If you would like to learn about web technologies then spare few minutes to take a look at this really good website ( http://w3schools.com/ ) which provides free web building tutorial. The website is more useful to a novice user. I learnt about PHP from this site after which i understood what the question marks in the PHP code means. It has tutorials on HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML and other technologies like JavaScript, PHP, ASP, SQL and much more.

It is good starting point for beginners who want to learn about different web technologies. The website besides providing a step by step tutorials also has code snippets and actual code in a particular language so that one can try out how the language actually works.
The website if pretty much simple but here are few things worth noting….
1)Once you click on a particular tutorial the left column of the website changes to a table of content like structure for that particular language.
2)The right column has examples (source code) written in different languages. It also has reference material links which you can refer to for more details
3)Many users of the website overlook the useful and pretty active forum of the website wherein you can post your questions and you tend to get a pretty quick response. The link to the forum is at the top of the right hand column
Have a good learning experience

Pre-Wordpress’ birth and the critical mass of blogs, Internet Marketing Professionals used many other tactics, one of which was writing value-based informational articles and submitting them to several article directories for online publishers and website owners to repost. This type of article marketing was done for years before blogging.

What is Article Marketing?

Wikipedia defines Article Marketing as:

“A type of advertising in which businesses write short articles related to their respective industry. These articles are made available for distribution and publication in the marketplace. Each article contains a bio box and byline that include references and contact information for the author’s business. Well-written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of increasing the authoring business’ credibility within its market as well as attracting new clients.”

Over the last few years it has become harder and harder for those starting fresh in the Internet Marketing arena to separate the wheat from the chaff, the noise from the signal. Of all the 100s of techniques and gurus touting the latest trends, it’s hard to know what works and what’s a waste of time.

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As mentioned in my last post, creating a strategy and project plan before beginning the design and build of a website or web application is perhaps the most important step in launching a successful website. Most successful businesses start with a business plan, it is our job as web strategists to translate that plan into the ever evolving web. Read the rest of this entry »

Occasionally you come across a little nugget like this; for all you clients who don’t know.

Which is more important; getting people to your site or having people do what you want once they are there? I ask this question because many interactive agencies are contracted to get people to do both but rarely seem to do both well.
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Today the 12th Annual Webby Awards nominated LevelTen for the Best Charitable Organizations/Nonprofit Website of 2008 for our creation of NationalBreastCancer.org.

Winners will be announced on May 6, 2008 and honored at The 12th Annual Webby Awards in New York City on June 10th, 2008.

LevelTen is so excited for this amazing nomination and for the opportunity to be honored alongside other talented professionals in our industry. Our team is dedicated to using the web’s best practices in building fully functional and asthetically pleasing websites for our clients. Last year, we were recognized as a Webby Award Official Honoree for RepublicWorldNews.com and are excited to have our hard work noticed again.

As a nominee for a Webby Award, LevelTen is also eligible to win a People’s Voice Award. People’s Voice voting, sponsored by Nokia, is open to the public from April 8th to May 1st at http://pv.webbyawards.com. Simply visit the page, sign up with an email address, go to the Society section and vote for NationalBreastCancer.org in the Charitable Organizations/Non-Profit section. (It’s that easy!)

Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Websites. The awards are judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a global organization that includes David Bowie, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, AKQA Global Creative Director Rei Inamoto, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser, and The Weinstein Company’s Harvey Weinstein.

This year the Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 states.

“The Webby Awards honors the outstanding work that is setting the standards for the Internet,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “LevelTen Design’s Nominee for NationalBreastCancer.org is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators.”

Once again, congratulations to everyone at LevelTen who worked so hard on NationalBreastCancer.org. Additionally, at the LevelTen site you can read more about NationalBreastCancer.org and our award winning sites.

I love it!

An introspective article over at A List Apart by Luke Wroblewski delves into the reasons why…

we can do better. In fact, I believe we can get people engaged with digital services in a way that tells them how such services work and why they should care enough to use them. I also believe we can do this without explicitly making them fill out a sign-up form as a first step.

The blog is an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (Rosenfeld Media, 2008), and you can read it here!

The article is super informative, and expounds upon the practice of gradual engagement, whereby a user is drawn into the website due to useful or practical information that pertains to their specific needs. Avoid gradual engagement solutions that simply distribute the various input fields in a sign-up form across multiple pages. It’s a good possibility that this will reduce efficiency and not delight anyone.

TOP 5 CLIENT REQUESTS

1. My Unqualified Friends have different Ideas…
   - Judge the idea on its merits, reasonably explain why it may not work, due to your research, experience, etc.
2. Purple is my favorite color, Why don’t we use that?
   - Backup with documentation, color board, creative specs, etc
3. We need more stuff about the FOLD!!
   - A significant amount of research is available to show that users understand they can scroll for more content
4. There’s so much EMPTY SPACE, can’t you fill it?
   - White space contributes to the general hierarchy of the content. NO.
5. MAKE MY LOGO BIGGER
   –>NO. the content on the page is not the logo.

Establishing the Purpose:
Aesthetics and Function. The two cannot be removed from one another in web design. They exist as your highest priority and business principle.
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As a designer, I rely on my vision to impart a hierarchy of data within web pages. It takes a jarring reminder from the smart folks at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival to remind me that not everyone can see the colors I painstakingly deliberate over, the varied and specific shades that I cross-browser test for universal appeal. Even color contrast can be lost to a slight case of color-blindness.

Assistive technologies are on the rise, and we learned about a full spectrum that are available now.

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So there I was, sitting in room 18ABCD at SXSW 2008 watching a presentation designed more for the Food and Hospitality industry than for an Interactive Conference, thinking, “why the hell did I spend good money to listen to this shit?” Read the rest of this entry »