Ben Savage recently wrote an article on VentureBeat called “Why HTML5 has provided more tricks than treats in 2012″ criticising what he sees as its low-uptake and over-hype. He quoted Mark Zuckerberg as saying: “The biggest mistake we did as a company (this year) was bet too much on HTML5.”
In this post I’ll explain why I think neither have got it quite right.
If you also think the Zuck’s got it wrong and want to learn how to use HTML5, try our HTML5 Course which goes great with our CSS3 Training for designing sites using the most recent standards for the web.
HTML5 in 2012
To me HTML5 is a fantastic tool that melds the dividing lines between mobile and desktop and extends the boundaries of what is possible with web development. 2012 has seen the adoption of the language in all sorts of diverse areas of the web and to great effect. Read the rest of "5 Reasons Why HTML5 is Here to Stay"
Responsive Web Design is happening right now, it has hit the mainstream and will be around for quite a while. Once you’ve been on our Responsive Web Design course, there are a huge number of online tools to help you switch to a responsive design workflow and develop your skills and your sites even further. In this post, we’re going to run through some of the best.
Responsive Design Workflow: You’re Going to Need a lot Less Paper!
Workflows are changing with responsive design: there’s less reliance on mock-ups and more emphasis on HTML and CSS prototypes. Although these take longer initially, iterations in response to client feedback are much quicker as they can be done live. Responsive design heavily supports CSS instead of graphics wherever possible, meaning that the majority of tweaks will be made in the style sheet.
Read the case studies below to see what’s involved:
Wireframes now need to include a range of devices, as well as consider how easy it is for the user to tap on areas of the screen. These free templates enable you to sketch your design on actual size, pre-created templates for seven mobile platforms. Read the rest of "Responsive Web Design Testing Tools Round Up"
Last Friday we attended BrightonSEO at the Dome. There was a marked change from the previous event and I don’t mean the 27 algorithm updates in the past year, or the extra 500 people attending.
There has been a shift in attitude. The talks were varied and focused on the bigger picture of SEO as a marketing tool, not an elite club where we sneer at Google and keep everything close to our chest.
People who were there just to find out what small trick they can do rank better would have gone home disappointed. Those who want to improve their businesses, make better websites, keep up good relationships with clients and evolve an industry would have gone home with big smiles on their faces.
There was a lot to learn about the psychology of marketing, the importance of language, the benefits of teamwork and overall the need to grow up as an industry, to stop being seen as snake oil salesmen and seen as a viable marketing channel for global businesses. Congratulations to Kelvin for putting on such a diverse selection of speakers.
Of course, amongst all the seriousness there was still time to be a bit silly:
Professor Puppet welcomes some familiar critters on to the stage
There was a lot less Google bashing than the last BrightonSEO – other than the penguin and panda carcasses hung from a coat rack on stage of course. When panda and penguin were mentioned, it was as a warning of what happens when you relentlessly go after the algorithm and try to con the results.
In this round up, I’m going to run through each talk and explain what we can learn to become better at what we do. How SEO can evolve from the common misconceptions in the media and many boardrooms to a recognised and trusted industry. Read the rest of "BrightonSEO 2012: Has SEO Grown Up?"
This guest blog post from Mike A. has some very helpful pointers for complete PHP beginners but if you want to learn more advanced techniques then you should consider PHP Training, one of a number of our excellent Programming Courses.
PHP Pointers for Beginners
With Web 2.0, website visitors expect a full-featured custom website that uses their location and other information to display a unique website. As a developer or designer, you want to find ways to make your website a unique experience for each visitor. You can use PHP to create a feature-rich, dynamic website for your visitors.
PHP is a scripting language embedded within HTML. A PHP processor module, which reads the script, is located on the web server. The module renders a readable web page, so site visitors do not need special software installed on their own computer to view features on the page. Used on over 20 million web pages, PHP is one of the most popular languages used to create dynamic web pages.
A few of the most popular Web 2.0 websites use PHP to create customized content for their visitors. Facebook, WordPress, Digg and Wikipedia all use PHP to produce websites tailored to each visitor’s needs and interests. Web developers can use PHP scripts to pull information from the database about each user, including location and previously saved data.
PHP has many features you can use to customize your website, but listing all of them would make this article too long ,not to mention too boring, to read. You will learn more techniques in future articles, but this article will introduce you to six easy ways to use PHP, even if your experience with PHP is limited.
Website Appearance
You can change the appearance of your web page depending on the day or any other factor. For example, show a picture of the sun during the day and a picture of the moon at night. This keeps your website fresh for returning visitors and keeps it interesting.
Place this code between the head tags in the HTML code:
New! Have customers download your content straight to their phone by creating an App for iPhones. iPhone App Training will allow you to create iOS5 apps from scratch. Having a user download your app onto their phone or tablet gives you a direct connection to customers that a traditional website lacks.
Websites are still overwhelmingly aimed at desktop users using a mouse and keyboard. However mobile and tablet use is on the rise and touch screens are starting to replace desktops as the number one way to surf the web. Should web design be targeted at touch screen users?
Breaking all analysts’ predictions, smartphone sales beat sales of PCs in 2010. In 2011 you can add in tablets, netbooks and laptops – the sales of touch-oriented devices has far surpassed traditional mouse and keyboard desktop systems.
As user habits change, so should developers – by ensuring they have up to date web design skills, and thinking about touch-device users when they design. Stay ahead of the trend by taking one of our Web Design Training Courses including the brand new Mobile Web Design Course which provides a best practice toolkit for creating mobile websites.
The boom in native mobile apps - especially games – has led to the development of a wide range of innovative new touch gestures, and as the mobile web becomes more dominant, we will start to see a wider range of touch gestures employed in web sites, as well as in native apps.
Well well well - it seems that Adobe can’t stop releasing previews and betas at the moment!
We recently saw the unveiling of Adobe Edge – a potential future replacement for Flash which creates animations using HTML5. You might like to check out my summary of Adobe Edge (and my atrocious attempt at an animation).
Then last week, they also lifted the lid on Adobe Muse. Muse is a “code name” – so we wait with baited breath to see what the final product will be called. Adobe is currently “working with the branding team to determine the final name of this product” (perhaps the developers are fans of the Devon rock band of the same name!)
Whatever it ends up being called – Muse is a web design tool that allows designers without any coding experience to create websitedesigns and publish them without having to look at any HTML. It’s a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tool.
Hang on a minute though! Adobe already has the industry standard WYSIWYG web design tool on its books in the shape of Dreamweaver – which has been around for a LONG time (we’ve been running web design training since 1999 and our Dreamweaver course was the first Silicon Beach Training ever offered!)
Dreamweaver was originally released in the age of static HTML pages – and has had to reinvent itself over the years to keep up in the age of dynamic database driven websites. It hasn’t done a bad job of that, and remains a very useful design tool and code editor (Dreamweaver CS5.5 also includes tools for mobile authoring – which is the biggest growth area in web design at the moment). But – to use Dreamweaver effectively to produce dynamic sites which include blogs, social integration etc… (all of which are really important now), increasingly requires more coding experience.
This is where blog and web design CMS systems like WordPressand Joomla have come in to their own in recent years. Via simple interfaces and easy to use plugins, these tools allow people with genuinely NO programming experience to set up sites with interaction and social integration. They are theme based, and don’t have as much flexibility in terms of layout design as Dreamweaver – but nevertheless can deliver professional results.
For a long time the industry standard tool for generating animated and interactive web content has been Flash.
The vast majority of animated content on the web including banners, intro sequences, ads, cartoons and even some navigation elements have traditionally been developed in Flash.
However - things have started to change over the past couple of years.
1) Apple rained on Adobe’s parade by refusing to support Flash on iPhones and iPads – rendering any Flash content invisible to users of these devices (when over half a billion people are using mobile devices to browse the web – that’s a big deal!)
2) The latest web standards including HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript libraries like jQuery are enabling developers to produce animated content that is more accessible and has faster load times than Flash
3) More and more browsers are now supporting HTML5 and CSS3
So if you can develop animated content that contains the same functionality as Flash, but will load faster and display properly on ALL browsers – what is the future for Flash…?
On April 1st I attended Brighton SEO - the brilliant Brighton Based SEO conference arranged by Kelvin Newman of SiteVisibility. One of my favourite presentations of the day was given by Dr Harry Brignull (who many years ago actually delivered a couple of Director courses at Silicon Beach Training!). Harry is a User Interface designer, who has created a brilliant Wiki called Dark Patterns, which highlights ‘Black Hat’ design techniques in website User Interfaces (or UIs).
Many people are familiar with the term Black Hat in the context of SEO (i.e. SEO techniques that go against Google’s guidelines) – however this is the first time I’d heard the term used in the context of User Interface Design.
“Dark Patterns” are UIs that are deliberately designed to confuse, dupe and exploit users in to parting with more cash than they were expecting, or to sign up for additional services they didn’t want.
Have you ever been shopping online and got to a page where you’ve really had to look hard to opt-out of a service you didn’t want, or noticed a check-box that had been ticked by default that you had to un-check. These are examples of fairly simple Dark Patterns – user interface features that are designed to make users who are in a hurry (i.e. most of us, most of the time) sign up for options that they didn’t necessarily want.
It’s one thing to end up on a mailing list you didn’t want to be on – but Dark Patterns can be much more devious than the simple ‘box checked by default’ trick – and some of the really nasty ones can lead to you paying more money without realising. This is the sort of thing that companies can only get away with online – the equivalent, in Harry’s words, of someone “slipping an organic chicken in to your trolley in Tesco’s without you realising”!
In his presentation – Harry gave examples of some fairly high-profile companies that are using Dark Patterns, including Comet, who automatically put a £30 iPad case in to your basket when you buy an iPad, and Wired Magazine, who use a deliberately confusing interface to make it hard for users to unsubscribe from all of their services.
However he awarded the Evil Genius Award to RyanAir (well known for scamming their customers), who have a really devious trick question to dupe passengers in to signing up for travel insurance. See Harry’s explanation below – a description of this devious piece of design can also be found on the Dark Patterns website here
Ben Savage recently wrote an article on VentureBeat called “Why HTML5 has provided more tricks than treats in 2012″ criticising what he sees as its low-uptake and over-hype. He quoted Mark Zuckerberg as saying: “The biggest mistake we did as a company (this year) was bet too much on HTML5.”
With Web 2.0, website visitors expect a full-featured custom website that uses their location and other information to display a unique website. As a developer or designer, you want to find ways to make your website a unique experience for each visitor. You can use PHP to create a feature-rich, dynamic website for your visitors.
On April 1st I attended Brighton SEO - the brilliant Brighton Based SEO conference arranged by Kelvin Newman of 
