Web Development Quick Reference Guides »

Cameron Chapman over at Mashable has compiled a flaming-hot list of web development resources.

The very first one on his list is the one that I keyed in on. It is a list of cheat sheets and quick reference guides found over at Tech Cheat Sheets. It should be of particular interest to anyone programming with virtually any language or technology in use today:

• Actionscript
• Ajax
• Apache
• CSS
• MySql
• Perl
• PHP
• Ruby
• you name it

We already made use of many of these lists, but there were several that I had missed in my search. Everything is arranged by tags and the search system is super-easy and really well organized. Now, we have everything referenced in one place, in a neat little package – sweet!

If you are a programmer or a web developer, you have to check out this list. And make sure you check out the rest of Cameron’s list over at Mashable – you are certain to find something that will help you on your next web development project.

Use Graphics Correctly and your Web Site Downloads Faster »

Graphics can visually make or break a web site. For a visitor, a web page with mostly text can look an awful lot like one of those “end user license agreements” and nobody wants to look at those things . So, you need to grab your visitor’s attention and some well placed pictures can do wonders to that end.

But failing to optimize those graphics can have just as negative an impact as using no graphics at all. A graphic saved in the wrong format or one that is not compressed correctly will result in a painfully slow download time for visitors to your web site. This can cause them to lose patience and leave your site even before the Home page finishes loading. If that happens regularly, why even have a web site?

Well, here are a few tips to keep in mind when using graphics on your web pages. The purpose of these techniques is to keep the graphic file size small without compromising the quality of the finished image.

Tip #1 – Blur your .jpgs

The next time you are going to be placing .jpg files on your web page, open your photo editing or graphics program (usually Photoshop or Fireworks or maybe one of the free Photoshop alternatives we have recommended) and add a slight guassian blur to each of the images you plan on using. “Make the graphic blurry”, you say? That’s right. Now, I am obviously not talking about making the image so blurry that its visual quality is affected. No, I am saying that by adding a slight gaussian blur to a .jpg file, you will actually decrease that image’s file size. You will have to play around with the exact amount to add, but try it next time. You will be surprised at the results and the visual difference will be imperceivable.

This is an especially good trick for e-commerce web sites that display dozens of images per page. Reducing the file size of each of those images results in the total page loading faster and you thereby avoid the risk of your visitors becoming impatient and leaving.

Tip #2 – Know your .gifs

It is important to know exactly how a .gif file is compressed in order to take full advantage of this image format. A .gif file is compressed horizontally and from top to bottom. This means that a .gif image with the majority of its solid colors running horizontally will be smaller in file size than a .gif image with the majority of its solid colors running vertically. Here is an example:

Image size: 118kb	Image size: 163kb

So, if you are using .gifs on your web site, see if you can orient the image so that most of its solid colors are running horzontally.

Now, if you are only using a few small images on your web page, don’t worry about it spending the extra time on these techniques. The big payoff happens when you are using lots of graphics on your web page and you apply these techniques. In that case, you can dramatically decrease the time your visitors spend waiting while your web page is downloading.

If you have some additional tips, don’t be stingy – leave a comment below with your tip .

Web Design Basics »

Professional web design has become vital during recent years. A few years ago, it was estimated that a visitor to a web site took about 8 seconds to decide to stay on that web site or click the “Back” button. That was then, this is now: Your web site has only about 4 seconds to make an impression on the visitor. That is not much time at all! Today, people want instant results. Few people even wait to see the entire web design before making their decision. If your web design does not grab their attention immediately, they won’t stick around. And if your web site does not offer something of benefit, they won’t bookmark it and they won’t come back (more on that later).

So, with that in mind, let’s discuss some practical ways your web design can grab the attention of your visitors. Then, in a future article, we will talk a little about keeping their attention with good web site content. Remember, people spend most of their time on the Internet reading. They read search results, news items, how-to articles and forums. A professional web design company will take this into account. But that is for later. First, we have to keep visitors attention (remember the 4 second rule). Click here to read more »

Free Screen Capture Software FastStone »

As our regular readers will attest to, we love FREE software . Typically posts like this are some of our most popular. And, since everyone’s wallets may be a little lighter right now, this should make some of you very happy.

I was checking out CyberNotes blog this morning and they had one post in particular that caught my eye. Ryan wrote a real nice review of his favorite screen capture sotware and the word free immediately caught my eye. If you want, check out his entire post to see the complete list but one in particular was very interesting to me.

We exclusively use SnagIt and could not work without it (earlier this month Techsmith released SnagIt version 8.2 and it is super sweet!). But in Ryan’s post, he said that FastStone was even better than SnagIt. Immediately, I thought, it could be better just on the basis that it is free and SnagIt costs $39.95. So, I followed the link and downloaded it to see for myself.

Well let me say that I am a believer. SnagIt is still a super program, but if free is your mantra, you will absolutely love FastStone. Check out just some of the features:
* Very lightweight – it will not hog up a bunch of your system resources.
* Pick a color on the screen – when you want to find out the exact color used on a website.
* Image editor – you can resize, crop and more to your heart’s content.

Check out Ryan’s post for a detailed list of the features of FastStone (and his other favorite free screen capture programs). I think we are sold on FastStone and you will be too .

New SnagIt Version Released »

Just when you thought it could not get any better, the Techsmith team has made improvements. They released SnagIt 8.2 today and it has some sweet new features. We use SnagIt almost every day and this is a program that we could not live without.

Some of the features include like Vista and Office 2007 compatibility. Not that we will be upgrading anytime soon, but it is nice to know that SnagIt has us covered if/when we do upgrade .

Also, you can send you screen captures directly to another application. So, if you are working in Word and need an image, you simply open SnagIt, grab the image and send it back to Word. Very nice. Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE SnagIt. But sometimes it was a hassle grabbing the image, saving it to the desktop, opening the target application and importing the “snagged” image. I am certainly not complaining because that process was WAY easier then anything else. But now it is smooth as silk. Love it!

Plus, hot little callout styles have been added. We use the callout function when getting web site redlines from clients. It makes the whole revision process much easier.

If you are not yet a SnagIt user, hop over to their web site and download the trial version. You will be grabbing screen shots in minutes and will be as hooked on it as we are.