tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91525582191327852982009-02-21T00:32:57.171ZIan Davenporthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10799665651036256494noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-43707010850589280242007-12-18T11:24:00.000Z2007-12-18T11:46:15.223Z

Well, following Michael's post last month about our collective Vista experiences, I write this as the proud installer of Vista SP1 RC, a.k.a "a-bit-better-than-beta". And I have to say I'm noticing a world of improvement.Unzipping my test 1mb / 1000 image file showed a significant improvement on Vista's previously flakey zip function. An action that previously took an astonishing 20 minutes (

Ian Davenporthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10799665651036256494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-45527260960801245412007-11-09T12:07:00.001Z2007-11-09T12:37:44.302Z

OK so hate is a strong word and should really be reserved for special occasions but I think in this case it actually is appropriate. I switched to Vista at the beginning of the year attracted by promises of improved speed, stability and security. In all three of these areas it has fundamentally failed:Speed - Vista is slow to start up, slow to shutdown, slow to open applications, slow to copy

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-12260374215312849522007-09-26T09:46:00.000Z2007-09-26T10:17:38.788Z

Following the announcement of the new Adobe Air interface to Google Analytics yesterday, I decided to have a good look at Air for the first time and see what it could really do. My expectations were fairly high based on what I'd heard from Adobe but I was bitterly disappointed with the applications that are currently available.Air applications are like widgets that are easily authored (apparently

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-49607154334758003762007-09-19T09:14:00.000Z2007-09-19T11:17:34.426Z

Over the past couple of years we've seen an increasing number of clients nipping out with the office digital camera when asked to provide a photo of a product or team member for their website or print campaign. All well and good - the photographic bang you get for your buck nowadays is pretty darned impressive, and snapping images yourself is obviously much more convenient and cost-effective than

Ian Davenporthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10799665651036256494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-90268886265506525872007-09-12T09:18:00.001Z2007-09-12T09:18:50.477Z

Birmingham based web developer, Mark James, has kindly put together a free set of cool web icons that are very well designed and look a little bit Web 2.0:There's around 1,000 icons in this set altogether so they cover pretty much everything you could ever want on your website or blog.

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-20811937849661375882007-09-04T09:25:00.000Z2007-09-04T09:59:35.342Z

Yesterday I went through a ton of data from one of my personal websites DoYouRemember.co.uk , a site mainly about 80s toys, 80s movies and 80s music. I was reading the traffic analysis reports using the fabulous free Google Analytics software (if you're not using this yet, you should be) and was interested to see the latest figures on browser market share. The market has shifted substantially

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-57531053604100309792007-08-31T08:34:00.000Z2007-08-31T09:28:56.112Z

I understand the point of PowerPoint - I really do. Even when criticised for a "pipeline" approach to presenting information. Even when the three-way simultaneous bombardment of visual, textual and aural information is causing mental shutdown in the audience. Even when presentations become so bloated that they become a hindrance to global security... even when drowning in the deepest depths of

Ian Davenporthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10799665651036256494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-16400447092774672302007-08-28T14:37:00.000Z2007-08-28T14:50:06.798Z

One of our clients recently complained that the images on their website were looking distorted and fuzzy when viewed in Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. We tried to replicate the problem on our own IE6/XP setup but we could find any problem. We asked our client to try other computers and browsers in his office and they worked just fine too.After a long and drawn out process of elimination,

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-60828737657677098092007-08-24T11:07:00.001Z2007-08-24T11:21:23.441Z

Senior Google guy Matt Cutts has recently confirmed that it is still preferable to use a hyphen instead of an underscore when naming files or web pages. Google will read a URL such as www.wordsun.co.uk/corporate_web_site_design.html and conclude that the page is about "corporate_web_site_design" not "corporate web site design". Do you see the difference? In the former example,

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-36094668910068940032007-07-17T13:34:00.001Z2007-07-17T13:45:24.435Z

It's that time of year again when everything goes quiet as everyone goes off on their summer holidays. This year has been the worst summer weather I can remember (global warming innit?) so I'm looking forward to some better weather in France next week.Strangely though, this year has also been the busiest summer so far that I can remember and the phones haven't stopped ringing. We're busier than

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-32900700561347796012007-07-04T14:17:00.000Z2007-07-04T14:40:00.289Z

I've been keeping an eye on the search engine positioning experiment we started on the 19th June and whilst there's no obvious result for the blog at the moment, a similar experiment I started on the www.wordsun.co.uk website has yielded excellent results.After making my last post, I decided to try optimising the main website for the phrase 'Corporate Website Design' as well and discovered that

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-41627197435270443202007-06-29T13:14:00.000Z2007-07-05T09:46:47.611Z

Read any decent article on CSS layout nowadays and you'll inevitably see mention of "liquid" layouts, where the page contents scale to fill the available browser space. They've become something of an obsession for developers recently, with many going so far as to coin the phrase "the Holy Grail". In slightly less hyperbolic terms this refers to a 100% cross-browser compatible 3-column layout,

Ian Davenporthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10799665651036256494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-69376742764552766402007-06-19T11:16:00.000Z2007-06-19T11:33:30.814Z

Corporate website design experiment: how to use a blog to increase your ranking in the search engines.Everybody knows that a better result in the search engines = more traffic = more sales, right? So here's an experiment to see just how easy (or difficult) it is to claw your way up the search results using the power of your blog. I've carefully written this post to include the key phrase "

Michael Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09847075712113836832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-19538801326587440082007-05-29T14:41:00.000Z2007-05-29T14:42:22.444Z

Search Engine Optimisation is all about getting your website to the top of the pile and beating your competitors at any cost, right? Not necessarily. We were recently asked by one of our clients to carry out Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on their website so that they would be found at the top of the list in key search engines like Google and MSN. This is something we’re good at and we know a

Michael Johnsonnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-84026532939460940232007-05-25T09:47:00.000Z2007-05-25T11:16:18.434Z

We've been thinking quite a bit about language recently here at Wordsun, and its role in creating a strong user experience for our site visitors. Like lots of web development companies, we like to think we know what makes a site appealing to our visitors. And like many web development companies we've spent hours tweaking page layouts, designing icons, and throwing a whole host of bells and

Ian Davenporthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10799665651036256494noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9152558219132785298.post-53775080882276681302007-04-25T12:01:00.000Z2007-04-25T14:44:49.036Z

Every good web developer should have an arsenal of tried and tested CSS tricks and techniques to call on in those darker hours, when the client is calling for the impossible, when Firefox, IE and Safari are all putting their own unique spin on things, or when you know exactly what you want to do, but you just can’t bring yourself to compromise your new-found passion for web standards.Following is

Ian Davenporthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10799665651036256494noreply@blogger.com0