User generated content, or UGC, can be extremely helpful for a company website. This form of interactivity can have several benefits and are not always that difficult to implement. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to the second installment of my internet buzz word recap. In part one I talked about Web 2.0, blogs, RSS feeds, and weather or not they are worthwhile tools for your online business strategies. In this continuation I will be talking about AJAX.
AJAX (not the dish soap) Read the rest of this entry »
At this time, AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is one of the hottest buzz words on the web. What is it exactly? Well that’s hard to say. Many developers are still debating what AJAX is and isn’t, but most will say that it relates to the ability to access new information without having to refresh the web page. One of the most famous examples of
One day I was surfing the web looking for some design inspiration for a project I was working on. At some point in my search I eventually came across Patrick Haney’s flickr set. It seems that Patrick Haney has had the same problem, and he collected all the websites that inspire him into one online photo album. “This is perfect!” I thought to myself. “There are hundreds of websites here and they all look fantastic.”
After my initial feelings of shock and joy something began to creep up and gnaw at the back of my mind, like a hamster trying to get out of its cage. Then it hit me. “How dare they!” I shouted. “Who do these people think they are to make such masterpieces?!” I began to sob and hit my head on my desk while repeatedly saying “Why not me, why not me?”
This started to remind me of how some women get angry and upset when they look through a catalog full of models. I was in the same situation and I found myself faced with two options. I could become anorexic and hope that great design shortly follows; or I could say screw it and focus on my inner beauty because that’s what really matters right? After all my content is interesting, my website is accessible, and my use of DOM scripting is just dreamy. If someone didn’t know enough about those things to appreciate them, then I could just thumb my nose at that person and call them shallow. After all, I know that the search engines like Google don’t care what a website looks like when it comes time to index, and if people can’t even find a website then they won’t care what it looks like any more than Google does.
The time has come for you to get a business card. The only problem is you have no idea what it should look like. The appearance of a business card is important. The last thing you want is for someone to pick up your card and his or her first impression is, “Wow this thing is uglier than sin!” When designing your own card (or someone else’s), follow these helpful tips to avoid a professional embarrassment.
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What would the Buzz Blog be if we didn’t talk about some buzz words. Well I’ve rounded up a few that have been swarming the web lately and I’ll be talking about whether or not they are worth the hype. For certain people some of these things can be very useful business investments that will make you lots and lots of money. For others they are just fancy new toys to keep up with Jones’ company.
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I’d like to take the time to introduce to you a new web technique I am working on called Faux Flash. Before I explain what faux flash is though I should probably take some time to talk about regular flash. Flash is a program that has become very popular for its ability to add animation and interactivity to web pages. If you have ever seen a beautiful animated website full of interactive features, chances are it was made with flash. Faux Flash is a way to simulate the pretty animation of a flash website without actually having to use flash.
A good example of this is….uh… hmm…
Ok there aren’t really any examples of this on the internet because no one is really doing it. Most developers would just go ahead and use flash for the pretty interactive animations. Maybe this technique will catch on at some point. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
How do I make faux flash? Faux Flash goes retro by making use of animated GIFs (yes the same as those annoying banners and dancing hamsters). In combination with CSS rollovers these animated wonders of yesterday can create some exciting new possibilities. To see a very simple example, check my portfolio page web.ics.purdue.edu/~cschlens and roll your mouse over the buttons at the top. This is a very limited example of what faux flash is capable of but it is still a decent example. I am currently working on developing a website that implements some of the more impressive capabilities of this technique, but nothing is ready to be unleashed on the public just yet.
Some of these features include images that zoom larger when you roll your mouse over them, interactive animated menus, expanding content, and much much more. Stay tuned for all the exciting updates of my adventures in Faux Flash.
Once upon a time in web land, there was much chaos. Web designers were being terrorized by a vicious enemy known as the table based design. These designs were full of complicated illogical code, took hours to make, and even longer to change. Large web sites (such as Amazon and the like) would have been a huge challenge because the styling code would have to be copied and maintained on every page individually. Not to mention all that messy table code made it more difficult for the search engine spiders to make sense of a web page’s contents.
Then it all changed. The answer to the web designers’ prayers arrived in the form of Cascading Style Sheets or (CSS). Beautiful Beautiful CSS.
What makes CSS so beautiful?
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Hey everyone. This is my first week working at Queen Bee Marketing so this is my first weekly blog post. I am a Purdue University student majoring in Computer Graphics Technology with a specialty in Multimedia. If you would like to see my portfolio please visit My Homepage. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s see… what did I do this week. Lately I have been working on making this blog look the way we want it. I just got the blog post to display the author that posted them. So when you see the “by: author” line under the title it’s because of me. Now I am working getting the authors picture
