WWW.Design

Hot Web Design Trends for 2011

Web design, like anything, is in a constant state of flux. Each year, there are new technologies and developments that change the way we do the process of web design. While the result, a beautifully created and highly functioning website, is the same, how we get there is changing. In 2011, there are several important trends that anyone who has an online business or designs websites should be aware of.

Simple Colors: We are seeing a move away from complicated color schemes. Instead, designers are relying on simple palettes based on primary colors. Stay away from black and white themes, and instead focus on basic colors in simple combinations.
Mobile Ready: As more and more people are purchasing mobile devices, it has become critically important that websites be optimized for viewing on these devices. Often, this means simple layouts, lots of negative space, and quick load times.
HTML5: It isn’t the same as Flash, but it provides a lot of the same functionality. Even better, it doesn’t have the negative impact on optimization that Flash traditionally has. Look to add HTML5 to replace flash elements in web design.
Depth Perception: designers are creating visually stimulating websites by playing around with depth perception. Look for designers to integrate the look and feel of 3D technology without they expensive hardware.
Touchscreen Capabilities: As more and more devices rely on touch screen technology, it is important that we designers keep this in mind as they build websites. Extra space and simple navigation are key.

Interesting Facts about Gaming

Three out of every four American households turn to computer and online gaming for entertainment on a regular basis, and it is not just children and teens that are playing. In fact, the average age is closer to 40 and one in four game players are over the age of 50.

NEW YORK - APRIL 17: Video games are seen for...

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People play from their computer as well as various handheld mobile devices. Gaming has become so popular that many companies have added games to their websites to entertain their customers while they shop so that they will return often.

While it is true that gaming can become an addiction for some, for the majority of people, children included, there are many benefits involved. Gaming allows people to keep connected to one another. Games provide mental stimulation and have been found to help Alzheimer’s patients. Life skills such as problem solving and time management can be taught with the use of certain games.

Oddly enough, online gaming also has some benefits for our planet. Since there is a growing trend of staying home and playing games online rather than traveling, less fuel is burned. Not to mention that some that took annual trips to Las Vegas to gamble are staying home and using an online casino bonus to gamble online instead.

Another interesting thing about gaming is that it helps our economy by providing plenty of jobs. Game companies employ over 100,000 people in the United States and as a growing industry it will continue to help our employment outlook.

Bottom line is that gaming can be a great activity in one’s life with many benefits.

Make Games a Part of Your Website

When you start an online business, your first goal is to generate traffic for the site. Without traffic, you will never have customers that want to purchase the services and products that you offer. You will quickly find, however, that you have a new goal keeping you up at night: finding more repeat visitors.

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The Importance of Repeat Visitors

Your business might function fine by selling items to casual consumers in search of the best deals online. To become truly successful, though, you need repeat customers that turn to your site before going elsewhere to find better prices.

Using Games to Create Repeat Customers

Using online video games could help you capture a larger market of repeat customers. When you have fun games on your site, customers will want to visit your page again and again. The best games combine simple goals with graphics, plots, and rewards that encourage people to continue playing. Players get bored with games that are too easy to play, but they also become bored when games seem impossible to defeat.

Making the Most of Your Site’s Games

Encourage players to sign up for newsletters, emails, and special advertisements that will keep them informed of your company’s latest developments. When you have a devoted fan of players, you have a target group that is easy to reach. You can even incorporate advertisements into your website’s games.

What websites have encouraged you to visit their pages over and over again simply because they had fun games for you to play? Do you think it had a positive influence on your buying preferences?

Design for Your Gaming Blog or Website

If you have a gaming hobby, you may find that you want to talk about it. There are many ways to do this, and blogging is one of the most popular today. Because of this, more and more people are starting to make websites based around betting, gambling, and gaming. If this is something that you are interested in, you may find that you need to come up with the perfect design for your new website or blog.

Many people decide to go with some of the basic, classic colors of gaming and betting. Blacks, reds, and greens tend to be popular for gaming blogs and websites. Another option is to take cards from games of bingo, and use them as backgrounds on your website. This can add a fun element to your site.

When talking about design on a website, you never want to forget about the header. This is a crucial part not only of your design, but also of your marketing itself. The header has to tie into the rest of the site, so that it all looks like a cohesive site. An example of this would be if you have bingo cards on the rest of the site, it can look awkward to have a roulette table in your header. Keeping the same theme throughout the site can help people understand the basis of your blog or website.

Design is a very personal choice. You want it to reflect what you are talking about in your blog or website, but there is so much that you can vary that you will want to make sure it also reflects you.

Gaming – From Console to Online

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The gaming industry has grown a great deal over the past few decades. Moving from the popular console gaming systems that dominated throughout the 80s and majority of the 90s, to more advanced and interactive online computer gaming. The shift was subtle, but seemed to go by extremely quickly. This is simply due to the fact that technology is becoming more advanced at a seemingly exponential rate. In addition, video game designers and developers listened to the demands of the public and put forth the effort to produce more graphically enhanced games. The Nintendo Entertainment System boasted a sufficient 8-bit processor in its hay-day, which was the standard and nobody had any complaints. Years later, the coveted 16-bit systems came out: The Super Nintendo and Genesis, which quickly paved the way for the 32-bit Playstation and eventual 64-bit Nintendo 64.

As graphics became more of an emphasis for manufacturers and game developers, people began looking for other areas of gaming that they wanted improved. Among one of the more widely sought after aspects includes that of multi-player capabilities. People were wanting to experience these games with their friends in a setting that would allow for more than simply two players. Around this same time, computers were becoming a more common household item. In conjunction with computers becoming a more common household item, Internet access was becoming an equally popular commodity to supplement the computer.

Computers, and more specifically, Internet access opened a whole new area of gaming up to the public. Now, you can find all types of games online. Everything from games of bingo to games of war. With computers, people could get together and build a LAN for multi-player gaming.

Additionally, the Internet provided this concept on a much wider scale, without requiring people to leave their home in order to participate in multi-player online gaming. First person shooters were among the most popular in the multi-player genre, and introduced environments in which players could play in the same setting with 30 or more other players. These games consisted of cooperation games, or free-for-all games in which it was every man for himself. Online gaming has since become a dominant source in the industry.

Winning at Bingo

It doesn’t hurt to be lucky, but there are ways to make your own luck when playing bingo. There are definite strategies that can be employed when playing bingo that can improve your chances of being a winner. The successful bingo players are the ones who block out distractions and play more than one card at a time.

The number one tip for playing games of bingo is to pay extremely close attention. There are a number of potential distractions that can affect your concentration when you are playing bingo in person or online that must be avoided. Spending time chatting face to face or in an Internet chat room while trying to keep track of the numbers that are being called can lead to a critical error. If you miss just one of the numbers that is called, you may miss your chance to bingo.

One winning strategy that many players employ is to play multiple cards. It is fairly obvious that having two or three chances to win is better than just one. When selecting your bingo cards, try and find ones that have an assortment of different numbers. You do not want the cards to be too similar because that will not improve your odds of winning and will make trying to bingo that much more difficult.

It is also very important to understand the rules of the different games of bingo. One game might require a straight line to win while another may call for covering every number. It can be embarrassing to yell out “Bingo!” if you don’t really have it.

Elements of an Effective and Functional Website

An effective and functional website should be appealing, appropriate and professional. Here are some mistakes to avoid when developing a website that will increase its effectiveness.

While flash animations look great and are a way to showcase the developer’s talent, keep in mind that many website visitors’ computers cannot handle graphics-heavy sites. When the website freezes up on someone’s computer, they will immediately click off and keep searching. Also, people who are searching want information in a hurry. They don’t want to wait for the animation to stop. If you happen to be in the business of developing flash animations, have a separate portfolio page with samples of your work.

Image by smemon87 via Flickr

Websites should be easy to read and navigate. “Artistic” fonts, too many graphics and poorly labeled links make it difficult for visitors to find what they are looking for. One of the most common things that people search for on a website is the company’s your phone number, hours of operation and location. A functional website makes these things easy for visitors to find.

It’s also important that a website be kept up-to-date. Visitors clicking on a “latest news” tab are looking for the latest company news. When the latest posting is over a year old, it shows that maintaining the website is not a priority.

It goes without saying that dead links and incorrect information are also details that should not be overlooked. Links to both internal pages and outside sources should work and not lead people to non-existent pages. Mistakes like these tell readers that the website creator is careless, which is not the message to send to prospective customers.

Web design: Color chart questions

When contemplating the design of one’s website, one of the key elements is choosing the colors that go with the information that will be displayed. There is what is called browser-safe or Web-safe colors, and most computer monitors can display approximately 256 different colors. (8-bit) However, there are only around 216 that are fairly common to many operating systems.

Some helpful tips and sites to utilize when deciding on color components are some of the following:

Color Charts. There are hundreds of color codes available, and being able to remember them all is unrealistic. There are color charts available to select from, and there are various sites that post color charts for the designer to use. Here are some:

-HEX Color Chart, http://www.2createawebsite.com/build/hex-colors.html, this is an excellent site for color charts. The color codes are next to each color, which allows for ease and speed when deciding color choices.

-Super Color Chart, www.zspc.com/color. With this particular site, it is interactive. When deciding on which color, you simply click on the desired color and the code is displayed.

-Brobst Systems, www.brobstsystems.com/colors1.htm. With this site the color chart not only displays the # codes, but it gives you the actual name of the color. This is useful if the designer prefers to use the names instead of codes.

-Color Symbolism Chart, http://webdesign.about.com/compute/webdesign/library/weekly/aa070400b.htm. This is a great reference site that will show the basic symbolisms associated with different colors, but also the various symbolisms that color has with different cultures.

-Color Matters, www.colormatters.com. This site has plenty of information on the importance of choosing the right color scheme for a site. It highlights the colors as they may relate to the body, eye, computers, science, and many more.

Lastly, some of the common causes of color confusion come from: fluorescent text, excess of more than three colors, black backgrounds, and light text on dark backgrounds.

Data Processing: Investigating

Understanding the data processing of a computer will happen when the user learns how the computer represents and stores data. All data and the various programs are stored as files. A collection of stored data is known as a computer file. Now an executable file is one that contains specific instructions that relay messages to the computer on how to perform a certain task.

An individual user creates the data files, generally with detailed software. Here is where it can get very confusing. The terms that are used in the human language are meaningless when it comes to the computer. A computer has to interpret every signal as either “on” or “off.” The computer represents data as dissimilar or separate numbers.

For example, it represents “on” with a 1 and “off” with a 0. These numbers are defined as called binary digits or bits. A series of eight bits is considered a byte, and a kilobyte (KB or K) is around 1024 bytes. A gigabyte (GB) is approximately one billion bytes! And just for informational purposes a terabyte (TB) is approximately one trillion bytes!

Generally most PC’s or personal computers use the ASCII system to signify character data. (ASCII, American Standard Code for Information Interchange) The original ASCII utilized 7 bits to stand for the numbers 0 to 127 to stand for the 128 common characters and non-printing control characters. For that reason bits are typically arranged in bytes, the eighth bit is saved and used for error checking. Most computers use the original version of ASCII, but not all computers use the dame definitions for the extended version of ASCII.

Network Admin: Ins & Outs

Network Administration is described in different ways. NetWare is sometimes called an operating system while others call it simply protocol. Each network is much more than operating systems and protocols. All network systems have to determine the physical dynamics in the decision processes.

NetWare generally runs on pretty much any type of cabling that is used such as: twisted pair, coax, and fiber. There are also NetWare drivers for almost any hardware that maybe needed in network installation. Coordinating all these aspects creates networking as a commanding and unique discipline, and makes the responsibility of troubleshooting a network fastidiously challenging.

There is generally a natural interplay that occurs between each working component that may be composed from various manufacturers, which makes it difficult to pinpoint one isolated issue.

So what is the difference between a file server and an application server? A file server is a laymen’s term for a device that handles basic programs and data on a LAN. These could be print services, communication services, word processing programs and files, email, and many more. Ultimately, the user typically creates an explicit connection to a specific file server through drive mapping.

Now an application server acts as client’s machines on a LAN and necessitates the presence of a file server to give low-level transport protocols. Also, an application server can give a certain service on a LAN at the discrete demand of an application (the client). From that a calling application, other than the user, which the connection is, develops the dialog with the server. The service is transparent to the particular user.