Browser Considerations When Desiging for the Web

I don't know what's worse when designing for the web, the fact that there is now 38+ different web browsers out there or that Internet Explorer still seems to need the most work arounds. You always need to be aware of what browser (including the version) that your target audience is primarily going to use when designing for the web.

According to W3 Counter Internet Explorer 6 still has the lion's share of the market:



According to my blog stats Internet Explorer 6 is the minority:




It's interesting to see that Firefox v 1.X is the second biggest web browser used by F-Stop Blues readers. You should always do some user interface research before designing for the web, especially if you are changing or tweaking a current design.

(original link: Smashing Magazine article)

Grade Your Website For Better Search Engine Optomization

With Website Grader you can enter your website or blog url and it will report back 'scores' on how well your url performs on all sorts of different SEO (search engine optimization) metrics.

My blog here at www.fstop-blues.com scored 78% if I remember correctly. Two useful things that it told me was that 1) my meta tags were all default (I think because I switched to the new Blogger beta template a while ago and didn't notice) and 2) I don't have a 301 redirect from fstop-blues.com to www.fstop-blues.com and that could be affecting my inbound link ranking. (Read more about how to make a 301 redirect file at isitebuild)

A very useful tool to use and best of all it's free!

(original link: Guy from How to Change the World)

Ruby,Ruby,Ruby

Most of my programming experience is with embedded hardware so I don't often get excited about the latest and greatest Web 2.0 thingy but I'm really getting into Ruby on Rails. (Yes, I have been living under a rock) I did get into Java for awhile , doing some specific engineering applications but I quickly burned out when I tried to port to the Web. Keeping up with the framework and standards - the Web got sloppy in my opinion.

And then comes along Ruby on Rails. It's so simple, so easy - it's like the first time I wrote a Perl program. I'm just getting into Ruby on Rails so we'll see what I make of it but so far I'm digging it.  If you know of any good Ruby on Rails resource sites then leave me a shout out in the comments.

Working on High Quality Flash Video

As you can see from my last two posts I am experimenting with using higher quality flash video on my site by hosting it myself. I'm still trying to get it to work properly but if you are looking to do the same thing on your site I will give you the 2 minute tutorial to get it done. (This is the site I found that pretty much details it all out for you)

1. To encode your video to flash from Windows Movie Maker, save it as a avi and then use the free Riva flash encoder. This tool has a really easy to use interface to convert your video file to a flash file. It also comes with a flash viewer so you can see what you have converted. The only downside is that it only supports certain video formats.



2. Now that you have a flash file, you need to put it up on your website. But for people to be able to view it, you need to have a flash player on your website. FlowPlayer is a free and open source flash player that you can put on your website. It has a lot of features like being able to add your own skin and looks great.




The only thing about using FlowPlayer is that it can be a challenge to figure out how to actually embed your flash files so they can be played on your site. I'm still working on this for my site and will let you know what I find out.