Posts tagged Design
Bing Testing New Search Results Design
Feb 8th
Bing is testing a new design for the search results layout. The new design seems a lot cleaner, fresher and more organized compared to the older design. A reader tipped us off listing out the key differences: Vertical tabs removed Top and bottom search boxes widened Search button icon changed…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Web Pros: Candidates Are Running Neck-And-Neck In Mediocre Web Design
Feb 8th
Politics is partisan and objective, but Web design is often much more subjective: you know good Web design when you see it.
Unless, of course, you’re a presidential candidate and his campaign staff. We asked expert Web designers to evaluate the major presidential candidates’ campaign Web sites. The candidates got okay – but not great – marks. And in a year when social media and mobile technology could play a role in the election, okay may not be good enough.
Sponsor
“All candidates are using opensource software, tracking you via Google Analytics and all of them are very patriotic looking,” said Chad Udell, managing director for Float Mobile Learning. “A few have modern tricks here and there, but most are a little bit behind the times in one way or another.”
What follows is a look at how each candidate’s Web site did on overall site design, content and presentation, and mobile functionality.
Overall Site Quality
The incumbent’s site uses some modern Web design technology, including HTML5, proper CDN asset storage, microformats, and semantically named elements. The site is “very well put together” with “lots of newfangled tricks like Modernizer and Jquery,” according Udell.
“Obama’s polished, mobile friendly site is no surprise,” Udell said. “He’s had the longest to prepare. He also was a big proponent of opensource software in his last campaign.”
Romney’s site is heavy on video content and makes links to social media engagement prominent. The site uses some antiquated techniques to track location, but overall it works well.
“Romney’s social media badging is pervasive and obvious. No mistaking it for anything else here,” Udell said. It would be nice to see the share icons use a lightwindow rather than a full browser redirect, but it’s acceptable and easy enough to use.”
The former House Speaker’s site doesn’t use HTML5 and has fewer calls to action and chances for visitors to share social content as Romeny’s site. Gingrich, like every other GOP candidate, has a site that is not optimized for mobile. The site is accessible on a smartphone, but requires lots of scrolling and zooming to navigate.
While Udell said the lack of social media icons made it cleaner than some of the other sites, overall the site’s “aesthetic is the least contemporary.”
Tuesday’s big caucus winner uses generic Facebook and Twitter widgets on his site, which draw away from a visually well-designed site. The site has an “interesting, mature color theme. It’s Red, white and Blue, but very deep and not typical,” Udell said.
But the pros stop there. In addition to not having a site enhanced for mobile viewers, Santorum uses some rather primitive Web design techniques.
“Using tables for layouts?” Udell said. “Really? It’s 2012!”
Paul is the only candidate to not use Drupel, instead opting for WordPress in his site design. And unlike the other candidates, Paul’s site is text heavy, opting to stay on message with lots of text as opposed to video and photo content.
Content and Presentation
Barack Obama: Obama’s campaign staff makes use of a lot of inforgraphics to make key policy arguments – a wise move, according to Nathan Hunt, founder of Dressler, a digital strategy and design firm in New York City.
The site “also uses infographic-like design to maintain a consistent design theme throughout,” Hunt said. “This is the design equivalent of being disciplined and staying ‘on-message’.”
Mitt Romney: Hunt gives points to Romney’s design team for having a clear sense of how to effectively use the Web. Romeny is photogenic, and the site puts that quality to good use. Hunt was most impressed with the “Caucus For Mitt Tool” which gives supporters specific and immediate directions on how they can help the candidate.
Newt Gingrich: The content presentation is confusing. The type is too big (perhaps it was chosen with elderly visitors in mind, Hunt said), and a righthand navigation bar draws the eye away from the content.
“Rather than establish a clear hierarchy of communication, this site attempts to yell everything at once,” Hunt said.
Rick Santorum: Hunt’s analysis of the site was pointed.
“This looks like something that someone’s nephew designed,” he said. “In truth, it is probably a template website that someone downloaded and adapted for the campaign.”
Ron Paul: Paul’s site has lots of text, but it also could have used a good editor and a style guide. All CAPS and italics are used with no rhyme or reason, and there are awkward combinations of serif and sans serif fonts.
“A lot of decisions seem to have been made just to ‘look cool’,” Hunt said. “While it does look cool, digital is about functionality, not just appearance.”
Mobile
Barack Obama: The President’s Web designers did a good job of making a site that works well on iPhones, but Aaron Maxwell, founder of Mobile Web Up, found some errors when he tried to access the site on Blackberry Torch, Android and Windows Phone 7.
“The Obama designers chose to use a responsive web design to create a single set of pages adaptable to different screen widths,” Maxwell said. “It looks like they focused on really polishing the mobile view for iOS, but allowed errors to slip in on other mobile platforms.”
Mitt Romney: The former Massachusetts governor is the only Republican candidate who has a Web site optimized for viewing on mobile devices. But Maxwell found problems similar to those he found when viewing Romney’s site outside of iOS. Like Obama’s site, Romney’s had certificate errors when viewed in Blackberry Torch and was unviewable in Windows Phone 7. “This is a flaw in their device detection – though a minor one, given how small WP7′s market share is at the moment,” Maxwell said.
Gingrich, Santorum and Paul do not have sites optimized for viewing on mobile devices.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Link-Assistant.Com Unveils Brand-New Design for SEO PowerSuite Software – PR Web (press release)
Feb 8th
 PR Web (press release) |
Link-Assistant.Com Unveils Brand-New Design for SEO PowerSuite Software
PR Web (press release) The much-hyped SEO PowerSuite has been on the market since 2004, providing multiple data for expert SEO work. After years of continuously boosting SEO PowerSuite's functionality, Link-Assistant.Com's analysts and designers took on a targeted renovation … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
User-Centric Design is Great, Just as Long as You Find the Right User
Feb 8th
My friend and colleague Esther Schindler has written a wonderful post over on SoftwareQuality Connection about encouraging user-centric design. The only trouble is figuring out the right set of users that your software is designed for. Put another way, this is the classic programming problem: the person who hires you (or who sets up the job) isn’t the ultimate end-user audience for the actual program.
Sponsor
Schindler mentions the Abomination That Is Taleo as Exhibit A. For those of you that haven’t been in the job market lately, this is one of the go-to apps that employers use to collect resumes and screen applicants. The only trouble is that its UI is bad, really bad. As she says, “Features and functionality that would give joy to the most common hands-on-the-keyboard user (the hundreds of job applicants applying for a given position) may not even appear on the list of application requirements.”
And having agile programming practices can actually remove programmers from the ultimate consumers of the app, because you write so quickly and get close enough in your first build that you stop doing anything further. Or don’t get to have any further discussions beyond the initial meetings, if you even meet with your programming team at all, because the budget for the project gets cut.
Some of the problem is the Dilbert-ization of corporate life, where a boss gets the overview and the devil is in the details. Part of it is the level of communication in modern companies can be frighteningly bad, as work teams are more distributed and we all have more work to do as layoffs have decimated most IT departments.
It is a great article, and one that you should email to your boss when it comes time to put together your next project. Along with the appropriate Dilbert cartoon, of course.
N.B.: The agile turtle is from Sarah Maddox’ FFeathers blog.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Algonquin Studios Shares Thought Leadership Reports on Web Design, SEO … – PR Web (press release)
Feb 7th
 PR Web (press release) |
Algonquin Studios Shares Thought Leadership Reports on Web Design, SEO …
PR Web (press release) Covering topics including web site design, SEO myths, and advantages associated with using a content management system, the reports are now available for download on Algonquin's corporate web site. Algonquin began a company blog in September 2011 and … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Austin Web Design and Internet Marketing Company, Boom Consulting, Publically … – PR Web (press release)
Jan 30th
|
Austin Web Design and Internet Marketing Company, Boom Consulting, Publically …
PR Web (press release) Dynamic, visually appealing web design optimized for mobile devices as well as traditional PCs, knowledgeable internet marketing strategies and search engine optimization (SEO) are just a few of the in-house services that the passionate team at Boom … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Leading company, Mays Digital offers enhanced web design and SEO services – News Broadcast
Jan 30th
|
Leading company, Mays Digital offers enhanced web design and SEO services
News Broadcast For this reason, novice online starters turn to the services of web design and SEO specialists, benefiting from the creative vision and traffic increase this service provides. www.maysdigital.co.uk is the online home of one of the leading SEO and web … SEO and Web Design Brighton services offer exceptional results |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Daily Wrap: The User Experience Design of TV and More
Jan 25th
Richard MacManus explores the shift from watching tv to experiencing it. This and more in today’s Daily Wrap.
Sometimes it’s difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well.
Sponsor
The Shift From Watching TV to Experiencing TV
We often talk about the Internet of Things here at ReadWriteWeb. Over half of the devices at the recent CES were connected, and more than 60% of those were not traditional computers, but more mundane, typically unconnected devices like home appliances and vehicle accessories. Richard explores the trend with an emphasis on the user experience. While user experience is vital on a PC, it may take on even more importance when you are waving your hands in front of a refrigerator trying to see how many eggs are in there. Over the coming weeks Richard will talk to user experience designers to understand how this will impact you in your daily life. He started the series off with a look at user experience design and the coming trends in television.
From our readers:
Robert Weller – Intensive users, even with Apple TV, have had to make this experience work. Apple TV does not allow surfing. Users can go only to Netflix, YouTube and other designated sites. Devices are appearing that make it possible to connect wirelessly. Apple has a device that will connect Direct TV to a Mac. But what we really want is an Internet TV. I want to be able to watch live news on French, Russian and other nations. Al Jazeera should be offered NOW on cable TV 24/7. Tired of stringing HDMI cables/couplers around house.
More Must Read Stories:
![Source: Next Xbox Won't Play Used Games [UPDATED]](http://www.readwriteweb.com/281319-xbox-logo.jpeg){kind=logo}
Source: Next Xbox Won’t Play Used Games [UPDATED]
An unnamed source is telling video game news site Kotaku that the next version of Microsoft’s Xbox will not play used games.
The person, identified as a “reliable industry source” also told Kotaku that Xbox 720 will be able to play Blu-Ray discs, an option not offered on current versions of the Xbox. The next generation of Xbox is expected to be released later this year or early in 2013. (more)
![[Infographic] Increase Click-Through Rates For Your Tweets](http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/twitter_newbird_whiteonblue_150x150.jpg)
[Infographic] Increase Click-Through Rates For Your Tweets
HubSpot’s resident social media scientist Dan Zarella released a new report on how to get the highest number of click-throughs for your tweets.
Some of the information (presented below in a handy infographic) is stuff we already knew: Tweets between 120 and 130 characters tend to get retweeted more often than longer and shorter tweets and tweeting links at a slow rate gets more clicks, for example. But other findings – including click-through rates for tweets containing the word “daily is out” by paper.li users – were surprising. (more)
Who’s Using Pinterest? Yup, It’s Mostly Ladies
Well, there’s a reason it’s not called Dude-terest. The latest darling of the up-and-coming social sharing space, Pinterest, has experienced rapid growth in both users and industry buzz in the last few months. If you had a sneaking suspicion that the majority of those users happen to be young females, you were right. (more)
Could Jailbreaking Your iPhone Become a Crime Soon?
Whether or not jailbreaking or rooting one’s smartphone is a legal act isn’t something most of us in the U.S. have had to think about for some time. That’s because, in 2010, the U.S. Copyright Office declared that jailbreaking devices is not a violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Fine, said Apple, but it will still void your warranty and we bet it will screw up your phone. (more)
Today In Facebook Scams: Is Chuck Norris Dead?
Facebook scammers are spreading a vicious rumor on walls everywhere.
The headline reads: “[video] Chuck Norris dies at age 71! Not a Joke,” and is accompanied by a video of the star. You may remember Norris from such films as “The Karate Kid” and “Karate Kommandos,” and the CBS series “Walker, Texas Ranger.” The Naked Security blog reports that this is in fact another Facebook scam, and that Chuck Norris is still alive. What’s the deal behind this spam attack? (more)
Why Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs Fail Against the iPad & Kindle Fire
One of the most entertaining aspects of studying the Android ecosystem is the fact there is just so much of it. It is overwhelming, especially for consumers that do not know what smartphone or tablet they are supposed to buy because a new device is released every other day.
Samsung is the largest culprit of the flood of Android devices to inundate the flood plains of the mobile coastline. Just look at its Galaxy Tab line of tablets. None have performed well on the market. (more)
Could You Ever Love An Ad?
Today, ads are something we skip. They coat everything we watch, read and listen to like a sticky film, blinking and shouting and shocking us into paying attention. Their value is measured in “impressions,” how many people’s eyeballs scan past them, and on the Web, a click on an ad is the holy grail. That’s what passes for “engagement.” (more)
There Is Opportunity In Diversifying Your Android Publishing Strategy
Mobile marketing company Tapjoy has had a tumultuous ride in the last year. It has been bounced around by Apple and its App Store terms of service, has gone to the Web to skirt Apple’s policies, integrated mobile video ads and set up a fund for iOS developers to port their games to Android. It has been scattershot and frenetic but it appears that, finally, the company is starting to see some success. (more)
Angry Birds Crash Into Facebook
Asia Tech News reports that the smash hit Rovio game Angry Birds is coming to Facebook on Valentine’s Day.
The release will happen fast, rolling out to all 800 million users at once as opposed to a slow Facebook feature rollout like Timeline, which first became available to New Zealand users, then to all – and now it’s being forced upon everyone. The big launch takes place in Jakarta. Indonesia holds the world’s second-largest Facebook population, trailing only the United States. With its entrance into the Facebook ecosystem, Angry Birds will transform into a social game complete with leaderboards so users can challenge their friends. (more)
Keep up with ReadWriteWeb by subscribing to our RSS feed or email newsletter. You can also follow ReadWriteWeb across the web on Google+, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
DuckDuckGo Relaunches With New Visual Design
Jan 16th
DuckDuckGo has just relaunched with a new visual design across its home page and search results pages. Founder Gabriel Weinberg has been taking feedback and tweaking the design for at least three-plus weeks in the site’s community forum, where he announced the new look and layout early…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Magic Logix Ranked in Top Ten SEO and Web Design Companies on TopSEOs.com – PR Web (press release)
Jan 12th
|
Magic Logix Ranked in Top Ten SEO and Web Design Companies on TopSEOs.com
PR Web (press release) Magic Logix was recently awarded the #7 spot in TopSEOs rankings for the Top 50 SEO Companies and Top 30 Web Design Companies. “We're honored to be recognized with a #7 ranking as an industry leader in SEO and web design by TopSEOs.com. … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
