Preparing Your Website For Mobile Devices

Tips to convert your current site into a mobile-friendly format

By: Brian Getting

With the growing number of consumers using mobile devices, such as cell phones and PDAs, to access the Internet, it's important to make sure your website can be accessed by potential customers using these devices। To get started, ask yourself a few questions about your website: Have you ever seen your website on a mobile device? Are you confident your customers can find the information they are looking for and make a purchase from your website on their handheld device? If your answer to all of these questions was not a resounding "Yes!," then you need to read on.

The first thing to do as a developer is to check the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications for CSS and mobile devices, which can be found at: W3.org/TR/css-mobile/. If you are still awake after the first paragraph, you can move into some more useful analysis. Is your site using tables? Does your site use a lot of images or multi-media files? Does your site take a long time to download on a web browser. While the Internet works essentially the same on mobile devices as it does on computers, you want to be sure the information on your website is easy to read and navigate.

A good resource to convert your current site into a mobile device friendly format is Skweezer.com. Simply enter your website's URL, and it will display your website in a mobile-friendly version by removing large images, CSS styles and page elements that will not display properly. I like to look at this as a template, or starting point, for making a mobile CSS profile for the site. To provide an alternative CSS stylesheet for users with mobile devices, insert the following code in the head of an HTML document:

A couple of things to think about when assigning styles for mobile devices is to keep it very simple। Mobile devices are still a bit slower, so you want to avoid using lots of images and graphics. In addition, there are varying screen sizes and resolutions with handheld devices, so it's a good idea to scale page elements by screen size, rather than setting fixed pixel widths for page elements.

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How To Start a Video Blog

Many folks prefer moving pictures

By: Jim Edwards

Web logs, commonly referred to as "blogs," came into the mainstream about two years ago.

Not really a newsletter or traditional .html-page publishing, blogs resemble more of a web-based diary where the creator records their thoughts, posts links or responds to questions.

Initially, blogs contained only text and pictures, but then came "audio blogging," which entails the use of audio on a blog.

Audio blogging also gets referred to as "podcasting" because of the ability to let people with iPods and other portable MP3 players download your MP3 audio.

The simplest form of video blogging, or "vlogging," means putting a video file online, linking to it from your blog and anyone subscribing to your RSS feed (automatically created by your blogging software) will get notified about your new video.

They can then open up your latest blog post in their "feed reader" and view your video by clicking the link.

More advanced forms of video blogging include getting your "vlog" accepted by Apple's iTunes so their subscribers can find and subscribe to your vlog (which gives you access to 19 million users at last count).

Vloggers use a variety of video file types (like Windows Media, Quicktime, Real Media and MPEG) and there's no restriction on which file type you use to be considered a "vlog."

However, two file types stand above the rest if you want to reach the widest possible audience.

For video podcasting, you must publish in either the FLV (Flash Video) or SWF (Shockwave Flash) file formats if you want people on both Mac and PC to view your video files.

FLV is better suited for full motion video, but they both work on smaller length video files.

For video podcasting, you must publish in the MPEG4 file format or Apple's proprietary version of that format known as M4V. Apple's QuickTime Pro software rates the simplest and easiest way to convert your video files to the proper video podcasting format.

To create a basic "vlog," you need the following list of equipment and software: a web cam or digital camcorder; a microphone, production software; a blog; an RSS feed to "syndicate" your content। A webcam will work for a basic vlog, though a digital video camera will create much better results because they contain better optics.

Using a separate microphone instead of the microphone built into your web cam or camcorder will also produce a much better sound quality.

Once you shoot your video you need to produce it to display on the web. At a minimum, if your computer operates with Windows XP, you can use the Windows Movie Maker software that comes free with XP.

Though you can't save as an .FLV or .SWF, you can save as a Windows Media file (.wmv) to get you started.
For a blog, you can use the free www.blogger.com service. To create a feed to syndicate your site, you can use the free service at www.feedburner.com.

Though audio blogging received mediocre acceptance from the mainstream Internet audience, "vlogging" should do extremely well simply because of our fascination with moving pictures.

If you're looking for a precedent, look how far TV has come in the last 50 years compared to radio.

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Flash or HTML: Which to Choose

By: Brian Getting

The question of whether it is better to design a website using Flash rather than using just HTML has sparked many debates among web developers. For the most part, it seems that developers tend to defend what they know, although there are some important differences between a pure HTML website and a website that is completely done using Flash. The method that is chosen depends purely on the type of website being created and the goals of the website owner.

Since every web browser in the world is designed to interpret HTML code and display web pages, building a site using strictly HTML ensures every web surfer will be able to view the site. Flash, on the other hand, requires users to have the Flash Player, which is a browser plug-in, installed on their computer in order to properly display the website. In addition, as Flash matures there are different versions of the Flash Player out there, further diminishing the chances that every visitor will be able to view the website.

On the other hand, Flash offers some capabilities that simply cannot be matched using pure HTML code, such as animation, dynamic content generation and user interactivity. Much of this capability stems from the Actionscript, which is the scripting language used in the Flash environment. Actionscript allows for developers to create complex animations, incorporate streaming video and provide unparalleled interactivity. In recent years, Flash has also proven to be a leading method for providing streaming video content on the web, and continues to be the choice for developers who want to present complex and stunning visual presentation.

Search-engine optimization is an important consideration if the website will rely on search engines to generate traffic. When looking at how a search engine will index a website, HTML offers the best choice. The reason is that search-engine spiders are designed to interpret and understand HTML code. In recent years, some search engines have made progress at indexing Flash content as well, although that can be deceiving for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that search engine spiders do not have the ability to run Actionscript code, which means that any dynamic content or Actionscript generated links, will not be indexed. The second reason relates to the way that search engines index and rank content.
Generally they would prefer to see content packaged in discrete, relevant units like the pages in an HTML website are. With a Flash site, all of the content appears to be in one file, causing content dilution in the search engines.

Generally, Flash websites tend to be used by companies that have large marketing budgets, or rely on compelling graphic interfaces to generate business. Businesses and websites that are interested in organic marketing and universal accessibility tend to opt for HTML-based websites. However, the lines can be blurred since Flash content can be incorporated into HTML websites in order to harness the benefits of both technologies.

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Installing Google Maps On Your Site

Help customers find the location of your business

By: Brian Getting

Implementing Google Maps into your website is an easy way to provide rich, interactive map features that can help your customers find your business.

Of particular interest to brick-and-mortar stores, Google Maps provides an Application Programming Interface (API) that makes it easy for developers to incorporate custom maps into websites they create.

The first step in working with the Google Maps API is to sign up for what is called an API key. Each website that contains Google maps requires its own API key — an effort to reduce spam and abuse of the service. Once you have your API key, you're ready to go.

Now that you have your API key, you will need coordinates that tell the API where the center of your map should be. The process of converting addresses to geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) is called geocoding. Google Maps provides access to geocoders that can easily convert the address you want to serve as the center of your map (such as your business) into latitude and longitude coordinates. With that information, you have everything you need to render a map on a web page.

Rendering maps requires that you add a link to the Google Maps API in the head section of your HTML document. This link is where you provide your unique API key for the site with which you are working. From there, you simply specify an empty DIV element on your page where you would like the map to appear. The API automatically displays and scales the map interface to your DIV element.

At the most basic level, you can provide a draggable, illustrated map that centers on a position of your choice. However, there are many advanced features that allow you to customize your map presentation. Controls can be added to pan and zoom the map, as well as to switch between illustrated and satellite views. An animation API gives developers the ability to animate certain actions. Markers and pointers can be added to the map to show precise locations, and they can be supplemented with callouts that provide more information. Not only can the information in the callouts be customized, but the callouts themselves can be customized to contain tabs, display custom images and more. You can even provide an interface for users to obtain directions from their location to your store's, all with some simple JavaScript.

Developers can explore many other possibilities with the Google Maps API, and I encourage people to refer to the documentation provided by Google. If your business has a physical location that customers need to be able to find, there is really no excuse for them not to easily find that information on your website.

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