Does this work?

So, today I thought I would see if emailing blogs directly to the page would work? Let me tell you now, if I sit here writing away for no reason, I shall be mightily miffed!

 

All our IE8 issues have been overcome – I wish I could say the same for some of the other social sites out there! Now, I am happy with MS’s new features and actually the debugging tool on IE8 is great – much more comprehensive than the Firefox freebie and really useful to us geeks!

 

On the SEO front, Sarah has worked her magic once more for a huge client fo ours – I don’t mean he is big, but the company he works for is! Within 3 weeks of site launch, they are now sitting at number 1 on Google and always on the first page for their products - you should get us to run our eyes over your SEO and page structure; there is ALWAYS room for improvement and keeping on top of your own SEO is now as much a job as keeping up with technology and design trends.

 

On the personal work front, I had a meeting last week with an amazing graphgic designer  – the speed at which he can turn around original quality work is quite staggering. No wonder he has the likes of Volvo and Rowntrees amongst his portfolio! I think we’ll be using his talents on a regular basis as we are asked for straight graphics work much more now – I suspect it is to do with SEO results again; That or the fact that we are just a great company to work with!

 

I better push the send button now before I blow our trumpet to distruction!

 

Caio

 

Internet Explorer 8 HELL!!!!!!!!!

Since IE8 was released and i've started using it, I've had nothing but issues, for example today I tried to sign up for Twitter. Not something I would normally do, but as a marketing tool we wanted to try it out. So when I tried to sign up, IE8 was telling me that the secure area of twitter had issues and then shut the page down. Finally I was able to knock off the 's' of https:// and was able to get on the site.

This problem does not occurin firefox, safari or google chrome just IE8 ... various other sites were problematic in the secure area's.

Mark has been fighting with IE8's over zelous security ... cookies creating havok, quote"its really jarring me off" unquote.

Lets hope tomorrow is a better day. We'll need to get over these IE8 issues, unless they bring out an update for the issues they have cause major websites!

Night Night all

Sarah

Web 3.0 is Here!

What was web 2.0?

You know, I have read many items regarding the mythological web 2.0 and listened to so much bull from other designers and developers. In a nut shell - and in my own opinion - web 2.0 was about a look, an ethos, and for one brief moment, the standardisation of the web.

All web 2 websites have that colourful, yet matt appearance, and usually nice big glossy buttons. There is a ’norm’ for layout too and really the site’s function, if it has a great deal, should be completely intuitive and accessible by anyone.

There are many great examples of web 2.0 websites out there now, but the time has come for change. You see, nothing stays the same forever in our technological design world and it won’t be long before you are hearing about web 3.0

So, what can we expect from web 3.0?

In my mind, web 3.0 will see a move towards bigger and brighter websites, bigger buttons, and clever application. I foresee a huge shift towards touch screen technology in the home and work, and this will play a huge part in the future of web design.

Gone is the minute text, simple text links, and stupidly pretty design. It’s all about "give me the info I want now without having to search for it"

At Media Creative, we are already experiencing the shift and have invested in touch screen PCs for all our staff. Upcoming projects see the launch of touch screen pods driven by MCL applications for... well, I can’t tell you just what yet, but its smart, clever and simple to use!

Mark my words people, the future for web design and web development is big, bright and is shaping up for a new trend

The death of the entry page

You’d think by now that designers and developers would have cottoned on to the fact that ’entry’ pages serve no purpose whatsoever, but alas this isn’t the case. You know what I mean by an entry page - they are usually created in flash, take an age to load, and then offer you the choice to ’skip’ once you are bored of waiting, or have seen it too many times!

Twice this week, I have stumbled upon such pages and wondered just what goes through the mind of the designer or marketer when they dream up such wonderfully animated collections of colours, words, video and sound.

"That will stun our customer into believing we are the best", they think as they busy themselves with that all important wow factor. "Our website will win awards" the marketers tell their CEOs to justify the extra budget they’ve just spent. "If that doesn’t get them spending with us, nothing will"

Let’s pull apart those myths and talk about just how 90s and pointless entry pages are.

Here are my ’pros and cons’ of the entry page:

Pros
err.........

Cons
where do I start?

OK, first things first - When your customer comes to your website either directly or from a search engine, they are coming for a purpose...they want INFORMATION. They don’t want to see swirling thing-a-me-bobs with unsubstantiated statements such as "the UK’s largest stock of..." flying across the screen. Let them in for pity’s sake.

Secondly, you must know your intro is boring, too long and pointless if you put a ’skip’ button on it in the first place!

Three. If you spent as much on good search engine optimisation (which, by the way, we are great at!) you would reap many more rewards and could then fully justify the expense to your CEO. And, there is nothing more damaging to optimisation than an entry page - apart from no thought of optimisation at all that is!

Number 4, well, to be honest, I am boring myself just thinking about entry pages.

Do yourself a favour... never use one, never let anyone bully you into one, don’t listen to the expert who tells you it won’t affect your SEO - he clearly isn’t - and last but not least, if you insist you want Media Creative to build you one, read this article again!