Social media explained

supunlk — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:11:58 +0000

Twitter – I am eating a donut

Facebook – I like donuts

Foursquare – This is where I eat donuts

Instagram – Here’s a vintage photo of my donut

YouTube – Here I am eating a donut

LinkedIn – My skills include donut eating

Pinterest – Here’s a donut recipe

Last FM – Now listening to “Donuts”

Google+ – I’m a Google employee who eats donuts

What is RSS?

Ishar — Mon, 25 May 2009 04:58:22 +0000

RSS - Really Simple Syndication - What is it and How Do You Use It?

Ever hear of subscribing for magazines? Well, there are millions upon millions of sites on the internet which has an abundance of useful information which we may need at some point in our life! So how do we siphon through all that information (overload?) to find the really useful stuff we need? We don’t really want to do all that work of going through each and every web site looking?? …. or do you? Time’s a wasting!! Enter RSS - Really Simple Syndication.

You may have seen this on many sites in the form of some nice eye catching icons:

RSS Icons

What do these do? They are your subscription forms!! Click on one and it will take you through the 2 or less steps that you need to do to subscribe. But wait… How do you read the feed you subscribe to? You will need a Feed Reader: here is a nice free one Google RSs Feed Reader of course you do need a Google mail account, hey! who hasn’t??!! If you don’t click here for a list of other RSS Feed Readers.

If you did not understand a word that I said (sigh……) Here it is in picture and voice format!!

How to Hyperlink specific words from one page to another

Ishar — Wed, 06 May 2009 06:50:52 +0000

Hi, recently someone asked us how they could link from one page to another using specific words.

As an example: you have a page about biology called mainpage.html with plenty of words that require explanations. These explanations are all on another page called definition.html.

To illustrate:

“Sri Lanka’s premier web design company Cyber Studio ……” What do the words “Cyber” and “Studio” mean? Clicking on them will take you to the definition.html page where you will find out. Get the drift?? or have we lost you?

No worries! Here is an example of what we mean:

Sample

What does Adobe Reader do?

Mad — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:40:35 +0000

Adobe Reader, reads PDF files which are created by Adobe Acrobat.

The beauty of this, is that Adobe Acrobat can convert almost file type from the popular Operating Systems. That means a document can be created by almost any program and then given to another person to read, even though the receiver of the document doesn’t have the program that created the document.

For example, a writer can create a Microsoft Word document on a Windows machine, convert it into a PDF file and give it to a person using a Linux machine and they can use Adobe Reader to read it. The Linux user doesn’t have to have Microsoft Word to read the document.

The Reader is free, but Acrobat costs money.

Click Here to Download Adobe Reader

Click Here to Purchase Acrobat

How to Open .docx using old MS Word?

Mad — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:02:15 +0000

To open Microsoft Office Word 2007 .docx or .docm files with Microsoft Office Word 2003, Word 2002, or Word 2000, you need to install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007 Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint File Formats and any necessary Office updates. By using the Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system, you can open, edit some items, and save Office Word 2007 documents in previous versions of Word.

Click here to download Office Compatibility Pack.

Protected: What is Web Design

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:53:06 +0000

Arouse Your Creative Senses

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:29:17 +0000

Hi here are a list of sites that will whet your appetite and get your creative juices flowing.

Below is a list of the best posts and websites out there that really got us (Cyber Studio) inspired.

If you have limited time, I would tell you to check out these picture based posts that load all the images on one page. Inspiration from 2007 and 32 Inspirational graphic design pieces. ShinyBinary and 57Even and UrbanCowboy and DeviantArt are also good choices.

Inspirational Collections

DesignFlavr - A gallery full of hand chosen design. 100% quality.

60 More Places To Get Design Inspiration - A list like this of 60 more websites where you can get design inspiration. Really good quality.

34 Places To Get Design Inspiration - 34 more websites of where to get design inspiration.

12 Links for Web Design Inspiration - A great list of where to get web design inspiration.

Great Illustrator Designs - A great pictured post of great illustrator designs.

32 Inspirational graphic design pieces - Another great pictured list of great graphic design.

The Best Inspiration from 2007 - A huge collection of awesome graphic design pieces from 2007.

Thinking For A Living - This is an awesome collection of only high quality websites and resources that have been broken down into smaller categories. Not so much visual inspiration but a list of good places where to get it.

Design Inspiration Galleries:

HOWDesign.com Design Inspiration Directory

Design Studios / Artists

OkapiStudio

Cecilia Lindgren

Robert Scully

Shinybinary - Nik Ainley

Frost Design - Vince Frost

Blogs (Resourceful Articles + Inspiration)

Design Inspiration Blog

Do please let us know of anymore that you think should be added to this post.

www.cyberstudio.biz pioneering webdesign in Sri Lanka

More tips to a great and effectively designed Web Site

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:03:05 +0000

Neat and Easy Navigation: Navigation of links on your site plays a big role in determining the stickiness of your site (how long your visitor stays and explores your site). Ask yourself this, What do visitors do as soon as they open your site? They would probably read the content of the present page and then look around to find any other page that interests them. Read our article on Web site Navigation Tips.
Clean Layout Design: A clean layout that uses a lot of white space enhances a site’s looks. Try to keep the focus on your content, use a template for this. Use fonts that will be available on all computers to prevent your site looking messed up.
Optimum Load Time: Make sure your load time is low. For this you must:
Minimize Graphics, Flash and scripts: They hugely increase your file size.
Optimize your HTML & script code: Make sure that your site doesn’t have any unwanted tags or unused scripts.
Use Server Side Include (SSI) files where ever possible. SSI files once called from the web server reside in its cache so on subsequent requests they load faster.
Read our article Tips for a Fast Loading Site for more.
Design for all Screen Resolutions: A site that is easy-to-use always encourages visitors to stay and read your content. For site with long pages of content this is very crucial as the amount of scrolling required is reduced. Suppose your site doesn’t look good for a particular resolution it is very probable that the visitor will close the browser window feeling that the web page is not for their viewing. Designing stretch layouts that fit any screen resolution ensures that you know all your visitors see a visually appealing and professional site.
Read our article Designing for all Screen Resolutions for more.
Ensure Web site scalability: Make sure your code and design is scalable. As technology advances and configuration of computers & their monitors keep increasing and varying it is impossible to test your site in all screen sizes and platforms.
Cross Browser Compatible: Make sure you check your site for Internet Explorer 6+, Mozilla Firefox 2.0+, Opera 7.0 and Netscape Navigator 6+ as they constitute 95% of the worlds browsers.

www.cyberstudio.biz pioneering webdesign in Sri Lanka

Web site Navigation Tips

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:01:10 +0000

Navigation of links on your site plays a big role in determining the stickiness of your site (how long your visitor stays and explores your site). Ask yourself this, What do visitors do as soon as they open your site? They would probably read the content of the present page and then look around to find any other page that interests them. Read On!

A clean layout and neat navigation and using a lot of white space for your site enhances its looks. Try to keep the focus on your content. Read our important article on Web Design Tips before you start designing your site.
Here are a few important tips:

Prepare your site navigation before designing to prevent cluttering up the site with forgotten links.
A clean-cut and uniform navigation system is a must.
If you have too many links then you should use drop-down menus or flyouts for your main topics. If you have Fireworks or Dreamweaver then macromedia drop-down menus are one of their most popular in-built “Behaviors”.
Maintain a site map or section contents/home pages to help people find what they are looking for with ease.
The navigation should be flexible enough to accommodate any amount of additional links in case you probably will be adding pages periodically. For this using drop-down menus or section home pages is a must.
Keep your main links together as much as possible so that visitors can absorb them at one shot and know what your site conveys about your company. Check out how all our major links appear in our top navigation bar and all related section links are listed in the right hand side menu.
There is no harm is showcasing important links (even repeated links) that you think might interest the visitor. Small boxes describing the link should look good.
If you like a graphic intensive site and find there is not much space for accommodating all your links, you can have a separate home (splash) page and all other pages as content pages. Thus your home page can have visual appeal and your inner content pages can have elaborate navigation structures while focusing on the content.
Use your navigation space efficiently. Use short, clear and precise words in your links so that your visitors know what the corresponding page will contain.

www.cyberstudio.biz pioneering webdesign in Sri Lanka

Designing Web Sites For All Screen Resolutions

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:55:04 +0000

Why do we need to design for all resolutions?

Web site design scalability - As technology advances and the configuration of monitors keep increasing it is impossible to test your site in all screen sizes. Designing stretch layouts that fit any screen resolution ensures that you know all your visitors see a visually appealing and professional site. Check out our website in different screen resolutions, you will find that it will fit the screen width.
To fit available browser space for easy reading - Try out a fixed width site in all resolutions (especially higher than 1024×768) and see how empty and unprofessional it looks. Now take a look at the example page in all the resolutions and feel the difference. If it is necessary for you to keep a fixed width then we have given suggestions on how to do it more professionally (read below).
To keep your viewers on your site - A site that is easy-to-use always encourages visitors to stay and read your content. For site with long pages of content this is very crucial as the amount of scrolling required is reduced. Suppose your site doesn’t look good for a particular resolution it is very probable that the visitor will close the browser window feeling that the web page is not for their viewing.

Viewer Statistics

There are more than 40 different screen resolutions.
1024×768 is the most popular resolution used (getting the lions share of around 60%) followed by 1280×1024 and above (around 25%) and 800×600 (around 14%). 98% of users have 800×600 and above resolution, thus, 800×600 can be taken as the minimum resolution the site should fit (other lower resolution are seldom used).

Design Basics

There are two ways to design your website - Table design and Table-less design (using div tags).
For a beginner using tables is the best as there isn’t much that can go wrong with the use of tables. For advanced users and design professionals designing using CSS styles and div tags is a must for optimal results of load time and to follow W3C standards.
For stretch layouts we need to give the width of the table(s) or div(s) in percentage.
To fit the whole screen for any resolution - the outer most table(s) or div(s) are given 100% width. If the design can be made to have just one outer table then it can be given a height of 100% to expand and fill the browser space vertically.
To make only the content area to expand do the following. After the outer most table or div is given the width in percentage all inside cells or div tags should be given fixed widths in pixels except the content cell or div.
If you like the fixed width concept or are forced to have a fixed width you can give a contrasting background color and/or a shadow effect/border to the table to make it stand out. These effects can also be used along with the stretch layout concept by giving the table or div width as 90 or 95 percent.
Some of the templates don’t fit the screen vertically due to design limitations and netscape compatibility issues. Instead of using 100% as the height, here the extra space can be cleverly hidden by using a background color or fill.

Example of a liquid layout click here

If you have any thoughts in this we would love to hear about them.