Doing Business on the Web

E-commerce is big business, and has been for a long time. While e-commerce sites were once treated with suspicion by many internet users, it’s become as common as checking email. While I’m sure there are some internet users out there who have never made an online purchase, they’re getting rarer by the day.
As a designer, you can’t afford to ignore good ecommerce design. When designing a ecommerce site I feel you have to be very particular on who you are looking for to consume your product.  And also the newest, resourceful, and inexpensive products you can find with updated visuals.  3 main keys are  
Trustworthiness
Simplicity and ease of use
Transparency


If someone doesn't trust your site then they wont order from it.  You must make the consumer feel comfortable purchasing something on your site with their personal information.  Not only that but the fact that they will receive what they purchased in the allotted time given.  No one like jumping through hoops as well when trying to purchase something.  The instructions should be easy to read and understand. 

Copyright and the Web Designer

Copyright law says that the creator of the design and content on a web site automatically becomes the legal owner of said design or content the moment it’s designed or written.  It’s customary to post a copyright statement on one’s web site but it’s really not necessary nor is it required by law. Let’s face it, since when do a few words on a web page stop someone from stealing your content if they really want it. If you think a copyright statement is going to stop them, you need to back up and then move forward in re-think mode.  If you want to review the actual laws, one of the best sites to do so belongs to Attorney Ivan Hoffman. Attorney Hoffman is considered to be the most highly regarded authority on the subject of Internet web site law. He provides an impressive list of links for web site designers and site owners that you may wish to review.  But me personally I feel copyright will always be a big issue.  Your design is your design but when it comes to creating anything I feel everything before has had an influence on what we do today.  And even if its something you may have thought of it doesn't mean somebody before you hasn't come up with the exact same idea...........Moral of the story if you build it.....COPYRIGHT IT!! lol

Web Design as a career

Personally I see myself using Web Development not so much as a career but more so as a side job.  Taking this class has taught me numerous things that I probably in any other circumstance wouldn't have paid much attention to.  In a world where there are people starting new business's everyday, they have a need to get their business out to a vast amount of customers.  Websites these days are one of the top ways people are selling merchandise.  To where a lot of business owners may not know how to create one, I would be able to and charge a reasonable price.  More then likely they will agree due to the fact that in the end it will increase their revenue.

web site interactivity

Interactivity attracts users attention, brings excitement, makes them unique, keeps users interested and ensures that they have a memorable experience visiting the website.  Single user interaction is about engaging users in spending time on your website by displaying the content in an attractive way.  Flash has become another name for interactivity in website design. The conventional non-static elements have been replaced with flash that interacts with the user. Websites will use flash elements for their navigation, header and/or banner ads. Video streaming and music players are becoming more and more popular and easy to use. Statistics show that over 95% of computers now have Macromedia Flash Player installed on their computer.  Technologies and techniques have been developed to meet the ever growing and changing need for interactivity.

Mobile First Webdesign

Now me being a strong believer in desktop over small devices puts me in a one sided view when it comes to Mobile First Webdesign.  For one image resizing to me takes away from the original creativity of a design.  This is a major issue considering that every good designer must rely on images to illustrate its concepts.  Viewing a responsive website on a mobile device forces the CPU and memory of it while resizing images because you are downloading a large image, uncompressing it in your phone’s memory and then resizing it to fit a small screen. This process takes about 3 bytes per pixel of memory, so a 1024×768 image will take about 2.36 MB of memory.  Second In my opinion is mobile speed Vs desktop speed. 
The whole point of responsive web design is the potential to be viewed on different devices. Yes I know this but id rather take time to get all I wish to view on a desktop and know im getting all the information I seek.

Retina Display

The devices on which the web can be displayed increases everyday. Rather recently Apple released its new set of Macbook Pros with retina display, so called because at a normal viewing distance users wont be able to see any pixels. Designing for such a high resolution however, can become a little more tricky than you would expect.
Over the years the resolution of your average monitor has gotten bigger and bigger. If you’ve upgraded your monitor to a larger resolution but with the same physical monitor size you will probably notice that the elements (windows, icons, etc) will have reduced in size. That’s because the pixels are smaller, so if the window was 180 pixels wide, it now takes up 180 smaller pixels.

Media Queries

Being able to detect device state at any given moment is important for any number of reasons and so it's important that web app CSS and JavaScript are in sync with each other. In working on my website , I found that there are many media queries, although helpful, sometimes very unhelpful. Is the user viewing the site in desktop, tablet, or phone screen size? Easy from a CSS perspective but CSS doesn't directly speak with JavaScript.

Device Adaptation

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh708740(v=vs.85).aspx




As a web (or Windows Store app using JavaScript) developer, you are faced with a dilemma: Code your site to work with as many devices, sizes, and resolutions as possible; or risk alienating users by potentially allowing your content to be either clipped (in fixed layouts) or jumbled confusingly (in fluid layouts). The @-ms-viewport rule, in combination with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Media Queries, attempts to solve this dilemma by enabling web developers and developers of Windows Store apps using JavaScript for Windows 8 to optimize the layout of sites and apps for different devices with minimal effort.


In my own opinion device adaptation is one of the most important part of developing nowadays with everything being mobile.  This is something that must be taken in to account when building your page.  You want whomever is visiting your page to be satisfied no matter the device they use.

Media Queries (HTML)

https://www.box.com/blog/media-queries-things-i-wish-id-known/




I happened to find a lot of knowledgeable information on Media Queries through box.com.  CSS media queries enable you to apply different CSS styles in your HTML page depending on the device that shows the HTML page. More specifically, media queries enable you to apply different styles depending on the browser window width, device screen width, type of device, aspect ratio and pixel ratio. In many cases it is enough to base your media queries on the browser window width, though.


Here Are Some Examples I Found.


<style>
    @media only screen and (max-width: 600px) {
        /* CSS rules for browser widths equal to or less than 600px */
        body { background-color: #ffffff; }
    }
    @media only screen and (min-width: 601px) and (max-width: 1200px) {
        /* CSS rules for browser widths from 601px to 1200 px */
        body { background-color: #ff0000; }
    }
    @media only screen and (min-width: 1201px) {
        /* CSS rules for browser widths from 1201px and up */
        body { background-color: #0000ff; }
    }
</style>

Dublin Core

http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Dublin_Core


I can honestly say I knew nothing about Dublin Core until I visited semanticweb.org.  This metadata has hardly any influence on the ranking of your site with the search engines. It has to be said that if your pages can be written better, they will be found better. And how often your site is found, the better it is for your rank. That's why we validate this metadata. I think that every effort you put in search engine optimization will result in better ranking and more visitors to your page .

WAI

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4924/web-accessibility-initiative-wai






The site https://www.techopedia.com has given me a crash course on WAI and what its all about.  First off  the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an initiative developed by the World Wide Web Consortium to help make the Internet more accessible to people with disabilities.  This to me is one of the coolest things I never knew about.  The internet is a very useable source when it comes to getting information at the drop of a dime.  We rarely take time to think about those of us who are disabled and cant use or understand how to use the internet.  

• Providing text alternatives for non-text content
• Presenting the same content in different ways
• Ensuring content is easy to see and hear
• Designing pages so that content appears and operates in predictable ways

These are all ways in which developers make it so that people with disabilities can be more assessable to the internet.

Viewport

http://blog.javierusobiaga.com/stop-using-the-viewport-tag-until-you-know-ho




Started off looking for viewport topics and kept seeing the same thing until I visited javierusobiaga.com. The author of this blog shows an easier more direct but slightly descriptive way of breaking down viewpoint.  Even though it comes off a bit strong all the input commands you need to viewing your page on mostly any device are right here.  Inputs such as Device-width, Initial-Scale, Combo-breaker and plenty others.  Most of the designers out there want their page to be preferable to whomever their viewer is.  No matter what device or browser they tend to use.  And this site can save you a lot of hassle and get you the design you desire

HTML 5 New Input Types

I have jus taken a look on the site html5doctor.com and saw some input types that I haven't seen before.  "Search" was one that I haven't seen yet as far as going over it in class but it caught my attention.  "Email" happened to be another one that I believe will be useful later on down the line while making my webpage.  These two will help your webpage be able to be more efficient on numerous devices and browsers.  I thought the "tel" input was pretty neat as well.  Never knew how some sites when putting in an social security number or telephone number some browsers automatically switch to numbers instead of letters.  Now I know how its done and plan to use that knowledge on my own webpage.

CSS 3 usage

http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/5-features-of-css3-you-can-use-today




I found a website where they use a list of different techniques to use with CSS 3 called teamtreehouse.com.  In this website they provide numerous different features u can use to make your website stand out or even jus styled a little better.  One of those would be the Border Radii which allows you to ostensibly curve the corners on a element.  Box Shadows is also another one I can see myself using in the near future, that lets me place a shadow underneath my element.  Opacity caught my interest from the jump.  I feel like transparency is very important when building a website, also color, font, and size.  Soon as I get the html code down, I feel as if the styling of my web page will take it over the top.  With these new features it should be no problem to put together the perfect webpage needed.

Learn HTML5 and CSS3 Fundamentals

https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-courses/html5-css3-fundamentals-development-for-absolute-beginners-14207?l=Y4COscFfB_7500115888




When looking for a site to that talks about HTML 5 Web Development I went straight to the source at Microsoft.com.  On the link posted above is a 10 min video I watched that literally if you are having trouble getting a hang of web design puts you in a step by step tutorial on how to begin one.  These series of videos are for the absolute beginners of web designing (people like myself).  By the time I finish watching the videos and work through this class I feel that I will be a pretty decent web designer.  I encourage everyone reading to take a look at these videos if they feel that they need help.

Understanding Forums & Blogs

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/28/understanding-the-difference-between-forums-blogs-and-social-networks/


I came across a website called web-strategist.com and saw a article discussing the difference between forums and blogs.  I felt this site and article dumbed down the understanding of a blog to the point where as if a person new to the internet could understand.  They proceeded to compare a persons blog to a keynote speech which I thought was extremely helpful.  Anytime I think of a blog I feel as if its a persons journal but typically available for everyone to see.  I was very interested reading this, and the link is above for anyone who wants to look into the differences between forums and blogs.

The Amazon Firestick

 So yesterday I decided to pick up the Amazon Fire stick.  After driving to 3 different Best Buy stores and both HH Gregg Stores in the Hampton Roads area I finally was able to purchase one.  When I first spoke with the salesman I asked him why were they were low in stock at most stores and had a vast supply of Google Chromecast?  I figured they did pretty much the same thing until he gave me the complete run down.  He proceeded to tell me how the Fire stick came with Netflix, Hulu, and Numerous Apps, and how the Chromecast only portrayed those apps on to a television with using a synced device.  Even then it still bothered me that they were selling like hot cakes.  That's when he told me the underlying reason people were purchasing the Fire sticks in mass amounts.  You can jailbreak a Fire stick to where you can put other apps on to it.  There have been numerous occasions where people have loaded apps onto it that gives you the ability to watch new movies, television shows, and even live television.  Which got me to thinking how long do people believe that this is going to last without repercussions? Only time will tell.