Web Design Business and Marketing

I follow several blogs that always have interesting stuff to say about web and design (you can view the list on the right). One post I just read was by Rich Quick over at Web Design Book. The blog was whether or not we as web designers should still develop for 800 x 600 screen resolutions. You can read the blog here: Is it time to stop supporting 800 x 600?

I follow Cameron Moll’s website as well and a while back he had a few good articles talking about the support for 800 x 600.

Optimal width for 1024px resolution? and Gridding the 960

Here are some Browser Display Statistics, which is note worthy information.

These other blogs also prove a point about the grid system and how many sections the actual dimension can be divided up into. Quote taken from Cameron’s blog below:

I’ve been using 960 for some time now, as it’s slightly smaller than full width, and it’s divisible by 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 16 (imagine the grid possibilities).

I made the decision to stop supporting 800 x 600 design about the beginning of the year (I guess I did accomplish one of my new year resolutions). Even designing at this resolution I have clients asking me to design something outside of this area that is pleasing to the eye. One of my clients had a 24 inch monitor and when I went over to his office to view my design it looked empty, but it also didn’t help that he was running his resolution at 100000000 x 10000000 j/k.

A List Apart conducted a survey for web design professionals. According to A List Apart the findings they presented on the survey have never been seen before, because until now, no one has ever conducted public research to learn the facts of our profession. Visit Findings From the Web Design Survey to download their survey. I myself took this survey and was curious about their findings. Over 33,000 responses were collected for this survey.

I have been reading like crazy lately. I have just acquired a thirst for knowledge like I have never had before. Soon I will be adding a currently reading section on my blog and also list books I have read and recommend. From time to time I will also give my review on a book that I have read.

The book I just finished was Mobile Web Design Book which is an e-book written by Cameron Moll. The book recently became available in print.

The book was an easy read and Cameron made it easy to understand with pictures of different phones that were being tested. I never really learned to read and get the books with pictures anyways When I bought the e-book I initially thought that I was going to receive loads of code information I needed to get on my way. Though there was plenty of helpful code information, the book was something more than I expected. It is about a way of thinking. I tend to ask the question “Who is your target audience?” when I am dealing with clients and the same has to be asked of mobile users. Who are these mobile users? How will they be accessing the mobile web? and for what? Questions like these came up in the back of my head as I read through Cameron’s book and his book helped make that connection. One example that Cameron pointed out was that a mobile web user is more than likely holding coffee in one hand and his phone in the other to access the web. Now what information do you want to give that person? My answer is something quick, efficient and relative.

I don’t want to give too much information about the book. It was a great read and worth the money spent $19.00. If you do web design or if your company is looking to go mobile this book will help the way you think and gives you some code insight.

Resizing images can be daunting. We provide a content management system for mostly every website we do. The content management system completed now is just version 1.0 and we are starting the works on version 2.0.

One of the things we train our clients is the resizing of photos. When you upload a 2000px wide photo and only mess with the dimensions, it still loads as a 2000px wide photo. The picture needs to be resized at the dimension that it will be used at. Most of the time we suggested using a program called IfranView. Sometimes after coaching a client over at their office or on the phone it was still a difficult program to grasp. I usually use Photoshop to resize my images but I don’t expect the client to have such a program. IfranView is free but can be difficult to understand if you are not use to resizing images.

After talking with a client on the phone I did a quick google search and found about the easiest image resizer I have seen. After showing this to the client she thanked me for the find and I thought I should post it here for others to use as well. The name of the program is called Web Resizer. You upload the photo you want to resize, enter the dimensions you want it to be and it will even crop it for you.

The reason I like the crop function is because it is hard to explain to clients that you can’t just enter the exact dimensions on every photo because it will distort the image. A 10 px by 10 px photo can not be resized to 5px by 2px without looking funky. After uploading the image and processing the new size it will give you a link to download the new image. This is a great free easy to use image resizer and is worth bookmarking or noting.