Tag Archive for 'Graphic Design'
According to the latest browsers statistics report (May, 2008) from the W3C, IE is still the most common browser (IE7 26.5%, IE6 27.3%), and Firefox becomes more and more popular as 39.8% of the public are using it today. At the same time, Safari and opera takes 2.4% and 1.5% of the market respectively. However, as we all know, different browsers response to CSS and javascript differently, and this will definitely give the developers and graphic designers some extra work.
As for the Bizroof development team, we dive into the specifications of each browser and try to discover all their preferences, and then we test our code in all the 6 major browsers, including IE6, IE7, FF2, FF3, Safari and Opera. It is a painful and time consuming job, but we are doing it now and we will continue doing it in the future. The reason is simple: As a web application provider, we need to make each user’s experience count!
The new calendar is in iCal format which is a standard for calendar data exchange with apps like google calendar, yahoo calendar, MS outlook, MAC iCal and lot more. We use AJAX wherever possible for this design, and keep improving on the usability.
The Current features include:
- Customize “first day of week” (i.e. week start on Monday, Saturday and Sunday)
- Support multi calendars (coloured labels) for each user
- Drag and drop events to make changes
- Quick add events (just one click)
- Translate human language to computer readable language. i.e. “Lunch with Jason 3pm tomorrow”
- Auto detect “Time Zone” and “Daylight saving time” on the user’s computer
- Support multi languages
- AJAX auto-completer to add guests to events
- Feed for events
- Export in iCal and MS Word formats
- Filter events by tags
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any suggestions. 
The bizroof blog has been upgraded to wordpress 2.5.1 which is the latest version to date. I documented what I’ve done here in case someone needs a quick guide on this:
1. BACKUP all your current files.
2. DEACTIVE all your plugins, and change the theme back to the default one.
3. DELETE all your files in the root folder.
4. DOWNLOAD the latest version wordpress.
5. COPY back your wp-config.php file to the root folder.
6. RUN the upgrade programme. simply type http://example.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php in your browser.
7. COPY back your plugins and themes to the wp-content folder and ACTIVE the plugins. Also, select your favourite theme.
8. (Optional) COPY back your robot.txt file or .htaccess file to the root folder if they are in use.
9. (Optional) LOGIN wp-admin, go to the Design section, and click edit theme, and then put your favicon back. After that, you can spend some time on update the css files to get the perfect look and feel. 
Also, I spent some time customized the css files to give the blog a new looking and feel. Looking at the blog now, I still think it is not pretty enough, and myself, is definitely not the type of person with a sense of style. So, could anyone will me some suggestions on how to improve please?
Meanwhile, the plugins I am using are AddThis social bookmark (Help my visitor promote the blog) and Google Analytics to help myself monitor the site traffic. I would be really appreciate if you can suggest me some other plugins which helps SE0 and usability.
1. Test your page on Firefox, IE and Safari
CSS and javascript behave differently on those three major web browsers. So, make sure the page look almost the same on all of them.
2. Make your page easy to read
Don’t put too much stuff on your home page, otherwise it fairly easily confuses people. Also, it potentially slow down the page loading speed.
3. Arrange the page content according to the importance of page sections
People pay more attention to the top right area of a page, followed by Top Left, and then the bottom areas. By putting appropriate content upon their importance, it will dramatically increase the ability to attract visitors and helps them to get your message much quicker.
4. Keyword is KING unless you don’t want search engines to pick up information
Don’t forget that you can always use <meta name=“keywords”>, <metaname=‘description’> and page title/url name to store the desired search terms. In that case, you don’t necessarily put all of them on the page itself.
5. Make as fewer HTTP requests as possible
HTTP requests occurs when loading images, css, javascript, and HTML files. Apparently, the more stuff to load, the longer it takes, and 24% visitors leave a site if it takes more than 4 second to load, especially for the home pages.
6. Don’t use more than 4 different colors if you are not an expert
Statistically, most people are able to handle 3 different colors on a page quite well but abit struggle facing 5+ colors situation. Also, the colors you like may not be your visitors’ favorite.
7. Validate HTML, CSS, Feed
CSS validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
XHTML validator: http://validator.w3.org/
Feed validator: http://validator.w3.org/feed/
Bizroof Home Page:
(Please give me some advice on how to improve)
