Natively, web browsers are restricted to around a dozen fonts that they can display (without resorting to using a plug-in of some description), so the biggest choice most web designers faced was whether to use Arial or Helvetica.  Then along came sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) which uses Flash to allow you to display any font you like – you simply create a small Flash file containing the font and link to it from the page.  SIFR isn’t perfect – it is fiddly to set up, needs a new Flash file for each new font and requires the device viewing the page to run Javascript and Flash (which covers the majority of browsers).  SIFR quickly became the de facto standard for handling custom fonts.  But that may well be about to change. [ read more ... ]

CSS stands for cascading style sheets and it refers to the instructions which manage the layout and design of web pages.  Without CSS, web pages would be presented as a single continuous stream of words and images.  CSS takes this raw information and puts it into columns, changes fonts (and their sizes & colours), applies borders, adds background colours, etc.

The latest release – CSS3 – adds many new features, not least rounded corners on boxes, graduated fills (backgrounds, etc.), images for borders, box and text shadows, transparencies and custom fonts.  These simple functions will allow web developers to make much “lighter” websites (as you can discard images you would have used for things like rounded corners), and as these pages will have a smaller overall file size their loading times will be better (and loading times are now a components of Google’s search algorithm – it now marks down pages which load slowly).  It also removes the need for you to have to generate images (corners, shadows, etc.) which may well speed up website development, as well as enable developers who can’t or won’t use Photoshop, etc. [ read more ... ]

So, what is crowdsourcing?  It is the concept of harnessing the masses – the crowd – and sourcing ideas, opinion or talent from them, usually driven through a website where people can post ideas, discuss and vote.   Wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as:

the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

But I think that crowdsourcing has another dimension to it.  The Wikipedia definition implies that the tasks being outsourced are only those which would be traditionally performed by an employee or contractor – i.e. paid services. But crowdsourcing has three much broader workforces – the general public, consumers and employees – who can offer something more – opinion and ideas. [ read more ... ]

HTML, the language of the web, is not a programming language – it is a mark-up language (“Hyper-Text Mark-up Language”).  That means it is responsible for page structure and layout, but it has no inherent programming properties – you cannot use it to query a database or even add two numbers together.

JavaScript is a programming language native to most web browsers, and it is a mature technology having been around since the mid-nineties.  By default it is turned on and, as most people do not turn it off, the vast majority of browsers have it enabled (BBC say around 5% of their visitor’s browsers do not have JavaScript enabled, although that percentage will rise as more devices which are not Flash enabled use the web).

JavaScript is a powerful language and can manipulate the majority of the content and layout of the browser – the HTML, the images, the form elements, the text styles, etc. – and is largely responsible for all the funky stuff which occurs on many contemporary websites – feature carousels, light box image galleries (where the pictures load on top of the page) and real-time form validation.  Recently, these functions have started to appear on more and more sites – not because there are more people writing JavaScript, because of the rise of pre-built JavaScript libraries, of which jQuery is King. [ read more ... ]

At the top of each of these posts (if you are viewing them in full and not viewing the summaries on the home page) you will see the little thumbs up icon and the invitation to like this page.  Next to it is a short message telling you how many people currently do like this page.

This is a simple application from Facebook which you typically install into your site via an inline frame.  This means that although the button looks like it’s on your site it is actually being pulled from the Facebook site, which also supplies all of the functionality.  There is almost nothing to install!

But, beware (or rejoice) this is just the start of Facebook and Open Graph’s world wide web domination! [ read more ... ]

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could get the juicy content from websites without having to navigate Flash heavy, ad-laden pages, and even better if that content was delivered to you in real-time?  Well RSS offers all of that, and more.

Really simple syndication (RSS) is a web standard which allows websites to publish their data feeds in a format which is easy share (in XML).  You can then subscribe to these feeds and consume them using an RSS reader such as Google’s Reader (free, via your Google account) or natively within Internet Explorer (and there dozens of other RSS clients out there). [ read more ... ]

There are a load of acronyms flying around the internet and new ones are being added daily, so here are a few common usages of some acronyms you will find on this site – around marketing, web and search. [ read more ... ]

Okay. The chief exec has had social media on their radar for a while and there is a growing sense of unease as time passes and the organisation continues to have no Facebook page, no Twitter presence – not even a blog.

So there’s a burst of activity and Google is searched and consulted.  A Facebook page is created, a Twitter account set up, and a WordPress blog activated.  Words are written, images sourced and with a small fanfare your social media presence is launched.  Phew, mission accomplished.  Or is it?   [ read more ... ]

We can all benefit from searching more effectively – I (and most probably you, just because you are reading this) use search a lot at work and at home, so better searching is a good thing.  Sure, better searches will save some time, but, more importantly, better searches will return better results – and generally with searches it is all about the quality of the results.

Although Google’s lonely single search box implies a limited interface, there is structure and method in the way they have organised their search operators.  Operators are the things you type into Google to make it do something with the other search keywords, e.g. noon OR midday where “OR” is the operator.  And Google has a load of them. [ read more ... ]