Browsershots is a free web service for viewing a website in about 50 web browsers among 4 operating systems (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BSD). This is helpful for checking your web design on multiple configurations without having to use virtual machines or extra hardware and software.
You just enter your URL, check the browsers you want to see, choose extra output options like screen width, color depth, and Javascript version, and then click "Submit."
Your job will be added to a queue so that all of the browser screenshots can be generated, so waste some time for a few minutes. When the job is complete, you'll have a group of thumbnails (one for each browser screenshot).
Clicking a thumbnail will enlarge the screenshot and give you information on the computer and browser that rendered your site. Clicking the screenshot again will enlarge the picture to full size.
Browsershots supports Firefox 3 (on Linux and Windows) and IE 8, but not Safari 3.
Similar to Doodlekit, Webnode is a free (no ads) website creation tool aimed at helping web design novices get a modern-looking website online in minutes. Once you've registered for a Webnode account, you're asked to choose a title and slogan for your new site. Then you select a template and start adding content.
Webnode uses a common modular system which allows you to drag content areas to create different layouts or add content like polls, forums, and photo galleries. There are also widgets for PayPal, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Maps. Like Tumblr, Webnode lets you use your own domain name for their service (instead of somename.webnode.com).
Traffic statistics are also available which show you important things like unique visitors, referring URL's, visit duration, and browser version.
Now that we've harangued you to upgrade your Web site, take advantage of business blogs, read your Web stats/, incorporate search engine tips and use Web 2.0 themes, it's time to choose a Web design firm to make all of the above happen for your small business. Google "web design" and spend the rest of your natural life clicking links or narrow down your search around some specific best-practices criteria.
Virtual Hosting has an excellent article up detailing 23 actionable web design lessons that we can learn from eye-tracking studies. Most of the items are common sense: people scan web pages rather than read them, people look at the top left corner of the page first, people ignore banner ads, people ignore fancy formating that looks like ads, etc. But why do people interact with pages in this manner?
The answer should be obvious: web designers have trained visitors to use their sites in a certain way. Yahoo, Google, AOL, and MSN all format their sites according to the above listed guidelines. Because of this, people expect site names and logos to be a the top left. They expect banner shaped images to be banners and therefore ignorable. They expect sites to look, feel, and function a certain way and they are very frustrated when they don't.
In a way it is like news papers. People expect news papers to look and function a certain way no matter what city or country they are in. Its perpetually reinforcing as each site that follows this standard pattern (which is not a bad pattern by any means) causes more users to expect the next site they visit to look the same. It is good because it promotes usability but bad because it limits creativity and new design patterns. People have to innovative inside a very small box.
In the world of web developers there are two standard ways of laying out a web page. The classical way is to use tables and structure your web page like you would an Excel Spreadsheet or a Word document. The second is to use Cascading Style Sheets that let you create elements on the page and position them according to your needs. For a large variety of reasons CSS based layouts are the way to go: they use less code, they are more customizable, they support various effects that aren't possible with tables, and they run faster in modern web browsers. The problem? They are darn hard to code!
Enter the CSS Grid Builder from the good folks at Yahoo!. Yahoo! has spent thousands of hours crafting web pages and testing them across all the possible OS and browser combinations (yes, even Opera). The end result of all this testing was the public release of the Yahoo! User Interface CSS and JavaScript libraries. The CSS Grid Builder is a simple web-based interface for quickly creating any number of layouts that rely solely on YUI's CSS files. This gives you the advantage of easily and visually laying out designs without using tables, and they will work the same way in every popular browser
AOL -- this blog's parent company -- has launched a redesigned home page, and you know, there's something awfully familiar about the layout. We just can't quite put our finger on it.
The portal's easier to navigate, has a nice set of links on the lefthand side -- oh yeah, and it looks almost exactly like the Yahoo! home page.
"What are you talking about? This is *so* not a rip-off of Yahoo. For example: Whereas Yahoo has search links of: Web, Images, Video, Local, Shopping ...the AOL site has links of Web, Images, *News*, and Local.
You could make the case that this is an intuitive web design for any company to follow, but it does look awfully similar.
For a company trying to reinvent itself as a web portal rather than a internet service provider, AOL really needs to focus on new and innovative services rather than playing a game of follow the leader by copying sites like Google, digg and Yahoo!.
Of course, we have to admit that investing in a blogging network was a great start.
A List Apart wants some information from you for a new survey they have released online.
Statistics have never been compiled for the Web Design profession, including designers, developers, project managers, writers and editors. This survey is aiming at tracking such questions as who we are, where we live, job titles, skills, education, and background.
By filling out the 37 question survey online, A List Apart will not only increase the knowledge about the industry, but each participant will be entered into a random draw to win a ticket to An Event Apart, an Apple 30GB video iPod, a jump drive, or a t-shirt.
The contest and survey remains open until May 22nd 2007, and data will be presented on A List Apart.
If you're in business and reading this article, chances are your company has a Web site. Before we all go to Web 2.0, does your site measure up to Web 1.0? Let's check how your site stands up to Web pages that "suck."
Today's Design Tip, the second in a recently re-launched series, brings some open source layouts to your web design tool box. The CSS Tinderbox features some Creative Commons licensed basic layouts that can easily lay the foundation for many of your design projects. All the layouts have previews available, and the site is of course collecting examples of their layouts being used in live projects.
A final bonus of these layouts is the leniency of the Creative Commons license: you don't necessarily need to credit CSS Tinderbox when using one of their layouts, though they request one when submitting your designs to any kind of design community sites or contests.
Microsoft is busy completing its first crack at knocking on Adobe's door by developing a suite of web and graphic design software called Expression Studio. The scheduled launch date is for the middle of 2007, and it will be selling for about $599 as a package.
The software suite will include Expression Web, a revamped FrontPage, Expression Blend which is an interactive design tool previously called Interactive Designer, Expression Design, used for layout and graphic design, and Expression Media photo management software. Expression Web, Expression Blend, and Expression Media are currently available online for $299, $299 and $499.
I don't see these Microsoft products knocking down Adobe's doors. I see them more as small time home user applications. I could be wrong, but as a professional Adobe user, there is no way I would dream of making that switch. What do you think? Are these going to be heavy hitters in the marketplace?
Here's an ingenious way to create a palette of colors that work well together for your next design project - Color Palette Generator. Simply supply the site with an image that contains colors you enjoy, and it will select a set of colors from the image that are complimentary to one another, and match the image's colors. As stated on the site, this can be useful for design projects that rely on a central image, but I can imagine it could also be a good way to choose colors for offline endeavors as well. Maybe you can match your wall color to a color from your favorite painting or rug. Imagine the possibilities.
I just got back from some much needed R & R, and since I left before the most recent Homeland Security PR campaign terror scare, I spent a lot of time on the TSA website the last few days of my vacation trying to figure out the ever-changing array of prohibited items. It wasn't much help. It seemed like they were updating the regs hourly, but the website only every couple of days, and then in English taken from a Chinese takeout menu. "These items are permitted, but to physical inspection" was a particular favorite that seems to have stuck. It's okay, though, TSA love you long time.
Now they seem to have redesigned the site, which was badly in need of an overhaul. Unfortunately, there aren't many changes, and they seem to have given the job to FBI programmers. They certainly haven't made the site more useful to travelers, or anyone else for that matter. It features the same contradictory information--beverages are not permitted except when they are. Unless you're a diabetic who needs juice; then juice is permitted except when it isn't--now in a new, less user-friendly layout. Every single page is now one huge iframe centered in a useless striped gray background, guaranteeing that you will have to scroll not once but twice to access any useful information. Assuming you even notice the information you want has scrolled off the bottom of the iframe. And, of course, the navbar is in the iframe, so it scrolls off the top any time you scroll down the page. Add to that some of the usual Firefox and Safari rendering errors, and you can have the full airport checkpoint experience without ever leaving your keyboard.
There are some improvements, though. We now have a new slogan--"TSA...Vigilant, Effective, Efficient"--some nice pics of mountains to remind us the TSA is "strong" and "formidable," a puppy gallery, and a nice graphic of the layered security model that implies the most important site for security is the airplane cabin. That's right folks. All that fancy new screening is wonderful, but when it comes right down to it, in-flight security is up to the overworked, under-trained flight crew, that woman next to you with the screaming toddler, and "YOU--THE PASSENGER."
If your software or web design project is struggling through the fog, let Porchlight show you and your team the way. This web-based project management and bug tracking service offers user-specific milestone and project tracking, so members of your team only need to see the tasks that matter to them. Email updates and RSS feeds for projects, as well as a subscribe-able calendar for upcoming milestones are but a few of the appealing features for this project management app targeted towards software and web nerds alike. Check out more screenshots after the bump, try out the service for free or check out Porchlight's pricing to see if a plan fits your needs.
The million-dollar question: will Microsoft's Expression package (which includes Graphic, Interactive, and Web Designer flavors) dethrone Adobe as king of multimedia creation? Today, according to Techworld, Microsoft's Expression Web Designer will be released as a Community Technology Preview today. The big difference between this tool and Adobe's Dreamweaver? According to the one guy quoted in the article, it's deep support for ASP 2.0. I'll admit, Dreamweaver's pretty lame when it comes to working in ASP (although to be honest I'm still stuck in ASP 1.1 land myself). But the question is really: will consumers upgrade to Vista fast enough for Windows Presentation Framework to be relevant? In other words, just buying Expression won't guarantee clients or customers can see your coolio new content. Granted, WPF can be installed across a variety of machines that don't need Vista (they released an OS X version, in fact). But with an installed user base for Flash hovering around 98+ percent, are consumers going to download yet another framework? Anyone remember the Great Code Hope that was .NET? We'll see. I still think Adobe and Macromedia were smart to merge before Vista hits though... Just for the record though, I am actually pretty excited about Windows Presentation Framework. If nothing else, it'll force Adobe to continue making Flash better.
Now that 
If you're in business and reading this article, chances are your company has a Web site. Before we all go to Web 2.0, does your site measure up to Web 1.0? Let's check how your site stands up to 
Today's Design Tip, the second in a 
I just got back from some much needed R & R, and since I left before the most recent 
The million-dollar question: will Microsoft's 
