadvantages of table slicing:

1. Tons of repetitive code
2. Bad terrible code readability
3. Serious problems displaying the page on the mobile devices
4. Highly restricted page-load order

Tables are included in HTML only for displaying table data, the document structure has to be displayed using DIV blocks. No exceptions.

Simple example of table slicing :

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td class="header" colspan="2">HEADER!</td></tr><tr><td class="content">CONTENT!</td><td class="sidebar">SIDEBAR!</td></tr><tr><td class="footer" colspan="2">FOOTER!</td></tr>

The same example sliced with DIV blocks:

<div id="header">HEADER!</div><div id="wrapper"><div id="content">CONTENT!</div><div id="sidebar">SIDEBAR!</div></div>

<div id="footer">FOOTER!</div></table>

It is easy to see the difference in the amount of code and It’s readability.

In the last example it doesn’t matter where the sidebar is located (right or left): one way or the other the content part will load first.

Semantics of the pages

This is important for any HTML document in general and especially for the content part. Using the correct tags, titles, paragraphs, (check)lists is equally importaing for search engine indexation and in case if the page is looked at from a mobile device of non CSS browser.
Most of the professional web design firms will make sure your content is accurate and linked correctly as well. For example if you crate special landing pages for different destinations make sure they respond to the correct values:

Boston Web Design or  Washington Conversational Photographers

Minimalistic coding

Simpler code is a sign of professionalism. (Please be aware: I’m talking about code functionality and code flexibility). I can write a whole article on this topic but here I will only demonstrate a simple example :

<div id="category"><h1 class=”category-header”>Topics</h1><p class=”left”>Topic cloud</p><ul class=”category-list”><li><a class=”category-link”  href=”#”>construction</a></li><li><a class=”category-link” href=”#”>plumbing</a></li><li><a class=”category-link” href=”#”>oil pumping</a></li></ul></div>

Things in bold are redundant. <h1>, <p>, <ul> and <a> in this block are used for look and feel customization using CSS. But this is a bad code, it was written by someone who is not very familiar with CSS.

You can specify the style like this:

.category-link {properties}

And here is the better HTML version:
<br><br><div id="category"><br><h1<strong></strong>>Topics</h1><br><p<strong></strong>>Topic cloud</p><br><ul><br><li><a<strong> </strong> href=”#”>construction</a></li><br><li><a href=”#”>plumbing</a></li><br><li><a <strong></strong>href=”#”>oil pumping</a></li><br></ul><br><br>
The style will look like this:

#category li a {properties}</div>

The change does not seem very important but it will boost you page load speed and optimize the code for future changes.

Clear names of structural blocks

Some people think of this as a good practice but I believe that giving proper and clead names to structure blocks is essential in modern coding. Most of the sites have these four parts :

1. Header
2. Content
3. Sidebar
4. Footer

These Parts respond to four parts of the website page. Since this kind of layout was so common HTML v5 officially announced implementation of the following tags: <header>, <footer> and many others. Now since we have some tibe befor HTML v5 will be required the following structure is considered to be professional:

<div id="header“>Head</div><div id=”wrapper“><div id=”content”>Text</div><div id=”sidebar”>Side_content</div></div><div id=”footer“>foot_note</div>

Comments after closing block tags

Sometimes you can see the following elements of the page code:

</div></div></div>

Even if there are spaces in between it’s really hard to tell which div is closing and where. Even the smallest changes (especially editing the CMS settings or design slicing) require this kind of knowledge.

The simple solution: place a text comment near each div notifying of closing of a certain block:

</div></div> <!-- /sidebar --></div> <!-- /wrapper -->

Correct use of float-blocks

Block-style of slicing has many advantages, but there are a few disadvantages as well.The main disadvantage is about the floating of the elements around them. Such blocks usually have a preference (float: left or float: right). If blocks like that are different in the height then the following element in the HTML starts to float around one of the blocks. For the correct anti-floating this logic is the most common:

<div id="content"> <!-- parent block -->[...]<div style=”float:left”>some content</div><div style=”float:left”>another content</div><div style=”clear:both”></div> <!– «reset block –>[...]</div> <!– /content –>

In the other words we place another ‘resetting’ block-style element that does not allow moving the following blocks (marked with bold).

This approach has only one chance for existence:in case if it is not possible to set width of the parent block.

In case if it is possible to set the width of the parent’s block then it is more correct to skip the resetting block but for the parent block set the following CSS-parameter:

#content {width:[width]; overflow:hidden}

There are other techniques such as using pseudo-class :after or height:0 but they are much less convenient and much uglier in my opinion.

Use of background pictures

You need to use background bpictures instead of regular pictures for the correct display of images in the mobile devices. Example: Pictures that exist in the header are the background of the header blocks .

No background picture – show background color

Sometimes the website assumes the background color. Let’s assume there is a blue block on the page and lets assume that there are links that are going over the block. If the links are in the white color. If the image is not going to lad then the links will not be visible.

Simplifying intereactive element

Using the mouseover effect became very common use of making the website more interactive. Here is a hint. You can use one image instead of four by implementing thre following logic. Please see the image below:

So on ‘mouseover’ you can move the picture 50% down to animate the folder. Using this techique allows you to unload sthe server and make the page load faster.

Use of CSS hacks

This is a controvercial subject. Sometimes you cant do it without hacks… Especialluy in Internet Explorer 6 (god_send) but I’m convinced that you can just keep connecting separate CSS files.

Use this as a reference:

<!--[if lte IE 6]><link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”[адрес]/style_for_ie6.css”/><![endif]–><!–[if lte IE 7]><link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”[адрес]/style_for_ie7.css”/><![endif]–>

I’m sure this list is far from being complete. In my opinion these are the most important elements.

I will list here a few free tools that allow building dynamic graphs in your projects. All of the tools are very easy to tweak.

.

.

.

1. API Google charts

This service offers many different choices in various diagram building: linear, circular, columnar, Venn’s diagrams, diffusion diagrams and others. Besides, has many parameters for fine tuning of your graphs

2. PHP and SWF diagrams

Using this tool you can create dinamic diagrams. In order for the tool to work you need to have flash and PHP installed.

3. Open flash chart

4. Simile Timeplot

This service is based on DHTML and AJAX. The service allows you to create functional graphs using minimal ammount of scripts on your server.

Enjoy

Alright, let’s go:

1. Smooth color change

Very cool thing, you got to install Colour Animation plugin and code:

$(document).ready( function() {
$(“.mainMenu a, .articleTitle a”).mouseover( function() {
$(this).animate({color: “#cc4e4e”}, {queue:false, duration:250 });
}).mouseout( function() {
$(this).animate({color: “#0e8db7″}, { queue:false, duration:350});
});

});

2. Check all checkboxes of certain object

// context = id of the element checkboxes inside of which we need selected
function checkall(context){
$(“#”+context).find(“input[@type$='checkbox']“).each(function(){
this.checked = checked;
});
}

3. The amount of elements selected

$(‘element’).size();

4. Radiobutton status

var var_name = $(“input[@name='radio_name']:checked”).val();

5. Class switch

$.fn.swapClass = function(c1, c2){
return this.each(function(){
var t = $(this);
(!t.is(‘.’+c1)) ?
t.addClass(c1).removeClass(c2) : t.addClass(c2).removeClass(c1);
});
}

or shorter:

$(‘#element’).toggleClass(’selected’);

6. Check for window size change

function doSomething() {
alert(“I finished changing the window size”);
};

var resizeTimer = null;
$(window).bind(‘resize’, function() {
if (resizeTimer) clearTimeout(resizeTimer);
resizeTimer = setTimeout(doSomething, 100);
});

Well so far this is all I got. If you guys have any snippets you wouldn’t mind sharing, please submit them below! Snippet topic is limited by client-side web applications (JS, CSS, HTML)

Have a great day!

For the starters we are going to need jQuery 1.2.6 and jQuery UI for it. After that we are going to need togo the plugin developer’s site and download it.

The plugin has the following variables:

* Direction: the direction of the flip (tb, bt, rl, lr)
* bgColor: the color of the of the block in the beginning of the movement
* color: the color of the block in the end of the movement
* speed: the speed of the movement
* content: defines new content of the block after the movement (text, html, or jQuery object)

So in order to unfold verticaly a block named id=”myBlock” in a half of a second. and to have it in white first and then turn it into black  and then in the end to change the content of the block with to ic=”myNewBlock” then we are going to use this code:

$('myBlock').flip({
    direction: tb,
    bgColor: #FFFFF,
    color: #000000,
    speed: 500,
    content: $('myNewBlock')
});

OK, now let’s do something more interesting. Let’s say we got four cards. originally the card is upside down. By a mouse click the card should flip.

HTML

<ul class="playing-cards">
	<li>
    	<div class="card1 back"></div>
    </li>
	<li>
    	<div class="card2 back"></div>
    </li>
	<li>
    	<div class="card4 back"></div>
    </li>
	<li>
    	<div class="card3 back"></div>
    </li>
</ul>

CSS

ul.playing-cards {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}

ul.playing-cards li {
	margin: 0 30px 20px 0;
	padding: 0;
	float: left;
	width:144px;
	height: 209px;
	list-style-type: none;
	cursor: pointer;
}

ul.playing-cards li .card1.back,
ul.playing-cards li .card2.back,
ul.playing-cards li .card3.back,
ul.playing-cards li .card4.back {
	width:144px;
	height: 209px;
	background: url(images/back.gif) 0 0 no-repeat;
}

ul.playing-cards li .card1 {
	width:144px;
	height: 209px;
	background: url(images/1.gif) 0 0 no-repeat;
}

ul.playing-cards li .card2 {
	width:144px;
	height: 209px;
	background: url(images/2.gif) 0 0 no-repeat;
}

ul.playing-cards li .card3 {
	width:144px;
	height: 209px;
	background: url(images/3.gif) 0 0 no-repeat;
}

ul.playing-cards li .card4 {
	width:144px;
	height: 209px;
	background: url(images/4.gif) 0 0 no-repeat;

JavaScript

$(document).ready(function() {
	var speed = 150;
	function backFront(el) {
		el.toggleClass('back');
	}

	function rotateCard(el, sp) {
		el.flip({
			direction: 'rl',
			bgColor: '#FFFFFF',
			color: '#e4bcc1',
			speed: sp
		});
		setTimeout(backFront(el), sp);
	}

	function bindRotation() {
		$('.playing-cards .back').each(function() {
			$(this).click(function(e) {
				rotateCard($(this), speed);
			});
		});
	}	

	bindRotation();

});

Here is your result… beautiful isn’t it ?

Knowing that creating a website is not usually cheap let’s see what we can do to make the tool work for us. Declaring our website a tool we need to understand what kind of holes we want to get.

Let’s assume we are a manufacturing company and we produce and sell some merchandise. The target group of the website consist of two: consumers and dealers. Both groups are crucially important for the company: if the consumers don’t want our merchandise the dealers will not order it and if the dealers won’t order the merchandise then our consumers will not be able to buy it no matter how much they want it. On our website we are going to try to satisfy both groups.
Step one is always forecasting the steps of the visitor starting form the moment we get a visitor and the steps he has to take to get to the needed information.

Let’s see another example: Macy’s. Even if you have never seen their site before would you assume they sell clothing online. Obviously they know that by not selling clothing online they will loose market share. So it’s actually worse for Macy’s not to have online store then not to have a website at all.

Alright, let’s go back to our dealers and consumers. All what the dealers want is to be able to contact you at any time: phone, email, contact form on every page or at least visible link from every page.

But is there anything else we can do for a dealer to make him pick up the phone? Let’s think what do we know about our dealers…  The first thing they want to know is their potential profit when they work with certain merchandise. If this dealer already got similar merchandise from someone else then we need to offer more competitive terms and bonuses in order to convince him to switch. So this way we need to outline this information in easy to read format: pricing, payment terms, list of bonuses and discounts, logistics, and so on…

Let’s now think about our consumers. Our task is to convince the visitor that our merchandise is better then our competitor’s. Since our merchandise is not ‘basic need/first priority’, it’s crucial to position it to every niche of the market. We are interested in competent consumers and that is why we are going to offer them an interesting dialog, overall information flow will be diplomatic and ‘on the case’.

The main point of the website for users is to create brand loyalty. This term means creating certain feelings and emotions that respond to a brand, it mans that we need to make the website personal and interactive. We need to allow users to leave comments and be heard. It’s also important to use pictures of people on the site corresponding with our target group.

If our merchandise is not sold on every corner we need to place addresses, directions and maps to the retail locations.

Implementing the e-commerce engine on the site is also crucial although it does cost money and resources it needs to be done in the similar fashion: target group, bonuses, easy to use, fast.
Let’s outline the plan (or a list of questions that needs to be answered in order for our website to make useful ‘holes’ vs. being an eye-candy)

1.    What kind of merchandise/services we are going to offer on our website?
2.    Who are the people on the other side of the screen? What is important for them and what do they like?
3.    What do we expect form the user? What kind of activity our users are most likely to engage in on the website?
4.    What kind of information and what abilities we need to offer on the website in order to convince people to spend money on our merchandise?
5.    How are we going to track the results?

The next step should be preparing the client (crating the content and illustrations), after that we need to create website prototype. After that, and YES, only after that we can start working on the website design.

By doing this web-studio and the client can refer to the main aims of the business and make implementations accordingly vs. adding random features on the site. The most important part is that the website must integrate with the client’s business model, interact with him, add and optimize business processes and not just being a visit card.