Liquid Layouts – The DecisionChoosing a type of layout is one of those things in web design where flames are regularly thrown, so I’m putting on my best heat resistant suit and wading in. At Nomensa we have always used liquid layouts, as we looked at in part 1, liquid layouts have their advantages and disadvantages.
This post explains why our policy on layouts has changed.
WAI-ARIA Document Landmark RolesThe Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) specification defines a set of roles known as document landmarks. They can be used to programmatically identify key areas of content on a page, which means they can be interpreted by access technologies such as screen readers.
Liquid Layouts Explained – The FoldThis is the first of two articles aimed at explaining screen resolution and liquid layouts for non-developers / designers. As part of that I’ll cover what the fold is, why it shouldn’t matter, but often does. With the next article I’ll release a little presentation anyone can use to explain these concepts.
Search Engine Optimisation Practices to AvoidMaking sure your website is optimised to rank highly in search engine listings is a difficult and time consuming task. Some people have found ways to speed up this process, however many of the techniques used are considered unethical and may have a negative impact on a site’s ranking. This article looks at a number of practices you should try to avoid when optimising your website.
The Design Patterns of Social MediaMost websites nowadays incorporate some kind of community aspect which allows users to provide feedback to the site’s owners and to each other. In fact, ‘building community’ is one of the most important aspects of any modern website. Websites that focus on their community or group nature are described as being social sites, an umbrella term that can cover a great number of disparate services. This article will describe how Developers can utilise social design patterns on a site in order to promote or dull certain behaviours in an online community.
Search Engine Optimisation TipsOptimising your website to improve your site’s relevance in search engine listing is often a slow process. It involves making small but significant changes to your website in order to increase its visibility to search engines. Many of the search engine optimisation tips to improve your website not only increase your chances of being found by search engines but also enhance the user experience of your website.
This article contains a number of search engine optimisation tips to help improve your website’s relevance in search results listings.
Integrating Web 2.0 into your CMSChoosing a CMS is a long-term commitment. You are choosing how your site will be driven and how it will be updated. What your CMS can do affects what you can do. When selecting a CMS, you are committing your content to be stored within this specific system; your data is then manipulated (‘normalised’) into formats suitable for the system’s storage mechanism. From this point onwards, any future decision to switch CMS providers will now need to include the laborious (and often expensive) task of data migration. It is clear to see that choosing a CMS is a commitment and needs to be carefully considered.
Common Search Engine Optimisation TermsSearch engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of visitors to a website from search engines. Pages which are optimised effectively come higher up in search results listings and are likely to receive more visitors from the search engine. Making sure your pages are optimised successfully involves understanding how leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft work and what people are searching for.
This article looks at some of the most common SEO terms and what they mean for your website.
