The Ariamedia Blog

Ariamedia named to Top Dallas Web Design Firms for 4th Consecutive Year

2008-08-25T12:59:00.001-07:00

Dallas Web Design firm Ariamedia has been named the 12th largest Web Design studio in 2008 by the Dallas Business Journal, the area's leading weekly publication for business.

Ariamedia revenues grew 19% from 2007 to 2008 placing it in the top 3 fastest growing design firms on the list.

Ariamedia Redesigns the City of Allen's Website

2008-07-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Dallas Morning News released an article today outlining the efforts the City of Allen and Ariamedia took to launch a brand new (2.0) website. You can visit the site at http://cityofallen.org/, to see it in action.

Of note, the article points to a number of features developed by Ariamedia for the City of Allen staff. Utilizing our product TouchPoint, which is an online forms builder and advanced analytic and reporting engine, the City of Allen is staying in touch with their visitors and residents in a much more meaningful and interactive way than ever before.

In addition to aesthetic changes, the site offers a new level of interactivity. Residents can go online to schedule services such as pickup of household hazardous waste and repair of street lights, sidewalks, streets and sewers.

Steve Massey, Allen's director of community services, said household hazardous waste pickups have nearly doubled under the new Web site.

When citizens use the online forms, they receive an automatic response notifying them that it was received. In addition, the system sends a message to the appropriate city staffer, reducing delays. Another message tells the user when the issue might be resolved.

The simplified process also helps to ensure basic information, such as names and telephone numbers, will be accurate, Mr. Massey said.

"It takes all the mystery out of the note so we can count the information to be correct," he said.

We are very proud to have been a part of this revolution for the City of Allen, and we are ambitiously looking toward the bright future this relationship holds.

Testimonial: TouchPoint has the best interface of any online product

2007-11-28T15:48:00.001-08:00

I thought I'd share a quick statement I heard today from a sales prospect who will likely be a customer shortly. Following a demo of Ariamedia's award winning forms software Conductor Touchpoint, this individual stated:

"Let me first say that Conductor TouchPoint has the best interface of any Web 2.0 product I've seen. Are you sure its not a Windows App? It performs extremely well for a web application."

Ariamedia Blog readers will know that we invested 14 months in development of the core interface technologies for our 3.0 product line including Conductor TouchPoint. Needless to say, we love hearing that. Learn more about our forms and survey software

Technorati Tags: Conductor TouchPoint,Usability & Design

Ariamedia named to Top 15 Web Design firms in Dallas

2007-11-28T15:40:00.001-08:00

For the fourth year in a row, Ariamedia has been named to the Dallas Business Journal's Top 25 list of Web Design companies in Dallas Fort Worth. We ranked 15th moving up from 22 last year. This list recognizes the largest and fastest growing web design agencies in the metroplex.

Conductor TouchPoint forms software chosen by Dallas County Community College

2007-10-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

Dallas County Community College District has selected Conductor TouchPoint 3.0 for system-wide deployment for online forms and reporting.

DCCCD is the largest undergraduate institution in the State of Texas with seven colleges serving tens of thousands of active students in the north Texas area.

Focusing on Interface Design

2007-10-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

Since the release of our next generation interface framework used currently by Conductor TouchPoint 3.0, our easy to use forms software and analytics platform; clients have been asking almost daily about how long it took to develop the new framework and why we choose to do it now (our 2.0 line of products have great, but older, interfaces as well).

I'll first explain what all the noise is about. We spent 14 months developing a new ground-up web application framework for our products. This effort focused extremely heavily on the user interface.

Features Include:
- Drag and drop visual form editors
- Real-time reporting dashboard with draggably subtotals and grouping
- Visual templating system
- Real-time AJAX profiling and saving
- Quick edits using modal DIV (no popups) windows

We had several design goals for this framework:
- Highly Intuitive = Low or No training required
- Simple Clear Buttons = Reduced support questions
- Everything you need in the product (Support, Knowledgebase, Forums, My Account etc
- Pleasant, enjoyable interface
- Fast, Responsive functionality

Here's the result:

Look familiar, it should....somewhat...

To accomplish this, we heavily reviewed recent operating systems and applications including Vista, OS X, Office 2007 and more. While we distinctly added our influence, we primarily built the interface like applications you know (namely Window's Outlook or Mac's Entourage). This helped accomplish our lower support and training while letting users know where to go out-of-the-box through familiar interfaces. Finally, using AJAX and other sophisticated interface technologies, we accomplished a desktop-like feel with much lower post-backs and screen refreshes.

Is the investment paying off? Absolutely. Nearly every demo or webinar attendee comments immediately on the beauty and usability of the interface. Most software development companies don't see the importance of the last sentence......Building products that people WANT to use WILL sell the product for you and build a lot of confidence and credability.

Find our more by seeing Touchpoint, our powerful forms software and analytical engine.

Recent Customer Testimonials

2007-09-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

We're always excited to share real feedback we get from user's of our products. Here are a few we've recently heard for Conductor TouchPoint 3.0 - our newest version of our popular web forms software and analytics tool:

"This product has the best interface of any web application I've seen."
David C.
Ecommerce Manager

"The ability to branch questions and create paths will revolutionize our field sales reporting functions."
Steve C.
VP, Sales & Marketing

8 Extremely Valuable features for your Forms Software

2007-09-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

I've used quite a lot of forms creation software over the years and I thought I'd share some of the biggest features that I (and our customers) have come to expect from tools that let you build online forms.

First, some background....
Undoubtedly, the oldest online software tools for websites fall in three categories: Content Management Systems (CMS), Ecommerce and Website Analytics. While these three categories have infinitely matured, a missing piece continued to stay in its adolescence – Forms creation applications.

CMS and Ecommerce applications allow you to create pages and products for a broad audience. With these tools, you author content once and through marketing channels, the content is distributed to potentially hundreds of thousands of viewers. But what about customer feedback? What about reversing this concept and allowing the customer to easily provide feedback to you?

Sure, building forms on the web has existed almost since day one of the Internet (in fact , a shopping cart is a form itself allowing a visitor to submit an order), but the EASE of form creation is what’s been missing.

Online Forms Software – a toolset that SHOULD allow you to easily create and distribute forms and report on feedback from you customer.

Most forms have the following features:

Public Interface – the webpage that allows a vistor to submit a form

Email Functionality – Autorespond to the visitor and send your admin an email

Database – Receive and store the form submission

Secure Admin Site – Allow your administrators to login and see submissions

Reporting – Report, graph and/or Export your submissions

The requirements above are what has made the form creation process too difficult and advanced in the past. The image below explains this process even more clearly:

Enlarge this Image

Following this 13 step process (and that's with NO revisions or bugs), even the simplest of forms could take 4-8 hours to develop resulting in hundreds of dollars when using a professional web development firm.

Luckily there are a number of online forms creation software on the market. Here’s what you should look for:

1. Drag and drop Simplicity – When you need customer feedback, you need it now. With drag and drop, creating your form should be as easy as pulling fields from a library and dropping on your page.

2. Layouts & Templates – Forms quickly get complex. You need layout options including multiple columns and rows to create the best user experience. Additionally, branding is always important. Your software must allow for custom templates to 100% accommodate your branding and website design.

3. Branching & Dependencies – Getting customer feedback must be as simple as possible because often your when your customers want to provide feedback, it may likely be negative. Considering this, why force your customer to drag through a ton of fields that aren’t relevant to them (have you ever seen a field labeled “If yes, please explain……”. Shouldn’t the form KNOW if you said “yes”?)? Branching and dependencies allow you to create customize paths down your form presenting only relevant questions to your visitor.

4. Advanced Functionality – Forms are commonly more than just textboxes and dropdowns. Sometimes you need to submit hidden field values, show summary data with calculated fields, or hide your submit button until a condition is met. Can your forms software handle your advanced needs?

5. Customizable Email Auto-Responders – You must be able to design auto-responders for your visitor and your administrator with point and click simplicity. Additionally, you need to be able to personalize these emails to allow you to insert values submitted from the form.

6. APIs & Exports – Getting Data Out - Most often you will desire to further analyze form submissions in another application such as: Microsoft Excel, your CRM system or similar applications. Can you easily export into a variety of industry standard formats? Better yet, can you have your forms software automatically submit electronic data to other software systems without your manual assistance?

7. Powerful, Flexible Analytics – Forms submissions are worthless without reporting on and understanding the data. Your forms software must allow you to create dashboard reports to analyze data in real-time in a variety of ways. The best form software will allow real-time drag and drop grouping, subtotaling, dyanmic charting and custom dashboards by each user.

8. Low Learning Curve – An emerging trend is simplicity in web application design. Out of the box, is your forms software immediately understandable?...Easy and pleasant to use? Can you learn by watching videos rather than reading a 150 page manual? Your forms software shouldn’t require a training manual.

I hope these eight features help simplify your evaluation process of your forms software.

Ariamedia is the creator of Conductor TouchPoint, one of the most powerful forms software applications available. Learn more about Conductor TouchPoint at http://www.ariamedia.com/products/touchpoint.

Aria Media or Ariamedia?

2007-09-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

Ariamedia or Aria Media - one word or two?

Sometimes potential clients misspell our name in searches after being referred to our firm. Another european firm exists named Aria Media but we're Ariamedia, the nationally known web design and software development studio located in Dallas, Texas.

So, if you're truly looking for Aria Media, the european company......keep searching as I'm sure you'll find them.

We're the guys building application that include:
Conductor CMS - Website Content Management
Conductor Commerce - Online Shopping Cart and Ecommerce System
Condutor TouchPoint - Powerful Forms Builder with Real-time reporting

Plus award winning services including:
Brand and Identity design
Website Design
Motion Graphics and Animation
Custom Web Application Development

We hope we're the Ariamedia (or Aria Media) you're looking for!

Conductor TouchPoint 3.0 Released

2007-06-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This press release was issued Monday 6/18/2007 via various newswires.

Ariamedia Corporation, a leading developer of Internet e-business products including content management, e-commerce and web form design software, has announced the immediate availability of Conductor TouchPoint 3.0.

Conductor TouchPoint 3.0 is the first business-focused feature-packed form design tool that easily allows non-technical users to create complex multi-page forms and surveys with drag-and-drop simplicity. Combined with the product’s powerful real-time reporting dashboard, business users can rapidly build, deploy and analyze a wide variety customer feedback and direct response systems…..with no programming required.

“Until Conductor TouchPoint, business users previously had to outline survey requirements, contact the I.T. department who then tasked a programmer with creating the form, backend database, secure reporting area and email functionality. Even the simplest online customer survey or response form would take hours or days to produce, test and release,” said Ryan Thompson, President & CEO of Ariamedia. “With TouchPoint, all form and report design is 100% visual through our Web 2.0 style drag-and-drop user interface. The learning curve of TouchPoint is measured in minutes. Marketers and other users can deploy customer facing solutions when needed without costly delays and without involving the I.T department.”

Conductor TouchPoint 3.0 is built on Ariamedia’s next-generation web application platform and features an extremely intuitive user interface without the slow responsiveness of a typical web application. Drag-and-drop, dynamic charting, multiple page forms and conditional dependencies (branching) are just a few of the significant features of this new release.

Thompson continued, “After 14 months of R&D, we’re very excited to introduce this product to market. We believe TouchPoint will have a significant impact for non-technical business users focused on obtaining on demand real-time customer feedback.”

Ariamedia is scheduling Webinars and Live Demonstrations of the product. To see TouchPoint, contact sales@ariamedia.com or visit www.ariamedia.com/products/touchpoint. Conductor TouchPoint is available in three versions: Standard, Business and Enterprise and can be purchase under a Hosted (Software as a Service) or Perpetual license.

About Ariamedia
Founded in 2000, Ariamedia offers unique products designed to streamline functions surrounding e-business for mid-market customers. Ariamedia offers a suite of products under its Conductor brand including CMS, a content management system; Commerce, an online e-commerce software and TouchPoint, a forms designer with analytical software. Ariamedia also provides implementation services including custom development, product integration and creative design. For over three years, Ariamedia has been named as one the largest web design and software development companies in the Dallas Fort Worth area by the area’s leading weekly business publication, the Dallas Business Journal.

For more information, please visit www.ariamedia.com.

Ariamedia named to Top 25 list of largest Software Developers in Dallas

2007-04-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

The Dallas Business Journal has recognized Ariamedia as one of the Top 25 Software Developers in Dallas/Fort Worth.

Ariamedia listed in Top 25 Web Design Agencies in Dallas

2007-02-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

For the third consecutive year, Ariamedia has made the top list of web design agencies in Dallas Fort Worth. This highly competitive listed is published by the Dallas Business Journal, the leading weekly business publication for the DFW market.

Ariamedia named to Southwest Airlines Top 10 Web Design List

2006-07-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

Southwest Airlines SPIRIT in-flight magazine has recognized Ariamedia as one of the Top 10 Web Design firms in the Southwest. Ariamedia had to meet numerous strict criteria including quality, number of projects, financial stability and employee capabiltities to make the list.

SOURCE: SPIRIT Magazine June 2006 list "Top 10 Best Dressed Web Design Firms in the Southwest"

Midago is born

2006-04-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

Ariamedia, in partnership with The Trade Group Inc., has founded Midago LLC. Midago is an experience design studio based in Dallas focusing on unique, innovate and highly creative interactive experiences. Learn more by visiting Midago.

AJAX Standardization

2006-04-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

Looks like the W3C is getting serious about the buzz around AJAX / Atlas. Recently they announced the beginnings of a formal specification for XMLHTTPRequest Object, the foundation of AJAX and Atlas. This is a significant step in AJAX moving from a fad to a mainstream adopted technology. Read the article on DevSource.com

Quark Round 2

2006-03-23T07:21:00.000-08:00

A few months ago Quark launched their new logo... which, as it turned out, was extremely similar to a few other well-known logos. The blogosphere churned, a lot of very strong opinions were put out there, and Quark was the bad guy for their apparent lack of research.

Looks like they listened. Behold. The new, new, new Quark branding. Looks like it belongs on the hood of a car to me. Quark.com

The Web 2.0

2006-02-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

What the heck is web 2.0? Did Al Gore roll out a new version of the Internet without informing me? Or maybe, did Microsoft buy it and plan on stuffing it inside its long-awaited “VistaHorn” release? Seriously though, web 2.0, as a broad and all-future-possibility-encompassing practice is, well, in practice, a good idea.

Personally, I think web 2.0 really means; “We’ve stopped making websites that stagnate and just take up hard disk space with our boring HTML brochure sites.” Web 2.0 websites will feature rich-content in a friendly, usable, interactive way, with accessibility to a plethora of users being one of the main concerns.

In the pursuit of end-user happiness, I believe that the big AJAX trend will slowly start to see its end. I know that sounds odd, but I believe AJAX will give way to much more customizable, easier to develop applications on the web, like Flash. Or PDF-Lash, or whatever they’re going to call it now.

With the Adobe Macromedia merger, the two giants are bound to create something fresh with the online vector format (or ruin it.) Adobe’s SVG was a good stab at a Flash competitor, and Macromedia’s Flashpaper was a good stab at PDF, but with both companies working toward a single goal, I’m hoping for a universal rich-media, interactive format for the web that’s easy to develop and maintain. I’m also hoping for a format that is as search engine friendly as HTML is.

However, web 2.0, or 1.1.1.3.596, or whatever we’re at right now, let’s not wait to begin developing interesting, intriguing, intellectual experiences for our friends, our clients, and our potential clients to start enjoying. The web is capable of handling 2.0, or even 3.0 features today. The only thing holding back the tide is companies slow to adopt new technologies and techniques–companies comfortable in their little web 1.0 boxes.

The Box

2006-01-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

Boxy Trends

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of talk about “out of the box” website design. The advent of CSS has given us as designers, developers, advertisers, whatever, wherever, the ability to break out of the grid and really push things to a new level on the web.

Since the beginning of the web–well, at least the popularization of the web–we’ve seen people making websites that look the same, act the same, feel the same, and are the same. They all have a product or a service to sell, information to impart, or agenda’s to push. The more and more I think about it, the longer I study the results of “sameness”, the more I am inclined to think that doing things inside the box might not be the way to go.

All In the Grid

In order to be found, navigated, and remarked upon, there are certain inescapable ideas you must include in a website. For instance, you must have a user friendly navigation menu, text readable by computers, easily definable sections, maybe a logo or major header to identify the website or owner of the website, along with a plethora of others. The simple fact is, to an extent, you must follow the rules.

The web is full of rules. The W3C dictates how browsers interpret HTML, CSS, XML, etc. and they dictate to us how to code our websites so they act correctly on the browsers. The HTML Schema is a rulebook. We’re in an industry built upon a box, inside a box.

The Truth About Cardboard

Although most boxes designed for shipping are made of cardboard, we know that it is a flexible, easily bendable, but also fragile material. Websites are, in many respects, the same way.

Flash gave us animation and rich content, but limited our ability to author entire sites due to incompatibility and SEO deficiencies.

Javascript adds a lot of customizability, but is cumbersome, hardly renders correctly cross-browser, and has a fairly steep learning curve for anyone not well versed in programming.

With every new technology or media format that emerges, a door slams shut on its wide-spread use before it can really take off.

So, how do we break out of the box with our design efforts?

I think the simple answer is to stop trying to create websites altogether, and start creating unique messages that reside on the web. When you can pull yourself out of the “web designer” mind frame and start looking at what the web for what it is, the largest avenue for delivering your message to the masses the world has ever known, you’ll open yourself up to new ideas.

I’m reminded of a recent article featured on A List Apart about Redesigning vs. Realigning, in which the author explains the difference between slapping a new skin on your site, and rethinking the way the website works.

I want to challenge you to take it one step further and rethink the way the web works. What can you make your website do that nobody else has done? The man behind Million Dollar Homepage had it right. Creating something unique, something memorable isn’t about following the rules. It’s about creating something nobody’s done before.

Easy in theory

Yes it is. Finding your own million dollar idea is a much harder thing to do. Especially in a world built upon a box inside a box. The ideas are out there, be daring enough to try them.

Remember that designing a website is not just about the imagery, the typography or the CSS. It’s about the structure, the substance, and even the purpose behind a website. Design something new, something out of the box, and someone will notice.
I’m not telling you to throw out the rulebook, just to look beyond the rules and strictures, and create something truly unique.

Content to Print II

2005-11-11T15:41:00.000-08:00

I’ve come across the request to “Make my website look good in print” recently. What exactly that entails differs from one client to the next, and from one website layout to the next. In order to make a website printable, you need to consider a few factors first.

Layout: If your website is laid out like a typical blog (nav at top, left or right secondary nav, main content in one big block), creating a print style is a relatively simple matter. But what if you have more than one column of information? Or your site is more horizontal than vertical.

Colors: Do you have white text on a dark grey or black background? Is your primary color reverse what it should be for Print? If so, your logo, and all graphical elements are probably going to print in white... On white.

Content: What is your reader really interested in. What reason would they have for printing your content?

Before I start to develop my secondary Print style sheet, I take a close look at the above factors, and start to develop a plan of action.

Cascading? Style Sheets

The reason cascading style sheets (css) are called “cascading” is because you can use more than one style, or more than one style sheet to effect an HTML object.

Example:
In global.css I can have a statement like this: h1 { font-size: 14pt; }
Then in print.css I can say, h1 { color: #333333; }

As long as both style sheets are properly listed in your HTML, you should see all H1 display as 14pt Dark Grey.

The same thing goes for overwriting styles. If I had used the same parameters, like font-size for instance, and had different values, the style sheet that is lower in the HTML markup will be the dominant one.

Example:
global.css: h1 { font-size: 14pt; }
print.css: h1 { font-size: 12pt; }

Style Sheet Media Type

HTML offers us the wonderful ability to apply specific style sheets to different media types, i.e. Screen, Print, Mobile, or All. Typically, I create my global style sheet to encompass all of the layout and global HTML styling attributes, and then overwrite them in cascading style sheets to achieve my print/mobile styling.

Now that we have two different style sheets, with the same font manipulation, we need to apply them to specific media.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="/styles/global.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="/styles/print.css">

Notice the media="" part of the link tag in the above example. By setting global.css to all, and print.css to print, all of the attributes in global.css that are not overwritten in print.css will be applied.

Changing Your Tune

So, getting back to the theory of print styles, what to include and what to exclude can make or break a print experience. When it comes time to turn off, or hide certain parts of a website, I open up my print.css file, and start attacking the code.

For the obvious aspects that should leave, like Navigation (who needs to navigate on a piece of paper?), if your web site is laid out semantically, it is simply a matter of adding display:none to your div, ul, or whatever tag is driving your navigation. For me, the easiest way to do so is to simply wrap my navigation in a div, give it a specific ID (like id=”nav_main”).

Some other things you may want to consider changing:

Screen fonts, like Arial, Verdana and Helvetica are great for readability on screen, but serif fonts like Times, or Georgia are typically a better choice for your body text.

If your background is colored, change it to white. If that is going to affect your logo, or any other colors on your website, you need to adjust those to fit.

The width of your website, whether fluid or fixed, should be set back to 100%. Adding a touch of padding never hurts, but is unnecessary. Most home or office printers won’t let you print outside a specified margin.

Sidebars, or other information that specifically pertains to navigating further in your website should be hidden. If a user is interested in printing your web page, they are most likely aiming for your content, not your design (they will take a screen shot) and not your HTML layout skills, your nun chuck skills, your... Got off topic a bit there.

For the most part, I leave my viewers with the company logo, the body of the content, and the footer/copyright. Anything more than that, and the viewer probably will just read your website.

I hope that this article was helpful... If you want to print it, just hit Print, and you’ll see my methods in action.

7 Bad Usability Practices

2005-10-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

I browse a lot of websites. I mean a whole lot. Over the past few weeks I’ve really been thinking about user interaction. What things are good, easy, and will keep a user on your site for a while, and what things are bad, difficult and will make your user leave and tell all their friends they hate your website.

Those things are typically small details, the kind that make people either love you or hate you. Below I’ve outlined 7 things that absolutely drive me nuts when I’m surfing the net.

Do not make me wait when I get to your website. If I have to wait through a long load, or an intro with no skip button, I will leave–making your message 100% ineffective.

Tell me who you are, and what you do immediately. That can be a short paragraph, or even just a single sentence. But however you decide to explain your existence, make it interesting and informative enough to keep me, but short enough so I’m not reading your About Us page.

Don’t make me search. Give me obvious places to go next. A kind of roadmap or choose your own adventure. Your homepage needs to either have big enough links in your navigation to draw my eye away from the content, or you need to have big shiny buttons on the homepage saying “You can go here and see this, or you can go here and see that!”. Either way, I need to know how to get to the next bit of information you want to feed me.

Don’t make your links hidden, graphics, or any other absurd thing. When I can’t figure out how to navigate to different sections (and especially the ones I’m looking for) then I’m going to leave without giving it a thought. In the same vain, don’t make your links cutsie names. If you have a portfolio, call it a portfolio, not something like “The Stuff”, or “Mindtease”.

Making a splash page with a “Click to enter” button makes me want to leave right there. I’m already on your domain, why make me go through another process to get to the information I need. The more clicks I have, the less likely I am to appreciate your concern for users, which happen to be me.

Full screen, smaller screen, odd-shaped screen... Quit making my browser change sizes. It’s already a great size, and if your site doesn’t fit in my browser, I’ll resize it so I can see the content. I almost always have more than one website open in my browser (the advent of Tabs in Safari made that much easier) and when all of my websites all of a sudden go full screen, it makes me want to close your website and forget I ever clicked on it.

Popups. I don’t even have to explain this one. They are pretty much universally hated.

Well, I hope these 7 tips help you make a more user-friendly website. Think about these and any other usability issues you can in the planning stage of yours or you clients website. If it makes it to Photoshop, it’s typically too late.

Tables

2005-10-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

The $100 question. Tables, or tableless CSS design? It seems like a catch-phrase, the new big kitsch thing, but creating a website without the use of Tables for the structural markup can make a big difference in the usability and even the search viability of your site.

The bulk of the Ariamedia site was built without the aid of tables. It is structured 100% through CSS styled DIVs, H1s, Ps, and the like.

When we started to develop the idea for the current rendition of our corporate site, we decided that adherence to the W3C web standards was going to play a large roll in the decision making influence. Hence the tableless design.

Okay, okay, it’s not completely tableless. As in this page, the use of tables, while not necessary, was the way to go. Creating tableless code for the sake of conserving code-space, maintaining readability, or just because you want to join in the crowd are all fine and dandy, but that should not stop you from using tables when tables are appropriate.

Tables are the way to go when laying out and displaying tabular data. Hence the name “Table”. When and where are up to you, but in our experience going from a table-laden, non-compliant site to our current incarnation, any time you can say the word grid, or cell, it needs to be a table.

Styling tables is just as easy as styling DIVs, Spans, or any other HTML tag.

We typically start out by defining an ID for the table itself, like #product_table, and then through inheritance, styling it’s child-elements. TH, TD, TR, can all be styled to your liking, and can offer you control over an extremely easy-to-use standard HTML tag.

Technorati

2005-10-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

You can now check out our Technorati Profile!

Browsing Without Color

2005-10-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

For those users who are color blind, surfing the web can be a hassle. Being able to tell what text is a link, and what's not can determine the longevity of a visit. There have been a multitude of articles on developing and testing your website to ensure a color blind user will be able to distinguish the various elements of your site.

I came across a nifty little Mac App by Michel Fortin that allows you to take a look at what your site would look like if you were color blind. You can get the donationware application here at his website Michelf.com

Google Sitemaps

2005-09-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

Google, the big daddy of all the search engines, the prize jewel in the SEO's crown, has offered up a new way to get crawled. Create an XML sitemap, upload it to your server, create an account on Google, tell it where the file is, and you're done.

Google Sitemap is a great way to jump-start your next SEO effort.

Content to Print

2005-09-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

It seems that more and more people are printing web pages and saving them for later than they are reading everything on screen. I personally have too many websites, blogs, podcasts and news pages than I could possibly get to in one day.

When we started planning out the redesign of our site, one of the things we set our sights on was accessibility. Not only making our site accessible to the impaired, but to anyone in any medium. Screen, print, mobile. We wanted you to be able to get to the content that was relevant to you as quickly and easily as possible.

Go ahead. Try printing this page. You'll notice that what you get on paper is a bit different than what you get on screen. What we've done is added a print stylesheet that overwrites a lot of the styles defined in our global stylesheet. The Navigation and Header are stripped out. The left (sub) navigation is stripped out. The fonts are changed to a friendlier serif font, and the page width is set to 100%, giving you a better fit on paper.

All in all, it looks, and acts, completely different. It's just one of the things we did to make our site more accessible, more usable, and hopefully, more effective.

Stay tuned. I will be writing a second part to this article on the technical aspects of defining multiple Cascading Style Sheets for different mediums.