Online banking users are being warned of a new type of attack being dubbed the 'man-in-the-browser'.  Using this tool, hackers can not only get access to your banking details, but they can obscure the real status of your account, showing you false figures after making withdrawals.

So what can users to to prevent this sort of thing from happening?

Keep your browser up to date

If you have Chrome, it will update automatically, but you may need to turn on automatic updating for Firefox or Internet Explorer using the help menu.

Call your bank if something doesn't seem right

If you are asked to enter your whole password instead of just parts, or if your transaction seems to be taking longer than usual, or you're worried about the figures in your statement, call your bank.  Try to remember as many details as possible, such as the exact time this happened.

Remember, virus protection doesn't catch everything

Anti virus software focuses on checking a database of existing viruses, so new viruses do not get caught at first. Be wary if your machine starts slowing down dramatically or starts to exhibit strange behaviour.  Windows users should look at using Microsoft Security Essentials, a free anti-virus program which updates itself regularly.

In a new blog post on the twitter website entitled "Tweets must still flow" (a misquote from Frank Herbert's Dune), twitter announced yesterday that if in one country the authorities request that a tweet be withdrawn for legal reasons, twitter now has the ability to pull that particular tweet in the country where it is banned, without affecting the worldwide view of it.

Inevitably, some people will be up in arms about this move, but in a world where countries impose different laws on their citizens, maybe it makes sense.  Is it better to censor an illegal tweet (for example, one claiming the Holocaust never happened, in Germany) than have the German authorities shutting down twitter and throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

A few weeks ago we looked at some of the graphics programs that make up a web developer's toolkit.  But like many things, photo editing is one of those functions that has successfully made the leap from desktop app to web based app.  Google isn't the only one doing it, but we've been trying out the tool provided from within Google+ and we like it a lot!

Simple on the surface, a set of tabs appear when you select "creative kit" (under the "photos" menu item).  Within each tab is a variety of tools - again, each one is simple at first but a number of options unfold if you explore.  For example, in the picture above, I've selected 'boost' as an effect to apply to my photo.  You can apply the effect to  the whole photo, or you can select to use a 'boost brush' ('effect painting') instead, and within the brush you can either apply the effect, or undo the effect.

As you might imagine, you can apply colour changes, cure red eye, crop, rotate, and sharpen, but you can also:

• pixelate
• fix blemishes
• airbrush
• add text in a variety of fonts
• add beards, crowns, tiaras, and christmas hats(!)

So no need to crank up photoshop whie you're plus-one'ing!

After some of the backers of SOPA, the proposed anti-piracy legislation, have withdrawn their support, it looks like a victory for internet democracy, but given our posts on copyright, what's the opinion at Oxford Web?

The problem many people have with the proposed legislation, including creators of original content who have had their content "pirated", is that it is too broad and far-reaching.

The obvious aim of the legislation would be to prevent people from damaging the income streams which rightly belong to original artists - be they writers, songwriters, singers, film-makers, graphic artists, etc. 

The problem with the proposed legislation being far-reaching is that if I create original content but my website happens to host a picture from another site, there is a worry that my website could be shut down (by the US government) without proper process.

It's a difficult area, but I have big problems with America setting themselves up as World Police, Judge and Jury.  So do I believe that if SOPA is dropped, it will be a good thing.

Today we're big fans of Michael Gove, who has announced that the IT curriculum in schools needs a bit of an overhaul and may be split into two areas similar to English with its 'Language' and 'Literature' GCSEs.

Some years ago, as a budding 11 year old computer scientist I signed up for IT classes at my school, and we were taught what a variable was, how variables might be assigned from some sort of input, how to manipulate them, store and retrieve them, and ultimately output something on a screen.  This means that with a little 'connecting the dots' we could write our own databases, word processors and games, before it became a thing for the elite and everyone else got spoon-fed.

Nowadays my 12-year-old son doesn't have an option to learn programming at school, even though he's dead keen on it (yes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...) so I'm doing my best to teach him at home - but how many kids are missing out on a vocation?

So we salute you, Mr Gove - you're doing the right thing!

Breaking news today - as 'tv-shack' website owner Richard O'Dwyer is sentenced to extradition to the USA, not for hosting copyrighted material on his website, but for linking to copyrighted material.

Obviously if you run a website selling cheese and you host a random link to a copyrighted site, I don't think you should be worrying too much about extradition, but certainly torrent servers and users should start worrying about whether they are infringing this evolving law.

But I do think this matters to ordinary users, and we should be aware of copyright law and how it affects us.  

For example, when you run a Google image search, you should certainly think twice about copying the images you find and using them on your own website.

And if you're copying text from a competitor website, even if you make tweaks to the copy, the act of copying does in fact fall foul of the law.

One of our suppliers, who is an industry giant, recently told us that their database of passwords and credit cards had been hacked, and we needed to take measures as a result.

Quite possibly the passwords are stored in an unreadable format, but unreadable is not the same as unbreakable - and some so-called unreadable formats are all too clear for hackers if just some of the passwords on the system are guess-able.

We are glad, then, that the password we used with this supplier is not the same as any of the ones used with other suppliers.  Because there is a chance that, knowing your password for one system, hackers will try the same password for your email, your banking, and so on.

How do you maintain a vast set of different passwords? 

A password file with a strong, unbreakable password is a possible solution. For example, this could be an Excel spreadsheet or Openoffice file which is encrypted with a long password.

However, you will need to remember some on a daily basis, so having passwords like hkj$$!h87633jheuxn is not really a great option.

One solution recommended by a few IT bloggers is to have a long phrase which you can remember - for example MyBrotherJohnHas5Goats!.  This has the advantage of having more than 52^23 possible combinations (more than, because it's not just alphabetical) which is a ten with 39 zeroes after it.  With the fastest technology possible, it would take longer than many lifetimes to go through this combination of passwords, by which time you probably won't need your password any more...

If you throw in the occasional bit of punctuation you lessen the chance of someone searching for a sentence using just word matches - for example My$BrotherJohn!Has26Goats.

Think about your weakest passwords today - and change them!

The mayor of New York is learning to program.

Software developers around the world are teaching their kids to program.

What are you doing for 'code year'?

One of the big problems with the latest revolutions in social history (the information revolution and the internet revolution) is that unlike the last two (the agricultural and the industrial) it is very difficult for technologicial outsiders to understand the basic principles of the new technology.

It is hard enough to understand even the benefit (one sceptic told me that computers have saved nobody any time - a fair enough comment on the failed NHS computer system but far from true in every case!).

"Code" (the word programmers use for software) does so many things it's hard to begin to talk about its reach and benefit. 

I was teaching programming many years ago and someone asked me if all the good software hadn't already been written (and why didn't we just used what's been written now?). This was before Windows 95 and XP, Vista and 7, before Android, Google mail, and a million and one things you're probably using and don't know it.

The answer is of course no - there's a vast amount of software being written today for things you haven't yet heard of but will form the basis of how your fridge or car works, not just your desktop computer, tablet or phone.

And when people come out with easier programming models (coding with flowcharts and similar graphical devices), someone still has to write and maintain the code beneath.

Is it essential that everyone knows how these things work? Of course not! But it is certainly useful, interesting, and enlightening.

So the idea behind 'code year' is that people who have never coded (=written software) before are coming together to discover what it's all about, and to write their first computer programs.

Whether it leads to a long career in programming, or the next Android app, or just a program to sort out your mortgage payments, I can assure you it'll be worth it.

What about you? Are you interested? Sign up at www.codeyear.com!

As we look forward to 2012 and what it may bring, we present to you a short list of suggested new year's resolutions for any organisation with a website.

I will conduct a twice-yearly website review

Your website affects your business. If it weren't so, I doubt you'd bother paying for it. So when was the last time you conducted a website review? Topics for discussion should include:

• The aims of the business
• How the website should fulfil each of those aims
• Where we could improve
• Next steps

I will get to grips with social media and cloud computing

Just like you saw the potential of the internet for your organisation, 5, 10, or even 15 years ago, now you should be looking at new ways to harness technology. Questions to consider are:

• Can my website benefit from new links or visitors found through social networking?
• What should I do about it?
• Am I relying on too many office-based solutions when a cloud-based solution is available, more cheaply and reliably?
• What should I do about it?

I will measure our marketing campaigns

There's still a huge amount of marketing that's relatively unmeasurable in terms of its impact. Online media helps you measure what yo're doing and how it's affecting visitors and sales. Make a point not to spend a pound in 2012 without measuring your spend and its effect. The simple act of measuring will help you get more out of your marketing budget. If you don't think you have a marketing budget, why not tot up what you spent in 2011 and use it as a baseline?

I will have a Happy New Year

Do you remember why you're in business, or working where you work? Make a point of making 2012 the year you enjoy what you're doing, do it well, and make a difference. Does this sound hard? Then maybe you need to discuss your objectives for the year with friends or colleagues, who will always provide new perspectives. If you don't have any to hand, why not talk to us?

A few years ago, too many to really remember, I wrote a blog post on how Firefox was creeping up on Internet Explorer in the access logs (there was no Google Analytics in those days, we had to rely on tools like Webalizer) and how one day Firefox and IE might be sort of equal in take-up.  In addition, our customers with a more techical fanbase were seeing Firefox and Safari users in significant numbers (but still not topping IE).

This year I have re-run my original survey, taking a sample of customer websites again - so I do stress that this is not a scientific survey in the sense that it does not represent the internet as a whole.

To my (mild) surprise, IE is still on top, but not much.  At around 33% on average across a variety of websites, including consumer websites.  Followed closely by Firefox at 27%, then Safari, then Chrome a poor 4th place.

However, on the more technically minded sites, Chrome is a clear winner, at 34% of users, followed by Firefox just pipping IE at the post, both on roughly 26%.

Within IE, across the whole sample, on average IE6 lags behind 7, 8, and 9, which is good news for users and developers alike, for reasons explained in previous posts.

Social sharing

Google analytics also reveals what it calls 'socially engaged' visits to our customers websites, visits prompted by sharing on twitter and facebook, for example.  These currently make up less than 1% of visits, but the presence of an emerging trend is obviously important.  If you're reading this and you're not giving your users a chance to share on facebook or twitter, or to +1 your web pages, have you been missing out on 1% of sales this year, 2% in 2012, 4% in 2013?

Mobile visits come in at 4% of all visits.  Again, this is an emerging trend that many website owners need to address and encourage.

The need for speed

Finally, Google Analytics also tells you how long your web pages take to load, which is an excellent measure of how much you're annoying users (little known fact: it also affects web page rankings).  Are your pages loading in under 3 seconds?  If not, it could be that you're on massively shared hosting, or the pages are built in an inefficient way, or both.  Come and talk to us!

It's likely that this is my last blog post before Christmas, so to all our readers:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

-Marcus

Google has announced via a blog post a number of improvements which should make Google+ easier to use and (I would imagine that Google hopes) more attractive to new users and 'sticky' for existing ones.

One of the huge advantages Google+ has had from the start is integration with other Google products - most notably gmail, although being able to advertise on the Google home page as they did when Google+ came out is also a huge (dare I say it?) plus.

Notifications about things happening in Google+ appear in a header bar gmail, and Google has now made this easier to navigate, introducing more content in a dropdown panel when you click the notification icon.

Google has also extended Google+ into the business world, and there is a specific way to advertise your business on Google+, using a "Google+ Page".

Finally a better photo lightbox has been unveiled, replacing the very klunky 1.0 version which, to be honest, looked like a rushed product.

So who knows, maybe in 2012 we'll all be Google+ing each other?

It seems like someone's been reading our Christmas wish list blog posts, as Microsoft has just announced on their Window Steam Blog (or should that be Windows Team Blog?) that IE is to "Start Automatic Upgrades across Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7"

This is a great step towards protecting users from websites which prey upon the more technically illiterate, using phishing or other techniques to gain access to sensitive data or to wreak havoc on victims' computers.

It also means that web developers can save countless hours adapting the latest HTML to older browsers, as the bar is raised a little higher a little more quickly.

Well done Microsoft!

Dear Father Christmas

I've been incredibly good this year; I've applied w3c standards to all my html and css, and object oriented principles to all my code.  I've applied the boy scout principle (when editing code, I leave it a little better than it was when I started) and I've avoided GOTOs and raw SQL in views and controller code.

What I'd like is:

1. A single specification that's easy to read and unambiguous

2. A 2000 pixel wide screen - make that on dual monitors.

3. 3g on my phone everywhere I go 

4. A quad core processor 

5. Adobe Photoshop CS5

6. Everyone who uses IE6 to upgrade, please!

7. Oxebiz 7

8. Windows 8

9. Firefox 9

10. Visual Studio 2010

11. 2011 to be the year they stop inventing new computer languages, paradigms and frameworks

12. Twelve cups of coffee a day!

Dear Father Christmas

I've been very good this year.  I haven't set up keyword spam pages to get myself a better Google ranking, and I haven't spam-emailed random address lists.  I've made my website cater for all browsers, even if some of them suck (you know who you are), and I've made sure that it's accessible to people with different disabilities, and that it can be read and indexed properly by search engines.

I'd like:

1. My web developer to anticipate my every need and carry out the work with style and panache.

2. Two number one spots on Google for my 2 top-selling products, when people search by their specific or generic names.

3. My website to be beautifully organised into three tiers - home page, more details, and most detail.

4. My website visitors to enjoy the four-step checkout process and fill their baskets.

5. Five users to test my website for usability, providing great data for usability analysis.

6, 7, 8 and 9. IE6 users to all upgrade their browsers.  IE7, 8 and 9 users to start using Firefox or Chrome.

10. My website to fulfil Oxford Web's 10 marketing must-haves. 

11. 2011 to be the best year yet.

12. My website not to crash with the weight of 12,000 Christmas orders.

We're not only "all about Google" here, so to follow up on yesterday's post about cloud services, I wanted to mention Microsoft's skydrive, which has recently been upgraded.  I checked it out, and it's pretty amazing..

• edit word, excel and powerpoint as if you've got it installed on your desktop
• upload and download files
• sharing (this has improved hugely)
• quicker access to everyday functions like renaming files (so that it doesn't feel like you're using a web application - again, it's more like using a desktop app).

My guess is that in 10 years time the polarisation between desktop and web apps will be largely forgotten, so unfortunately none of these comparisons will make sense any more - but if you're reading this in 2021, desktop apps used to be faster, trust me...

Having moved offices this week I have to say, despite the heaps of work actually carting stuff from one place to another and notifying customers and suppliers of our new contact details, it's been one of the least stressful moving experiences I've ever had.

Of course, we have to thank the good people at Sandford Gate in part for that; renting an office here and getting the phones, internet, and furniture we needed was a doddle.

But it's also down to the wonder of cloud computing. 

In the bad old days, our Exchange Server Administrator and our Windows Network Administrator would have been fiddling with cables and desktop settings, installing file servers and email servers in air-conditioned racks and coming up with unexpected problems which take email offline for hours on end. 

Nowadays, with everything we need on our laptops and desktops somewhere in the cloud, we can just unplug in the old office and plug in again in the new.  

In addition to a hosted email and file servers, and hosted office documents, we also use versioned file backups of our software projects, which mean any changes are logged and we are able to roll back to previous versions if necessary - a very useful tool.

To find out more about how cloud computing can help you and your business, get in touch.

Online Christmas shopers fall into all sorts of categories, and some into no categories at all, but here are some behaviours which we've observed in customers over the years which should help you plan your website's foray into the marketplace:

Customers don't always buy on price

Customers will look for websites that appear to be trustworthy. This means that some of them will avoid Google ads in favour of natural search results. It also means that getting a sharper design and the right content (and social media links) must be a priority for ageing websites. Just because it works, it doesn't mean it will attract customers.

Customers can't always buy on price

The cheapest option may be way down the list of search results.  No customer in a hurry is going to look on page 3 of search results, and many aren't going to look on page 2.  Be on page one (for your product name - your company name doesn't matter) and try Google Product Search too (see our earlier post).

Customers like to buy from trusted sites

If you don't have information about your security features, your returns policy, and happy customer testimonials, you will almost certainly be losing out on a huge swathe of customers who just don't trust you. They're easy to add, too. If you want to go a notch higher, use video testimonials to prove that your customers really exist!

Customers love lots of information

Of course, there are some situations in which, if you've found the product you're looking for, you'll click "buy".  But what if you aren't quite sure if it's wide enough, or supports Windows, or is suitable for a 3 year old? Be especially careful if you're receiving downloads of product information from  the manufacturer - are they enough?  Can you point the customer to more information or fact-sheet downloads, or write about your own experience? This is another great way to differentiate from your competitors.

Happy selling!

We've moved to Sandford Gate in East Oxford, a fantastic office development with a bit more room for our growing business. Our new address is:

Oxford Web
Sandford Gate
East Point Business Park
Oxford OX4 6LB

Our telephone number has also changed - it's 01865 596 144 - but our old number will work for a little while.

We look forward to welcoming you to our new offices.

The paradoxically self-referencing Hofstadter's law states that "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

I'm sure it works in many professions, but it feels especially suitable to the software development industry.

So what makes projects take longer?

Whenever something takes longer than expected here at Oxford Web, we analyse the reasons, in order to learn from the experience.

And one of the biggest causes that crops up is the lack of a shared language between customers and web designers/developers.

If you've ever specified or built a website yourself, then you fall into one of both of these groups.

Baby talk

Have you overheard or been part of a conversation between a baby and a parent, where the baby is trying to get something across that the parent just doesn't understand?

Baby: Want it
Parent: Here's your teddy, sweetie!
Baby: Grrrr!  Want it!
Parent: Don't you want your teddy?  What do you want?
Baby (gesturing like crazy): Want it? 

Customers don't have the language

The baby analogy is not to say that customers are immature, but those who don't have experience of specifying websites just don't have the language - what the layperson calls jargon but is in fact a very necessary glue for putting together the desire for something and the activities which get it done.

The problem gets bigger when customers have a language but it's not our language. For example the customer may say "auto responder" (which means an email which fires off straight away when any email is received) but really mean "a series of prepared emails that fire in sequence when someone signs up to a newsletter". Or get frustrated with a developer who creates a fixed width website, when that's what the designer has designed, and it just won't stretch.

What can we do about it?

The only perfect solution is for the customer to understand a great deal about web design and development. But of course there's a lot we can do:

• Thinking of things that the customer may not have thought of.
• Showing the customer websites which do similar things to the things they want theirs to do.
• Creating a written statement about the purpose and function of the website, based on the customer's original requirements.

These are huge steps towards mitigating the problem. But the biggest thing, the one thing which people say  they don't have but in reality will lose more of if they don't spend it at the start, is:

Time

If you want your website next week, we don't really have time to site down and discuss how it's going to work, specify it, prototype it, test it, usability test it, and go live. So you might as well write a blank cheque on cost and functionality.

For a very simple website (a unique website, not a wordpress job), you should normally allow:

• A week to agree the specification
• A week for design
• A week for development
• A week for functional testing (by the customer) and usability testing
• A week to iron out problems and go live

For larger projects and systems, these timescales rise logarithmically with the amount of functionality being specified.

An evolving language

If you're the specifier, the designer, and the developer all rolles into one, you shortcut these processes within your brain, of course, and you can go from initial vision to going live in a few hours. So if there are more people involves, can we still shortcut the process by using a shared language?

In an industry less than 20 years old, with new trends, paradigms, and user expectations emerging every year, and when kids are learning how to use software instead of how to build it, how can we ever have a shared language? Are we in fact going back to the times when priests and monks knew Latin and the Bible, and the populace had to accept what was given to them?

Why don't you join us and learn a little Latin?  We've started a tech blog aimed at everyone from complete beginners to programming gurus, with a shared authorship in order to broaden the subject matter and the appeal, and with the aim of explaining techie concepts in plain English. We hope you enjoy it as it grows.

As the BBC reports, a judge in Nevada, USA, has ordered various online directories including Google, Bing, Yahoo and Facebook to remove links to sites offering counterfeit goods for sale.

As legislators try to get to grips with controlling the internet, what does it mean, and is it good or bad?

Earlier this year the European Union ruled that websites within its jurisdiction should gain explicit consent from users before storing 'tracking' cookies on users' browsers.

Google is today hitting back with print advertising explaining just what a cookie is and why it's so useful - there's an ad above my head on the train as I blog, saying "Hello David, What's your name again" as an illustration of the fact that without cookies, websites can have very short memories.

I have not met anyone yet who agrees with the EU cookie legislation. So in my view it's very misguided. But does that make internet legislation bad?

In all walks of life there may be good and bad legislation, and if legislation exists to prevent street traders from selling fake Rolexes on Oxford's cornmarket, why can't the law rule on internet trading?

Opposers of this kind of legislation cite the fact that in order to make it work, you have to legislate in all jurisdictions - but does that matter? Surely that is not the point of the law. However nice it would be if it was applied globally, laws must be passed if there is a strong case.

What do you think?

Are you tired of hearing about SEO and social media? So are we. But together with our friends at Cicada Online, we have put together a workshop for our contacts and customers, aimed at cutting through the hot air and getting results. The half-day session covers:

• Understanding the opportunities from SEO and social media
• Relating them to your business
• Creating an SEO and social media action plan for your business
• A credit for 4 hours' SEO work on your website

Workshops can be held on your premises, or at Oxford Web's new offices at Sandford Gate (from mid December 2011). Workshops at Sandford Gate will be delivered to a maximum of 6 people from 2 businesses and will cost £375+VAT per business represented.

By keeping the workshops very limited, we are able to concentrate on your needs - whether you want to focus on more traffic, expanding the reach of your business, or simply a better experience for your website visitors, we can give you the low-down, listen to your concerns, analyse your website's strengths and weaknesses, and advise on future actions.

Marcus Idle from Oxford Web and Ned Wells from Cicada Online will both be available throughout the workshops in order to cover the subject matter comprehensively.  Each company represented will also receive credit for 2 hours' work from Oxford Web and 2 hours from Cicada, which will be directed where needed most, following recommended actions from the workshop.

We will be publishing workshop dates shortly; meanwhile, for more information, please get in touch.

Google Product Search is an automatic feature which is turned on when Google thinks you're searching for a product.  You may see normal web results for some way down the page, then a row of results for that product from different online shops.

You can also turn it on by clicking 'Shopping' in the filters you will see on the left hand side of the screen whenever you conduct a search.

Product Search is a great way to give your products more exposure, even (or especially) if you have a successul online shop with a stream of visitors, as it can put your products above similar products in search results, where you may not be above them in 'natural' search.

What's more, Google has just made some great improvements to product search:

• multiple filters (left hand side) allow you do narrow your search down, even by category (Google tries to understand the categories your product sits in; it may not always get it right, but it's pretty close)
• you can go to a single product and click 'compare prices' to see its availability in different stores
• you can add products to a 'shopping list' (this doesn't place it in the store's basket; rather, this is like a wish list, and you can go back to your list any time and follow the links to the relevant online shop).

So if you're selling online, why wait? It's easy to set up, and if you need help, that's why we're here.

The New York Times reports that Microsoft and Yahoo have signed a non-discolsure agreement, signalling that Microsoft may be closer to buying the search engine company than we thought.

So what's in it for them?

The Yahoo CEO resigned earlier this year, due to the search engine's lacklustre performance in the marketplace.  This prompted me to wonder what Yahoo's attraction to users is - their search engine is way behind google, their email is klunky, their home page is cluttered... what is there to like?

But 80 million unique visitors a month somehow end up at Yahoo's front door - poor by search engine standards, yes, but pretty good for the average website!

Yahoo groups has some traction, and some people will land on the home page having installed the Yahoo toolbar alongside some other software.  There's also Yahoo answers and niche services like Yahoo finance.

Users - yes.  But what about profits?

Microsoft aren't stupid, and what they will be looking for is profit.  So what will they plan to do with Yahoo? My guess is that Yahoo and Live/msn/hotmail won't merge - not for years anyway. The brands have their own followers and merging would not gain users. But we will certainly see shared advert and search algorithms, and a push to capitalise on ad revenue on the same way Google has. Yahoo email users should also expect more integration with Office 365 features, another great way to push/cross-sell the Yahoo and Office 365 services.

So after some dire experiences with Yahoo mail I'll pick it up again after the merger, along with trying out their other services again, but typically I think growth will come from retention of existing customers, plus new customers cross-sold from Office, Skype, the Windows phone and other Microsoft services and acquisitions.

Watch this space! 

You may have heard from search engine specialists that you should blog to improve your search engine ranking.  

Do they never learn?

The best and only reason to blog is to communicate with your users. Users who may be your customers, your potential customers, your sponsors, your readers, your constituency, or one of any number of audiences you may wish to address.

It is those people who have to read your drivel, or of course your well thought out and informative discourse. Search engine spiders may read it too, but there is only one reason for this: to put it in front of other people.

Of course putting content on your website makes you relevant to more keyword searches, but if you're just putting junk up, then at what price?

Whats best, SEO or usability?

I was speaking to a search engine consultant today whom I respect, and he told me that, with an ecommerce customer he works with, simply making the website more usable (please see my blog articles 1 and 2 on usability) the site's search engine ranking for some key phrases improved hugely, and the subsequent traffic increased four-fold. Why would this be? Apart from the fact that changes were being made, and spiders love that kind of stuff, the web is for humans, and the search engine algorithms are designed to mimic humans, in order to make search results better for everyone. So the rule of thumb works: make your website better for human beings, and they will come.

Remember the panda

Earlier this year the 'panda' algorithm came into effect at Google HQ, making content more important than links in the game of 'how important is my website?'.  The only reason for this is that search engine 'specialists' were creating huge link sites in order to make their clients rank better, rather than improving the websites themselves.  There's a lesson here (again): make your website better, and people will come!

So by all means blog, much and often, but please write great content directed at your human website visitors, not keyword-splattered spider-fodder!

The occupy flash movement aims to get computer users to disable the Flash plugin on their browsers, claiming that it's old and buggy, and is slowing down the development of new interactive web pages, specifically HTML5/Javascript developments.

While I sympathise, this is akin to asking people to take out the mileometer on their car in favour of soon-to-be-standard robot vehicles.  It won't give them a robot vehicle; it'll just make sure they have less features (and sometimes when they really need those features) in their current car.

So I raise my hat to you, Occupy Flash guys, but I won't be coming along for the ride, sorry!

We're working with a local educational establishment on an application which helps them receive student submissions.  There is a twice-yearly submission window, which means a period of intense activity followed by 5 months of preparation for the next window.

This forces us to follow a neatly defined 'plan-develop-test-release' cycle, which could apply to any other website, but isn't usually top of the agenda.

During the testing part of the cycle the idea is that you test  that the system functions properly given a wide variation of parameters, but also that the system is usable, i.e. that perhaps the less savvy users will still be able to understand and navigate the web application.

However, during the release section of the cycle there are inevitably events we can learn from.

For example:

• do users fail to understand the terminology and ask the same questions?
• will users benefit from having different concepts separated over multiple screens, so they don't miss anything?
• do website administrators repeatedly ask us to perform system level tasks, where we could create an 'app for that'?

Yes, the thrust of the usability effort has got to be looking over shoulders of new testers during the test cycle, but usability is also understanding patterns which emerge from mass usage.

A six month cycle can really focus the mind and help a website increase any metric - conversions and sales for example.  Let us know if we can help you plan your usability analysis and release cycle.

An interesting video from "KreativMagazin" shows how it takes time to build real creativity into what you do. It's not a terribly scientific study, and the children who are asked to draw around the hands of a clock are given just ten seconds at first, which is not even time to think, but it makes a good point.

But the problem is, given ten minutes instead of ten seconds, how do you know who's going to squander the time and who's going to come up with something unique or "disruptive"?  In the video a whole classroom of children is the resource, but in real life you sometimes need to choose one resource... and of course the temptation is always to tell them to make it snappy!

Have you ever seen (or perpetrated) the 'click here' crime?  It's when you have a sentence on your web page that reads something like "To see our brochure about ecommerce apps, click here" (where 'click here' is a link).

Here's why it's wrong on 3 levels:

1. Readability.  If your customers are reading your webpage at 100 miles an hour (and they will), a set of underlined 'click here's aren't going to help.  Far better to emphasise the important words (like the "ecommerce apps") by turning them into links.
2. Accessibility.  If blind people are using your website, they'll hear "link: click here" instead of "link: brochure about ecommerce apps", which doesn't work, especially if they're getting a summary of links!
3. Search engines: if you're linking to the ecommerce apps page with the words "ecommerce apps", search engines will add those words to the information they have about the page (i.e. they'll go into the search index along with all the words on the page, for retrieval later on).  Which means the page shows greater relevance to those words.

Why not take a look at your website copy now and correct those pesky 'click here' links? 

It doesn't take a huge outlay to be able to develop websites these days.  What it does take to develop good websites is an in-depth experience, not just of the technology, but of your customers and the process of marketing them online.

That said, we present the first in our series about the tools a web developer needs to get started, starting with graphics tools.

The main thing you need if you're building any kind of sophistication into your design (whether you're designing the site or receiving/setting up the artwork in order to build the site) is a graphics editor which handles layers.

Photoshop is the industry standard package with all the bells and whistles, and comes with a hefty price tag to match.  You can do amazing things with photographs, although you'll need to learn about the tool in order to create nice buttons and graphics.  Thankfully, there are now lots of youtube videos which help with that.  Or you can read a book...

Photoshop Elements is a cut-down and very reasonably priced version of Photoshop.  The only thing I've needed that it lacks is grouping layers, which can be important if you're receving artwork from a designer who uses Photoshop 'proper'.

Fireworks is another Adobe offering, really aimed at the graphics side of the web rather than photo editing, so while it won't help you with that nice header banner you would like to create, with the face merging into a landscape, it'll do buttons nicely.  It doesn't have a huge market so you may find that designers you'll deal with normally use Photoshop.

GIMP is a free tool which offers something near the sophistication of Photoshop, with some nice extras besides, like a series of effects and animations.  The down side is the clunky multi-window interface, but you can certainly get used to it.

Paint.Net is the baby of the group, another free tool, with various features missing such as retaining text information inside a layer.  That said, it's often good for your customers who just want to crop and resize pictures before putting them online and don't want to pay for anything more sophisticated.   

Microsoft loves a launch party, but can Microsoft make it with their Windows phone?

Points in favour:

• Microsoft is a recognised brand, and is able to pull together elements that people already work with, such as office documents and skype.
• Having jumped in at this point, they've had a good chance to study the competition and get things right.
• There's lots of media coverage, and no doubt new phone buyers will understand the concept.

Points against:

• Microsoft haven't quite shaken their uncool glitchy blue-screen-of-death image.
• Smart phone market saturation is huge, so there aren't that many places to go, and Android and iPhone users will probably stay with what they know.
• Steve Ballmer.  He's got the energy, yes, but none of the charisma the other Steve had.

Well, the jury's out, but my prediction is that Windows Phone will trail even Blackberry in the marketplace at the end of 2012.