Posts Tagged ‘Web development’

Web-development: trying to draw users’ attention

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

1. Users concentrates on faces

People instinctively notice other people. The same occurs on web pages, users focus their attention on somebody’s face and eyes. So web developers and designers have a good tool to manage users’ attention. Moreover they also can take into account that people usually start to look in the same direction, following photomodel’s look.

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Temperature map that shown quantity of users looking at an image with a child who looks at them.

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And now he is looking at the content. Pay your attention to the increase in the number of people who read the title and the text.

2. Most of users do not see advertising

Jakob Nielsen says that most of people do not see ads. Looking for some information or focusing on site content, they simply do not pay any attention to banners. It means that users also avoid anything that looks like an advertisement, even if it is not an ads actually. Some menu items may look like banners, so website designers should be careful creating such elements.

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Square banners on the left side of the FlashDen site are not banners: they link to content on the same site. But they may be ignored by some users.

However, advertising that looks like content, can be visited by people who are looking for this very information. It can bring more revenue from advertising, but also can reduce level of visitors’ trust because they will click on a banner thinking it’ just a reference to required material on the site. So consider what will be better for you: short-term gain or long-term trust.

Creating input forms for websites – the shortest guide for web developers

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Designers working for EleganceIT believe that usability is an important aspect of website development. It is important to make pages more simple and user-friendly. Numerous studies on various aspects of website design and user interface help us to create products in compliance with usability standards. Let’s begin from the very first thing you see entering most of sites. We mean input forms.

It’s better to put left-aligned labels above input fields

The UX Matters web magazine has conducted a comprehensive study to find out look-and-feel of an ideal login / registration form. According to the results, the best way is to put labels above form fields. You definitely have noticed that many forms in the Internet have labels placed on the left side, creating a layout with two columns. It looks not bad, but it is not the easiest layout to use. Why? Because users enter information using top-down approach. It will be easier for them to read labels placed just before fields, rather than look for them on the left side.

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For example, Tumblr has a simple and elegant registration form, which is consistent with the recommendations of UX Matter.

Labels on the left side create the following dilemma for website application developers: how to align these labels? A left-align label creates good looking layout, but at the same time it separates the label from your form, so it will be difficult to see what label relates to every field. And a right-align label makes the opposite thing: a user-friendly form with wry layout. :( While labels above input fields will be convenient in most cases. The study also has showed that labels should not use < b > (bold) tags, but this recommendation is not so obligatory.

Why should I use PHP for web development?

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Looking for a proper web programming language focus your special attention on PHP. Why? Here we have listed some reasons for such a decision:

1. Start, learn and develop PHP-applications FREE OF CHARGE
Members of more than thousand communities will be glad to help you with php. Great number of PHP forums and web projects provide all the necessary information, be sure that you’ll find answers for some standard questions even before you will have time to ask them.
Of course, you will pay nothing starting your work with php (unlike Microsoft’s aspx language and others). No paid php software is needed; open source editing tools allow to develop web applications based on php without any investments.

2. Hundreds of php code examples and frameworks
You will find great number of php code examples, that will help you to learn this language and use it for successful web development. Frameworks will save your time and will allow to do the most of repetitive programming tasks. Just use Google to get some more new php code examples and frameworks.

3. The best choice for web 2.0 applications and hosting companies
Create with PHP web 2.0 applications with rich user interfaces and impressive functionality. Remember that php works with javascripts!
Also web hosting based on Linux or Windows will be glad to take care of your php web site. :)

4. The most of content management systems use PHP
Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress, some of the most popular open source CMS, written in php. It means that your php web development will be based on the following formula: free CMS + site functionality based on php + usability + qualitative design.
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