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Archive for the ‘Web Standards’ Category

How does your website look on mobile devices?

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

We’ve had our iPad for a couple of weeks now, and we love it! With Apple selling one every 3 seconds, expect to see an increasingly large number of your customers visiting your website on a mobile device – be it an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Google Android phone.

With all these different gadgets around, some consideration is needed during the building of your website as to how people will access your information. For example:

  • If your site relies on Flash for content, this is not accessible on the majority of mobile devices. Non-Flash alternatives are available.
  • You will need to check your site works with touchscreen devices – features relying on a “mouseover” will not function.
  • Your site needs to be optimised for speed and layout – visitors using their iPhones want the information quickly and in an easy to read format.

We will be announcing our plans for mobile optimised websites and even native apps for iPhone and Android in the coming weeks.

So if you and your customers love these devices as much as we do, why not speak to Rubious about your website, and see what we can do for you?

Posted in Accessibility, Browsers, Web Standards, Your Website | No Comments »

How the Apple iPad will affect the way we make websites

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Last week Steve Jobs announced the impending release of the Apple iPad. The 9.7 inch touchscreen display will make it a marvellous new way to browse the web. But does this make any difference to the way we make websites?

With their hugely popular iPhone and iPod touch, Apple has transformed the way people see smart phones. Even if you do not own an Apple device, many similar devices (e.g. The Palm Pre, Android, future BlackBerry devices) use the same core technologies to browse the web (a browser called WebKit, on which Safari is based). Where Apple leads, others follow, and you can expect more news on tablet computing devices to spring up from other companies. Now is the time to make sure you are ready for this big shift in browsing the web.

If the iPad takes off and becomes a big player in the handheld computing market, then there are a few things you will need to take into consideration when getting your website designed:

It’s a big iPod touch, but it runs the full web

Unlike the iPhone and iPod touch, the iPad is not intended to run mobile-optimised sites. With its 1024×768 resolution, the iPad is fully capable of displaying full web pages. Along with its ability to zoom in with multitouch gestures, there will be no need to scale your website down at all.

All of the websites designed by Rubious are designed to be displayed at a minimum of 1024×768 resolution, so we already have the right workflow to accommodate the iPad’s screen.

One consideration which is worth thinking about is the iPad’s lack of any “mouse hover” . Many websites are designed with drop-down menus which require the user to hover their mouse over the item in order to see the entire list. These will not work on the iPad, as there is no way to “hover” on a touch screen.

The iPad does not support Flash

The debate over whether this is a waste of an opportunity or a huge success for open web standards is rife on the internet, although our opinion is that this is fantastic news. With Flash not being very accessible, search-engine friendly or efficient, we have never been big proponents of it, and have limited our usage of Flash to simple website animations and video. With the iPad using the Safari browser, which is one of the world’s most advanced browsers and has support for great javascript animations and HTML5 video, the need to use Flash on your website will be greatly reduced.

What this means is that anybody with an all-Flash website needs to seriously consider making an HTML alternative site. This should already have been done for accessibility reasons, and because the iPhone and iPod touch do not support Flash either, but if the iPad becomes popular your website could soon get left behind.

It also means that anybody who is in the market for a new website should choose not to rely heavily on Flash, and to try and future proof their site with technologies such as HTML5 video.

The iPad uses the Safari browser and Mail app

These are the browser and mail client of choice at Rubious, and so we are very familiar with them. All our websites look great in Safari, and our email marketing is perfect for Mail.

If your web designer does not use a Mac, they might not be familiar with these applications and so they may have never tested how your site looks and functions in Safari. Now is the time to make those checks. If needed, you can download Safari for Windows but nothing beats the experience of running it on a Mac.

Conclusion

This is an exciting time for website developers as more people will gain a handheld web browser the web will continue to grow and become even more of an important part in people’s lives. If you want to know how your website will fair come March when the iPad is released, contact Rubious for some advice.

Posted in Browsers, News, Web Standards, Your Website | No Comments »

True fonts on the web: what @font-face means for web design

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

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At last, a new feature is available on two major web browsers which gives typographic freedom to designers. If you are using Safari 4 or the new Firefox 3.5, you can now view fonts specified by the web designer — even if they are not installed on your system.

The web was initially created to share technical papers amongst scientists across the globe. Formatting these papers was a simple matter: hypertext documents were created to contain simple text with links and references.

But now designers want more control over these documents. We want the web to be beautiful. And the latest browsers include fantastic new ways to beautify the web: opacity, rounded corners, text-shadows, drop-shadows, and now true fonts.

Take a look at a magazine, brochure or leaflet that you have nearby. Imagine if the designers of this leaflet were limited to just a handful of fonts, all of which are used on every other piece of published material. No way to innovate and impress the readers with beautiful typography. This is how the web has been since its inception.

Sure, there have been work-arounds to try to include fonts such as replacing text with images or with flash. But these are often slow to load, not standards compliant, or have drawbacks such as not being able to copy the text or show it in different sizes. The browsers have been holding back the web but that is all over with the latest release of Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5.

Click the links below for some great examples of beautiful typography. Please note that you must be using a modern browser to view these pages in the intended format: you can download Safari 4 or Firefox 3.5 for free, and dramatically improve your experience on the web.

Here at Spring Bud we will design our websites with @font-face in mind.
Contact us for advice on how to add some style to your website.

Links:

Posted in Browsers, Web Standards | No Comments »

Top 5 SEO myths debunked

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Everybody is interested in getting their website on the first page of Google, and today Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most misunderstood and misused aspects of web design. Here I will debunk some of the myths which resurface time and again.
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Posted in SEO, Tips, Web Standards | No Comments »

Accessibility in web design

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Many people see accessibility as a need to give those with disabilities special treatment. They consider it an additional expense that will not give much tangible improvement on their sales, and so ignore it completely.

In actual fact, accessibility is about treating everyone– no matter what their ability–the same. It also needn’t cost any extra – by creating websites with accessibility in mind you can write your code to the standards and have it accessible with no extra effort. Bolting on accessibility features as an afterthought (such as builders adding a ramp to a building which previously only had stairs) can be inefficient and expensive. Websites created by Spring Bud always have accessibility in mind.

Some of the common mistakes which hinder accessibility:

  • Building websites with tables/frames – two old practices which create complicated and messy code – screen readers have trouble understanding the order to read things in and the invalid code causes problems
  • Using images with no text alternative, often websites will be created as a large image which is chopped up – text in images cannot be read by screen readers, and cannot be enlarged for people with poor vision.
  • Using Flash for websites – although Adobe are making great strides to improve the accessibility of Flash, it still cannot compare to plain text. Additionally, people using older versions of screen readers (they are expensive!) will not have the latest updates that allow Flash to be readable.

An added benefit is that Google and other search engines act just like disabled viewers – they are not currently able to see text in images, they struggle reading Flash content and prefer HTML valid web pages. This means in ensuring your website is accessible you are also improving your search engine ranking.

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Posted in Accessibility, Web Standards | No Comments »