Rage Software Updates WebDesign Editor

Rage Software, a developer and marketer of design and productivity tools for Mac users, has updated its HTML source code editor, WebDesign, to version 2.6. The update includes added support for Web languages, including JavaScript, XML, ASP and VBScript. The company said the update has been in development since August 2004.

"The main focus of this release is improving WebDesign's expandability. WebDesign's main advantage is how much it can be expanded by users with free add-ons available at http://www.ragesw.com/community and with the visual plug-in development environment found on the same site," said Paul Levine, product manager for Canada-based Rage Software.

WebDesign 2.6, Levine said, now allows users to fully customize and expand syntax coloring by creating their own XML-based syntax files. It also works with Document Modes, letting users customize editor options based on whatever language or Web page document they are currently editing.

The latest release also includes a site manager and FTP browser for handling Web site files both locally and remotely. The site-manager function will automatically upload any modified pages to a user's Web server when the user is ready to make changes, Levine said.

Users can download a fully functional trial version with no limitations, up to 21 times, at the Rage software site. WebDesign costs $29.95 and includes one year of free Web hosting.

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Principles of web Design: Content, Accessibility, Presentation.

Designing good websites is not simply a case of throwing a
load of funky graphics at the screen, there are 3 main areas
to consider, here I give a brief overview of these key areas
and explain why they are so important.

Content : Content is king. The whole point of the majority of
websites is to provide content, be it text, pictures, mp3s or
whatever to users. When you build a site the first thing you
should consider is the content. How much is there likely to be,
how often will it change, what content do you want the visitor
drawn to first and so on. Design the site to fit the content,
dont create a site first and then try to decide where to put
everything, it simply wont work.

Accessibility : There is no point in content if people cant
access it. Furthermore you do not want to limit accessibility
to those people fortunate enough to have the latest browsers
& plugins, with high speed connections and with no special
requirements. The World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) publish
guidelines to aid developers in creating standards compliant
websites by writing clean, browser-friendly code. They also
provide automated services for checking that your web pages
conform. It is important to note however that compliance with
these guidelines does not automatically ensure your site is
fully accessible to all potential users. The best way to
achieve this is to test your site against the Web Accessibility
Initiatives guidelines. These are purely self-tested and if you
decide your site has passed you can award it with an A, AA or
AAA logo.

Presentation : Presentation has very close connections to
certain areas of the accessibility issue. In particular
good use of colours is important from both viewpoints.
Too many colours makes any site look un-coordinated and messy.
Stick to a few basic colours for text, backgrounds, logos etc
and use different shades of those colours to add depth. Make
sure text colour and background colour are significantly
different to make reading the text nice and easy. Similarly
do not use an array of different fonts, stick to one or two
throughout the site. Serif fonts such as Impact are good for,
surprisingly, making an impact on a visitor whereas sans serif
fonts like verdana are much easier on the eye when reading.
Large blocks of text look very unwelcoming to visitors so try
to avoid them particularly on the homepage, break text into
paragaphs and sections with sub-headers, lists and so forth,
use images where appropriate to give the user a break from reading.

Overview : It is important to note that all three of these
components are vital in creating good sites but the balance
between the three will vary from site to site. Just remember:
Plan the design to fit the content; keep content fresh and
accessible; make the site pleasing to look at and interact with.

Article written by Adam Harding.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

Software Development to Boost Profit

When you first set up a website in the World Wide Web, you may stick to something simple. A beginning website resembles a glossy brochure for your company or expertise. It details your mission, your company history, personnel contact information, and some basic services. This is great for some smaller businesses. In fact in Denver, software development is unnecessary for some very small operations that are essentially operating online to get some additional walk-in business.

But if you run a site that is even slightly more complex than this, software development, Denver and elsewhere, is necessary. Let’s look at some ways in which software development can benefit various companies and their online marketing strategy.

•Email lists. There are some basic programs available online for compiling email addresses of visitors to your website. Some hosting companies offer this benefit when you purchase a managed hosting package. This may be enough for you, but if you want something tailored to your company’s and your clients’ needs, you should look into Denver software development firms. They can analyze your strategy and your site architecture so that you get a software component suited to your professional image, rather than a cookie cutter program for a basic site.

•Opt-in lists. These are very popular today and most companies need to create an incentive for their visitors in order to be trusted with email addresses without a purchase. Work with your software development team to come up with strategies to offer free information products or sample services in exchange for joining opt-in email newsletters and automatic updates.

•Inventory presentation. You might be able to find a basic check out program through your hosting company or you might be able to insert the shopping cart program from a known online provider into your website code. However, a client who expects unique service and quality products will take notice, even subconsciously, of your web design. You can have slick and stylish web graphics and a killer homepage, but if your inventory display and shopping cart system are bare bones, you will lose the effect of that color scheme.

Fortunately, good Denver software development firms can create an inventory presentation and purchasing system to suit not only your special product needs, but also the esthetics of your site. Plus, the customization possibilities are endless. Size, color, style, and pricing are only some of the variants you might want your customers to select at the point of purchase. These elements, as well as quality graphics, are essential to good inventory presentation and effective sales.

•Search feature. Among all the elements that web users cite as a draw or as a deterrent to specific websites, the search feature is always near the top. One of your website’s intentions is to create an online catalog of products, services, and information for potential customers. To do this, they must be able to find what they’re looking for. The problem with most pre-packed search software is its lack of precision in selecting results that are related to the original search terms. So take advantage of professional software development to create search engine software that is tailored to your inventory as well as to your typical client needs.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
This article was written by Sytsma Morris-Reeves. Mr. Morris-Reeves runs NewMediaDenver,an Internet technology company located in downtown Denver, Colorado (www.NewMediaDenver.com). Mr.Morris-Reeves is a highly respected Denver SEO Expert since 10 years, and he constantly develops and stays current with all the latest SEO and Link Building Techniques.

Webdesign Tips: CSS Styling And Layouts

There are many ways of improving the accessibility of your web site to the visitors. The most important one is using the external Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), which has the purpose of separating the structure and presentation of your web site.

You can bring the best out of the use of Cascading Style Sheets by making improvements in the structural coding of your HTML pages. HTML elements must be chosen for their functional purpose and not for their default style attributes. The result is that the code is cleaner and more easily to be maintained. One of the advantages of using the Cascading Style Sheets is that the people who experience readability problems caused by the appearance of a page can choose to view it without the style sheet or, if they know what to do, replace it with their own user-defined style sheet. In order to leave them this option available, you must make your styles to allow overriding. This way, the visitors will feel more comfortable with that particular web site.

The style sheets specific to the media can be linked to a site to take care of the differences in its presentation in numerous browsers. In order to determine how the page will sound in a text-to-speech device, you can link a separate style sheet to it. A print style sheet will allow you to correctly display the content in a printer-optimized version of a page, if the visitor wishes to print the page.

The result of choosing to use Cascading Style Sheets is a real simple way to provide alternative styles of the same page content, addressing almost all common readability problems. For instance, you could offer an option to have the text in a larger text size. You can have no guaranty that this will solve all visual problems, but is a quite simple attempt at providing clear and obvious accessibility features. There is not much effort involved, so give it a try!

Think about the time and resource you can save by using the cascading style sheets. Your site will be quicker to download and use. Well, after all these features we have been talking about, most of you will agree that using the cascading style sheets is a very good thing. Nevertheless, we must never forget about the fact that your site must be just as accessible and easily used when the visitor chooses not to use any style at all.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

Good Things To Know About Website Design

Nowadays, the high quality web design techniques and internet marketing seem to go hand in hand. There is no website which does not have effectiveness as a goal and there is almost no company that does not have a web site to introduce and describe its products. Not to speak about the sites which aim to build up a fully functional and money bringing store! In what web site design is concerned, the sky is the only limit, with design ideas to fulfill any desire a business might have.

The most important thing is that the web site should fit the company like a glove. This is what an effective design is all about! The website should reflect a solid, stable and reliable business. Otherwise, the confidence of the potential buyer will be for ever lost!

Any web site designer must achieve the crucial balance between the interesting graphics and the efficient communication and purchase processing needed to catch every sale opportunity.

Therefore, a web design professional is the best and the most efficient option you�ve got! Give up those ideas of web sites which can be created at home. A web development company can build up your entire web site and you will not have to worry about a single thing. You just provide them with details about your business needs and website desires and they will do the work in a very short period of time! This is because they have already acquired a large amount of experience in the internet marketing field. You will all agree that time is always the essential element in any business!

Internet marketing professionals can update and streamline your site, should it already be up and running, but not bringing the increased customers or profits hoped for. A good internet marketing company prides itself in using the most new and effective products and processes. When a good internet marketing expert works his magic, you will be surprised to see an almost immediate boost in the efficiency of your site. That is in attracting new customers and in keep the existing ones. This is the key to success for any web site! You know how it works: a buyer who is not pleased with the design of a web site will quickly loose interest, no matter what products and services the company is advertising for. So try and avoid this from happening!

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Ecommerce Web Site Design - Nahda Ecommerce Web Site Design -

Website Design: Keep it Simple

Website Design: Keep it Simple One of the keys to a quality
web site is simplicity. You've heard of the KISS principle?
Keep It Simple Silly. This applies doubly for websites.
Design Web Friendly It is inexperience than can make you
want to use every bell and whistle, every feature and every
new trick. It is nice to be able to create complex frames
and tables, use large busy fonts, use flash and animated
GIFs, but will end up with too many features competing
against your message. It's more than likely your audience
is quickly going to be overwhelmed, rather than impressed.
Just because you can create a flashy effect, doesn't mean
you should. Ask yourself if the flashy addition is improving
my page, my design. Decide if there is actual value in the
addition and does it add with this technique? Is this the
best way to communicate my message? A simple design doesn't
necessarily mean uninteresting and dull. Lots of people
confound fancy effects with effective communication. Keeping
it simple means you should think about how people will be
using your pages. Then present your information to them so
it matches their requirements and expectations. Earn their
attention Use technology and effects where appropriate and
where they make for more effective communication. You're not
designing web sites for yourself to look at. You're publishing
a web page because you expect someone to stop by and visit it
- your audience. The more you know about and understand your
audience, the more effective you can gear your communication
and marketing appropriately on your site. Does your audience
still use dial-up service that still relies on slow modems?
Then be aware of file sizes and download times. Are they
expecting to hear your band's music clips? Then you'd better
think about an audio format. Ease of use is critical in web
design, so above all else your site easy to navigate. Many
small factors can quickly add up to create easy paths through
your site. For example, one thing you can do is keep the number
of choices small, that way people are less likely to become
lost in a long list of options. Simple in design is simple
design. Did you know that the average human mind sees five or
fewer items as one group, but when it encounters more than five
items it has to divide them into smaller sub-groups to process
them? It makes sense, then, to try to keep your selections
arranged in groups of five or less. That makes it easier for
your readers to quickly see the options and select one.

Article written by Jason A. Neal.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
graphic design seattle - seattle graphic design

Creative Web Design

When you are thinking about having a website designed, there are a number of things to consider before you get to the creative web design stage. Firstly pre-planning and thinking through exactly what you need your website to do for your business is critically important. What is the role of the site? Is it to sell, generate enquiries, build your brand or act as an online reference point with useful information?

Good functionality is a major consideration - your site needs to be user friendly and easy to navigate. You also need to consider the search engines; it is all very well having a beautifully designed website but if nobody can find it, your creative web design isn't reaching its full potential. Only after tackling these issues does the creative aspect come into play. Some design companies churn out websites using templates, which means they can look very similar and fail to communicate the unique proposition and personality of a company. A truly creative web design will incorporate all these factors without compromising on usability, navigation or sales effectiveness.

YOUR CREATIVE WEB DESIGN CHECKLIST
The following checklist will help you plan your creative web design project. Having clear answers to these questions will help you brief your designer to give you creative web design that gets positive business results:

What are the main objectives for this website?

For example: Increase sales, help existing customers, advertise new promotions/discounts, promote new services or attract new clients.

Who is your target audience?
How can the website be designed to appeal to that target market?
What do you know about them in terms of their age, sex, geographic location, income, aspirations, hopes and fears?

What is your USP (Unique Selling Point)?
What makes your company different from your competitors?
How can the creative web design dramatise this message?

What are the key functions needed for your website?
Do you need ecommerce (shopping baskets)?
Do you need a content management system (allows you to update your website yourself)?
How can it be designed to make it as user friendly as possible?

Content
How many pages will you need and what will they contain?
Do you need help with copywriting?
Do you already have pictures of your product or will you need help with photography / picture research to give a professional look?

What is your budget?
How can you use your funds to the best advantage?

What is your deadline?
Have a clear idea of your timescale.

For more detailed advice and help, have a look at our advice section

Our designers are experienced and knowledgeable in creative web design. We will listen to your individual needs and build you a website that combines creativity and functionality - and we will tailor it to your business needs. We will give you jargon-free advice and continuous support throughout the creative design process.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
www.deckchair.co.uk/creative-designing.php