Another Free Upgrade!
In January 2001 we offered a free bandwidth upgrade to all of our web hosting customers. We're at it again!
We are pleased to announce that all of our existing web hosting customers will receive a free web space upgrade. Here's how the free upgrade stacks up:
Personal Plan: was 20 MB, now: 50 MB
Professional Plan: was 50 MB, now 125 MB
Corporate Plan: was 75 MB, now 175 MB
Commercial Plan: was 125 MB, now 225 MB
Enterprise Plan: was 140 MB, now 275 MB
High Volume Plan: was 200 MB, now 525 MB
And you thought the days of free 'anything' on the internet were over.
This is a free upgrade for all of our hosting customers. Enjoy your new web space. Use it. We'll buy more.
What is your screen resolution?
Statmarket.com recently did a study (February 17, 2001) to try to figure out how much screen area web users were seeing on their screens. They found that most users had their screen resolutions set at 800x600 pixels. In fact, 53% of web users had their screen resolution set at 800x600 pixels.
Why is this important? Well, if you are designing pages for the web, you want to make sure that the viewer can see all of your page without scrolling horizontally, if possible. On the other hand, you don't necessarily want to design for the smallest screen resolution because on a larger screen, your design will be swamped by empty space.
But what if the viewer doesn't have their browser window set to maximum? What if they customized their browser tool bars to make more viewing area available? What if global warming is real?
What I am getting at is that there are a lot of factors beyond our control when it comes to viewable screen real estate. So how do you design for this infinitely flexible canvass?
Two techniques come to mind (but I am sure there are many other creative solutions). One solution is to make the design stretch to fill the browser window, regardless of the screen resolution, or the size of the browser window, or anything else for that matter. The other solution is a hybrid: make the main area of the page float so that it always stays in the center of the screen.
For example, this page is totally "stretchy". Go ahead. Change the size of your browser window. The page should stretch or squish to fill the screen. If you want to see something cool, watch the top navigation bar as you resize the window. See how the geometric thingies slide over the net in the background? This is an example of a stretchy design.
NormanRussell.com is an example of a hybrid design. When you resize your browser window with this design, the central elements stay the same size, but move together to the center of your window. In general, a hybrid design is easier to build than a totally stretchy design.
By now, you may be wondering how all the screen resolutions stack up with regard to popularity. Here's what statmarket.com learned in their study of 50,465,595 user sessions:
- 640x480: 7%
- 800x600: 53%
- 1024x768: 31%
- 1152x864: 2.5%
- 1280x1024: 2.5%
- other: 4%
The bottom line is this: web designers should concentrate less on what the most popular screen resolution is, and focus more on how they can make the pages useable for the viewer at any screen resolution or browser window size.
If you want to learn more about how BIGSEA can help you make your design stretchy, give us a call. We're here to help.
Separating Form From Content
If you work around the web building web sites for any amount of time, you will eventually hear the phrase "separate form from content". What, exactly, does that mean?
In a nutshell, it describes the concept of separating the appearance and layout of your web documents from the text that those documents contain.
Why is this important? Say, for example, you are maintaining a web site with 100 pages. You built those pages using static html files and you painstakingly applied font sizes, colors, and font styles to all 100 pages. Someday, your boss or client will come to you and say: "change all of my type to a light blue, and make my headlines dark gray.". You will say "arghhhh..."
If you had the foresight to use a style sheet to apply the color formatting to the text in your documents, you will make the change in two places, and suddenly all 100 of your pages will take on the new appearance. If you weren't blessed with foresight in this instance, you will get busy editing all 100 of your pages manually.
That's the beauty of separating form from content. In fact, the concept behind Rev9 is all about separating form from content. If you want to learn how BIGSEA can help you separate form from content in your existing web site, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Saturday, February 17, 2001 |
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Why you need a content management system
Here's a link to a pretty good article that explains why you need a content management system.
This page summarizes some of the existing content management systems available in the marketplace today.
Of course, we can convert your site to a Rev9 site and give you the benefits of a content management system at a fraction of the cost compared to building your own content management server and database.
While we're on the subject of content management, have you been thinking about ways to separate your web content from your web design? You aren't alone-- at BIGSEA we understand the importance of this idea. But content management systems are just one piece of the puzzle. Cascading style sheets, XHTML and XML are a few others. In this article, Zeldman discusses his efforts and the efforts of other developers to convert their sites and web content to support standards-compliant web browsers. Zeldman believes that developers can pull users along to upgrade to newer browser versions by ending the practice of creating backward-compatable web pages. Whether you agree with him or not, this article is a good read if you want to stay up-to-date with the latest web development techniques.
And, as always, if you are interested in learning how BIGSEA can help you build a better web site, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Friday, February 16, 2001 |
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Client-Side Javascript Includes
I saw something this morning that got me thinking. It was a really ugly (and poorly built) web site that had an interesting feature. On the right hand side of the page, there was a nice looking news feed from internetsoccer.com. How did this gem get on this page?
The answer: client-side javascript includes.
First a little about news feeds: if you don't already know, news feeds make it easy for people to share links to interesting articles that are (hopefully) related to the content of their web site. For example, this site includes a news feed to Wired News. See the right-hand column of this page? Those links to articles are coming directly from Wired. They get updated every day, and the best part is, I don't have to do anything to maintain it. New articles appear on the news feed whenever Wired adds them.
But enough about news feeds. Lets get back to the client-side javascript includes. If you know some of the more technical details of the web, you know that some pages are static (they are just text files stored on the server, and the server just serves them up, as is), and some pages are dynamic (the server builds the page from bits and parts every time someone sends a request for the page). The page I was looking at was most definitely a static web page. So how was this dynamic news feed appearing on the page? Client-side javascript includes.
Hmmm. Pretty clever, but simple really. Instead of having the server build the page dynamically, some javascript on this page caused my client software (Internet Explorer) to build the page dynamically.
How did they do this? There are two parts to the solution. The first part is to create a text file consisting of a snippet of html that you want to include on a page. This text file has to have two special characteristics. One, the text must look like this:
document.write (' html snippet goes here ');
And two, all of the text, including the html, must be on one line.
The second part of the solution is to include a bit of code on your page where you want the included html to appear. Here is what that line should look like:
<script language="javascript" src="http://path to file you created in step one"></script>
If you did everything right, and you have javascript enabled in your web browser, viewing your modified (static) web page should include (dynamically) the html snippet you created in step one. Pretty neat.
There are a couple of potential problems that you should be aware of: one, you are totally dependent on the client machine to properly render your dynamic page. If the browser has javascript turned off, the include won't work. Two, if you want the included html snippet to update dynamically like our news feed does, you will have to find someone who is providing the news feed in the proper format (like the example above).
Our Rev9 product handles news feeds a little differently than the example above, but I thought it was an interesting technique that someone could use. And you don't have to use it just for news feeds. You could easily break a web page into simple text files and have the client put it all back together. Why would you want to do this? It could make editing the site easier. Instead of editing the complete static web page, you could edit sections separately. This would allow you to separate form from content.
But if you are going to go to that much effort, you may want to consider a browser based content management system like our Rev9 product. With Rev9, you get all of the benefits of separating form from content, dynamic pages that can be rendered out to a static server (for speed, reliability), and you don't have to worry about all of the messy details that are going on in the background. Rev9 makes it easy for you to use your brain power to manage the content on your web site so you don't have to waste brain cycles managing your web site.
If you want to learn more about how BIGSEA can help you ease the pain of maintaining your web site and help you keep your content fresh, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Sunday, February 11, 2001 |
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Maybe you don't want to be a webmaster.
So maybe you don't want to be a webmaster. You have read about Rev9, but you don't want to worry about the details of keeping your site up-to-date on a regular basis. Maybe you would just like to be able to tell your webmaster: "change the word 'cat' to 'dog' everywhere in my site", and have the changes made almost instantaneously.
No problem. If that's what you want, let BIGSEA be at your service. Rev9 makes it easy for our hosting customers to keep their sites updated on a regular basis, but for those clients who don't want webmaster responsibility, we can use our Rev9 product to keep your site updated for you.
Maybe you have had a bad experience with your current web developer. You needed to have some changes completed on your site by tomorrow afternoon, but your developer told you it would take a week or two before they could get to it. You thought to yourself: "there has got to be a better way."
There is. If you like the idea of having a webmaster on call to make chages to your site, but don't like the idea of experiencing long delays to get the changes made, give us a call. We can discuss converting your existing site to a Rev9 site. After that, we should be able to make most changes (text, some graphics) to your site in less than 24 hours. If you want a complete re-design of your site or you want to add additional functionality that requires custom coding, it will definitely take longer than 24 hours, but we will let you know in advance. But for most simple changes to text or graphics, we will have your work done by the next day, and often, sooner.
Sound interesting? Give us a call. We're here to help.
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Wednesday, February 7, 2001 |
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Another thing that makes Rev9 great...
You're updating the content on your website. It's late, you're tired. You are working with your favorite WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) web page editor. You find the page you want to change on your local machine, make your changes, save them, and FTP the updated page to the webserver. Just to make sure all is well, you browse to the page you just changed to see your changed page live.
Oops. Something went wrong. Your page isn't rendering correctly in the browser. Next you realize you overwrote the original copy on your local machine when you saved your changes, and you overwrote the original on your webserver when you FTP'd the page to the web server.
You were hoping to hop into your warm bed, but now you know you have another hour of work ahead of you to correct the damaged page.
If you had a Rev9 site, this extra work could have been averted. In Rev9, you edit your pages directly in your web browser, in WYSIWYG mode (works with Internet Explorer for Windows). You make your changes, click the "Post Changes" button, and then you see your changes in the web browser. You know right away if the changes you made were the changes you intended.
What if you made a mistake? Don't worry, you can always go back and edit the page again to fix it. But what if you really, really made a mistake? You are still O.K. Rev9 keeps two copies of your pages in circulation. One copy resides on the Rev9 server (this is where you make your changes) and the other copy resides on the public web server. The page your customers see doesn't get changed until you choose to "render" the final version to the public web server. So, if you get stuck, we can always help you revert your Rev9 page to the original page that is stored on the public web server. If you accidentally rendered your page to the public server and overwrote your remaining "good" page, most likely we can help you restore yesterday's page from backup. That may take some time and effort on our part, and we may charge you a restoration fee, but rest assured that in most cases your pages can be restored (Just don't wait too long to let us know you want a page restored. Our backup tapes don't go back forever.).
What if you don't know HTML? Don't worry. If you have used a word processor, you can use Rev9. Some HTML knowledge can help you, and you can use a WYSIWYG editor as a crutch, but most people can maintain a Rev9 site without using any HTML at all. In fact, I am typing this story into my browser window, without any HTML. Just plain text, no special formatting. On a Macintosh.
Are you interested in learning more about Rev9 and how it can help your business? Give us a call. We're here to help.
About Our Web Site
A potential client once said to me: "I don't get it: what is your site all about?". Good question. At first glance, our site may not make much sense to a new visitor. We have articles about web development and hosting, links to tech support and services, dynamic news feeds from national publications like the New York Times, a calendar, and a search box, among other things.
I'll agree that we've broken just about every marketing rule in the book. But that's the point. This site is part marketing, part customer service, part technical support, and mostly a showcase of interesting technologies that we can implement for our customers on their web sites.
Take the calendar, for instance. To a casual visitor, it just looks like a normal calendar with the current day highlighted. But it is really a daily index to all of the articles that we have archived on our site.
And the search engine? How many times have you visited a site looking for a specific piece of information only to be frustrated because they didn't offer a way to search their content? An integrated search engine is another example of the kind of functionality that we can offer our clients for their own websites.
You will also see references to Rev9 throughout our site. What is Rev9, you ask? Rev9 is a tool that our customers can use to keep their sites up-to-date, every day. Although the casual visitor may not realize it, this site is driven by Rev9. If it were not for Rev9, keeping a site like this up-to-date would be a major pain. If you don't believe me, try it the old fashioned way, then give us a call. We can convert your existing site to a Rev9 site. We'll teach you how to use your web browser to edit your site (that's right, I said "web browser"). And then you will understand the beauty of Rev9. Remember, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Thursday, February 1, 2001 |
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News Feeds
We now have the capability to add news feeds to a Rev9 web site.
Do you see the New York Times Tech News box at the right? That is an example of a news feed that gets updated on the dynamic version of this site every day. To see the dynamic version of this site and the latest news, click here.
If you would like to add dynamic news feeds to your web site, give us a call. We're here to help.
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Thursday, January 18, 2001 |
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Free Upgrade!
We have just increased the Data Transfer limits for all of our hosting plans.
Here are the details:
Personal Plan: was 2 GB per month, now: 3 GB per month
Professional Plan: was 4 GB per month, now 5 GB per month
Corporate Plan: was 5 GB per month, now 7.5 GB per month
Commercial Plan: was 7 GB per month, now 10 GB per month
Enterprise Plan: was 8 GB per month, now 15 GB per month
High Volume Plan: 20 GB per month, now 35 GB per month
How much extra is this gonna cost you?
NOTHING!
This is a free upgrade for all of our hosting customers. Enjoy your new bandwith. Use it. We'll buy more.
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