Why It’s Time to Update Your Browser

Why It's Time to Update Your Browser

Let me start with a little profanity: Internet Explorer.  Okay, so maybe it’s not the type of profanity you were initially thinking, but in the Internet world, Internet Explorer is one of the foulest, most cruel phrases anyone could say.  Why? Simple.  It’s terrible mainly due to its inability to follow simple web standards and user basics.

I will be fair though, with the release of IE 9, Microsoft has finally begun listening to consumers and web developers alike, by releasing software that follows web standards a bit more strictly. The only new problem we, web developers, face are people who don’t, or simply refuse to update.

Not using Internet Explorer? I’d like to give you a high five.  In case you’ve been living in Windows98 for the past several years, companies such as Apple, Google and Mozilla have made great strides in building better browsers to best Microsoft’s.

It wasn’t until IE9 that Internet Explorer finally supported HTML5.  Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari have been supporting it since 2009, whereas IE was two years behind.

HTML5 support isn’t the only reason to update your browser, though.  Recent improvements Apple, Google and Mozilla have been implementing are hardware acceleration, user preference and bookmark sync features, as well as faster rendering for the jQuery JavaScript library, which can be found on most websites.

Here are a few other reasons you should update your browser:

  • Security updates – Most releases usually have some form of security updates, whether it’s dealing with SSL, HTTPS or other small operating system related fixes
  • A better web experience – Take a look at http://dowebsitesneedtobeexperiencedexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/ Crazy URL, but hover over the word you see. Do you see a black background with white text?  How about a blue and purple backgrounds?  Do the words appear differently?
  • Themes – Everyone likes a little personalization and customization, right?  Why not break away from the typical gray/sandy colors and jazz up your browser with a new theme?
  • HTML5/CSS3 – Animations are no longer confined to Flash.  With CSS3, animations and transitions are fully supported, speeding up webpage load times.
  • I’m a happier person – Building a website to look aesthetically pleasing in a browser takes time.  Making it work in IE7 requires a lot more time.  In fact, it usually requires the use of its own stylesheet, just to make web pages appear correctly.
  • Beautiful interfaces – Currently, everywhere you look, advertisements and pictures are using color gradients to make products more visually appealing.  With modern browsers, creating beautiful websites is much, much easier and doesn’t require the use of hundreds of images.



My Name is David M. Auble, and I Oppose SOPA

STOP SOPA

STOP SOPA

This is important — I’m sure you’ve heard a little bit about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), but I think it’s important to stand out against it.  If you search anything on Wikipedia today, you’ll not be allowed to view the results.  Instead, you’ll be automatically redirected to a page asking for your zip code to contact your state representatives and tell them you are against SOPA.

It’s important to oppose SOPA because to summarize it, webmasters would be in charge of filtering EVERY bit of information posted to their sites.  For small companies, this would be a tremendous task, as they’d have to filter all comments, posts, or bulletins before being displayed online.  This would in turn cut into company budgets, due to having to hire someone full time to monitor the information.  On a larger scale, websites such as YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, would be responsible for filtering every post that’s made.  This would create a hassle, as a team of people would have to moderate every single post/comment.  With thousands of Twitter messages, Facebook status updates, and videos uploaded to YouTube every second, you can see how this can begin to be a BIG issue, and a big bottleneck for most websites.

It’s important let everyone know that you oppose SOPA.  We have several late-aged men and women making decisions about how the Internet is being formed and how it “should” be managed, instead of letting the youth dictate how information should be shared.  It’s no secret that the world’s youth download/share music/videos/media in an illegal manner.  It’s the same as recording a song to a cassette tape from the radio.  The government and other agencies will never be able to stop people from breaking the law — it’s simply impossible.

SOPA is affecting your freedom of speech, in the digital format.  Although the principle of regulating what is shared online is a good idea on paper, SOPA has been developed for all the wrong reasons.  Voting begins on January 24th, 2012, so it’s imperative everyone speak up!

For more information, look at Google’s “Doodle” today — you’ll see that the Google logo has been censored.  Do a search on Wikipedia — you’ll be surprised at what you may find.. or won’t find.

If you oppose SOPA, please sign the petition below:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

My name is David M. Auble, and I oppose SOPA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E46

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Please feel free to pass this post on to anyone and everyone you know.  People need to know and be educated about SOPA and the real threat it can be.  Watch more information:




The Panda Effect

The Panda Effect | Google PandaBy now, most businesses are implementing some form of basic SEO.  Whether it’s optimizing page titles and structure, or optimizing all pictures, content and folder structure, it’s important to build your site with SEO in mind.

Most people agree that Google is the leading search engine (by a significant margin).  By receiving over 65% of all search traffic, Google has been busy at work with trying to return the most relevant results as quickly as possible.

Recently, the search engine giant has released their latest version of their algorithm, Panda.  With the release of Panda came a series of changes and new factors that are taken into account when “grading” a website. The Panda release affects nearly 12% of all search results.

Let’s take a look at some of the new factors Panda takes into account when crawling a website.

  • Focus on the basics: UI/UX
    It may sound scary, but Google’s web bots (the Googlebot) are becoming more human-like by “understanding” page layouts.  By taking factors such as bounce rate, time spent on each page and site, page response times and conversion rates, the Googlebot is able to determine if the page contains content that people are actually wanting to view.

    With this information, the Googlebot is able to make an educated guess as to how people are engaging with your website.

  • Content Quality, Including Spelling
    Something our content writers always ask themselves is “How original is my content?”  It’s no secret that Google has virtually limitless space to store indexes of your content.  Because of this, it’s relatively easy for Google to determine the uniqueness of your content.  Pages with trustworthy and reliable content are favored more by the Googlebots, too.

    It seems trivial, but you would be surprised at the number of websites that have small spelling and grammar errors.  Googlebots recognize this and actually penalize sites with errors.  By looking through a website’s PageRank, or how reputable the website is, spelling and grammar affect this significantly.

  • Ad Spacing and Layout
    If you’re like me, you probably despise ads.  Googlebots are no different.  If they deem your page to have too many ads, your website may become flagged as a link farm, or may be seen as a page that serves no purpose other than to advertise for other companies. Being flagged as a link farm will severely affect your rankings, as most link farm websites have no real value.
  • Cleanliness of Code
    Any developer will agree that clean code is much easier to manage.  By writing clean code, it’s much easier to ensure your website renders the same way in any browser, regardless if it’s Internet Explorer or Chrome.  By validating your website against the W3C, this is your best ally in making sure everyone and Googlebots can view your website properly.

The Internet changes constantly. Google recognizes the inevitable changes and continually updates their algorithms.  Panda is the latest big change and certainly won’t be the last. By keeping these tips in mind, a website can please the “Google Gods” and improve its page rank.




Photography for the New Decade: Harry Potter Style Pictures?

I’m sure by now every person on the face of the earth has heard of a 17-year-old British kid, Daniel Radcliff.  If not, perhaps Harry Potter.  I was first introduced to Harry Potter when I was a freshman in high school, when the first movie came out, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  The magic in the movie, or “movie magic” I should say, really fascinated me.  I think the thing that stood out the most, was the moving pictures.  I’ve always been obsessed with the “latest and greatest” ever since I was a little kid.  It didn’t matter if it was a new car, a new computer or some new gizmo.

Anyway, I’ve stumbled upon a few pictures recently that have really sparked an interest with me.  They’re called Cinemagraphs, and are super awesome, to say the least.  I read an interesting article from a web design blog the other day and it featured a lot of cinemagraphs.  Cinemagraphs are more than your typical late-1990′s animated GIFs, as found on just about every GeoCities page.  You know the kind I’m refering to.. the awful “Under Construction” graphics.  If not, here’s one for your viewing pleasure.

 

Yes.  You all remember them now.  Oh how the Internet has evolved, thankfully.  Enough about them, let’s check out the cool parts of cinemagraphs.  Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg can be credited for creating this new type of image.  They would define a cinemagraph as “an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly.”  In other words, taking a picture, then animating a small aspect, capturing a glimpse of time, eternally.  I think they’re on to something, and may start a new revolution of photography, or even be the inspiration to new camera and/or printing technology.

Enough technical mumbo-jumbo, let’s see some of my favorites, pulled from Noupe and Beck/Burg’s website.

Pretty cool, huh?  They’re more than simple animated GIF images; they’re higher quality GIF images that reflect scenes and take some time to stitch together.  What do you think, would you be interested in seeing some of these on your website or social media pages?

[Via Noupe, Cinemagraph]




Freelance Portfolio Update

It’s been a little while since I’ve had a chance to update my website, but today I had a few minutes and decided to give my portfolio a bit of a facelift.

If you’d seen my portfolio before, you would have noticed it was divided into three columns — one for Web, Print and Graphics.  In taking a step back and thinking about how most portfolio sites are laid out, I discovered that most are not broken into columns and that it could cause some confusion.  Not to mention it made my work seem more spaced out.

So, I decided to group everything together and list them by piece.  Now, it looks much better and items can be found just as easily.

Take a look and let me know what you think!




« Older Entries