Often times when I am working with a client there is a file we need to share that is just too large for email. I used to have an FTP file storage site that I used for this purpose until I found these nice large file sharing websites. This has been especially useful when editing Power Point presentations which have sound such as a client would use for an eCourse or Webinar. Also, sharing MP3 files is really hard when you are working on someones podcast for them.

Here are the sites. There is a certain amount of storage space you can use for free, and you can upgrade to a paid account if you really lilke it and you want to be able to transfer larger files.

http://www.mailbigfile.com/

http://www.dropboks.com/

Happy Web Developing!

Ever been in just straight HTML and needed to build a nice looking calendar? How many rows and columns would you need in your table? Should you nest information in another table? Can you even come close to uniformity much less a nice looking design? Or did you just resort to using Power Point or Word and saving as a .jpg? 

I found a great site where you can build nice calendars and transfer them to your site very easily!

Here you go: http://www.calendarhub.com/

Happy Web Developing!

If you’ve never poked around Google for fun you really should!

Ok let’s start with the Web Developer Tools.

These can be found by going to the Google search page, and clicking more and going into the Google Labs area.

Here are my three favorite areas to look at. Google Trends gives you a good idea of the most popular web sites and what the more popular web sites are going to be by giving you info on the most popular searches search engine-wide. Google Suggest can be used as a light key word research tool, it gives you helpful suggestions for key words to search under as you type your own search in the search bar. Google Page Creator can be used as an HTML editor, and prepares your pages for the Google search engine because that is what is actually creating the pages!

-Google Trends
-Google Suggest
-Page Creator

Here’s another fun Google thing; It actually shows you the “web” of the World Wide Web. You can use it for fun, and it also serves as a great tool to see linking on a site you are working on.

http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

Here’s a great place to get your gMap:  http://www.yourgmap.com/

AND finally the FUN:

Did you know that if you text 466453 (Google) from your phone and in the body of the text message put in a query for any number of things you will get a text message back with the answer?

It’s true! Just a few of the things you can get an answer for: Weather, Glossary, Sports, Maps and the list goes on! Check it out, I love this feature and most people I encounter have never heard of it!

If you don’t have a fast way to create web forms using an HTML editor or a site builder here is a place where you can easily create forms and cut and paste the HTML/Script into your site.

Good knowledge of HTML and Java Scripts and how to integrate with your database is necessary, but it is very fast if you know these things!

Here’s the site:  http://www.webformfactory.com/

Happy Web Developing!

Being web site developers we all have issues regarding different browsers and the way they can force things to show up not quite the way you imagined or planned. The top two browsers that most people know about are Internet Explorer and Fire Fox. There are however several others that you want to make sure your site shows up well on. And if you ever work for someone developing a site that originates in another country you will need to check the browsers most commonly used there.

So, what’s a web designer to do? Download all the necessary browsers and check the site in all of them upon publishing and tweak and tweak and tweak until you get some reasonable results? Nope! Now there is a great tool you can use to take a snap shot of your site/page in many different browsers at once and look at them at a glance without having the hassle of doing this yourself!

http://browsershots.org/ is the site which does it. Simply go to the site and click, you have a snap shot of your site in many different browsers so you can tweak right away and get your site looking in top shape in more markets faster! Your international clients will LOVE that you can do this!

Happy web developing!

There is a new language on the horizon! DIAL, Device Independent Authoring Language. With all the new ways of viewing the web, particularly mobile and video, W3 is coming up with some standars of writing to incorporate this. NOW they are examining a cross platform language which we could all use to get our websites seen properly by all devices.

A large amount of experts is gathering to start talking about and constructing the newest version of HTML and XHTML = HTML 5.0, and XHTML 2.0. One of the major topics is video and what sort of standards should be in place to make this tool more cross platform compatible.

Google is changing the way it ranks pages! People everywhere have noticed their page ranks dropping.This isn’t across the board, but a significant amount of people are talking about it. Apparently, Google is penalizing sites that are selling links on them or have paid links that are not Google paid links. Some other things in the Google algorithm may also be changing.

Some guru’s are emerging for the newest web marketing tool = VIDEO. And they are letting us in on the secrets of web video marketing.

AOL mobile application!AOL finally comes up with something new! My question is: Will we now be getting 100’s of CD’s in the mail with this application for the next 5 years?

 So, has everyone heard of Jaiku and Twitter?

For those who haven’t these are posting sites which can be seen/sent via SMS (text messaging), Instant Message and on the online message boards. You can subscribe to certain people’s accounts to receive all of their posts via text message if you want! It is the very latest in blogging, and is being called microblogging.

Now for the kicker: Google just bought Jaiku! What does this mean to you? Well, it could mean that a lot more websites and web-based programs such as these mini-blogs will be viewed on phones. And there is also talk of a Gphone from Google. If you have ever had to work on optimizing someone’s (or your own) website for Google you know how obsessed you can get, and how important it starts to seem that you get a good page rank. Now we might have to worry about if the site is optimized to be viewed on a mobile device!

Speaking of SEO, check out this article:

“10 reasons why I don’t care about Google Page Rank?” at DailySEOBlog

In other news:

If you ever send out mass marketing emails you might want to check out this article:

Best Practices for Bullet Proof Email Delivery

All three of these things can be considered different. You as a designer and or website owner need to decide which one you (or someone you hire) will be using when you create, edit, and manage your site.

So, Let’s define the three types of publishing platform:

Editor:Probably the most common. Everyone has heard of these. They are the DreamWeaver’s and CoffeeCups of the world. They are HTML editors with lots of great tools to help you create a nice site. You see the HTML in one window and a MS Windows like display (which you manipulate just like Word or Power Point) in another. You can edit both the code and the display. You don’t necessarily need to know HTML but it helps a lot if you need something specific done and the editor isn’t helping you. You are completely free to edit the code and add anything you want to it (such as Java scripts, or Flash animations).

Site Builder:Also very common. Typically you get one of these when you buy your hosting/from your hosting company. It is an editor of sorts but not nearly as flexible as the Editor I spoke of above. You see just the display, and manipulate it like a Power Point slide. If you want to manipulate the code you have to figure out where the heck you can do that, and it is in a different place with most builders. Also, the builders don’t always let you mess around with the code that was “written” by the builder when you were editing it in the display. Great for someone just starting out, frustrating and inflexable for someone who knows a bit of HTML and is ready for more advanced stuff.

Content Management System:Can be the best tool for large or corporate sites or those with members needing to sign in. This is a program that writes the pages for you, and also let’s you edit all of the code. It however keeps track of your styles and statistics very well. Instead of editing each page individually you edit portions of it, while the management system keeps everything looking nice and uniform in the rest of the page. You fill out work sheets most of the time in order to create things in it. Don’t know how to put something in your shopping cart, no problem, fill out this work sheet and you are all set. Want to know who joined your site today, click here. It’s a very nice way of organizing and keeping track of a huge site while keeping every page looking nice and uniform and preserving your branding. It also integrates very easily with an Email Database and or Shoppingcart. The closest thing to a CMS that is fairly common is a blog; You fill out a kind of worksheet in order to post, click post, and then you can see that post up on the site.

So while you could say these are all the same thing, they are not. There are some pretty important differences that make a difference to your site, and what and how you can edit it. I hope it has been helpful. 

Have a great week!