Sarasota Web Design, 3d Animation, Video, Audio

by Michael Rassel

The main aspect that helps me produce such a low price web site that is the fact that I do everything myself. That includes being the door to door salesman. I take time every week to walk the streets, get a little exercise and talk with small business owners about the Razworks $499 Website. I meet some great people and have some interesting and often rewarding conversations. I get feedback about how I can make my product more of a value for local business owners. For example, one of the number one questions I heard in my travels to small businesses throughout town is, “With my old web designer, everytime I needed to change text or add images?”, the business owner would recall,  ”I had to pay them $125 per hour and it would take a week or more before it was completed properly”. I responded to that common question by implementing a Do-It-Yourself webpage editor in the Razworks $499 web site. Now website owners can edit text, upload images and add new web pages from any Internet connected computer using a web browser like Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox. My hourly rate is  $75, so although that is almost half the average rate, text and image updates can still add up quickly. The web page editor allows business owners to manage the website content inhouse and save a lot of money.

In talking to many small business owners I’ve discovered that unethical web site developers are disturbingly common. The story of the web designer holding a domain name hostage is one that is unfortunately familiar. Not only have I heard horror stories in conversations with potential clients, but I have personally redesigned websites whose previous web designer was very reluctant about releasing the domain to the business owner. Time and money was expended in releasing the domain to it’s rightful owner.

Razworks policy is that the business owner always has administrative access to their domain, web hosting and any other third party services that they are paying for. Many companies spend thousands of dollars on print collateral and other advertising media that displays the company website domain name. Unethical web developers realize this and will often limit access to the domain name. The business owner then has no choice but to pay the web developer for domain name administration. Razworks uses GoDaddy, the world’s leading domain registry and web hosting service, and the account login information is always emailed to the client so they can control access and administration.

This policy gives clients peace of mind in knowing that they always have control of their website and domain name.

Click Here to learn more about the Razworks $499 Web site.

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts.

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:

• A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
• An archive of older articles.
• A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
• A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a “blogroll”.
• One or more “feeds” like RSS, Atom or RDF files.

Some blogs may have additional features beyond these.

The Blog Content

Content is the raison d’être (http://www.bartleby.com/59/4/raisondetre.html) for any web site. Retail sites feature a catalog of products. University sites contain information about their campuses, curriculum, and faculty. News sites show the latest news stories. For a personal blog, you might have a bunch of observations, or reviews. Without some sort of updated content, there is little reason to visit a web site more than once.

On a blog, the content consists of articles (also sometimes called “posts” or “entries”) that the author(s) writes. Yes, some blogs have multiple authors, each writing his/her own articles. Typically, blog authors compose their articles in a web-based interface, built into the blogging system itself. Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand-alone “weblog client” software, which allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time.

Comments

Want an interactive website? Wouldn’t it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the site or a specific article? With blogs, they can! Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs.

Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. There are also nifty ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog! Called “pingbacks” or “trackbacks”, they can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles. All this ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and websites.

The Difference Between a Blog and CMS?

Software that provides a method of managing your website is commonly called a CMS or “Content Management System”. Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of CMS. They provide the features required to create and maintain a blog, and can make publishing on the Internet as simple as writing an article, giving it a title, and organizing it under (one or more) categories. While some CMS programs offer vast and sophisticated features, a basic blogging tool provides an interface where you can work in an easy and, to some degree, intuitive manner while it handles the logistics involved in making your composition presentable and publicly available. In other words, you get to focus on what you want to write, and the blogging tool takes care of the rest of the site management.

WordPress is one such advanced blogging tool and it provides a rich set of features. Through its Administration Panels, you can set options for the behavior and presentation of your weblog. Via these Administration Panels, you can easily compose a blog post, push a button, and be published on the Internet, instantly! WordPress goes to great pains to see that your blog posts look good, the text looks beautiful, and the html code it generates conforms to web standards.

If you’re just starting out, read Getting Started with WordPress, which contains information on how to get WordPress set up quickly and effectively, as well as information on performing basic tasks within WordPress, like creating new posts or editing existing ones.

Things Bloggers Need to Know

In addition to understanding how your specific blogging software works, such as WordPress, there are some terms and concepts you need to know.

Archives

A blog is also a good way to keep track of articles on a site. A lot of blogs feature an archive based on dates (like a monthly or yearly archive). The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked to daily archives. Archives can also be based on categories featuring all the articles related to a specific category.

It does not stop there; you can also archive your posts by author or alphabetically. The possibilities are endless. This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool.

Feeds

A Feed is a function of special software that allows “Feedreaders” to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue (http://mezzoblue.com) has written a comprehensive summary (http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/05/19/what_is_rssx/) of feeds.

Blogrolls

A blogroll is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a “sidebar” on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page. BlogRolling (http://blogrolling.com) and blo.gs are two websites that provide some interesting functions or help related to blogrolls. These sites provide methods for users to maintain these rolls effortlessly and integrate them into weblogs. WordPress has a built-in Link Manager so users do not have to depend on a third party for creating and managing their blogroll.

Syndication

A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves “feedreaders”. What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don’t have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these “Syndication” feeds available for the readers to use.

Managing Comments

One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature allows users to comment upon article posts and link to your posts and comment on and recommend them. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks . We’ll also discuss how to moderate and manage comments and how to deal with the annoying trend in “comment spam”, when unwanted comments are posted to your blog.

• Trackbacks
• Pingbacks
• Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks
• Comment Moderation
• Comment Spam

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Trackbacks

Trackbacks were originally developed by SixApart (http://www.sixapart.com/), creators of the MovableType (http://www.movabletype.org/) blog package. SixApart has a good introduction to trackbacks (http://www.movabletype.org/trackback/beginners/):

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, “This is something you may be interested in.” To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.

A better explanation is this:

• Person A writes something on their blog.
• Person B wants to comment on Person A’s blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
• Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A’s blog
• Person A’s blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B’s post

The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A’s and Person B’s readers can follow links to the other’s post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weblog. Unfortunately, there is no actual verification performed on the incoming trackback, and indeed they can even be faked.

Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an “excerpt”) of what Person B had to say. This is meant to act as a “teaser”, letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B’s site to read the rest (and possibly comment).

Person B’s trackback to Person A’s blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole idea of “authenticity” isn’t really solved. (Note: Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B’s site that sent the trackback.)

SixApart has published an official trackback specification (http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mttrackback.html).

Pingbacks

Pingbacks were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with trackbacks. The official pingback documentation (http://www.hixie.ch/specs/pingback/pingback) makes pingbacks sound an awful lot like trackbacks:

For example, Yvonne writes an interesting article on her Web log. Kathleen reads Yvonne’s article and comments about it, linking back to Yvonne’s original post. Using pingback, Kathleen’s software can automatically notify Yvonne that her post has been linked to, and Yvonne’s software can then include this information on her site.

There are three significant differences between pingbacks and trackbacks, though.

1. Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies (XML-RPC and HTTP POST, respectively).
2. Pingbacks support auto-discovery where the software automatically finds out the links in a post, and automatically tries to pingback those URLs, while trackbacks must be done manually by entering the trackback URL that the trackback should be sent to.
3. Pingbacks do not send any content.

The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:

• Person A posts something on his blog.
• Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A’s post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
• Person A’s blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B’s post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.

The pingback is generally displayed on Person A’s blog as simply a link to Person B’s post. In this way, all editorial control over posts rests exclusively with the individual authors (unlike the trackback excerpt, which can be edited by the trackback recipient). The automatic verification process introduces a level of authenticity, making it harder to fake a pingback.

Some feel that trackbacks are superior because readers of Person A’s blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say, and then decide if they want to read more (and therefore click over to Person B’s blog). Others feel that pingbacks are superior because they create a verifiable connection between posts.

Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any name they like: there’s no verification process to ensure that the person is who they claim to be. Trackbacks and Pingbacks both aim to provide some verification to blog commenting.

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Comment Moderation

Comment Moderation is a feature which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control the comments on the different article posts, and can help in tackling comment spam. It lets you moderate comments, & you can delete unwanted comments, approve cool comments and make other decisions about the comments.

Comment Spam

Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are often irrelevant to the context value of the post. They can contain one or more links to other websites or domains. Spammers use Comment Spam as a medium to get higher page rank for their domains in Google, so that they can sell those domains at a higher price sometime in future or to obtain a high ranking in search results for an existing website.

Spammers are relentless; because there can be substantial money involved, they work hard at their “job.” They even build automated tools (robots) to rapidly submit their spam to the same or multiple weblogs. Many webloggers, especially beginners, sometimes feel overwhelmed by Comment Spam.

There are solutions, though, to avoiding Comment Spam. WordPress includes many tools for combating Comment Spam. With a little up front effort, Comment Spam can be manageable, and certainly no reason to give up weblogging.

Pretty Permalinks

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn’t change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent (valid for a long time).

“Pretty” Permalinks is the idea that URLs are frequently visible to the people who click them, and should therefore be crafted in such a way that they make sense, and not be filled with incomprehensible parameters. The best Permalinks are “hackable,” meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog. For example, this is how the default Permalink to a story might look in a default WordPress installation:

/index.php?p=423

How is a user to know what “p” represents? Where did the number 423 come from?

In contrast, here is a well-structured, “Pretty” Permalink which could link to the same article, once the installation is configured to modify permalinks:

/archives/2003/05/23/my-cheese-sandwich/

One can easily guess that the Permalink includes the date of the posting, and the title, just by looking at the URL. One might also guess that hacking the URL to be /archives/2003/05/ would get a list of all the postings from May of 2003. Pretty (cool). For more information on possible Permalink patterns in WordPress, see Using Permalinks.

Link Manager

The Link Manager is the place where you can manage all your links to other websites, blogs, etc. You can create different categories here in which you can place links pointing to other websites or blogs. These websites or blogs can be those which you regularly visit or which are cool, or with whom you are exchanging links or those who’ve paid you to place their links on your BLOG. ;)

Blog by email

Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts (http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=How%20To%20Blog%20By%20Email) directly to your blog, all without direct interaction through the blogging tool interface. WordPress offers this cool feature. Using email, you can now send in your post content to a pre-determined email address & voila! Your post is published!

Post Slugs

If you’re using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The blogging tool software may simplify or truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a link. A title such as “I’ll Make A Wish” might be truncated to “ill-make-a-wish”. In WordPress, you can change the Post Slug to something else, like “make-a-wish”, which sounds better than a wish made when sick.

Excerpt

Excerpts are condensed summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these in various ways. In WordPress, Excerpts can be specifically written to summarize the post, or generated automatically by using the first few paragraphs of a post or using the post up to a specific point, assigned by you.

Plugins

Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are often features which either enhance already available features or add them to your site.

WordPress offers simple and easy ways of adding Plugins to your blog. From the Administraton Panel, there is a Plugin Page. Once you have uploaded a Plugin to your WordPress plugin directory, activate it from the Plugins Management SubPanel, and sit back and watch your Plugin work. Not all Plugins are so easily installed, but WordPress Plugin authors and developers make the process as easy as possible.

Basics-A Few Blogging Tips

Starting a new blog is difficult and this can put many people off, there are then other people who have blogs with no comments or visits. You want to stand out from this crowd of millions of bloggers, you want to be one of the few hundred thousand blogs that are actually visited. So here are some simple tips to help you on your way to blogging mastery:

1:Post regularly, but don’t post if you have nothing worth posting about.

2:Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.

3:Don’t put ‘subscribe’ and ‘vote me’ links all over the front page until you have people that like your blog enough to ignore them (they’re usually just in the way).

4:Use a clean and simple theme if at all possible.

5:Enjoy, blog for fun, comment on other peoples’ blogs (as they normally visit back).

Test Credit Card Numbers are used to test or register an e-commerce account instead of using a real credit card. They are dummy credit card numbers that work just like live credit card accounts, except that none of the transactions are actually settled so there will be no funds or fees moving from a customers account into your merchant account and bank account. Valid data must be used or errors will occur for things like card numbers, checking information, check writer ID info, etc. DO NOT use a real credit card with test accounts unless you run a $1.00 transaction! If you do more, your accounts funds will be held by each authorization until the credit card expires. The test credit card will always give a result, the address verification and security code will match regardless of the input values. It will also authorize with no expiration date. If you need to see different address verification and security code results, you must use a live credit card. In such a case, use low dollar amounts like $1.00 to avoid costly testing procedures. Test VISA credit card number: 4005550000000019

Test Credit Card Numbers

Master Card
16 numbers starting with 5
5431-1111-1111-1111
5105105105105100
5555555555554444

Visa
13 or 16 numbers starting with 4
4111111111111111
4012888888881881

American Express
15 numbers starting with 34 or 37
341-1111-1111-1111
378282246310005
371449635398431
378734493671000

Dinners Club
38520000023237
30569309025904

Discover
16 numbers starting with 6011
6011-6011-6011-6611
6011111111111117
6011000990139424

JCB
3530111333300000
3566002020360505

Web site designers and website owners often use test credit card numbers when developing and maintaining a website.

Small Business Media Suite from Razworks is a collection of presentation media that will brand your company and present your product or service to consumers. A custom designed website, print collateral and audio/video advertisement will help your company gain visibility in a broader market. 

Your company can gain an advantage over competitors with such a comprehensive advertising toolset. Presenting your product or service to multiple media outlets (Internet, DVD, TV, Radio, Newspaper, mailers, brochures and business collateral) will help maximize sales and help your small business grow. An attractive and consistent looking company brand can be combined with a well demonstrated message and distrubted across many venues of media. Such broad visibility of your company’s product or service almost always guarantees increased business.

Razworks possesses 20 years of combined production experience in sound production, graphic design, animation and video editing. Razworks founder, Michael Rassel, has a broad career history through which he has developed professional experience in most venues of media production. 

Your company is sure to succeed with presentation media that carries the professional signature quality of Razworks. 

Print and radio decrease while online rises

2007 will see increases in online advertising while offline budgets decrease.

There is a significant trend of increased marketing dollars being committed to online activity, and a decrease in spending on traditional advertising media such as print, TV and radio.

Web 2.0?
What is the buzz prhase "Web 2.0" I keep hearing about?

The term "Web 2.0" is used with more frequency on today’s websites and with more than 9.5 million citations in the Google search engine. But many disagree on the actual definition of "Web 2.0". Some claim it is merely a marketing buzzword. Others, web designers and developers in particular, have begun to adopt Web2.0 as a new standardized method of web site development. The latter being true, advertising still manipulates Internet evolvement, but through a more controlled process called search engines.

Google is known for their purist philosophy, and the search engine’s evolvement has often focused on eliminating Internet abuse or SPAM. The programming code in Google’s search engine software is often updated to eliminate marketing abuse in Google Search results. Google’s support for open source software has empowered the end user to shape the Web. Open source web browsing with Mozilla Firefox has perpetuated CSS and XHTML browser compliance, which in turn gives web design a standard to follow.

There are several independent factors that drive Web 2.0 web design techniques.

Search Engines (ie; Google)
Blogs and content software (ie; WordPress)
Social Networks (ie; My Space)
WC3 Standards (ie; XHTML validation)
Open Source Software Development (ie; Firefox)
Retail Portals (ie; Amazon)
 Where advertisers manipulated Television’s evolvement, the user manipulates how the Internet is evolving. Millions of people world wide have contributed to the propagation of Web 2.0. Blog authors, web developers, open source software programmers, and casual web users all collectively influence the convergence of a Web 2.0 Internet. By epowering the user to become the merchant, retail portals like eBay and Amazon define the Web 2.0 marketplace.

 What does Web 2.0 mean to the small business owner’s web site?

Having a web page that passes a WC3 XHTML validation could make the difference in getting your web page on the front page of Google Search results. Contract a web design company or contractor who will produce web pages that can pass the WC3 validation.

There have been many different and widely varied definitions of what Web 2.0 means. Some have described it as a network of member only websites. Others have defined it as a broadband based marketplace. Others claim Web 2.0 is defined by W3 standards compliance. The latter seams to be gaining wide adoption by web developers, bloggers and Google. What makes the Internet so successful is the fact that it’s development and evolution is driven by independent users and open source developers, not Mega-Corporations.

The central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be this, that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence:

Now, innovative companies that pick up on this insight and perhaps extend it even further, are making their mark on the web:

One of the most highly touted features of the Web 2.0 era is the rise of blogging. Personal home pages have been around since the early days of the web, and the personal diary and daily opinion column around much longer than that, so just what is the fuss all about?

At its most basic, a blog is just a personal home page in diary format. But as Rich Skrenta notes, the chronological organization of a blog "seems like a trivial difference, but it drives an entirely different delivery, advertising and value chain."

One of the things that has made a difference is a technology called RSS. RSS is the most significant advance in the fundamental architecture of the web since early hackers realized that CGI could be used to create database-backed websites. RSS allows someone to link not just to a page, but to subscribe to it, with notification every time that page changes. Skrenta calls this "the incremental web." Others call it the "live web".

Now, of course, "dynamic websites" (i.e., database-backed sites with dynamically generated content) replaced static web pages well over ten years ago. What’s dynamic about the live web are not just the pages, but the links. A link to a weblog is expected to point to a perennially changing page, with "permalinks" for any individual entry, and notification for each change. An RSS feed is thus a much stronger link than, say a bookmark or a link to a single page.

RSS also means that the web browser is not the only means of viewing a web page. While some RSS aggregators, such as Bloglines, are web-based, others are desktop clients, and still others allow users of portable devices to subscribe to constantly updated content.

RSS is now being used to push not just notices of new blog entries, but also all kinds of data updates, including stock quotes, weather data, and photo availability. This use is actually a return to one of its roots: RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer’s "Really Simple Syndication" technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape’s "Rich Site Summary", which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows. Netscape lost interest, and the technology was carried forward by blogging pioneer Userland, Winer’s company. In the current crop of applications, we see, though, the heritage of both parents.

But RSS is only part of what makes a weblog different from an ordinary web page. Tom Coates remarks on the significance of the permalink:

In many ways, the combination of RSS and permalinks adds many of the features of NNTP, the Network News Protocol of the Usenet, onto HTTP, the web protocol. The "blogosphere" can be thought of as a new, peer-to-peer equivalent to Usenet and bulletin-boards, the conversational watering holes of the early internet. Not only can people subscribe to each others’ sites, and easily link to individual comments on a page, but also, via a mechanism known as trackbacks, they can see when anyone else links to their pages, and can respond, either with reciprocal links, or by adding comments.

Interestingly, two-way links were the goal of early hypertext systems like Xanadu. Hypertext purists have celebrated trackbacks as a step towards two way links. But note that trackbacks are not properly two-way–rather, they are really (potentially) symmetrical one-way links that create the effect of two way links. The difference may seem subtle, but in practice it is enormous. Social networking systems like Friendster, Orkut, and LinkedIn, which require acknowledgment by the recipient in order to establish a connection, lack the same scalability as the web. As noted by Caterina Fake, co-founder of the Flickr photo sharing service, attention is only coincidentally reciprocal. (Flickr thus allows users to set watch lists–any user can subscribe to any other user’s photostream via RSS. The object of attention is notified, but does not have to approve the connection.)

If an essential part of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain, the blogosphere is the equivalent of constant mental chatter in the forebrain, the voice we hear in all of our heads. It may not reflect the deep structure of the brain, which is often unconscious, but is instead the equivalent of conscious thought. And as a reflection of conscious thought and attention, the blogosphere has begun to have a powerful effect.

First, because search engines use link structure to help predict useful pages, bloggers, as the most prolific and timely linkers, have a disproportionate role in shaping search engine results. Second, because the blogging community is so highly self-referential, bloggers paying attention to other bloggers magnifies their visibility and power. The "echo chamber" that critics decry is also an amplifier.

If it were merely an amplifier, blogging would be uninteresting. But like Wikipedia, blogging harnesses collective intelligence as a kind of filter. What James Suriowecki calls "the wisdom of crowds" comes into play, and much as PageRank produces better results than analysis of any individual document, the collective attention of the blogosphere selects for value.

While mainstream media may see individual blogs as competitors, what is really unnerving is that the competition is with the blogosphere as a whole. This is not just a competition between sites, but a competition between business models. The world of Web 2.0 is also the world of what Dan Gillmor calls "we, the media," a world in which "the former audience", not a few people in a back room, decides what’s important.

As early as Pei Wei’s Viola browser in 1992, the web was being used to deliver "applets" and other kinds of active content within the web browser. Java’s introduction in 1995 was framed around the delivery of such applets. JavaScript and then DHTML were introduced as lightweight ways to provide client side programmability and richer user experiences. Several years ago, Macromedia coined the term "Rich Internet Applications" (which has also been picked up by open source Flash competitor Laszlo Systems) to highlight the capabilities of Flash to deliver not just multimedia content but also GUI-style application experiences.

However, the potential of the web to deliver full scale applications didn’t hit the mainstream till Google introduced Gmail, quickly followed by Google Maps, web based applications with rich user interfaces and PC-equivalent interactivity. The collection of technologies used by Google was christened AJAX, in a seminal essay by Jesse James Garrett of web design firm Adaptive Path. He wrote:

AJAX is also a key component of Web 2.0 applications such as Flickr, now part of Yahoo!, 37signals’ applications basecamp and backpack, as well as other Google applications such as Gmail and Orkut. We’re entering an unprecedented period of user interface innovation, as web developers are finally able to build web applications as rich as local PC-based applications.

Interestingly, many of the capabilities now being explored have been around for many years. In the late ’90s, both Microsoft and Netscape had a vision of the kind of capabilities that are now finally being realized, but their battle over the standards to be used made cross-browser applications difficult. It was only when Microsoft definitively won the browser wars, and there was a single de-facto browser standard to write to, that this kind of application became possible. And while Firefox has reintroduced competition to the browser market, at least so far we haven’t seen the destructive competition over web standards that held back progress in the ’90s.

We expect to see many new web applications over the next few years, both truly novel applications, and rich web reimplementations of PC applications. Every platform change to date has also created opportunities for a leadership change in the dominant applications of the previous platform.

Gmail has already provided some interesting innovations in email, combining the strengths of the web (accessible from anywhere, deep database competencies, searchability) with user interfaces that approach PC interfaces in usability. Meanwhile, other mail clients on the PC platform are nibbling away at the problem from the other end, adding IM and presence capabilities. How far are we from an integrated communications client combining the best of email, IM, and the cell phone, using VoIP to add voice capabilities to the rich capabilities of web applications? The race is on.

It’s easy to see how Web 2.0 will also remake the address book. A Web 2.0-style address book would treat the local address book on the PC or phone merely as a cache of the contacts you’ve explicitly asked the system to remember. Meanwhile, a web-based synchronization agent, Gmail-style, would remember every message sent or received, every email address and every phone number used, and build social networking heuristics to decide which ones to offer up as alternatives when an answer wasn’t found in the local cache. Lacking an answer there, the system would query the broader social network.

A Web 2.0 word processor would support wiki-style collaborative editing, not just standalone documents. But it would also support the rich formatting we’ve come to expect in PC-based word processors. Writely is a good example of such an application, although it hasn’t yet gained wide traction.

Nor will the Web 2.0 revolution be limited to PC applications. Salesforce.com demonstrates how the web can be used to deliver software as a service, in enterprise scale applications such as CRM.

The competitive opportunity for new entrants is to fully embrace the potential of Web 2.0. Companies that succeed will create applications that learn from their users, using an architecture of participation to build a commanding advantage not just in the software interface, but in the richness of the shared data.

In exploring the seven principles above, we’ve highlighted some of the principal features of Web 2.0. Each of the examples we’ve explored demonstrates one or more of those key principles, but may miss others. Let’s close, therefore, by summarizing what we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:

The next time a company claims that it’s "Web 2.0," test their features against the list above. The more points they score, the more they are worthy of the name. Remember, though, that excellence in one area may be more telling than some small steps in all seven.

Core Competencies of Web 2.0 Companies

Rich User Experiences

Collective Information

The Most Popular Fonts for Web Site Design

1. Helvetica and Arial are the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. Many consider Arial to be a generic imitation of Helvetica.
   
   
2. Verdana was designed for Microsoft in 1996 for readable at small sizes on a screen. The absence of serifs, wide proportions and loose letter-spacing make this font extremely legible for web sites.
   
3. Georgia -designed for Microsoft in 1993 bears similarities to Times New Roman, but is larger and works well at small and big sizes. It is often chosen for web design as a substitute to the overused Times New Roman.
   
4. Trebuchet MS – designed for Microsoft as a “good web design font” in 1996. It works well for big headers.
   
5. Century Gothic – sans-serif font designed in 1991. It works well for headers, but isn’t recommend for use with large passages of body text.
   
6. Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande – Lucida Grande is the font that’s used throughout Mac OS, whereas Lucida Sans Unicode is a similar Windows font. Both fonts belong to the “humanist” sans-serif type which is the most calligraphic of all typefaces in the sans-serif family.
   
7. Palatino – designed in 1948 with an old style typeface look. Microsoft distributed an imitation of this font called Book Antiqua by Monotype.
   
8. Garamond, Baskerville- Garamond was commissioned for the French king in 1540. The text was set in 12-point Adobe Garamond, a typeface based on the sixteenth-century type designs. 
    
   Baskerville – designed in 1757 with an intention to improve legibility.
   
9. Univers Condensed, Linotype Univers – Univers, often confused with Helvetica, was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1956. Frutiger is famous for his unique typeface classification system. Univers is exceptionally legible at great distances, that is why it was chosen by new Swiss International Air Lines, Deutsche Bank and for the keycaps on many Apple keyboards.
    
10. Myriad Pro – designed specifically for Adobe Systems in early nineties. Since 2002 Myriad has become Apple’s corporate font, replacing Apple Garamond. Myriad works well both for print and web typography.
    

Here is a test copy of and image that has been inserted using the web page editor. The editor has many font and image formatting tools that allow easy point and click operations.

Highlight the text, click some formatting buttons, save your post and your text will now display on your website with the formatting you’ve selected.

Click the image button to easily insert an image from your computer or from images stored on your web server. Specify left or right word wrap, margins and borders.

This tool assists web site owners in easily editing their web pages and blog posts, from any browser, with a wide selection of formatting choices. Here is a tutorial of the the three of the most common formatting operations, Text Size, Text Color and Inserting Images.

 Inserting Images:

Click the Image Button on the tool bar. (Highlighted in red on the image below)

 A Browse Image menu appears.

Click Browse Server to select the image file. A file manager allows you to select an image file stored on your web site server, or you can upload a new one from you computer. New folders can be created with which to organize your images. This is especially helpful if you have a lot of images.

Click on the desired image filename to select it.

The properties menu for the selected image now displays.

You can specify alternative text, which is useful for tooltip descriptions and search engine optimizaiton.

Border sets the border width

HSpace sets the horizontal margin

VSpace sets the vertical margin

Align sets the alignment of the image and word wrap

Click OK to insert the image.

Click the dropdown arrow in the Size field, 
then select the desired font size.

The text you type will now be formatted with the selected size. This method also works for other format options such as , color, bold, style, etc.

Changing the text color:

 Highlighting existing text, then pressing a format button will apply the formatting to the text selection.

Here we are changing the color of existing text. With the text highlighted, we click the Text Color button, and select a color from the color picker.

The select text is now the chosen color.

The page editor provides Razworks’ clients with many text and image formatting options when editing the web pages and blog posts on their web site.

Can’t figure something out? Feel free to request a tutorial from Razworks. Click Here to Contact Razworks

Images are added via the Write Post or Write Page menus. Go to Write and author a new post or page. This would also apply to editing an existing post or page.

Scroll below the ‘Save’ and ‘Publish’ buttons until you see the File Upload tabs. Click the ‘Browse’ button next to the ‘File’ field to select the image file.

The ‘Choose File’ menu opens. From here you locate and select the image file. Click the image file then click open.

 The ‘Choose File’ menu closes and the ‘File’ field now has the file path of your image. Press the “Upload” button to upload the image file. Optionally, you can fill in the ‘Title’ and ‘Description’ fields. Although these fields are not necessary to display the image, entering site relevent titles and descriptions can aid in search engine optimization.

The ‘Upload’ menu is replace with the uploaded image’s browse menu. Select the ‘Show: Full Size’ radio menu to show the actual size of the image. You can also select specify ‘Link to: ‘ values for the image. Click the area of the page where you want to insert the image, then click ‘Send to editor’.

The image is now inserting into the page. Click ‘Save’ or ‘Publish’ to preview the image on your web site.

The image is now posted on your web page.

To justify the image left, center or right, click the align tool on the toolbar.

To have the text wrap around a left or right justified image, you’ll have to edit the code.

 First, upload and insert the image that you want the text to wrap around.

Click the ‘Code’ tab to open the code editor and find the “img” tag for the image. This defines HTML and CSS display properties for the image. Everything between the “<img and />” symbols are various property values for the image.

After the <img tag enter the CSS declaration; class=”alignleft” surrounded by spaces. Press the Save/Publish button, then preview the image post.

 
The text now wraps around the left justified image, giving it that newspaper article look.  

This is a very effective way of inserting images and photos without interfering with the flow of the text.

It also can add visual reference to the topic of the text.

Inserting images and photographs in this manner helps break up the text paragraphs to maintain the reader’s interest.

Replacing the class=”alignleft” with class=”alignright” , will right justify the image, and wrap the text to the left.

You can also have an image slideshow in any page or post.

Razworks can implement an attractive Adobe Flash slideshow for a modest fee.

Call Raz at 941-685-8851 or email Razworks here!
(:

If you ask any IT professional or web developer for advice about protecting yourself online, the first words from their lips will be, “Update your web browser”.

In my opinion, every person who uses the Internet should upgrade Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) to Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). In addition, everyone should install the latest version of Firefox. The Mozilla Firefox browser is the most secure web browser available, it is web 2.0 compliant, it is more stable than IE, and there are tons of addons available for it. And Google endorses Firefox, so it has been positioned as a major weapon in the corporate heavyweight championship between Microsoft and Google.

Here is a look at the usage ratio of web browsers in July 2007:

Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is obsolete and will eventually be replaced completely by IE 7. Why upgrade? IE 6 is vulnerable to various security threats, it does not support web 2.0 standards, it doesn’t fully support CSS, it has no native alpha transparency, no RSS reader, and the list goes on.  IE 6 is currently the most used web browser, but by years end that will no longer be the case.

The security threat alone is enough to convince most users to upgrade. IE7 was officially released on October 18, 2006. A 20% adoption of IE7 has occured in less than a year, and that rate will grow exponentially as users continue to upgrade.

However, during the last 2 years Firefox has claimed a significant victory over Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer had a 75% adoption rate in January 2005, whereas Firefox had only 15%. Firefox is expected to near an impressive 40% adoption rate by the end of 2007 , becoming a serious contender for the title of #1 web browser, currently held by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which has 59% adoption.

Firefox is my primary web browser and Opera is my secondary web browser (Opera is the fastest web browser). I use Internet Explorer for web design testing and Windows Updates.

However, my new design machine has an Intel Q6600 quad core processor and the 64 bit version of Windows XP Pro. The 64 bit version of Internet Explorer 7 seems more stable than the 64 bit version of Firefox, especially since I have yet to successfully install Firefox 64 bit on this new machine. After 3 failed attempts, I have shelved it for another day.