Kelowna Website Design, Vernon Web site Hosting, Penticton, Vancouver Web Designs

HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight?

2009-06-16T06:46:00.001-07:00

HTML 5, a groundbreaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification, could become a game-changer in Web application development, one that might even make obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX.

The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) HTML 5 proposal is geared toward Web applications, something not adequately addressed in previous incarnations of HTML, the W3C acknowledges. In other words, HTML 5 tackles the gap that Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX are trying to fill.

The rich promise of HTML 5 "HTML 5 is really the second coming of this Web stuff -- of the Web," says Dion Almaer, co-founder of the Ajaxian Web site and co-director of developer tools at Mozilla. The specification boasts capabilities covering video and graphics on the Web, as well as a slew of APIs, Almaer notes.

HTML 5 technologies such as Canvas, for 2-D drawing on a Web page, are being promoted by heavyweights in the Internet space such as Apple, Google, and Mozilla. (Although Microsoft itself has given a thumbs-up to certain aspects of HTML 5, it has not backed Canvas.)

"HTML 5 features like Canvas, local storage, and Web Workers let us do more in the browser than ever before," says Ben Galbraith, also co-founder of the Ajaxian Web site and co-director of developer tools at Mozilla. Local storage enables users to work in a browser when a connection drops and Web Workers makes "next generation" applications incredibly responsive by pushing long-running tasks to the background, he says.

Web applications will become more fun, says Ian Fette, project manager at Google for the Chrome browser: "They're going to be faster and they're just going to provide overall a better user experience and make the distinction between online apps and desktop apps blurred."

HTML 5 features already appearing in browsers After five years of work, a draft of the HTML 5 specification was released in 2008. Parts of it are showing up in browsers, but the complete HTML 5 work won't be done for years.

"For example, video support is new in HTML 5 and new in Firefox 3.5," notes Vlad Vukicevic, technical lead of the Firefox project at Mozilla. Google's new Chrome browser also has some capabilities, including video tags, derived from the HTML 5 specification. And Microsoft has several HTML 5 features in Internet Explorer 8, such as local storage, AJAX navigation, and mutable DOM prototypes.

Source:[computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=development&articleId=9134422&taxonomyId=11&intsrc=kc_feat]

Outsourcing Advanced Web Site Design and Development with Flash Animation to the Philippines

2009-06-03T05:08:00.000-07:00

The world wide web is the new arena of competition where businesses vie for the attention of online visitors. A company's web site is its online office and storefront, carrying the company's image and reputation. Good web site design is, therefore, not good enough anymore. To really attract more visitors, convince them to stay and entice them to return again and again, a company’s web site design needs to be a cut above the rest, especially in its landing pages. In today’s online battle for supremacy, this calls for the use of flash animation.

Flash animation is achieved with the use of Adobe Flash, considered one of the most advanced graphic designing tools available today. It enables website designers to create more dynamic pages that have more visual appeal, enhanced with animated logos, banners, interactive movies, games, business presentations and other creative animations. It can even be used to make each visit a unique experience for the visitor. Undeniably, a web site with flash animation will have greater impact on a visitor and will leave a more positive impression about the company it represents.

Advanced web site design
and development, especially when enhanced with flash animation, is not something that can just be done in the office unless there already are experts in this field among the company’s employees. Otherwise, the company will have to hire programmers and designers who are experts in php, mysql, JavaScript, Adobe Flash and other programming languages and tools, as well as in the correct use of flash animation. It must be borne in mind that when used inappropriately, flash animation can actually even backfire on the company and turn off visitors. It can cause slow loading of the company web site pages, prompting visitors to leave. It can look like cheap advertising and be ignored. Only true web professionals will know how to avoid these mistakes.

Aside from hiring web developers, the company will also have to purchase the equipment they will need to develop the web site and to maintain it. The whole thing will be a considerable investment. To cut costs without sacrificing the company's need for an excellent web site, the solution is outsourcing.

There are many good reasons why a company should choose to outsource its advanced web site design and development with flash animation to the Philippines. On the matter of design, the Philippines can boast of top artistic talent. The best web designers can draw up original and highly aesthetic looks appropriate to a web site and pleasing to its online visitors. Skillfully implementing such design plans is also a challenge that Philippine web site developers have already had much experience with, and have long been known for.

One BPO company in Manila that can be trusted to meet your needs in advanced web site design and development with flash animation is Web Dot Com Website Development Philippines, Inc. It has ten years of experience in serving clients in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Korea, the British Virgin Islands and the Philippines, providing low cost advanced web site development and business process outsourcing packages.

These packages can cover advanced interactive database driven web site development, advanced portal development, heavy web based programming, web application development, content management systems, website design, graphic design and multimedia components including flash animation development, e-commerce site solutions including a shopping cart using osCommerce, website maintenance and support, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and social media marketing. Web Dot Com Website Development Philippines, Inc. is also a web hosting provider that can help with domain name registration.

Web Dot Com Website Development Philippines, Inc. is your One Stop Shop Internet and Contact Center Solutions Vendor for the Global Market.

Source:[elitestv.com/pub/2009/06/outsourcing-advanced-web-site-design-and-development-with-flash-animation-to-the-philippines]

Checklist and summary: Core guidance

2009-05-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

Checklist

Decide whether a discussion group is to be open or closed
If the discussion group is to be closed, carefully control the distribution of passwords
Publish an Acceptable Use Policy alongside the discussion group
The group must be continually moderated
The focus of the discussion group should be decided on before being implemented

Summary

Discussion groups can be delivered by many sources. Your website hosting service may well be in a position to offer this service, or you may have to use a separate service managed by another service provider.

Discussion groups can be volatile. However the service is delivered, it will have to be managed and moderated particularly well, especially if it is an open site available to all web users

Customer relationship management

2009-04-29T22:41:00.000-07:00

At the simplest level, customer relationship management (CRM) means the attraction and retention of visitors by operating a user-focused strategy.

Audience attraction

Audience attraction involves offering the information and services on your website that your user base requires. To do that there must be an understanding of your audiences and their needs if you are to understand what information and services to offer. You will also need to decide if that offering will be identical for each audience segment or whether you will differentiate.

Audience retention

Audience retention involves acquiring and continuously updating knowledge about visitor needs, motivation and behaviour. Applying this knowledge through a process of learning from your successes and failures will ensure that your website is better managed around the user. The aim is to understand, anticipate and manage the needs of current and potential visitors in terms of what is offered and how it is offered.

Relationship management looks at a continuing series of transactions, rather than an individual transaction. This includes supporting your users online and offline, and satisfying them by responding to their requests for information and assistance as soon as possible.

The user-centric strategy allows the integration of people, processes, and technology systems to support the delivery of user requirements. The organisation's whole team will need to be in the business of building customer relationships, both online and offline.

Electronic CRM

With the 'all-electronic' version of CRM, customer relationships become more dynamic and interactive. The creation of a channel and product strategy will define how your organisation delivers its products and services effectively, making sure the right message gets out at the right time and through the right channel. Relevant information can be collected more easily, uploaded automatically and used more effectively.

For example, your department might build a database about its users that described relationships in sufficient detail so that those providing the service can match user needs with products, remind them of the available services and information, and even know what other online and offline transactions a visitor had used. This would provide a web manager with the information necessary to know their users, understand their needs, and effectively build relationships with them.

However, web-based CRM can mean that huge volumes of user information are retrieved, stored, processed and delivered electronically. The IT platforms used must be flexible, adaptive, and scalable. They must also be completely dependable and secure to provide the credibility that will encourage the use of online transactions and resources.

Focusing on user needs - Marketplace

2009-04-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

It is vital to know who your target audiences are and how they will access your information. This information will determine how you design and prepare the electronic publication.

However, targeting information on a website is very different from the targeting of conventional publicity and information.

Conventional marketing is effective at getting the information to the intended audiences. Leaflets are sent only to mailing lists of the target audience, or displayed in places they are likely to visit. Advertising is placed in magazines or in TV programs that appeal to the target audience.

This leaves design and text in conventional publicity free to concentrate on the task of communication with particular kinds of people.Anyone with access to the Web can show up at your website, whether your information is for them or not. Websites have to do their own targeting by directing users to the information or services that are for them.

Some industry experts suggest that the different levels of a website should have different aims.

Information on the upper levels of a website will be targeted at a very broad general audience. The aim is to help users swiftly find what is relevant to them. or move on. Design should aim to be professional and sufficiently engaging for a broad audience. In this context Government sites should aim to:

Make immediately plain that this is a government site.

Make clear what the owning organisation does.

Make clear the kind of content and services on the site.

Build trust in the authority, accuracy and currency of the information.

Build trust in the security and effectiveness of the transactions on offer.

Direct regular users to content that is new on that particular site.

Offer access to the rest of government sites.

Send different kinds of interested users to content that is aimed at them.

Middle layers of the site can be for people with some interest in content or services. This level of the site should aim to:

summarise information or available transactions.

provide enough details or facts to satisfy mild interest.

provide enough details for people with strong interest to select the detailed information that is for them or who wish to apply for the service.

Middle levels of the site can also be a good place for key messages aimed at the general public. Writing and design can in this case be more clearly targeted at the target audience.

Lower levels of the site will tend to provide the detailed information that government sites so often make available. Here the aim is to:

secure the interested user’s agreement to read the information.

and offer users the choice of reading onscreen or different file formats to download.

An exception to this approach is likely to be a website that works as part of a publicity campaign. As advertising is likely to be driving an interested audience to the site, there can be a greater degree of targeting.

The aim of the site should be to add value to the campaign by such means as:

providing more detailed information than the advertising could carry.

reporting on progress towards the goals of the campaign.

providing a transaction that facilitates users’ response to the call to action for the campaign.

An important aim of design will be to make it plain that the site ties in with the look and feel of the campaign. Users should be in no doubt they have come to the campaign’s site. The content and transactions on the site must reinforce the value of the brand.

Campaign sites should be revised as the campaign changes or be taken down once the campaign ends.

Understanding the terminology

2009-04-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

Browser - is the web browser used by a visitor to access your website.

bytes transferred - the number of bytes transferred to the client's browser as a result of the request.

entry resource - the first web page viewed as part of a visit to your website.

exit resource - the last web page viewed as part of a visit to your website.

hit - a browser request for any one web resource, for example a web page or a graphic. A web page containing two graphics will take three hits to display that web page in a client's browser.

hits per visit - the number of hits occurring in a given visit to your website.

page impressions - a file or a combination of files sent to a user as a result of that user's request being received by the server. For example, one web page that contains three frames and 2 graphic files will generate one page view but 5 hits. Also known as 'page requests', 'page views' or 'page accesses'. Where service providers, search engines or other organisations cache content, page impressions served from these caches may not be recorded on the originating website.

page view per visit - the number of page accesses occurring in a given visit to your website.

platform - the operating system used by the visitor to your website, eg, Windows ME

session - A series of page impressions served in an unbroken sequence from within the website to the same user. A session begins when a user connects to a website, continues while page impressions are served in a continuous sequence from within the website, and ends when the user leaves the website.

user - this is defined as the combination of an IP address and an 'heuristic'. The user agent string is usually employed as the ‘heuristic’. Because of the use of dynamic IP number assignment, NAT, PAT, perimeter cacheing and dynamic proxying this definition may overstate or understate the real number of users visiting a website. Alternatively, websites may use cookies and/or registration Ids as the basis for identifying user numbers. Often also referred to as 'unique user'.

unique user duration - The total time in seconds for all visits of two or more page impressions, divided by the number of unique users making such visits. In order to measure user duration, a first and last page impression record must exist for each visit. Therefore, users making visits of only one page are excluded, since no interval can be established. This metric is sometimes referred to as 'website stickiness'.

user agent - the browser and platform used by a visitor when accessing your website.

visit - a series of one or more page impressions served to one user, which ends when there is a gap of 30 minutes or more between successive page impressions for that user.

visit duration - the total time in seconds for all visits of two or more page impressions divided by the total number of visits of two or more page impressions.

Downstream caching and pixel tagging

2009-04-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

Copies of Web pages served to browsers are often 'captured' by content caching systems. 'Downstream' caching systems are typically operated by third parties such as the ISPs and other organisations through whose networks the pages travel on their route to users' computers. These caching systems are able to serve pages of which they hold copies in response to subsequent requests for them without reference to the origin server.

From an Internet-wide perspective caching content downstream close to the browsers is a good thing: serving content to topologically nearby browsers is quicker and consumes less network resource than transmitting it from the origin servers. It also reduces the load on the origin servers.

In order to have a website inter-operate properly with downstream caches (for example, to avoid out-of-date pages being served to users), it is important that appropriate cache control directives are included in the HTTP headers of the content that it serves. Getting this right normally involves having your server administrator configure the web server software appropriately. Note that it is not appropriate to attempt to control downstream caches by using HTML mark up elements because the special purpose appliances typically used for caching only act upon HTTP directives in the content headers.

There is an important consideration with regard to website traffic measurement arising from the increasing deployment of downstream caches on the Internet. Typically, there will be no record of pages served from downstream caches in your traffic log. As downstream caches are increasingly deployed on the Internet, standard origin web server logs tend to underestimate the number of your pages that have actually been viewed by users.

The pixel tag approach

One way of achieving a more accurate page view counts in origin web server logs is to ensure that every page contains a content element whose HTTP headers mark it as non-cacheable. This can be achieved by including a tiny transparent image referred to as a pixel tag in each HTML page. This pixel tag is typically served from a directory the contents of which the web server has been configured to serve out with HTTP headers marking the content as non-cacheable.In a pixel-tagging regime, page impressions served (including those served from downstream caches) can be estimated by counting the number of pixel tags served. If more detailed information is required about which pages have been served, then all or a part of the page's own URL can be included as a query string on the end of the pixel tag.

Examples of pixel tagging

A basic pixel tag could be generated by including the following image element in HTML pages (conventionally just before the closing tag):

In this example, the directory named 'nocache' resides at the root of the web server. The web server would be configured to include HTTP headers marking any files served out of the 'nocache' directory as non-cacheable. The file named 'trans.gif' would be a one pixel square transparent GIF image.

If it is required to track actual pages visited by users. In this case, the pixel tag for example, in the file at:

http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/insideoee/index.shtml, would be:

Evaluation Website - Not the full picture

2009-04-19T23:10:00.000-07:00

You should be aware that there are limitations to the information that can be discovered from the analysis of Web server log files .The principal issues are:

Most ISPs use dynamic IP addressing. This means they maintain a pool of IP addresses from which an IP number is ‘loaned out’ to each dial-up call for the duration of the call. A particular IP number will therefore be used by many different users and a particular user may appear at your website with many different IP numbers. The firewalls used at the interface between the Internet and corporate networks typically use a process named Network Address Translation (NAT) which has a similar effect. Firewalls also often use a process named Port Address Translation (PAT). With PAT, many users behind the firewall ‘share’ a single Internet IP number. The result of all this is that a specific IP number only rarely corresponds to a specific user and it is inappropriate to attempt to base estimates of the number of visitors to your website on a count of the different IP numbers found in server log files alone.

Caches - almost all ISPs and many corporate users deploy 'perimeter caches' to conserve their Internet connection bandwidth and improve the speed with which web pages can be served to their users. These are often set up to work ‘transparently’ regardless of whether users have configured their browser’s cache settings. . Perimeter caches work by storing a copy of pages fetched by the client systems on whose behalf they are deployed. Subsequent requests for pages from other users behind a cache will be served from the cache if it already has a copy of the page. This may be done without any further reference to the origin server. Therefore web pages may be served to users without the creation of any record being captured in the origin server's log file.

Dynamic proxies - dynamic IP addressing and perimeter cacheing make the identification of page requests from specific users uncertain. This uncertainty is further compounded by the fact that some organisations assign proxy devices such as perimeter caches dynamically during the course of a user’s Internet session. The result is that a sequence of page requests that is in fact from a single user may appear to come from several users even during the course of a single visit or session. AOL is an example of an organisation that uses dynamic proxying.

Cookie manipulation - users can delete, or otherwise manipulate cookies stored by their browsers. Browsers can convert persistent cookies to session cookies. Cookies cannot therefore be relied upon as the basis for accurately measuring the number of users of a website or for identifying users that revisit a website.

Browsers - some browsers are known to incorrectly identify the referring URL by indicating the previous page that the client was viewing even if the user recalled a bookmarked URL or typed a URL in to their browser’ as opposed to following a link on the displayed page.

Anonymisers - some clients use 'anonymisers' which deliberately send false browser and referrer data.

All of these issues mean that there have to be reservations concerning the reliability of estimates derived from standard web server logs of the number of users of a website or of their browsing behaviour when they visit a website. The Internet advertising industry develops and promotes standard website traffic metrics and methodologies for calculating them. It is recognised that the measurements are flawed for the reasons outlined above, however, it is believed that the metrics provide the basis for comparing one website's usage with another on the basis that these issues will affect all websites to broadly the same extent. There is, however, no sound basis for this belief.

The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards in the UK and Ireland

JICWEBS is the body created by the UK and Ireland media industry whose aim is to ensure independent development and ownership of standards for measuring use and effectiveness of advertising on electronic media.

The International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations

The IFABC Web Standards Committee promotes similar aims on a worldwide basis.

www.jicwebs.org

www.ifabc.org

User agent masquerading

The term 'user agent masquerading' refers to browsers that transmit an incorrect browser identification string in the requests that they send to servers. Some browsers just do not properly identify themselves and are therefore not being identified in server log file records. Deliberate masquerading is also used for a number of reasons:

Some websites alter the content they serve based on the browser identification string, so masquerading can be used to work-around this.

Some websites reject requests from browsers that they are not intended to work with, so masquerading can be used to work-around this.

Some users simply wish to remain as anonymous as possible.

Evaluation and website metrics - Advanced techniques

2009-04-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

Log files can be further analysed through advanced techniques. For example:

Sessions and visits - the identification of sequences of page requests from individual users.

Session and visit duration the measurement of the length of time that individual users spend viewing a website.

Categorisation - a process whereby similar items, eg URLs, browsers, platforms, a specific directory, are grouped together for pattern matching.

Aggregation - a process by which all combinations of entities and their resulting measurements are combined.

Other website server software may also keep logs that can provide useful insights to the way visitors use your website. For example, it may be possible to configure search facility software to record the search terms that visitors have used when they are attempting find information on your website. This information can be useful when considering whether there are areas of the site that are not easy to find and can help with organising navigation. It also may indicate what other information users are expecting to be on the website, which would be of use when considering whether additional content should be included on your website.

Using a server log file

2009-04-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

A standard HTTP server log entry may look like this:

193.63.182.194 [03/March/2001:11:30:35]
‘GET/webguidelines/index.htm HTTP/1.0’ 200 35000

What this means:

193.63.182.194 is in principle the IP number of the client’s (the visitor’s) host name or computer making the request. In fact it may actually be the IP number of a ‘proxy’ device that made the HTTP request on behalf of the real user. Such devices include the web content caching appliances that ISPs are increasingly deploying (‘perimeter caches’) and the firewalls that are typically deployed between corporate networks and the Internet. See section 1.4.5 Not the whole picture!

03/March/2001 indicates the date of the access.

11:30:35 indicates the time (hours:minutes:seconds) of the access.

‘GET/webguidelines/index.htm HTTP/1.0’ is the request that the browser sent to the server.

200 is the HTTP status code with which the request completed (code 200 means that the file was served successfully. See annex I Common HTTP server status codes.

35000 is the size in bytes of the file that was transferred to the client’s browser.

Depending upon the logging capabilities of the web server software and how the web server logging has been configured, web server logs may contain a large amount of additional information such as:

HTTP_REFERRER this records the URL of the web page that referred the visitor to the current page. This actually records how a user (client) makes their way through your website.

USER_AGENT this records the program name and version number of the browser that the user (client) employed. For example, Microsoft Internet Explorer/4.04 (Windows 95).

Understanding user statistics

2009-04-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

Website usage statistics are generally obtained by analysing the server logs. A typical HTTP server log contains in a log entry for each HTTP request (or hit) on the server. This entry will contain information about the web resource requested and the browser to which it was served. Software can be used to analyse and process these log files and provide a picture of the traffic to the website.

the number of visitors,

visitor duration and traffic pattern,

visitor origin including which country, when it can be identified,

visitor IP address,

visitors’ technical preferences, such as browser type and version, platform.

This analysis will also indicate:

traffic peaks and troughs against time of day and day of the week,

average daily user load,

what obstacles may turn visitors away,

which pages get high traffic,

which directories are getting high traffic,

which graphic files are acceptable in terms of size and download time,

type of browsers (user agent) being used.

There is a wide range of software available for processing and analysing the potentially huge amount of raw data contained in web server logs. This ranges from the commercially available Webtrends product family through to ‘shareware’ packages such as Wusage and free software like Analog.

www.webtrends.com

www.boutell.com/wusage/

www.analog.cx

Evaluation and website metrics

2009-04-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Is the web strategy working? Does the navigation get people to the information they need? Is the server reliable? Measuring audience satisfaction, looking at feedback, understanding access statistics without measures such as these you will not be able to demonstrate value for money, or that you are meeting the needs of users and the aims of management. Therefore, regular (quarterly will be sufficient), formal evaluation exercises of both the content and the technology are strongly recommended.

Evaluation of website design and content can be carried out by drawing on:

Website access statistics provided by the ISP/hosting service provider. (The ISP/hosing services provider may either supply the raw web server logs or the results of their having been processed by analysis software);

Responses via feedback tools (forms, databases, email addresses);

Feedback from contributors to the website;

Conventional audiences research, for example, focus groups and professionally authored online questionnaires.

The effectiveness of the website can also be judged by measuring achievement in other ways. For example, one recruitment website was evaluated on:

The number of recruits that applied via the website.

Their performance of web recruits measured against that of staff recruited by other means.

The cost per recruit measured against the cost per recruit of publicity in other media.

If the ISP/hosting service supplier provides the results of analysing the web server logs as opposed to providing the unprocessed raw logs, the minimum information that should be required from them is statistics on:

number of unique users (visitors)

number of visits ,and

page impressions (page views).

Some examples of other relevant metrics that can be identified from web server logs are:

error message counts (indicating that pages and other content were not served successfully); and

traffic analysis focussing on peak times (to assess bandwidth requirements) and ‘dead’ times (should it be necessary to switch the site off while maintenance is carried out)

Additional useful information can include:

successful requests;

unsuccessful requests;

most frequently visited pages;

least frequently visited pages;

top entry pages;

top referring websites.

This information can be used to do such things as:

identify the most popular content,

review the navigation system for example, identifying orphaned pages,

identify referring websites (the sites from which users arrive at your website),

audit the level of response to electronic forms,

assess the effectiveness of marketing/PR campaigns in bringing traffic to the website,

provide information on users’ platforms and browsers,

identify users’ DNS domains and thus visits from abroad or from within government.

It is, in addition, recommended that web teams should:

give more importance to visitors, unique visits and page impressions than to hits;

take as much notice of error logs as of any other statistics;

determine who is using the website the most;

monitor current bandwidth use, and attempt to project future requirements;

archive server logs to use for monitoring trends over time.

The web strategy and management team should ensure, at the procurement stage, that ISPs/hosting services are offering to provide a full range of server log information.

It is acceptable to use HTTP cookies or session identities to track visitors' paths through the website (and this will be essential in e-transactional sites). The website should contain a clear statement of policy on the use of cookies.

Good practice dictates that the need for attention to the accuracy and timeliness of information will increase as the level of activity of a site increases.

Web managers should, in the interests of open government, consider publishing a summary of usage statistics on their websites

The commercial value of credits

2009-04-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

The giving of credit to suppliers of web services that you employ directly within the functionality of your website can have commercial value. Significant reductions to the cost of features such as search engines can be negotiated especially if logos and links to suppliers’ sites are granted. The value will vary with the popularity of the specific web pages, and the relevance of the service to your readership.

The giving of credit to suppliers of web services, for example, by name, by email address, particularly if within your metadata will also have commercial value. Reductions to costs should be negotiated.

Sponsorship

2009-04-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

Sponsorship may be a useful means of saving public expenditure. Like all government publicity projects, websites should observe the guidance given in the Cabinet Office Guidance for Departments on Sponsorship of Government Activities. This document can be found online at: http://www.gics.gov.uk or published in the Directory of Civil Service Guidance. These guidelines should be consulted in full. Like all government guidelines they are subject to amendment and update.

In general, sponsorship:

must avoid any suggestion that the sponsors will be sympathetically regarded for other purposes;

must be seen to add significant benefit;

should add to, not replace, core funding for the project;

cannot be given by firms which are involved in significant commercial negotiations with the department or are licensed/regulated by it;

should be sought in an open and even handed manner between organisations in a particular field, using the appropriate public sector procurement methods to secure the contractual arrangements;

must not be an endorsement by Government of the sponsor or its products or services;

must not dilute the effectiveness of your website or the message that lies behind it. Sponsors cannot influence, the messages of Government communication in their business area;

must not bring adverse publicity to the project;

must be of websites and not of individual Ministers or civil servants;

does not place a Minister or a Department under an obligation to a sponsor.

Sponsorship of individual amounts, including value-in-kind, of more than £5,000 must be disclosed in Departmental Annual Reports.

To measure the value of in-kind sponsorship, where the sponsor provides goods or services that benefit of the project, Departments should consider the opportunity cost, ie, how much it would have cost the department if it had paid for the support provided. Ongoing costs should also be taken into account for the lifetime of the sponsorship agreement.

Returns to the sponsor must be specified in writing as part of the sponsorship agreement. The agreement should cover, for example, the display of the name of the sponsor or whether there is to be a link to the sponsor’s website.

Credit to a sponsor must never create confusion about branding or your website’s identity.

Credit to a sponsor should only occur on those parts of your web space where the sponsor is directly contributing to its provision. This should be specified in the sponsorship agreement.

Acknowledgement should be concise. A company logo, if used, must not distract from clear branding of your website’s own identity or any government branding. A sponsor’s logo must comply with the universal accessibility and graphics requirements of these guidelines.

A company logo must be seen as appropriate and must not be of a size that is visually or perceived to be visually larger or more important than any official or campaign logo. A link to the sponsor’s own web page is perfectly okay. To retain your audience, you may wish to have it open in a new browser window.

If these guidelines have been followed, then no specific disclaimer for this instance of sponsorship should be necessary. It should be evident that the source of sponsorship is appropriate. It is, however, your responsibility to ensure that this relationship cannot be misinterpreted.

In the case that a disclaimer is necessary to avoid the semblance of an inappropriate relationship with the company, then it should be placed next to the credit line in the same heading level and typeface and on the same page. This is because disclaimers that are a link away from a credit have not in practice proved to be effective at avoiding the appearance of a problem.

It would be useful if the government’s policy on sponsorship is included were the disclaimer information just off the home page together with an assertion that all sponsorship of the site meets these criteria.

The buying of advertising space on other websites

2009-04-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

As the market place is in constant evolution and having a strategic approach to Internet advertising is required. Unlike traditional advertising space, the Internet does not benefit widely from independent audience audits. Traffic claims can be variable and you must ask for specific information - page impressions, from where specific information and pages are requested, etc - and make judgements on the effectiveness of an individual site against the site operator’s claims.

In line with your overall media communications strategy specialist agencies are best placed to carry out the following tasks for you:

planning an internet advertising campaign using various sites and methods of reaching your target audience;
negotiating the approved plan to ensure maximum value for money;
implementing the approved plan to ensure that the adverts appear on time and in the right place, and
optimising campaigns through identification of the most appropriate web pages to be used for advertising, analysis of page impressions and 'click through' and the published performance of individual sites.

This is a specialist area and you are advised to refer to the Guidance on the Work of the Government Information Service

Advertising

2009-04-05T21:45:00.001-07:00

Using the Internet for advertising falls into two distinct categories:

Selling advertising or sponsorship space on your website, and

Buying advertising space on other websites.

Selling advertising space on Government websites is not an easy task. This is a rapidly evolving and fiercely competitive area and a dedicated, trained resource is required to managed, sell and promote this service. You are advised to source help from specialist agencies, eg, COI Communications.

The full value should be obtained from the sale of advertising on government websites.

Departments and agencies need to judge carefully the balance between the effort required to achieve the maximum value and the income that is earned. Payment for web advertising may not be based on space alone, but on the number of page downloads or ‘clicks on the ad’. Alternatively, an advertiser may wish to sell ‘button space’ on your website. These are fixed graphics with links to the advertised organisation’s own website or campaign, paid for at a fixed rate for a fixed period of time, sometimes regardless of the number of page impressions or ‘clicks through’. Advertisers may expect there to be a link between known user interest and who sees the advert. You will probably need to be able to prove levels of access .

in designing pages, you should ensure that advertisers' brands do not compete with or detract from the effectiveness, integrity and appearance of their own branding or that of the government as a whole.

attention should be given to avoid any implication of endorsement of products or services or of contradiction between government messages and those of advertisers.

website users are often irritated by pop-up advertisements and related technologies (variously referred to as ‘interstitials’, ‘superstitials’) and particularly by those that draw animations within the main window overlaying the page content. It is therefore recommended that advertisements on government websites should be confined to the use of banners and buttons.

where banner and button advertising space is included in Web pages, it is recommended the dimensions should conform to those of the industry-standard Interactive Marketing Units (IMU) defined by The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) at:

Advertisers should be advised to bear in mind the range of connection speeds used by visitors to government websites and the implications for viable file sizes of advertisement content.

if you are using information about user behaviour to sell advertising space, you must not breach your own website’s published privacy statement and if in any doubt you must ask the advice of your Data Protection Officer.

Contract management

2009-04-02T21:51:00.000-07:00

The management of advertising or sponsorship arrangements can be established using the following routes:

in-house management of web space to be made available for advertising or other means of publicity agreed under a sponsorship agreement, or

the use of a third party supplier to manage the advertising or sponsorship web space on your behalf.

The available costs, benefits and expertise are key factors when deciding which route will suit your organisation. All must be examined and included in the evaluation of the business case for making use of advertising or sponsorship to raise potential commercial revenues

Management documentation

2009-04-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

Whether the organisation's website has been produced internally or by a design agency, it is important that each element of the construction is fully documented.

Personnel within the website management team will eventually move on and need to be replaced. Without adequate formal documentation a great deal of time will be lost in new staff determining, eg, what markup to use in order to maintain a consistent look and feel.

A number of standards should be developed for the life cycle of a website or document, covering many of the following:

the management structure that a document must be passed through before it can be published;

the production of HTML pages, whether they are manually constructed or dynamically generated from a database;

the production of other document formats, such as PDF and RTF from the source document;

the organisational publishing standards, eg housestyle covering colour usage, font specifications, logo placement, writing styles, etc;

the lifespan control of on-line documents;

the organisation's designated web authors and their roles and responsibilities;

the management and storage of archived documents, both electronically and paper based (records management);

the management of the web-hosting service-provision contract;

the administration of the web server (if controlled internally);

the information back-up routine that has been adopted;

the management of existing third party contracts for publishing or design work;

records of software and license agreements that are used by the website team;

the administration and use of any escrow agent(s);

the maintenance of an asset register of all domain names/sub-domains registered by/owned by the organisation, eg, date registered, when to be renewed, and corresponding IP numbers;

record of permissions granted by third parties for you to link to their website(s);

record of intellectual property rights permissions obtained, eg, for text, graphics, audio or video materials used;

manage passwords keeping a record for emergency situations.

Records management

2009-03-31T22:02:00.000-07:00

Records Management is the systematic control and management of recorded information resources within an organisation to ensure that the business, legal, regulatory and other requirements for the retention of authentic, evidential records are met.

There are also useful management concepts familiar to records management professionals that are of use to managing large volume information resources. Examples include retention management (usually achieved using schedules), protective marking of sensitive material (eg on Intranets), corporate fileplans etc.

The underlying principle of records management is that records are kept for a period appropriate to their use. Specific procedures follow this principle to assist in its achievement in a systematic and structured way.

Records occurring on websites should be managed in the context of other information resources and records in government and not in isolation. Certain web content across government will have the status of records and should be identified and managed accordingly to manage business risk and comply with legal and regulatory obligations. Some will be required to be preserved for long periods for these reasons or to satisfy the archival preservation requirements of the Public Records Acts.

Managing records in the electronic environment is demanding. Issues of retrieval, migration, authentication and preservation replace pressure on storage space in the traditional hard copy environment. Adding disk space may be a cheap option in the short term, but migrating the content to new platforms and ensuring media refreshment occurs at regular intervals are extremely costly.

This has a significant consequence on the management of web resources and the Public Record Office has published guidance on how these issues might be addressed.

Developing educational content

2009-03-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

Where an organisation's website is developing online education content it is important that you refer to advice published by the National Grid for Learning.

When planning web pages the content providers should be clear about whether they are likely to appear to a high proportion of children or young people.

Consider carefully before linking from pages designed for children to pages where children are not the primary audience. Take special care when planning to link to external websites.

Web managers should take steps to prevent any child from publishing their email address on your website or in a discussion group.

Web managers should also be aware of procedures that apply to the use of children’s photographs on websites. You should be especially sensitive in the case of children or young people with special educational needs. If:

You could readily identify an individual child by sight,

or if the child is named.

Then you should:

Have written consent to the publication of the photographs, signed by the parent of legal guardian.

The consent should clearly include the Internet - it would not be sufficient to simply re-use consent that applied to a conventional publication.

Retain the signed consent form.

Mirror copy of website

2009-03-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

The machine running the live website will usually reside at an Internet hosting datacentre. It is recommended that the web manager should keep one or more additional 'mirror' copies of the organisation’s website on a local PC. This is in order to facilitate the development and testing of updates to the website's content and organisation prior to installing the changes on the live site.

One commonly adopted solution is for the web manager to establish a development environment and a second checking (or staging) environment in addition to the live website. It is possible to have the development and staging versions of the website on the same computer. However, it is important to keep the development and testing functions well separated regardless of whether the two mirror copies are on the same computer or separate ones.

Maintaining local copies of the website will also allow the complete and latest version of the site to be available at all times when only a dialled or slow speed connection to the Internet is available. It may also be desirable to automate the updating of the live website in order to minimise the time that it is unavailable while updates are being installed.

With a local development copy of the website, it is easy to see how any new documents will fit into the existing structure. Maintaining a staging copy of the website enables content and links to be checked and general usability to be tested prior to applying changes to the live website.

It is likely that a local PC’s filesystem naming and organisation rules will be different from those used on the live server. In order for the development and test environments to be of value and easy to use, it is important they should replicate the directory and file organisation and naming used on the live website. Often this can be achieved quite straightfordwardly by keeping all file and directory names and the references to them in hyperlinks within pages in lower case and always using relative URLs in internal hyperlinks (ie, reference all links from the root of the website). Refer to section section 1.9 and section 3.2.3 for recommendations on directory and file naming schemes for websites. Following these recommendations will improve the chances that the live website directory structure and the files it contains can be copied to a PC where the site hyperlink navigation will work without having to make changes to all the files.

It is a role of the web manager to assess the technical requirements for the website development and testing environments in consultation with server managers. Typically the requirements will depend upon issues such as the size and complexity of the website and aspects of the regime under which it is managed, for example, whether it is being updated by more than one staff member or from multiple geographical locations.

Contingency planning

2009-03-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

Whatever an organisation's line of business, there is always a requirement for contingency plans to cover a number of eventualities.

A government organisation can be thrust into the spotlight of the media at a moment's notice. You should ensure that your website has the capability to carry fast-developing stories and that its web hosting service would be able to deal with a sudden increase in the number of visitors.

A news development that requires immediate publishing on the web must not shortcut or bypass existing publishing standards. The contingency plan may suggest that it can be streamlined but the correct authorisation must be given before any information is published on the website.

Within this contingency plan there should a clear and easily accessible list of roles and responsibilities for each of the staff concerned in publishing emergency information. This list must be up-to-date and have contact numbers for each individual.

This same list of individuals to contact and a similar list of roles and responsibilities will be vital in any disaster recovery scheme. If the server is physically destroyed, severely hacked or ceases to function there should be plans already in place to restore service. If your organisation has an overall disaster recovery plan, then plans to restore website service should work within it.

Finally, you should ensure your contract with your server host writes preventative measures such as frequency of backup and the supplier’s responsibilities in the event of a disaster.

Conventions on government publicity

2009-03-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

Websites maintained by UK Government departments and agencies, the Scottish Executive, the Northern Ireland Executive and the National Assembly for Wales are a form of publicity, and are subject to the conventions on government publicity and advertising.

These conventions are set out and explained at the following websites:

Guidance on the work of the Government Information Service (GICS)

GICS handbook

In summary, they require that government publicity:

should be relevant to government responsibilities;

should be objective and explanatory, not tendentious or polemical;

should not be party political, nor liable to misrepresentation as such;

should be produced and distributed in an economical and relevant way, so that the costs can be justified as a proper expenditure of public funds.

These rules not only govern decisions on what should or should not be published on the Internet; they also apply to issues of content and style. For example, departments should take care when publishing ministerial speeches on the Internet to remove overtly party political content, such as direct attacks on policies and opinions of Opposition parties and groups.

Web service management - Effective content

2009-03-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

The web management team is also the overall point of responsibility for ensuring that content:

is line with the web management strategy;

takes its place in a clear and navigable website structure;

is consistent in style, intent and accuracy;

communicates effectively and meets users needs.

The relevant units can still carry out production of material across the organisation, but material can only be published once authorised by the appropriate posts in the web management team. The objectives for information providers must therefore be to ensure that:

information is accurate, relevant and up-to-date;

content held conforms to the style set down for the website;

contact points (email, telephone or interactive form) are staffed, inputs received are actioned and responses given within agreed targets;

metadata is provided for all new documents;

information is provided by the agreed deadline.

There should be sufficient controls in place to check that content:

meets all editorial standards;

is in line with overall communication strategy;

is reviewed regularly by the information provider for currency and correctness;

is removed or archived when appropriate;

is easily accessible, navigable, with no broken links.

Web service management - Effective website operation

2009-03-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

The website strategy should also determine the management, communications and security regimes that will drive the service. These objectives are also the criteria against which service level agreements (under formal contract where external commercial suppliers are party to service provision) are set.

The web management team should:

manage the day-to-day operational interface with the Internet Service Provider (ISP)/hosting service in line with the agreed standards of service;

ensure the security and reliability of the ISP/hosting service;

determine the most appropriate technologies to be used for the production and availability of the information and/or goods and services;

manage the procurement and subsequent contracts or Service Level Agreements with Internet Service Providers /hosting services;

ensure that staffing levels are maintained for website content provision, in line with agreed standards of service;

keep key stakeholders within the organisation informed of service performance against agreed targets and objectives;

co-ordinate publishing of Internet information;

set and maintain the organisation’s design and editorial specifications for the Web (commonly called style guidelines);

ensure that all information held on the website conforms to frameworks and standards set by the Cabinet Office, including the Government Web Guidelines and legislation, eg, copyright and data protection;

ensure the website continues to work in a range of browsers and keep checking page links as they are easily broken;

in partnership with the ISP, maintain the integrity of a website’s structure, content and availability to agreed standards;

monitor website activity including bandwidth usage, analyse usage statistics, review the regularity of updating information and report the findings to the relevant personnel.

The web management team can contribute towards effective transactions by ensuring that the website effectively exchanges data between the user and the organisation. They contribute to ensuring that transactions and authentication are secure. Effective transactions are likely to also require reform of other operational systems in order to accept electronic applications.

Importance of Efficient Website Navigation

2009-03-23T03:54:00.000-07:00

The most important and crucial factor to ensure that a visitor of your website stay hooked to your site is through providing effective website navigation. Most visitors get put off when they notice that the site does not include good navigations and they might opt to just switch over to another site due to this one aspect. One factor which has been noticed most of the time is that attractive websites have similar layouts. Always design navigational elements keeping in mind the basic purpose of your website. Since a website is usually designed with the intended audience in focus, there are some guidelines which needs to be followed.

Ensure that all navigational elements are distinct links by using standard conventions for links such as buttons, menus, underlining the text ,changing color on mouse etc. Avoid using ambiguous names for links.On the other hand, while utilizing non-conventional links, let it be made clear to the user that it is a link.Keep in mind the "Three Click Rule" which is used by most professional web designers.Studies have proved that majority of users will not click more than 3 links to reach either the target page or the information they require.

Web designers need to make certain that every page on their site need to be reachable by just 3 clicks.Most of the effort must be targeted towards making your website simple and elegant,as often visitors browse your site for information and seldom its for entertainment.

List of the Navigation Element Locations:

Top Menus – This menu bar is located below the site logo which is part of the page header graphic.These menus can be either in the form of drop down menus,single links or expanding menus.Its optional to use either graphic or text for each menu item.Hyperlinks are usually associated with these menus.

Left Side / Right Side Navigation – Left side/Right side navigation is displayed as a column on left or right side.These navigations can either be a single link or an expanding menu.Also note that mostly right side navigations are used for advertisements instead of links.

Bottom Menus – Designers have the option of displaying bottom menus as either a menu bar or footer.Graphics or text links will be used in the case of menu bars while text links are used in the case of footers.

Some Important Navigation Elements:

Internal Page Links – As mentioned earlier, ensure that every page is within 2 or 3 clicks from the home page. Also, important pages need to be just one click away.

Shopping Carts – For sites which utilize shopping carts,there needs to be a view cart occuring on every page.

External Links – It is a common practice to use external links in the text area on a website.These are used to refer to an another website location which provides some useful information.

Advertisements – Ads are usually a graphic or text with a corresponding hyperlink. Ads can be placed almost anywhere on a webpage but the preferred location is just under the header banner or under the navigation elements on the left side.

Site Map – A site map is the most efficient method to help in navigation of your website in a heirarchical manner.

A clear and distinct navigation system can increase the numbers of pages viewed a visitor.This in turn can boost the time that a visitor stays on a page.Indirectly this will also increase the sales or whatever your site is meant to perform,eventually leading to the success of your business and website.

Management of your website - Web service management

2009-03-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

A team of people will be responsible for ensuring that the website achieves its strategic aims. It does this through:

measuring achievement against overall aims and objectives set by the organisation

effective website operation

effective content provision

This team should consist of people with a mix of publication, web and project management skills. A senior web manager is recommended to manage the team and ensure it carries out its tasks. A further division of labour between content and technical responsibilities is likely.

Meeting overall aims and objectives

Clear, formal and regular progress reports against the aims and objectives are recommended to ensure that:

ongoing and proposed new developments for the website have been measured against the objectives, costed to ensure the best value and considered in relation to corporate developments;

a business case has been prepared and approved to ensure sufficient resources (financial, time and people) have been allocated;

projects for delivery are being managed within agreed tolerances (again tied to the business case).

Reports need not be onerous, with the emphasis being on reporting by exception. They will help inform the broader organisation of progress and give stakeholders the opportunity to raise concerns, issues and/or new developments.

The benefits of this process are:

it provides a way to ensure continued adherence to delivery against set objectives;

open and clear communication on developments throughout the organisation;

accountability for development work against clearly defined resource limits;

reduced risks on overlaps, duplication and failure to deliver against expectations.

Management of your website

2009-03-19T01:30:00.001-07:00

Skill sets for setting web strategy

Communications: Executive Board

At this level the corporate communications policy is set. Therefore a clear framework covering how the organisation is to communicate information is required and is to be used to determine the subject matter to be covered by the website. This approach will clarify the areas of content control appropriate to both the Internet and Intranet.

This role does not require day-to-day involvement. It is more about clearly defining the parameters within which information is to be made available in the public domain and establishing appropriate control mechanisms for handling potentially sensitive information.

Corporate services: publicity and marketing

Publicity or marketing skills support the communication strategy, ensuring that audiences are identified and effective communication of messages and promotion of services takes place. Their understanding of the organisation’s publicity and marketing strategy is integral to ensuring that the website communicates effectively and provides services users require.

Web service provision: Web management team

The web management team will know the opportunities and caveats of working with the web: what it does well and what can go wrong.

They can be a source of new ideas, and are likely to be able to keep an eye on the technological future.

As they represent the day-to-day management of the website they are also a source of practical advice on procedures, resourcing, scheduling, capacity, risks and benefits.

They are likely to be responsible for looking at access statistics and user feedback and are well placed to take an impartial view of customer needs versus organisational perceptions.

They are responsible for maintaining the structure of the website and understanding the limitations of staff time, Internet technology and the systems the organisation has in place.

It is likely that there will be one key manager responsible for content and another responsible for technical issues and developments. Both sides of the team should be represented on the editorial board.

Content owners

The people in the organisation who will want to publish to the web. What are their needs, issues, etc? What capacity do they have to amend and update content? It is important that a procedure is in place to control the correction and uploading of content, ie, who has final signoff before content goes live.

Resource provision

Because a website invariably impacts the whole organisation in terms of service delivery and business processes, it is essential that the resource implications are recognised and handled accordingly. Allied to this is the need to ensure that the technology aspects of the website are sufficiently and appropriately resourced and that future staff and equipment needs are planned in advance. This can be particularly difficult in an area notorious for its pace of change and evolution.

Material for the website (and other future communication technologies) has to be generated using specific software tools and languages. These create training and organisational requirements that need to be covered as part of the website management regime.

Finally, staff has to be recruited and trained and a purchasing budget will be necessary for software, equipment and consultants.

Technology provision

All web services are dependent on technology solutions. Impartial technical advice and guidance is required to ensure that the most appropriate solution is used to meet customer service needs. It is essential that someone familiar with the technology should cover this area. However, given the diversity of IT solutions available in the marketplace, technological impartiality is essential and as such should be a key factor when selecting a suitable representative.

The establishment of a web strategy and management team comprising representatives that cover these roles will result in a more streamlined operational group. By operating in a more project-style management environment the team will be able to create and manage small teams geared towards delivering products on a customer-demand basis.

Management of your website

2009-03-16T23:07:00.000-07:00

The key to effective website management is the development and implementation of a strategy designed to ensure that it remains focused on what the organisation is there to deliver as well as on what information and services the target audiences expect to be able to access.

Strategic and operational management

Effective website management can be defined under three categories:

owning organisation - Web strategy and management team
web service manager - Web Manager (aka Webmaster)
information providers - content owners and the editorial team

The owning organisation

The owning organisation is responsible for establishing and maintaining the web management strategy and for ensuring that it integrates with wider strategic plans.

The equivalent of a senior editorial board is recommended. This will help ensure that key areas of the organisation bring a full range of necessary skills and awareness to the process of setting aims and objectives for the website. The owning organisation should also ensure that the resources are in place to achieve these aims. The following are examples of key areas of the organisation that should be represented.

communications
corporate services
web service provision
content provision
resource provision
technology provision.

Benefits of publishing data on the Internet

2009-03-16T01:41:00.000-07:00

Interactivity

The Web can speed up the process of individuals getting the answers they need. Websites could be used to direct enquiries to the right place in the organisation to get an answer. Email can speed up the process of responding to them.

Adapting to user needs quickly

Feedback and access statistics can tell web managers which pages are popular and which pages need further development. They can help identify gaps in information or services. A well-managed website will respond to user needs and use the flexibility of the web to revise the website.

Building individual relations with the citizen

Web technology provides a way for users to register interests and receive automatic updates of news and developments in the areas that interest them. Website content can be personalised to meet their interests and concerns, or provide local or national versions of information that are relevant to them.

Saving costs on services

Properly supported by business plans and backend systems, the web can be used to improve services and reduce the cost of providing them.

Benefits of publishing data on the Internet

2009-03-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

Savings on print and distribution costs

Publishing data on the website should save on the printing, distribution and storing of printed documents and the wastage caused by overestimated print runs. Only the one copy needs to be maintained; as soon as a changed version is published it is available to everyone.

In order to achieve this publication in print and on the web should be part of one carefully planned publication process. This process should be audited regularly to ensure it is efficient.

Website maintenance and archiving

Web documents can also be a reliable source of older documents, developing into a useful archive.

This will be achieved if archived documents are given a stable URL and are clearly marked as being archived. It is important that electronic master copies of each document published on the website are kept. This not only makes the creation of new versions in other formats easy; it also maintains an archive version for historical purposes.

Providing the call to action

A good publicity campaign issues a call for action - something the user is expected to do. A campaign website can give the user the chance to quickly and simply carry out that action, whether it is to set up an appointment, order more information, or enter the recruitment process for a public sector job.

Opening up consultation

Government makes policies and needs to collect informed views from organisations and individuals. The web can provide this opportunity and provide another channel for the distribution of the background documents that people need in order to contribute to the debate.

Benefits of publishing data on the Internet

2009-03-09T22:03:00.000-07:00

Although publishing documentation on the Internet initially seems to be little different to publishing in any other medium, there are a number of special considerations that need to be borne in mind. There are almost as many permutations of monitor resolution, colour rendering, browser types, operating systems and user ability, as there are websites. Website Managers will have to consider many capabilities and standards to ensure that data is available to the widest audience.

There can be enormous benefits when documentation is published on the Internet, both for the publishing body and the general user.

Information access

A well designed website offers users a broader range of information than is available to them through conventional media, when they want it and in a form they can use.

To achieve this, the website should make use of the number of ways the web helps users find the documents they are looking for such as search engines, menus, navigational aids, indices and links between documents. Web navigation should also help users find the information they want within the document.

Some information such as menu pages and document summaries will have to be written specifically to be quickly scanned and understood.

It may be appropriate to make documentation available in a variety of differing formats. For example, some users may find it easier to download and print an entire document in Portable Document Format (PDF) and read it offline, whilst other may prefer to read it in online and on -screen in the form of a sequence of HTML pages.

Accurate and up-to-date

The web is easier to update or correct than print. Documents contained on the website can be a point of reference for both the public and your staff. Some departments provide a copy of their website on their intranet to facilitate this. A 'What's New' section should be included and constantly updated so that users have a constant and familiar route to new and updated information.

To achieve accuracy, the maintenance of documents after publication should be planned and resourced. Each document should adhere to the site template and all data should be formatted in a consistent way. Particular care should be paid to the Cascading Style Sheet, which may be used to control the formatting of the website.

What is the website for??

2009-03-02T21:10:00.000-08:00

In establishing the aims of the website, each organisation must ensure that:

users should be able to find your website;

users are clear about who owns the website and what it is designed to achieve;

navigation is clear and customer orientated, taking into account the needs of specific audiences;

goods and services being offered by the organisation are effectively focused on the target audiences in terms of relevance and ease of accessibility;

visitors are able to access the information they seek as directly as is practicable;

adequate security is in place when dealing with online transactions for the purchase of goods and services - and that neither the client nor the provider is compromised;

contact points (whether email, forms-based or telephone) must be staffed and all enquiries answered within reasonable timescales;

the information published is up to date, accurate and relevant to the website;

content is clear, concise and appropriate;

links are kept up to date that users can rely on the website being available and is fast enough.

The tasks to be addressed when setting the aims and objectives are:

identification of your website's place in the organisation's overall communications strategy;

identification of the audiences for your website, where possible on the basis of market research or dialogue with client groups;

understanding and responding to users' satisfaction with the website;

provision of resources, especially staff with the necessary skills, for the website team;

integration of the website with business processes, which might include electronic dealings with the public, publication of information, recruitment and consultation;

integration of the website into the department's strategy for electronic government and freedom of information;

integration of web services with other systems where practicable;

monitoring the development of the website and its success as a means of meeting departmental objectives.

To ensure that the aims and objectives of the website are achieved they must be applied to key roles in the organisation and placed under an appropriate management regime.

Planning your products and services

2009-03-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

Departments and local authorities are currently investing millions of pounds in building the infrastructure to support the electronic delivery of their information and services. Without a central architecture to manage this spending much more will be spent on duplicating research, design, systems integration and hosting.

Departments and local authorities have been wrestling with the same problems: managing customers, content, new channels and emerging technologies. Entire infrastructures, both technical, as well as people and process?based, have consequently evolved, not always with consideration of the customer experience.

The Office of the e-Envoy (OeE), has 'productised' its infrastructure, the Government Gateway and the www.ukonline.gov.uk portal, into components, both products and services. The OeE is now able to offer these products and services, as a service organisation, to facilitate quick deployment of government content and transactions, economically, and focused on the customer. Such products and services include:

Products

Authentication and authorisation

Secure Routing

Content management and delivery

Management information

Services

Hosting

Systems integration

Customer research and user experience

process design and change management

Requirements analysis

These products and services conform to government guidelines and recommendations produced by the OeE, and have all been security accredited by CESG.

The OeE product set has been designed and built to be fully modular, to enable departments and local authorities to customise to their specific strategic business needs. These products and services will increase over time, as more departments and local authorities take advantage of the centralised architecture.

Considerable investment has been made at the centre, in researching customer needs, defining the types of interaction customers require of government, as well as the best of breed technologies capable of delivering government information and services effectively. All government departments and local authorities are advised to consider the technical viability and value for money of these products and services before investing resources in building their own infrastructure.

How should a website be considered by an organisation?

2009-02-26T21:36:00.000-08:00

It is essential for the success of any website that it is recognised as an integral part of the organisation. It is a global, potentially low-cost communication and an (increasingly) transactional medium by which information and services can be made available at any time of day or night.

As such, organisations need to consider how best the Internet can be used to provide access to information and to aid in the delivery of goods and services to customers.

A clear web management strategy is at the heart of developing this thinking. It must be an integral part of the organisation’s Corporate Communications and e-Strategies.

There are three main categories of website:

Information orientated: these cover departmental publications, publicity, recruitment, news, statutory information, promotional material, providing advice, requesting responses and feedback. They may, for example, provide an electronic catalogue to users. Queries and requests can be handled via email or forms. Orders, and necessary payment, can be fulfilled through the conventional procedures.

Operational: these are transactional websites geared towards e-business and cover the whole online process, from service selection through ordering and confirmation to online payment. These may be integrated with departmental systems to enable electronic transactions with the public and other customers.

Campaign: such websites will support a specific publicity campaign, working directly with press, TV and radio advertising. All the media reflect the same messages and images. They may also provide an electronic catalogue to users with requests being handled via email. Fulfilment can be handled through the conventional procedures.

Many websites may incorporate aspects of each of the above. In all three categories the principle of developing a relevant and effective management strategy applies. This section sets out the five key components of a web management strategy:

Purpose - what is the website for?

Strategic and operational management - who is the owner and who is responsible?

Information and other content management - how will material and services be provided and presented online?

Evaluation and ongoing development - how should use and performance of the website be monitored and how should the results be used for future development?

Content Management simplifies Web publishing

2009-02-25T22:36:00.000-08:00

Consolidate numerous Web properties into a single managed environment to drive down operational expenses.

Streamline your content development by reusing your materials.

Empower your web master to manage your content for faster changes with greater accuracy.

Web pages can be written by anyone in your agency; content contributions can be controlled through permissions.

Maintain web governance standards by archiving auditable copies of all websites, while improving the transparency of your organizational processes.

Effectively manage system security, fault tolerance and disaster recovery.

Bolster workforce productivity and accelerate time-to-value.

TeamSite content management system from DIS enables agencies to manage content across all internally and externally facing Web-based applications, such as enterprise portals, intranets, self-service applications, public-facing Web Sites, and extranets. Your agency can reduce your web site development and maintenance costs and the time-to-Web risk associated with all online initiatives.

Ensure your agency’s brand consistency across all Web and application touch points.

Empower content owners to manage their own content for faster changes with less process overhead.

Reuse content across business applications and sites to drive consistency and lower publishing costs.

Web content creation and publishing processes can be set up to suit your unique agency.

Version control assures consistent content integrity.

Share resources and collaborate with other agencies using TeamSite.

Customer and technical support available 24x7.

How does parallel design work?

2009-02-25T00:51:00.000-08:00

What is most striking about parallel design is how many ideas can be considered in a very short time. Most linear processes would only have considered a few iterations of a single design in the time that parallel design can consider many ideas. McGrew's design team considered at least 40 design alternatives in a single day. McGrew found that most participants responded immediately to good ideas. This was true even when good ideas were contained in otherwise poor design solutions.

Good user interface design requires designers first to "saturate the design space." This means that user interface designers should consider as many alternative design ideas as possible before selecting the best to take forward.

How have others conducted parallel design?

2009-02-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

McGrew (2001) published an article confirming the value of parallel design. McGrew's case study was the user interface for an invoice reconciliation program. He scheduled a one-day session with several participants, including the project manager, a designer, two subject matter experts, a technical writer who was scheduled to do the training, three users, and a human factors engineer.

They began by having each person independently sketch a proposed user interface on a large sheet of paper using colored felt-tip markers. The sketches then were posted on the wall for all to see and evaluate. After viewing the design solutions proposed by others, each participant sketched two new designs. McGrew required that each new design include at least one idea from another person's design and an idea that no one had yet proposed. Again, all participants reviewed all the design solutions. They began to agree on an optimal design fairly early in the process and were able to reach consensus on the final user interface before the end of the day.

Benefits of parallel design:

2009-02-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

Several research projects have shown the value of this technique:

Seeing and trying others' designs improved final solutions
Creating many designs produced better results
Combining design elements resulted in better user interfaces

Seeing and trying others' designs improved final solutions

Bailey (1992) reported on training courses where students were given a specification and used a prototyping tool to create a simple system. After all the students completed their designs, each student used everyone else's system to complete a task. Having experienced the ideas of all the other students, each then made changes to his or her original prototype. This process was repeated two more times. The revised interfaces were always considerably better than the originals. Two important observations emerged from these classes:

No matter how good the original interfaces were, every one was improved.
Students were able to very quickly identify the good design ideas in the systems of others, and they effectively integrated those good ideas into their own designs.

Creating many designs produced better results

A few years later, Nielsen (1993) described a development methodology in which several designers worked independently to generate as many different design ideas as possible. Once they had created different designs, they combined their different ideas and took the best features from all designers. The goal was to develop and evaluate different ideas before settling on a single approach.

Nielsen listed the following as major benefits of this approach:

It allows a range of ideas to be generated quickly and cost-effectively.
It allows several approaches to be explored at the same time, thus compressing the concept development schedule.
The concepts generated can often be combined so that the final product benefits from all the proposed ideas.
People with little usability expertise can use the technique.

Combining design elements resulted in better user interfaces

A few years later, Ovaska and Raiha (1995) published an article suggesting that having designers make initial design decisions independently and then combining their results produced better user interfaces than the original design of any one person. They called this approach "parallel design."

Use Parallel Design

2009-02-09T23:20:00.000-08:00

With parallel design, several people create an initial design from the same set of requirements. Each person works independently, and when finished, shares his/her concepts with the group.

The design team considers each solution, and each designer uses the best ideas to further improve their own solution. This process helps to generate many different, diverse ideas and ensures that the best ideas from each design are integrated into the final concept. This process can be repeated several times until the team is satisfied with the final concept.

Content Management simplifies Web publishing

2009-02-04T01:55:00.000-08:00

What is Content Management?

TeamSite, by Interwoven delivers enterprise web page management you can put to work right away.

Organize your web sites to more effectively carry out your agency’s mission.

* Consolidate numerous Web properties into a single managed environment to drive down operational expenses.

* Streamline your content development by reusing your materials.

* Empower your web master to manage your content for faster changes with greater accuracy.

* Web pages can be written by anyone in your agency; content contributions can be controlled through permissions.

* Maintain web governance standards by archiving auditable copies of all websites, while improving the transparency of your organizational processes.

* Effectively manage system security, fault tolerance and disaster recovery.

Bolster workforce productivity and accelerate time-to-value.

TeamSite content management system from DIS enables agencies to manage content across all internally and externally facing Web-based applications, such as enterprise portals, intranets, self-service applications, public-facing Web Sites, and extranets. Your agency can reduce your web site development and maintenance costs and the time-to-Web risk associated with all online initiatives.

* Ensure your agency’s brand consistency across all Web and application touch points.

* Empower content owners to manage their own content for faster changes with less process overhead.

* Reuse content across business applications and sites to drive consistency and lower publishing costs.

* Web content creation and publishing processes can be set up to suit your unique agency.

* Version control assures consistent content integrity.

* Share resources and collaborate with other agencies using TeamSite.

* Customer and technical support available 24x7.

Programmable read-only memory

2009-01-30T01:16:00.000-08:00

A programmable read-only memory (PROM) or field programmable read-only memory (FPROM) is a form of digital memory where the setting of each bit is locked by a fuse or antifuse. Such PROMs are used to store programs permanently. The key difference from a strict ROM is that the programming is applied after the device is constructed. They are frequently seen in video game consoles, or such products as electronic dictionaries, where PROMs for different languages can be substituted.

Programming

A typical PROM comes with all bits reading as 1. Burning a fuse during programming causes its bit to read as 0. The memory can be programmed just once after manufacturing by "blowing" the fuses (using a PROM blower), which is an irreversible process. Blowing a fuse opens a connection while blowing an antifuse closes a connection (hence the name). Programming is done by applying high-voltage pulses which are not encountered during normal operation (typically 12 to 21 volts). Read-only means that, unlike the case with conventional memory, the programming cannot be changed (at least not by the end user).

Advantages

• Reliability
• Stores data permanently
• Moderate price
• Built using integrated circuits, rather than discrete components.
• Fast: reading is between 35ns and 60ns.

Invention

PROM was invented in 1956 by Wen Tsing Chow, working for the Arma Division of the American Bosch Arma Corporation in Garden City, New York. The invention was conceived at the request of the United States Air Force to come up with a more flexible and secure way of storing the targeting constants in the Atlas E/F ICBM's airborne digital computer. The patent and associated technology was held under secrecy order for several years while the Atlas E/F was the main operational missile of the United States ICBM force. The term "burn," referring to the process of programming a PROM, is also in the original patent, as one of the original implementations was to literally burn the internal whiskers of diodes with a current overload to produce a circuit discontinuity. The first PROM programming machines were also developed by Arma engineers under Mr. Chow's direction and were located in Arma's Garden City lab and Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters.

Magnetic tape sound recording

2009-01-30T01:11:00.000-08:00

Magnetic tape has been used for sound recording for more than 75 years. Tape revolutionized both the radio broadcast and music recording industries. It did this by giving artists and producers the power to record and re-record audio with minimal loss in quality as well as edit and rearrange recordings with ease. The alternative recording technologies of the era, transcription discs and wire recorders, could not provide anywhere near this level of quality and functionality. Since some early refinements improved the fidelity of the reproduced sound, magnetic tape has been the highest quality analog sound recording medium available. Despite this, as of 2007, magnetic tape is largely being replaced by digital systems for most sound recording purposes.

Prior to the development of magnetic tape, magnetic wire recorders had successfully demonstrated the concept of magnetic recording, but they never offered audio quality comparable to the recording and broadcast standards of the time. Some individuals and organizations developed innovative uses for magnetic wire recorders while others investigated variations of the technology. One particularly important variation was the application of an oxide powder to a long strip of paper. This German invention was the start of a long string of innovations that lead to modern magnetic tape.

Random access memory

2009-01-30T01:09:00.000-08:00

Random-access memory (usually known by its acronym, RAM) is a form of computer data storage. Today it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow the stored data to be accessed in any order (i.e., at random). The word random thus refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned in a constant time, regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is related to the previous piece of data.

This contrasts with storage mechanisms such as tapes, magnetic discs and optical discs, which rely on the physical movement of the recording medium or a reading head. In these devices, the movement takes longer than the data transfer, and the retrieval time varies depending on the physical location of the next item.

The word RAM is mostly associated with volatile types of memory (such as DRAM memory modules), where the information is lost after the power is switched off. However, many other types of memory are RAM as well (i.e., Random Access Memory), including most types of ROM and a kind of flash memory called NOR-Flash.

History Of Random access memory

An early type of widespread writable random access memory was the magnetic core memory, developed from 1949 to 1952, and subsequently used in most computers up until the development of the static and dynamic integrated RAM circuits in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Before this, computers used relays, delay lines or various kinds of vacuum tube arrangements to implement "main" memory functions (i.e., hundreds or thousands of bits), some of which were random access, some not. Latches built out of vacuum tube triodes, and later, out of discrete transistors, were used for smaller and faster memories such as registers and (random access) register banks. Prior to the development of integrated ROM circuits, permanent (or read-only) random access memory was often constructed using semiconductor diode matrices driven by address decoders.

Magnetic storage

2009-01-30T01:08:00.000-08:00

Magnetic storage and magnetic recording are terms from engineering referring to the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetization in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is accessed using one or more read/write heads. As of 2007, magnetic storage media, primarily hard disks, are widely used to store computer data as well as audio and video signals. In the field of computing, the term magnetic storage is preferred and in the field of audio and video production, the term magnetic recording is more commonly used. The distinction is less technical and more a matter of preference.

History of Magnetic storage

Magnetic storage in the form of audio recording on a wire was publicized by Oberlin Smith in 1888. He filed a patent in September, 1878 but did not pursue the idea as his business was machine tools. The first publicly demonstrated (Paris Exposition of 1900) magnetic recorder was invented by Valdemar Poulsen in 1898. Poulsen's device recorded a signal on a wire wrapped around a drum. In 1928, Fritz Pfleumer developed the first magnetic tape recorder. Early magnetic storage devices were designed to record analog audio signals. Computer and now most audio and video magnetic storage devices record digital data.

In early computers, magnetic storage was also used for primary storage in a form of magnetic drum, or core memory, core rope memory, thin film memory, twistor memory or bubble memory. Unlike modern computers, magnetic tape was also often used for secondary storage.

Front-end versus back-end

2009-01-28T02:23:00.000-08:00

With modern media content retrieval and output technology, there is much overlap between visual communications (front-end) and information technology (back-end). Large print publications (thick books, especially instructional in nature) and electronic pages (web pages) require meta data for automatic indexing, automatic reformatting, database publishing, dynamic page display and end-user interactivity. Much of the meta data (meta tags) must be hand coded or specified during the page layout process. This divides the task of page layout between artists and engineers, or tasks the artist/engineer to do both.

More complex projects may require two separate designs: page layout design as the front-end, and function coding as the back-end. In this case, the front-end may be designed using the alternate page layout technology such as image editing software or on paper with hand rendering methods. Most image editing software includes features for converting a page layout for use in a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor or features to export graphics for desktop publishing software. WYSIWYG editors and desktop publishing software allow front-end design prior to back end-coding in most cases. Interface design and database publishing may involve more technical knowledge or collaboration with information technology engineering in the front-end.

Grids versus templates

2009-01-28T02:19:00.001-08:00

Grids and templates are page layout design patterns used in advertising campaigns and multiple page publications, including websites.

* A grid is a set of guidelines, visible in the design process and invisible to the end-user/audience, for aligning and repeating elements on a page. A page layout may or may not stay within those guidelines, depending on how much repetition or variety the design style in the series calls for. Grids are meant to be flexible. Using a grid to layout elements on the page may require just as much or more graphic design skill than that which was required to design the grid.

* In contrast, a template is more rigid. A template involves repeated elements mostly visible to the end-user/audience. Using a template to layout elements usually involves less graphic design skill than that which was required to design the template. Templates are used for minimal modification of background elements and frequent modification (or swapping) of foreground content.

Most desktop publishing software allows for grids in the form of a page filled with automatic dots placed at a specified equal horizontal and vertical distance apart. Automatic margins and booklet spine (gutter) lines may be specified for global use throughout the document. Multiple additional horizontal and vertical lines may be placed at any point on the page. Invisible to the end-user/audience shapes may be placed on the page as guidelines for page layout and print processing as well. Software templates are achieved by duplicating a template data file, or with master page features in a multiple page document. Master pages may include both grid elements and template elements such as header and footer elements, automatic page numbering, and automatic table of contents features.

Page layout

2009-01-28T02:18:00.000-08:00

Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements (content) on a page. Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalog layouts, proper page design has long been a consideration in printed material. With print media, elements usually consist of type (text), images (pictures), and occasionally place-holder graphics for elements that are not printed with ink such as die/laser cutting, foil stamping or blind embossing.

Since the advent of personal computing, page layout skills have expanded to electronic media as well as print media. The electronic page is better known as a graphical user interface (GUI) when interactive elements are included. Page layout for interactive media overlaps with (and is often called) interface design. This usually includes interactive elements and multimedia in addition to text and still images. Interactivity takes page layout skills from planning attraction and eye flow to the next level of planning user experience in collaboration with software engineers and creative directors.[citation needed]

A page layout may be designed in a rough paper and pencil sketch before producing, or produced during the design process to the final form. Both design and production may be achieved using hand tools or page layout software. Producing the most popular electronic page (the web page) may require knowledge of markup languages along with WYSIWYG editors to compensate for incompatibility between platforms. Special considerations must be made for how the layout of an HTML page will change (reflow) when resized by the end-user. Cascading style sheets are often required to keep the page layout consistent between web browsers.

Human-computer interaction

2009-01-27T01:23:00.000-08:00

Human–computer interaction is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the user interface (or simply interface), which includes both software and hardware, for example, general-purpose computer peripherals and large-scale mechanical systems, such as aircraft and power plants. The following definition is given by the Association for Computing Machinery[1]:

"Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them."

Because human-computer interaction studies a human and a machine in conjunction, it draws from supporting knowledge on both the machine and the human side. On the machine side, techniques in computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages, and development environments are relevant. On the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, cognitive psychology, and human performance are relevant. Engineering and design methods are also relevant. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of HCI, people with different backgrounds contribute to its success. HCI is also sometimes referred to as man–machine interaction (MMI) or computer–human interaction (CHI).

Web template system

2009-01-27T01:21:00.000-08:00

Dynamic web pages usually consist of a static part (HTML) and a dynamic part, which is code that generates HTML. The code that generates the HTML can do this based on variables in a template, or on code. The text to be generated can come from a database, thereby making it possible to dramatically reduce the number of pages in a site.

Consider the example of a real estate agent with 500 houses for sale. In a static web site, the agent would have to create 500 pages in order to make the information available. In a dynamic website, the agent would simply connect the dynamic page to a database table of 500 records.

In a template, variables from the programming language can be inserted without using code, thereby losing the requirement of programming knowledge to make updates to the pages in a web site. A syntax is made available to distinguish between HTML and variables. E.g. in JSP the tag is used to output variables, and in Smarty, {$variable} is used.

Many template engines do support limited logic tags, like IF and FOREACH. These are to be used only for decisions that need to be made for the presentation layer, in order to keep a clean separation from the business logic layer, or the M(odel) in the MVC pattern.

Style sheet (web development)

2009-01-27T01:17:00.000-08:00

Web style sheets are a form of separation of presentation and content for web design in which the markup (i.e., HTML or XHTML) of a webpage contains the page's semantic content and structure, but does not define its visual layout (style). Instead, the style is defined in an external stylesheet file using a language such as CSS or XSL. This design approach is identified as a "separation" because it largely supersedes the antecedent methodology in which a page's markup defined both style and structure.

The philosophy underlying this methodology is a specific case of separation of concerns.

Separation of style and content has many benefits, but has only become practical in recent years due to improvements in popular web browsers' CSS implementations.

Speed

Overall, users experience of a site utilising style sheets will generally be quicker than sites that don’t use the technology. ‘Overall’ as the first page will probably load more slowly – because the style sheet AND the content will need to be transferred. Subsequent pages will load faster because no style information will need to be downloaded – the CSS file will already be in the browser's cache.

Maintainability

Holding all the presentation styles in one file significantly reduces maintenance time and reduces the chance of human errors, thereby improving presentation consistency. For example, the font color associated with a type of text element may be specified — and therefore easily modified — throughout an entire website simply by changing one short string of characters in a single file. The alternate approach, using styles embedded in each individual page, would require a cumbersome, time consuming, and error-prone edit of every file.

Accessibility

Sites that use CSS with either XHTML or HTML are easier to tweak so that they appear extremely similar in different browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.).

Sites using CSS "degrade gracefully" in browsers unable to display graphical content, such as Lynx, or those so very old that they cannot use CSS. Browsers ignore CSS that they do not understand, such as CSS 3 statements. This enables a wide variety of user agents to be able to access the content of a site even if they cannot render the stylesheet or are not designed with graphical capability in mind. For example, a browser using a refreshable braille display for output could disregard layout information entirely, and the user would still have access to all page content.

Customization

If a page's layout information is all stored externally, a user can decide to disable the layout information entirely, leaving the site's bare content still in a readable form. Site authors may also offer multiple stylesheets, which can be used to completely change the appearance of the site without altering any of its content.

Most modern web browsers also allow the user to define their own stylesheet, which can include rules that override the author's layout rules. This allows users, for example, to bold every hyperlink on every page they visit.

Consistency

Because the semantic file contains only the meanings an author intends to convey, the styling of the various elements of the document's content is very consistent. For example, headings, emphasized text, lists and mathematical expressions all receive consistently applied style properties from the external stylesheet. Authors need not concern themselves with the style properties at the time of composition. These presentational details can be deferred until the moment of presentation.

Portability

The deferment of presentational details until the time of presentation means that a document can be easily re-purposed for an entirely different presentation medium with merely the application of a new stylesheet already prepared for the new medium and consistent with elemental or structural vocabulary of the semantic document. A carefully authored document for a web page can easily be printed to a hard-bound volume complete with headers and footers, page numbers and a generated table of contents simply by applying a new stylesheet.

Website Planning

2009-01-27T01:15:00.000-08:00

Before creating and uploading a website, it is important to take the time to plan exactly what is needed in the website. Thoroughly considering the audience or target market, as well as defining the purpose and deciding what content will be developed are extremely important.

Purpose

It is essential to define the purpose of the website as one of the first steps in the planning process. A purpose statement should show focus based on what the website will accomplish and what the users will get from it. A clearly defined purpose will help the rest of the planning process as the audience is identified and the content of the site is developed. Setting short and long term goals for the website will help make the purpose clear and plan for the future when expansion, modification, and improvement will take place.Goal-setting practices and measurable objectives should be identified to track the progress of the site and determine success.

Audience

Defining the audience is a key step in the website planning process. The audience is the group of people who are expected to visit your website – the market being targeted. These people will be viewing the website for a specific reason and it is important to know exactly what they are looking for when they visit the site. A clearly defined purpose or goal of the site as well as an understanding of what visitors want to do or feel when they come to your site will help to identify the target audience. Upon considering who is most likely to need or use the content, a list of characteristics common to the users such as:

* Audience Characteristics
* Information Preferences
* Computer Specifications
* Web Experience

Taking into account the characteristics of the audience will allow an effective website to be created that will deliver the desired content to the target audience.

Content

Content evaluation and organization requires that the purpose of the website be clearly defined. Collecting a list of the necessary content then organizing it according to the audience's needs is a key step in website planning. In the process of gathering the content being offered, any items that do not support the defined purpose or accomplish target audience objectives should be removed. It is a good idea to test the content and purpose on a focus group and compare the offerings to the audience needs. The next step is to organize the basic information structure by categorizing the content and organizing it according to user needs. Each category should be named with a concise and descriptive title that will become a link on the website. Planning for the site's content ensures that the wants or needs of the target audience and the purpose of the site will be fulfilled.

ICANN

2009-01-23T02:22:00.000-08:00

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is at most one holder for each possible name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have the primary role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system.

Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet's systems of domain names, IP addresses, protocol ports and parameter numbers.

Internet protocols

2009-01-23T02:07:00.000-08:00

The complex communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of its hardware components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the architecture. While the hardware can often be used to support other software systems, it is the design and the rigorous standardization process of the software architecture that characterizes the Internet.

The responsibility for the architectural design of the Internet software systems has been delegated to the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF). The IETF conducts standard-setting work groups, open to any individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture. Resulting discussions and final standards are published in Requests for Comments (RFCs), freely available on the IETF web site.

The principal methods of networking that enable the Internet are contained in a series of RFCs that constitute the Internet Standards. These standards describe a system known as the Internet Protocol Suite. This is a model architecture that divides methods into a layered system of protocols (RFC 1122, RFC 1123). The layers correspond to the environment or scope in which their services operate. At the top is the space (Application Layer) of the software application, e.g., a web browser application, and just below it is the Transport Layer which connects applications on different hosts via the network (e.g., client-server model). The underlying network consists of two layers: the Internet Layer which enables computers to connect to one-another via intermediate (transit) networks and thus is the layer that establishes internetworking and the Internet, and lastly, at the bottom, is a software layer that provides connectivity between hosts on the same local link (therefor called Link Layer), e.g., a local area network (LAN) or a dial-up connection. This model is also known as the TCP/IP model of networking. While other models have been developed, such as the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, they are not compatible in the details of description, nor implementation.

The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol (IP) which provides addressing systems for computers on the Internet and facilitates the internetworking of networks. IP Version 4 (IPv4) is the initial version used on the first generation of the today's Internet and is still in dominant use. It was designed to address up to ~4.3 billion (109) Internet hosts. However, the explosive
growth of the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion. A new protocol version, IPv6, was developed which provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of data traffic. IPv6 is currently in commercial deployment phase around the world.

IPv6 is not interoperable with IPv4. It essentially establishes a "parallel" version of the Internet not accessible with IPv4 software. This means software upgrades are necessary for every networking device that needs to communicate on the IPv6 Internet. Most modern computer operating systems are already converted to operate with both versions of the Internet Protocol. Network infrastructures, however, are still
lagging in this development.

History Of Graphics Interchange Format

2009-01-22T03:18:00.000-08:00

CompuServe introduced the GIF format in 1987 to provide a color image format for their file downloading areas, replacing their earlier run-length encoding (RLE) format, which was black and white only. GIF became popular because it used LZW data compression, which was more efficient than the run-length encoding that formats such as PCX and MacPaint used, and fairly large images could therefore be downloaded in a reasonably short time, even with very slow modems.

The original version of the GIF format was called 87a. In 1989, CompuServe devised an enhanced version, called 89a, that added support for multiple images in a stream, interlacing and storage of application-specific metadata. The two versions can be distinguished by looking at the first six bytes of the file, which, when interpreted as ASCII, read "GIF87a" and "GIF89a", respectively.

GIF was one of the first two image formats commonly used on Web sites, the other being the black and white XBM.[citation needed] JPEG came later with the Mosaic browser.

The GIF89a feature of storing multiple images in one file, accompanied by control data, is used extensively on the Web to produce simple animations. The optional interlacing feature, which stores image scan lines out of order in such a fashion that even a partially downloaded image was somewhat recognizable, also helped GIF's popularity,[citation needed] as a user could abort the download if it was not what was required.

Graphics Interchange Format

2009-01-22T03:17:00.000-08:00

The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.

The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel, allowing a single image to reference a palette of up to 256 distinct colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.

GIF images are compressed using the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality. This compression technique was patented in 1985. Controversy over the licensing agreement between the patent holder, Unisys, and CompuServe in 1994 inspired the development of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) standard; since then all the relevant patents have expired.

Design Complies with Best Practices of Modern Web Design

2009-01-22T03:14:00.000-08:00

The IN.gov design is built based on today’s modern Web design standards. Content is marked up semantically so that the underlying HTML markup properly designates the content displayed. Additionally, content and design are separated in accordance with modern Web design standards.

This separation of content and design has many benefits, which include:

• making it easier to make enterprise style changes across the entire site with the change of one cascading style sheet (CSS);
• faster page load times;
• pages that are more accessible to impaired users who use alternative devices; and,
• allowing the same content to be appropriately formatted for other devices, such as
handhelds and printers, with only a different style sheet.

Web Design Requirements and Standards

2009-01-22T03:12:00.000-08:00

Though standardization of Web design across an entire Web site (regardless of internal divisions of an entity) is found across the thousands of Web sites of private sector entities, governmental entities are notoriously bad at securing executive support and reaching consensus on a standard design. This was certainly true for the state of Indiana, which once had more than 75 different agencies with different looking Web sites. As a result, sites were agency-focused, not customerfocused; confusing due to lack of consistency; presented the same types of information and functions (e.g., navigation and search) differently; usually had a stale design and illogical structure; with pages often out of date. All this, despite the fact that external customers demand an easy-to-use Web site and do not care whether the Web site is supported by the private or public sector.

To meet the expectations of its external customers, the governor’s office and the IN.gov Program took on the bold initiative to become the first state in the nation to implement a common set of design requirements and standards. These requirements and standards are derived from the work of a multi-agency task force that was established in 2007 to create a standard “look and feel” for state agency Web sites.

Difference between TCP and UDP

2009-01-21T02:58:00.000-08:00

TCP ("Transmission Control Protocol") is a connection-oriented protocol, which means that upon communication it requires handshaking to set up end-to-end connection. A connection can be made from client to server, and from then on any data can be sent
along that connection.

* Reliable - TCP manages message acknowledgment, retransmission and timeout. Many attempts to reliably deliver the message are made. If it gets lost along the way, the server will re-request the lost part. In TCP, there's either no missing data, or, in case of multiple timeouts, the connection is dropped.
* Ordered - if two messages are sent along a connection, one after the other, the first message will reach the receiving application first. When data packets arrive in the wrong order, the TCP layer holds the later data until the earlier data can be
rearranged and delivered to the application.
* Heavyweight - TCP requires three packets just to set up a socket, before any actual data can be sent. It handles connections, reliability and congestion control. It is a large transport protocol designed on top of IP.
* Streaming - Data is read as a "stream," with nothing distinguishing where one packet ends and another begins. Packets may be split or merged into bigger or smaller data streams arbitrarily.UDP is a simpler message-based connectionless protocol. In connectionless protocols, there is no effort made to set up a dedicated
end-to-end connection. Communication is achieved by transmitting information in one direction, from source to destination without checking to see if the destination is still there, or if it is prepared to receive the information.
* Unreliable - When a message is sent, it cannot be known if it will reach its destination; it could get lost along the way. There is no concept of acknowledgment, retransmission and timeout.
* Not ordered - If two messages are sent to the same recipient, the order in which they arrive cannot be predicted.
* Lightweight - There is no ordering of messages, no tracking connections, etc. It is a small transport layer designed on top of IP.
* Datagrams - Packets are sent individually and are guaranteed to be whole if they arrive. Packets have definite bounds and no split or merge into data streams may exist.

User Datagram Protocol

2009-01-21T02:56:00.000-08:00

The User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, sometimes known as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network without requiring prior communications to set up special transmission channels or data paths. UDP is sometimes called the Universal Datagram Protocol. The protocol was designed by David P. Reed in 1980 and formally defined in RFC 768.

UDP uses a simple transmission model without implicit hand-shaking dialogues for guaranteeing reliability, ordering, or data integrity. Thus, UDP provides an unreliable service and datagrams may arrive out of order, appear duplicated, or go missing without notice. UDP assumes that error checking and correction is either not necessary or performed in the application, avoiding the overhead of such processing at the network interface level. Time-sensitive applications often use UDP because dropping packets is preferable to using delayed packets. If error correction facilities are needed at the network interface level, an application may use the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) which are designed for this purpose.

UDP's stateless nature is also useful for servers that answer small queries from huge numbers of clients. Unlike TCP, UDP is compatible with packet broadcast (sending to all on local network) and multicasting (send to all subscribers).

Common network applications that use UDP include: the Domain Name System (DNS), streaming media applications such as IPTV, Voice over IP (VoIP), Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) and many online games.

History Of Internet Protocol Suite

2009-01-21T02:53:00.000-08:00

The Internet Protocol Suite resulted from work done by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the early 1970s. After building the pioneering ARPANET in 1969, DARPA started work on a number of other data transmission technologies. In 1972, Robert E. Kahn was hired at the DARPA Information Processing Technology Office, where he worked on both satellite packet networks and ground-based radio packet networks, and recognized the value of being able to communicate across them. In the spring of 1973, Vinton Cerf, the developer of the existing ARPANET Network Control Program (NCP) protocol, joined Kahn to work on open-architecture interconnection models with the goal of designing the next protocol generation for the ARPANET.

By the summer of 1973, Kahn and Cerf had worked out a fundamental reformulation, where the differences between network protocols were hidden by using a common internetwork protocol, and, instead of the network being responsible for reliability, as in the ARPANET, the hosts became responsible. Cerf credits Hubert Zimmerman and Louis Pouzin, designer of the CYCLADES network, with important influences on this design.

With the role of the network reduced to the bare minimum, it became possible to join almost any networks together, no matter what their characteristics were, thereby solving Kahn's initial problem. One popular saying has it that TCP/IP, the eventual product of Cerf and Kahn's work, will run over "two tin cans and a string." There is even an implementation designed to run using homing pigeons, IP over Avian Carriers, documented in RFC 1149.

A computer called a router (a name changed from gateway to avoid confusion with other types of gateways) is provided with an interface to each network, and forwards packets back and forth between them. Requirements for routers are defined in (Request for Comments 1812).

The idea was worked out in more detailed form by Cerf's networking research group at Stanford in the 1973–74 period, resulting in the first TCP specification (Request for Comments 675) (The early networking work at Xerox PARC, which produced the PARC Universal Packet protocol suite, much of which existed around the same period of time (i.e. contemporaneous), was also a significant technical influence; people moved between the two).

DARPA then contracted with BBN Technologies, Stanford University, and the University College London to develop operational versions of the protocol on different hardware platforms. Four versions were developed: TCP v1, TCP v2, a split into TCP v3 and IP v3 in the spring of 1978, and then stability with TCP/IP v4 — the standard protocol still in use on the Internet today.

In 1975, a two-network TCP/IP communications test was performed between Stanford and University College London (UCL). In November, 1977, a three-network TCP/IP test was conducted between the U.S., UK, and Norway. Between 1978 and 1983, several other TCP/IP prototypes were developed at multiple research centers. A full switchover to TCP/IP on the ARPANET took place January 1, 1983.

In March 1982, the US Department of Defense made TCP/IP the standard for all military computer networking. In 1985, the Internet Architecture Board held a three day workshop on TCP/IP for the computer industry, attended by 250 vendor representatives, helping
popularize the protocol and leading to its increasing commercial use.

On November 9, 2005 Kahn and Cerf were presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their contribution to American culture.

Internet Protocol Suite

2009-01-21T02:51:00.000-08:00

The Internet Protocol Suite (commonly known as TCP/IP) is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is named from two of the most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which were the first two networking protocols defined in this standard. Today's IP networking represents a synthesis of several developments that began to evolve in the 1960s and 1970s, namely the Internet and LANs (Local Area Networks),which emerged in the mid- to late-1980s, together with the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 (and which exploded with the availability of the first popular web browser: Mosaic.

The Internet Protocol Suite, like many protocol suites, may be viewed as a set of layers. Each layer solves a set of problems involving the transmission of data, and provides a well-defined service to the upper layer protocols based on using services from some lower layers. Upper layers are logically closer to the user and deal with more abstract data, relying on lower layer protocols to translate data into forms that can eventually be physically transmitted.

The TCP/IP model consists of four layers (RFC 1122).[1][2] From lowest to highest, these are the Link Layer, the Internet Layer,the Transport Layer, and the Application Layer.

Web log analysis software

2009-01-20T01:15:00.000-08:00

Web log analysis software (also called a web log analyzer) is a simple kind of Web analytics software that parses a log file from a web server, and based on the values contained in the log file, derives indicators about who, when, and how a web server is visited. Usually reports are generated from the log files immediately, but the log files can alternatively be parsed to a database and reports generated on demand.

Indicators reported by most web log analyzers

* Number of visits and number of unique visitors
* Visits duration and last visits
* Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits
* Days of week and rush hours
* Domains/countries of host's visitors
* Hosts list
* Number total pageviews
* Most viewed, entry and exit pages
* Files type
* OS used
* Browsers used
* Robots
* HTTP referrer
* Search engines, key phrases and keywords used to find the analyzed web site
* HTTP errors
* Some of the log analyzers also report on who's on the site, conversion tracking and page navigation.

Bandwidth throttling

2009-01-20T01:14:00.000-08:00

Bandwidth throttling is a method of ensuring a bandwidth intensive device, such as a server, will limit ("throttle") the quantity of data it transmits and/or accepts within a specified period of time. For website servers and web applications, bandwidth throttling helps limit network congestion and server crashes, whereas for ISP's, bandwidth throttling can be used to limit users' speeds across certain applications (such as BitTorrent), or limit upload speeds.

A server, such as a web server, is a host computer connected to a network, such as the Internet, which provides data in response to requests by client computers. Understandably, there are periods where client requests may peak (certain hours of the day, for example). Such peaks may cause congestion of data (bottlenecks) across the connection or cause the server to crash, resulting in downtime. In order to prevent such issues, a server administrator may implement bandwidth throttling to control the number of requests a server responds to within a specified period of time.

When a server using bandwidth throttling has reached the allowed bandwidth set by the administrator, it will block further read attempts, usually moving them into a queue to be processed once the bandwidth use reaches an acceptable level. Bandwidth throttling will usually continue to allow write requests (such as a user submitting a form) and transmission requests, unless the bandwidth continues to fail to return to an acceptable level.

Likewise, some software, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) network programs, have similar bandwidth throttling features, which allow a user to set desired maximum upload and download rates, so as not to consume the entire available bandwidth of his or her Internet connection.

Professional Web Designing Tips

2009-01-20T01:12:00.000-08:00

A web design is all about innovative, technical and graphical designs. Web page designing is nothing but creating, planning, modeling and executing of electronic media content delivery via internet in the form of website. A competent Web designer will make use of simple tools to offer professional website. A web page comprises of innovative techniques, tools, designs, programs and graphics like template, background color, images, content, font, codes, page color, tables, graphics and navigations. Some of the web design tips for web searchers are

Page design is one of the important tools for a web design. It should comprise background color, images, color, fonts and graphics.

Adequate hyperlinks, images, content, CSS are created then it is set to be the best website design.

Experts will make use of flash, CSS and languages like HTML, java script, PHP and XML etc. It creates a professional, attractive and impressive web design.

It should be inclusive of search engine optimization and web content. Content plays the major role in web designing. Professional website designer knows well the importance of quality content for web designing.

Proper modeling, executing and formatted web designs created by atomic55.net makes the web page to be the best website design.

Web server

2009-01-20T01:05:00.000-08:00

The term web server can mean one of two things:

1. A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients (user agents such as web browsers), and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc.).

2. A computer that runs a computer program as described above.

Common features

Although web server programs differ in detail, they all share some basic common features.

1. HTTP: every web server program operates by accepting HTTP requests from the client, and providing an HTTP response to the client. The HTTP response usually consists of an HTML document, but can also be a raw file, an image, or some other type of document (defined by MIME-types). If some error is found in client request or while trying to serve it, a web server has to send an error response which may include some custom HTML or text messages to better explain the problem to end users.

2. Logging: usually web servers have also the capability of logging some detailed information, about client requests and server responses, to log files; this allows the webmaster to collect statistics by running log analyzers on these files.

In practice many web servers implement the following features also:

1. Authentication, optional authorization request (request of user name and password) before allowing access to some or all kind of resources.

2. Handling of static content (file content recorded in server's filesystem(s)) and dynamic content by supporting one or more related interfaces (SSI, CGI, SCGI, FastCGI, JSP, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Server API such as NSAPI, ISAPI, etc.).

3. HTTPS support (by SSL or TLS) to allow secure (encrypted) connections to the server on the standard port 443 instead of usual port 80.

4. Content compression (i.e. by gzip encoding) to reduce the size of the responses (to lower bandwidth usage, etc.).

5. Virtual hosting to serve many web sites using one IP address.

6. Large file support to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2 GB on 32 bit OS.

7. Bandwidth throttling to limit the speed of responses in order to not saturate the network and to be able to serve more clients.

Domain name

2009-01-19T02:57:00.000-08:00

The main purpose of a domain name is to provide symbolic representations, i.e., recognizable names, to mostly numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet, in effect changing the IP address. This translation from domain names to IP addresses (and vice versa) is accomplished with the global facilities of Domain Name System (DNS).

By allowing the use of unique alphabetical addresses instead of numeric ones, domain names allow Internet users to more easily find and communicate with web sites and any other IP-based communications services. The flexibility of the domain name system allows multiple IP addresses to be assigned to a single domain name, or multiple domain names to be services from a single IP address. This means that one server may have multiple roles (such as hosting multiple independent websites), or that one role can be spread among many servers. One IP address can also be assigned to several servers, as used in anycast networking.

Personal web page

2009-01-19T02:55:00.000-08:00

Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature. The content can be about that person or about something he or she is interested in. Personal web pages can be the entire content of a domain name belonging to the person (which would then be a personal website), or can be a page or pages that are part of a larger domain on which other pages are located - an example of one such larger site is GeoCities. Another example would be a student's website for school. Personal web pages are often used solely for informative or entertainment purposes. Defining personal web page is difficult, because many domains or combinations of web pages that are under the control of a single individual can be used by the individual for commercial purposes, ranging from just the presentation of advertising, to electronic commerce: the sale of goods, services or information; in fact eBay began as the personal web page of Pierre Omidyar.

Personal web pages may be as simple as a single page or may be as elaborate as an online database with gigabytes of data. Many Internet service providers offer a few megabytes of space for customers to host their own personal web pages.

The content of personal web pages varies and can, depending on the hosting server, contain anything that any other websites do. However, typical personal web pages contain images, text and a collection of hyperlinks. Many can contain biographical information, résumés, and blogs. Many personal pages will include information about the author's hobbies and pastimes, and information of interest to friends and family of the author.

Java applet

2009-01-12T02:44:00.000-08:00

A Java applet is an applet delivered to the users in the form of Java bytecode. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), or in Sun's AppletViewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets. Java applets were introduced in the first version of the Java language in 1995. Java applets are usually written in the Java programming language but they can also be written in other languages that compile to Java bytecode such as Jython.

Applets are used to provide interactive features to web applications that cannot be provided by HTML. Since Java's bytecode is platform independent, Java applets can be executed by browsers for many platforms, including Windows, Unix, Mac OS and Linux. There are open source tools like applet2app which can be used to convert an applet to a stand alone Java application/windows executable/linux executable. This has the advantage of running a Java applet in offline mode without the need for internet browser software.

A Java Servlet is sometimes informally compared to be "like" a server-side applet, but it is different in its language, functions, and in each of the characteristics described here about applets.

Java (software platform)

2009-01-12T02:39:00.000-08:00

Java refers to a number of computer software products and specifications from Sun Microsystems that together provide a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms from embedded devices and mobile phones on the low end, to enterprise servers and supercomputers on the high end. Java is nearly ubiquitous in mobile phones, Web servers and enterprise applications, and while less common on desktop computers, Java applets are often used to provide improved functionality while browsing the World Wide Web.

Writing in the Java programming language is the primary way to produce code that will be deployed as Java bytecode, though there are compilers available for other languages such as JavaScript, Python and Ruby, and a native Java scripting language called Groovy. Java syntax borrows heavily from C and C++ but it eliminates certain low-level constructs such as pointers and has a very simple memory model where every object is allocated on the heap and all variables of object types are references. Memory management is handled through integrated automatic garbage collection performed by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

On 13 November 2006, Sun Microsystems made the bulk of its implementation of Java available under the GNU General Public License, although there are still a few parts distributed as precompiled binaries due to intellectual property restrictions.

Internet Telephony (VoIP)

2009-01-08T02:26:00.000-08:00

VoIP stands for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, referring to the protocol that underlies all Internet communication. The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkie-like voice applications for personal computers. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a traditional telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL.

VoIP is maturing into a competitive alternative to traditional telephone service. Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple, inexpensive VoIP network adapters are available that eliminate the need for a personal computer.

Voice quality can still vary from call to call but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls.

Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialling and reliability. Currently, a few VoIP providers provide an emergency service, but it is not universally available. Traditional phones are line-powered and operate during a power failure; VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the phone equipment and the Internet access devices.

VoIP has also become increasingly popular for gaming applications, as a form of communication between players. Popular VoIP clients for gaming include Ventrilo and Teamspeak, and others. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 also offer VoIP chat features.

The World Wide Web

2009-01-08T02:22:00.000-08:00

Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (or just the Web) interchangeably, but, as discussed above, the two terms are not synonymous.

The World Wide Web is a huge set of interlinked documents, images and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. These hyperlinks and URLs allow the web servers and other machines that store originals, and cached copies of, these resources to deliver them as required using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). HTTP is only one of the communication protocols used on the Internet.

Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to share and exchange business logic and data.

Software products that can access the resources of the Web are correctly termed user agents. In normal use, web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Apple Safari, access web pages and allow users to navigate from one to another via hyperlinks. Web documents may contain almost any combination of computer data including graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content including games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo! and Google, millions of people worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data.

Using the Web, it is also easier than ever before for individuals and organisations to publish ideas and information to an extremely large audience. Anyone can find ways to publish a web page, a blog or build a website for very little initial cost. Publishing and maintaining large, professional websites full of attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however.

Many individuals and some companies and groups use "web logs" or blogs, which are largely used as easily updatable online diaries. Some commercial organisations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work.

Collections of personal web pages published by large service providers remain popular, and have become increasingly sophisticated. Whereas operations such as Angelfire and GeoCities have existed since the early days of the Web, newer offerings from, for example, Facebook and MySpace currently have large followings. These operations often brand themselves as social network services rather than simply as web page hosts.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of products and services directly via the Web continues to grow.

In the early days, web pages were usually created as sets of complete and isolated HTML text files stored on a web server. More recently, websites are more often created using content management or wiki software with, initially, very little content. Contributors to these systems, who may be paid staff, members of a club or other organisation or members of the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose, while casual visitors view and read this content in its final HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors.

Internet and the workplace

2009-01-08T02:19:00.000-08:00

The Internet is allowing greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections and Web applications.

The Internet viewed on mobile devices

The Internet can now be accessed virtually anywhere by numerous means. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a cellular network supporting that device's technology.

Within the limitations imposed by the small screen and other limited facilities of such a pocket-sized device, all the services of the Internet, including email and web browsing, may be available in this way. Service providers may restrict the range of these services and charges for data access may be significant, compared to home usage.

Common uses

E-mail

The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Even today it can be important to distinguish between Internet and internal e-mail systems. Internet e-mail may travel and be stored unencrypted on many other networks and machines out of both the sender's and the recipient's control. During this time it is quite possible for the content to be read and even tampered with by third parties, if anyone considers it important enough. Purely internal or intranet mail systems, where the information never leaves the corporate or organization's network, are much more secure, although in any organization there will be IT and other personnel whose job may involve monitoring, and occasionally accessing, the e-mail of other employees not addressed to them.

Static and Dynamic web page

2009-01-07T01:16:00.000-08:00

A static Web page is a Web page that always comprises the same information in response to all download requests from all users. Contrast with Dynamic web page.

It displays the same information for all users, from all contexts, providing the classical hypertext, where navigation is performed through "static" documents.

Advantages

* Quick and easy to put together, even by someone who doesn't have much experience.
* Ideal for demonstrating how a site will look.
* Cache friendly, one copy can be shown to many people.

Disadvantages

* Difficult to maintain when a site gets large.
* Difficult to keep consistent and up to date.
* Offers little visitor personalization (all would have to be client side).

Dynamic web page

Classical hypertext navigation occurs among "static" documents, and, for web users, this experience is reproduced using static web pages. However, web navigation can also provide an interactive experience that is termed "dynamic". Content (text, images, form fields, etc.) on a web page can change, in response to different contexts or conditions. There are two ways to create this kind of interactivity:

1. Using client-side scripting to change interface behaviors within a specific web page, in response to mouse or keyboard actions or at specified timing events. In this case the dynamic behavior occurs within the presentation.
2. Using server-side scripting to change the supplied page source between pages, adjusting the sequence or reload of the web pages or web content supplied to the browser. Server responses may be determined by such conditions as data in a posted HTML form, parameters in the URL, the type of browser being used, the passage of time, or a database or server state.

The result of either technique is described as a dynamic web page, and both may be used simultaneously.

To adhere to the first definition, web pages must use presentation technology called, in a broader sense, rich interfaced pages. Client-side scripting languages like JavaScript or ActionScript, used for Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and Flash technologies respectively, are frequently used to orchestrate media types (sound, animations, changing text, etc.) of the presentation. The scripting also allows use of remote scripting, a technique by which the DHTML page requests additional information from a server, using a hidden Frame, XMLHttpRequests, or a Web service.

Web pages that adhere to the second definition are often created with the help of server-side languages such as PHP, Perl, ASP or ASP.NET, JSP, and other languages. These server-side languages typically use the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) to produce dynamic web pages. These kinds of pages can also use, on client-side, the first kind (DHTML, etc.).

Web integration

2009-01-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

Web Integration is leveraging the enormous success of the Web Browser to access services and information on the Web. The services can for example include lookup in news archives, searching cheap flights and ordering cinema tickets, even editing Wikipedia. Information can for example include search results from Google or content from any other online information source, even RSS feeds. Web Integration allows for fast integration of any Web browsable content, data, and applications into portals, wireless devices, content management systems, applications, databases, RSS feeds, REST or web services.

Web Integration is the engine behind most Mashup (web application hybrid) sites today. Some of them are using commercial Web Integration products, and others use technologies like Python, Perl, etc.

Benefits

The web front-end is the most widespread interface on the web, by definition everything on the Web is accessible from a web browser and can thus be accessed with Web Integration. This gives many benefits like:

* Anything on the web can be mashed-up as-is, thus the entire web can be used for mash-ups.
* The web human interface is very easy to understand, no deep programming skills are needed to work with Web Integration.
* Mash-up applications can be done without any interference with others.
* The entire internet becomes a database of information, even when there is no RSS feeds or other data feed, as long as the information is available from a web browser.

Types of Integration

# Integration at the presentation layer. This layer is the human user interface, either web-based or a platform-specific GUI or terminal interface. This layer allows user to collaborate with an application. Integration at the presentation layer lets have to access to a user interface of a remote application.
# Integration at the functional layer. This type of integration provides direct access to business logic of applications. It is attained by interaction between applications and API or by interaction with web services.
# Integration at the data layer. In this case we mean access to one or more databases used by a remote application
# Complex integration. Commerce solutions of web-integration as a rule include all three types of integration

User Interface and Interaction Design

2009-01-07T01:07:00.000-08:00

User interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user's experience and interaction. Where traditional graphic design seeks to make the object or application physically attractive, the goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals—what is often called user-centered design. Where good graphic/industrial design is bold and eye catching, good user interface design is to facilitate finishing the task at hand over drawing unnecessary attention to itself. Graphic design may be utilized to apply a theme or style to the interface without compromising its usability. The design process of an interface must balance the meaning of its visual elements that conform the mental model of operation, and the functionality from a technical engineering perspective, in order to create a system that is both usable and easy to adapt to the changing user needs.

User Interface design is involved in a wide range of projects from computer systems, to cars, to commercial planes; all of these projects involve much of the same basic human interaction yet also require some unique skills and knowledge. As a result, user interface designers tend to specialize in certain types of projects and have skills centered around their expertise, whether that be software design, user research, web design, or industrial design.

User Interface and Interaction Design

Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of GUI is an important part of software application programming. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the underlying logical design of a stored program, a design discipline known as usability. Techniques of user-centered design are used to ensure that the visual language introduced in the design is well tailored to the tasks it must perform.

Typically, the user interacts with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold. The widgets of a well-designed interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of the user. A Model-view-controller allows for a flexible structure in which the interface is independent from and indirectly linked to application functionality, so the GUI can be easily customized. This allows the user to select or design a different skin at will, and eases the designer's work to change the interface as the user needs evolve. Nevertheless, good user interface design relates to the user, not the system architecture.

The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as "chrome".[4] Larger widgets, such as windows, usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, email message or drawing. Smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool.

A GUI may be designed for the rigorous requirements of a vertical market. This is known as an "application specific graphical user interface." Examples of an application specific GUI are:

* Touchscreen point of sale software used by waitstaff in a busy restaurant
* Self-service checkouts used in a retail store
* Automated teller machines (ATM)
* Airline self-ticketing and check-in
* Information kiosks in a public space, like a train station or a museum
* Monitors or control screens in an embedded industrial application which employ a real time operating system (RTOS).

The latest cell phones and handheld game systems also employ application specific touchscreen GUIs. Newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and touch screen multimedia centers.

User interface design

2009-01-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

Web page

2009-01-06T04:07:00.000-08:00

A web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links.

Web pages may be retrieved from a local computer or from a remote web server. The web server may restrict access only to a private network, e.g. a corporate intranet, or it may publish pages on the World Wide Web. Web pages are requested and served from web servers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Web pages may consist of files of static text stored within the web server's file system (static web pages), or the web server may construct the (X)HTML for each web page when it is requested by a browser (dynamic web pages). Client-side scripting can make web pages more responsive to user input once in the client browser.

File hosting service

2009-01-06T04:04:00.000-08:00

A file hosting service, online file storage service, or online media center is an Internet hosting service specifically designed to host static content, typically large files that are not web pages. Typically they allow web and FTP access. They can be optimized for serving many users (as is implied by the term "hosting") or be optimized for single-user storage (as is implied by the term "storage"). Related services are video sharing, virtual storage and remote backup.

Uses

Software file hosting

Shareware authors often use file hosting services to serve their software. The inherent problem with free downloads is the huge bandwidth cost. These hosts also offer additional services to the authors such as statistics or other marketing features.

Personal file storage

Personal file storage services are aimed at private individuals, offering a sort of "network storage" for personal backup, file access, or file distribution. Users can upload their files and share them publicly or keep them password-protected.

Prior to the advent of personal file storage services, off-site backup services were not typically affordable for individual and small office computer users.

Sometimes people prefer hosting their files on a publicly accessible HTTP server. In this case, they generally choose paid hosting, and use their hosting for this purpose. Many free hosting providers do not allow the storage of files for non-website-related use.

Content caching

Content providers who potentially encounter bandwidth congestion issues may use services specialized in distributing cached or static content. It is the case for companies with a major Internet presence.

Cyberspace

2009-01-06T04:01:00.000-08:00

Cyberspace is the global domain of electro-magnetics accessed through electronic technology and exploited through the modulation of electromagnetic energy to achieve a wide range of communication and control system capabilities. The term is rooted in the science of cybernetics and Norbert Weiner’s pioneering work in electronic communication and control science, a forerunner to current information theory and computer science. Through its electro-magnetic nature, cyberspace integrates a number of capabilities (sensors, signals, connections, transmissions, processors, controllers) and generates a virtual interactive experience accessed for the purpose of communication and control regardless of a geographic location.

In pragmatic terms, Cyberspace allows the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures (ITI), telecommunications networks--such as the Internet, computer systems, integrated sensors, system control networks and embedded processors and controllers common to global control and communications. As a social experience, individuals can interact, exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, direct actions, create artistic media, play simulation games, engage in political discussion, etc. The term was originally coined by the cyber-punk science fiction author, William Gibson.[1] The now ubiquitous term has become a conventional means to describe anything associated with computers, information technology, the internet and the diverse internet culture.

Cognitive metaphor

2009-01-06T03:59:00.000-08:00

The cognitive metaphor of a website is the association of the site concept to an experience outside of a site's environment. It is used to enhance the level of comfort the user experiences using the website since this association relates the navigational schemes, processes, and informational areas of a site to something familiar. For example, a tabbed metaphor can be used in a site for organization of information because users can relate the site's organization to that of using a file drawer of tabbed file folders. This relationship between the file drawer containing folders allows a user who is unfamiliar with a website to navigate it comfortably and with less aggravation.

Literature and Cognitive Metaphor

"The most recent linguistic approach to literature is that of cognitive metaphor, which claims that metaphor is not a mode of language, but a mode of thought. Metaphors project structures from source domains of schematized bodily or enculturated experience into abstract target domains. We conceive the abstract idea of life in terms of our experiences of a journey, a year, or a day. We do not understand Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" to be about a horse-and-wagon journey but about life. We understand Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" as a poem about the end of the human life span, not a trip in a carriage. This work is redefining the critical notion of imagery. Perhaps for this reason, cognitive metaphor has significant promise for some kind of rapprochement between linguistics and literary study."

Colocation centre for webhosting service

2009-01-05T01:56:00.000-08:00

A colocation centre (collocation center) ("colo") or carrier hotel is a type of data center where multiple customers locate network, server and storage gear and interconnect to a variety of telecommunications and other network service provider(s) with a minimum of cost and complexity.

Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the benefits of colocating their mission-critical equipment within a data centre. Colocation is becoming popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as result of using shared data centre infrastructure. Significant benefits of scale (large power and mechanical systems) result in large colocation facilities, typically 4500 to 9500 square metres (roughly 50000 to 100000 square feet). With IT and communications facilities in safe, secure hands, telecommunications, internet, ASP and content providers, as well as enterprises, enjoy less latency and the freedom to focus on their core business.

Additionally, customers reduce their traffic back-haul costs and free up their internal networks for other uses. Moreover, by outsourcing network traffic to a colocation service provider with greater bandwidth capacity, web site access speeds should improve considerably.

Major types of colocation customers are:

* Web commerce companies, who use the facilities for a safe environment and cost-effective, redundant connections to the Internet
* Major enterprises, who use the facility for disaster avoidance, offsite data backup and business continuity
* Telecommunication companies, who use the facilities to interexchange traffic with other telecommunications companies and access to potential clients

Clustered hosting

2009-01-05T01:53:00.000-08:00

Clustered hosting technology is designed to eliminate the problems inherent with typical shared hosting infrastructures. This technology provides customers with a “clustered” handling of security, load balancing, and necessary website resources.

A clustered hosting platform is data-driven, which means that no human interaction is needed to provision a new account to the platform.

Clustered hosting "virtualizes" the resources beyond the limits of one physical server, and as a result, a website is not limited to one server. They share the processing power of many servers and their applications are distributed in real-time. This means that they can purchase as much computing power as they want from a virtually inexhaustible source, since even the largest customer never consumes more than a fraction of a percent of the total server pool. Customer account changes (to add new resources or change settings) are propagated immediately to every server in the cluster. This is different from typical shared hosting architectures that usually require changes to a configuration file that becomes live after the server is rebooted during off hours, or are pushed on a cyclic basis every few hours.

Multiple tiers of security are integrated into the clustered hosting platform. In a typical hosting environment, the security layer is usually not integrated in the platform. The stock solutions used for shared hosting do not solve core issues around integrating security between the application and the operating system. At best, most typical hosts will implement a firewall solution, and weaknesses inherent with the operating system will remain exploitable to those that penetrate the firewall.

Clustered hosting network layer protections employ intelligent routing, redundant switching fabric and built in firewall and proxy technology. Clustered hosting provides considerable advantages over traditional hosting architectures in mitigating denial-of-service attacks and other network attacks because such attacks can be dispersed over a large pool of servers, and if individual hardware components are impacted by such attacks, they automatically fall out of traffic handling during the attack.

Grids versus conventional supercomputers

2009-01-05T01:50:00.000-08:00

Distributed" or "grid" computing in general is a special type of parallel computing[citation needed] which relies on complete computers (with onboard CPU, storage, power supply, network interface, etc.) connected to a network (private, public or the Internet) by a conventional network interface, such as Ethernet. This is in contrast to the traditional notion of a supercomputer, which has many processors connected by a local high-speed computer bus.

The primary advantage of distributed computing is that each node can be purchased as commodity hardware, which when combined can produce similar computing resources to a multiprocessor supercomputer, but at lower cost. This is due to the economies of scale of producing commodity hardware, compared to the lower efficiency of designing and constructing a small number of custom supercomputers. The primary performance disadvantage is that the various processors and local storage areas do not have high-speed connections. This arrangement is thus well-suited to applications in which multiple parallel computations can take place independently, without the need to communicate intermediate results between processors.

The high-end scalability of geographically dispersed grids is generally favorable, due to the low need for connectivity between nodes relative to the capacity of the public Internet.There are also some differences in programming and deployment. It can be costly and difficult to write programs so that they can be run in the environment of a supercomputer, which may have a custom operating system, or require the program to address concurrency issues.

If a problem can be adequately parallelized, a "thin" layer of "grid" infrastructure can allow conventional, standalone programs to run on multiple machines (but each given a different part of the same problem). This makes it possible to write and debug on a single conventional machine, and eliminates complications due to multiple instances of the same program running in the same shared memory and storage space at the same time.

Grid computing

2009-01-05T01:29:00.000-08:00

Grid computing (or the use of a computational grid) is the application of several computers to a single problem at the same time - usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data. According to John Patrick, IBM's vice-president for Internet strategies, "the next big thing will be grid computing."

Grid computing depends on software to divide and apportion pieces of a program among several computers, sometimes up to many thousands. Grid computing can also be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing, as well as a form of network-distributed parallel processing. It can be small -- confined to a network of computer workstations within a corporation or it can be large -- a public collaboration across many companies or networks.

It is a form of distributed computing whereby a "super and virtual computer" is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, acting in concert to perform very large tasks. This technology has been applied to computationally-intensive scientific, mathematical, and academic problems through volunteer computing, and it is used in commercial enterprises for such diverse applications as drug discovery, economic forecasting, seismic analysis, and back-office data processing in support of e-commerce and web services.

What distinguishes grid computing from conventional cluster computing systems is that grids tend to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed. Also, while a computing grid may be dedicated to a specialized application, it is often constructed with the aid of general purpose grid software libraries and middleware.

Website awards for advertising and design

2009-01-02T03:10:00.000-08:00

Several advertising and design award schemes now include categories for websites and other interactive media. Among the most prominent are:

Addy Awards

The Addy awards are operated by the American Advertising Federation, which is based in Washington DC, USA. In addition to awards for print, poster, and television advertisements, there are several categories for interactive media. These include: Business to Business Websites, Consumer Websites, Banners & Pop-Ups, E-Cards, Micro & Mini Websites, Online Games, Online Newsletters, Podcasts, Mobile Marketing, Internet Commercials, and Webisodes. Selection is based on a judgement of creative quality.

Clio Awards

The Clio awards program, which is based in New York USA, is operated by Nielsen, the Dutch media conglomerate formerly known as VNU. Clio awards recognise excellence in advertising and design. There is an interactive category, which grants awards to websites. Other categories include: TV/Cinema, Print, Poster, and Billboard. The Clio jury comprises more than 100 judges drawn from more than 60 countries. Awards are granted during the four day Clio Festival, held each May in Miami, Florida.

D&AD

The D&AD awards program is operated by D&AD, a non-profit organization based in London, England, and founded in 1962, which represents the global creative, design and advertising communities. D&AD offers several annual awards for websites, including awards for: Websites, Microsites, New Uses of Websites, Writing, Sound Design, Interface & Navigation, and Photography. Two levels of award are granted: the Yellow Pencil (equivalent to a silver award) and the coveted Black Pencil (equivalent to a gold award).

Website awards

2009-01-02T03:07:00.000-08:00

The internet industry has established various award schemes for websites, following the example of the Tony, Oscar, BAFTA, Cannes Film Festival and Emmy awards which are granted in the fields of theatre, film and television. This article covers notable English language website award schemes.

General website awards
Best-on-topic website awards
Website awards for advertising and design
Aggregating award sites

General website awards

There are numerous general website award schemes, many of which carry little credibility. Among the most prominent general website award schemes are:

Favourite Website Awards

The Favourite Website Awards (FWA) scheme has been operated since 2000 by FWA, which is based in Knebworth, England. FWA claims to be the world's most visited website award program, receiving more than 1 million visits per month. FWA selects a Site of the Day, a Site of the Month, and a Site of the Year. Recent Sites of the Day are shown as thumbnails on the FWA front page. FWA bases its selections on: Design 40%, Navigation 25%, Graphics 15%, Content 15%, and Personality 5%. As a result of the emphasis on design and graphics, winning websites tend to be strikingly designed and visually attractive. In addition to the Site of the Year, there is an annual People's Choice Award decided by online public vote.

Interactive Media Awards.

The Interactive Media Awards (IMA) scheme has been operated since 2004 by the non-profit Interactive Media Council Inc., which is based in New York, USA. Entries are judged on the following criteria: Design, Content, Feature Functionality, Usability, and Standards Compliance & Cross-Browser Compatibility. IMA takes the view that a website rich in graphic design is of little value if its content is weak, boring and useless. Awards are granted annually in 100 categories. These are divided into four quarterly judging rounds. Categories include Advertising, Agriculture, Arts & Culture, Banking, Community, Education, Energy, Legal, News, Politics, Real Estate, School, Spirituality, and Sports.

WebAwards

The WebAwards scheme has been operated since 1997 by the Web Marketing Association, based in Simsbury, Connecticut, USA. It grants annual awards to websites in 96 industry categories including Advertising, Architecture, Automobile, Banks, Broadcasting, Insurance, Investor Relations, Legal, Leisure, Media, Medical, Military, Movies, Music, News, Pharmaceuticals, Political, Real Estate, Retail, School, Sports, Technology, Travel, and University. Entries are judged by three or more expert judges on seven criteria, each of which is given equal weight. The criteria are: Design, Innovation, Content, Technology, Interactivity, Copywriting, and Ease of use.

Webbys

The Webby Awards scheme has been operated since 1996 by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which is based in New York, USA. Awards are granted each spring for websites which demonstrate Best Practice in: Content, Structure & Navigation, Visual Design, Interactivity, Functionality, and Overall Experience. Other award categories include: Activism, Commerce, Fashion, Humor, Kids, News, Politics, Science, and Sports. There are Business Website awards covering categories which include: Automotive, Financial Services, Professional Services, Retail, and Travel. The main awards are decided by a panel of judges. The related People's Voice Awards are decided by online public vote.

Best-on-topic website awards

Beesker. The Beesker award scheme, operated by Extonet Ltd of Cambridge UK, selects the world's best website on each of several hundred narrow topics from Aardvarks to Zippers. Selection is based on depth and reliability of content, and clarity of presentation. 400 topics are covered in the following categories: Arts & Entertainment, Education, Food & Drink, Hobbies, Home & Garden, Natural World, People, Places & Travel, Sports, and Technology.

History of Website builder

2009-01-02T03:06:00.000-08:00

The first websites were created in the early 1990's. These sites were hand written in a markup language called HTML. The early versions of HTML were very basic, only giving websites basic structure (headings and paragraphs), and the ability to link using hypertext. As the Web and web design progressed, the markup language changed to become more complex and flexible, giving the ability to add objects like images and tables to a page. Features like tables, which were originally intended to be used to display tabular information, were soon subverted for use as invisible layout devices. Page layout using tables made these pages difficult to update, as adding information generally meant rewriting the whole page. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), formatting pages became separated from content making pages easier to edit. Database integration technologies such as server-side scripting and design standards like W3C further changed and enhanced the way the pages are built.

Software was written to help design web pages and by 1998 Dreamweaver had been established as the industry leader, however purists criticised the quality of the code produced by such software as being overblown and reliant on tables. As the industry moved towards W3C standards Dreamweaver amongst others were criticised for not being compliant. The Acid2 Test, developed by the Web Standards Project is used to test compliance with standards and most modern web builders now support CSS and are more or less compliant, though many professionals still prefer to write optimized source code by hand.

Open source software for building web sites took much longer to become established mainly due to problems with browser compliance with standards. Most open source developers are interested with being standards compliant rather than commercially viable, whereas those producing software for sale need it to work with Internet Explorer which is still not completely standards compliant. W3C started Amaya in 1996 to showcase Web technologies in a fully-featured Web client. This was to provide a framework that integrated lots of W3C technologies in a single, consistent environment. Amaya started as an HTML + CSS style sheets editor and now supports XML, XHTML, MathML, and SVG.

With the coming of the second generation of the Internet, also known as Web 2.0, many more people are surfing the web, few of which have any technical knowledge. These users want an easy and stress free experience. With the explosion of commerce on the Internet more and more people need their own web site and so software designers created better and simpler WYSIWIG web builders. As more people connected to the web using broadband it became possible to use web builders on line rather than buy or download one. Web hosts began to provide web building software as part of the package, claiming a web site can be created in 10 minutes with out any technical knowledge. These on-line web builders are easy to use and offer small businesses and private individuals a relatively quick and cheaper alternative to employing a professional web designer or learning how to write source code. They can produce colourful and professional looking pages but are tied to a single web host.

Website builder

2009-01-02T03:04:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of web site builders: on-line proprietary tools provided by web hosting companies which cater to people who wish to build and publish their website without learning the technical aspects of web page production and software which runs on a computer, creating pages off-line and which can then publish these pages on any host.

On-line website builders typically require customers to sign up with the web hosting company -- most offer free trial periods -- and choose the page design that best suits their purpose. They offer a variety of services, anywhere between creating basic personal web pages or social network content (Widgets) to making full blown business/e-commerce websites, either template based or - on the more flexible platforms - totally design free. Some companies' tools allow the user to see the source code, that is, the HTML behind the page he is building. Many do not, meaning that only certain designated areas on the page can be modified. Usually, these areas are: headers, text and some graphic elements. These web builders are WYSIWIG or “what you see is what you get” meaning that the page can be edited as in a word processor. An example is Moogo.

Off – line web builders cater to professional web designers who need to create pages for more than one client or web host. Modern off-line web builders are usually both WYSIWIG and allow direct editing of source code and CSS styling. They are generally quicker and more flexible to use than on-line builders, but may be expensive to buy. An example is Adobe Dreamweaver (previously Macromedia Dreamweaver). There are some open source web builders which may be downloaded free of charge. Sea Monkey is an example of an open source free web builder.

Marketing

2008-12-31T01:07:00.000-08:00

Marketing and incentives are very important for the success of your online services. Agency commitment is vital in ensuring the high adoption of an electronic service. Comprehensive internal and external marketing are also critical to continue to meet customer needs and expectations.

We understand that your budget for service marketing is probably small (if any), and we have experience in developing creative marketing ideas that are free or very low cost. Over the years, we have found that reaching out to your known customer groups through existing events, publications, newsletters, routine mailings, etc., is very effective. Such targeted marketing efforts to your known customer groups are more effective than large scale and often costly broad advertising campaigns.

Marketing an online service includes:

* Identify target markets
* develop and educate customers
* educate and encourage internal staff
* provide customer incentives
* create and deploy a marketing plan

The marketing methods for your online service may include:

* press releases and events
* newspaper ads, brochures, postcards, and other print materials
* association newsletter articles
* PSAs

A marketing plan will ensure optimum exposure. Ultimately, your marketing goals are to provide high customer satisfaction which, in turn, generates additional use of the online service.

Secrets of Marketing Success

* Direct Mailings
* In-person customer training
* Offer online services at a less expensive rate than the traditional methods
* Provide customer service via telephone and email for users learning the new system
* Provide outreach and education at user association meetings
* Provide easy to use and varying billing options
* Attend user association events and conferences

Website Hosting

2008-12-31T01:02:00.000-08:00

Static Web Pages

InforME provides website hosting services for State agencies. Nearly every State agency website is hosted on InforME's servers, totalling more than 150,000 individual web pages.

Hosting of static web sites is provided at no cost to agencies, and includes access to the Maine.gov Google search engine, the AutoForms form processing tool, and the What's New tool.

Web Applications

InforME also hosts all eGovernment web applications we have built for State agencies, providing a stable, secure environment for online government transactions. View transaction security policy.

Hosting of non-InforME web applications is possible on a case-by-case basis. Application hosting must be pre-approved, and will involve charges for code review, storage, and maintenance. Alternative hosting options available to agencies include the State's Office of Information Technology and commercial ISPs.

More Information (state agencies only):

* InforME's hosting policy
* Hosting environment
* Hosting services and related services (FTP, virtual domains)

Website Design

2008-12-31T00:58:00.000-08:00

Whether we are re-designing your agency’s website or creating one from scratch, we will work with you to develop a site that is pleasing to the eye, easy to use, meets the needs of your users and your agency, and complies with current State and industry standards.

InforME’s web design process is designed to meet the following goals:

* Evaluate Agency needs
* Emphasize usability, with a focus on the public audience
* Meet accessibility standards established by State of Maine policy and Federal law
* Meet Web Standards established by the State of Maine
* Design high-quality graphical elements
* Ensure compatibility with multiple browsers and platforms
* Provide ease of content maintenance
* Incorporate interactivity where appropriate

InforME’s Director of Creative Services will act as the project manager and will be your liaison to the InforME team for website design projects.

We Offer Experience & Expertise

The InforME Creative Services team brings eGovernment experience and expertise to every project, including graphic design, information architecture, usability, accessibility for the disabled, and multimedia.

InforME's staff is responsible for the award-winning Maine.gov portal, recognized by the Center for Digital Government as the best state government Web portal in the nation in 2004. The design team has superb expertise in website usability and accessibility, and Maine's Web Standards. We built the State's standard website templates and participated in the development of the State's Web Standards and Accessibility Policy. We understand State government and the unique role of government websites. We also champion the public website user and ensure that each website will be user-friendly and truly meet the needs of citizens.

Cost/Funding Method

Web design services are offered on a contract basis. New England Interactive is an approved IT Preferred Vendor for the State. Individual agencies may contract with us directly up to $10,000, and for larger amounts using the streamlined Preferred Vendor process.

Once we understand the scope of your project, we'll provide you with a project summary and cost quote.

Domain registration

2008-12-31T00:53:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the home of the national rules and principles for registering and managing a domain name. These rules are an integral part of the Guidelines for UK government websites, Illustrated handbook for web management teams (section 1.9 - updated September 2004).

.gov.uk domain registration

These rules are an integral part of the Guidelines for UK government websites, Illustrated handbook for web management teams (section 1.9 - updated September 2004).

Who is eligible to register a .gov.uk domain name?

The only organisations which can register a .gov.uk domain name are:

* UK government and devolved administration departments and agencies
* local and regional government bodies, including town and parish councils
* other associated and NDPB organisations and projects.

Making an application

Review our domain naming conventions and terms and conditions. Then if you are eligible your application must be made by an appropriate Internet Service Provider, using the correct UKERNA template formats. If the supporting information detailed in rules paragraph 1.9.3.1 is not provided the application will automatically be rejected.

The national rules

These are available in HTML, PDF and MS Word formats.

* National rules - HTML version (section 1.9 of the Web Guidelines)
* National rules - PDF version (236KB)
* National rules - MS Word version (306kb)

.EU domain name

The object of this note is to provide guidance to the UK public sector on the registration and validation of an .EU domain name that may be applied for during the .EU phased registration period (also known the Sunrise Period).

* .EU domain name – guidance to the UK public sector – HTML version
* .EU domain name – guidance to the UK public sector – PDF version

How can I find out if a domain name is available?

Being shown available on the JANET Lookup Service or any WHOIS does not mean that the name you are seeking is acceptable. The .gov.uk Naming and Approvals Committee review individual names within the context of the .gov.uk domain and the information provided by the applicant.

* JANET WHOIS Lookup Service [external website]

.gov.uk Naming and Approvals Committee

* Terms of reference

Further advice

Please direct any queries on the rules or on specific names to:

* naming@coi.gsi.gov.uk

Wide Area Network Services

2008-12-30T02:05:00.001-08:00

Nearly all of the data transport in state government — including city, county and educational network traffic — is combined onto DIS’ managed Wide Area Network infrastructure. Gathering this much demand in one place means we can competitively acquire large amounts of bandwidth, driving down costs while boosting speed and capacity. Our aim is to help you focus on your core business, so we act as your single point of contact for designing, ordering, implementing and operating networks — dispatching staff around the clock to resolve problems and work with vendors.

The Campus Fiber Network

A high-speed fiber optic backbone service that interconnects voice, video and data communications for customers located in over 30 buildings on the state Capitol Campus in Olympia.

Advanced Transport Services (ATS)

ATS is a reliable and economical wide area network transport service provided over a secure Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) infrastructure. Customer sites are connected to DIS regional nodes sites. The nodes sites are located in Olympia, Lacey, Seattle, Vancouver, Yakima and Spokane. The nodes sites are connected together using high-speed SONET and Ethernet circuits from various service providers. ATS offers customers the security of a private IP network built on a shared, fault-tolerant, high-speed IP network infrastructure.

Interconnect Services

DIS designs, orders, implements and manages a complete package of vendor services and equipment that connects customer field offices to the nearest DIS node site. Combined with Advanced Transport Services, Interconnect Services provides customers a complete multi-access networking service with DIS acting as a single point of contact.

Internet Services

DIS provides state and local government customers with high speed, secured and unsecured Internet access. This service includes Domain Name services and IP addressing.

InterGovernmental Network (IGN) Services

The IGN is the common, standard Internet protocol-based data network used by DIS customers to connect to state agencies, counties, and cities with known end points, managed gateways, and applications. The IGN is an example of the State of Washington's enterprise architecture principle of commonality.

SGN

The State Government Network (SGN) is the common, standard Internet Protocol-based network to be used by state agencies to connect separate locations within and among those agencies.

Ethernet

A local-area network (LAN) architecture. Ethernet uses a bus or star topology and supports data transfer rates up to 1Gbps. The Ethernet specification served as the basis for the IEEE 802.3 standard, which specifies the physical and lower software layers. Ethernet uses the CSMA/CD access method to handle simultaneous demands. It is one of the most widely implemented LAN standards.

Frame Relay

Frame relay is a data link network protocol designed to transfer data on Wide Area Networks (WANs). Frame relay works over fiber optic or ISDN lines. The protocol offers low latency and to reduce overhead, does not perform any error correction, which is instead handled by other components of the network. Frame relay has traditionally provided a cost-effective way for telecommunications to transmit data over long distances.

DSL

DSL technologies use sophisticated modulation schemes to pack data onto copper wires. They are sometimes referred to as last-mile technologies because they are used only for connections from a telephone switching station to an office, not between switching stations.

Webcasting

2008-12-30T02:04:00.000-08:00

Webcasting is a powerful, versatile and innovative new communication channel. Ask us about streaming live video over the Web, or using video-on-demand from your Internet or intranet site.

Basic webcast

You can customize this simple interface with your own colors, logo and titles. The basic webcast works with a single camera to bring a presentation to life or record a message from your Director. Use this basic service if you don't need audience interaction.

Intermediate webcast

Multiple cameras and audience interaction create a sense of being there for your viewers. Our intermediate-level webcast service delivers a sophisticated interface that allows viewers to e-mail questions to a panel or presenters in real time, download course or event materials, and link out to program-related Web sites.

Advanced webcast

Watch real innovation in action as our production team creates customized live and video-on-demand presentations with a full spectrum of interactive features including polling, surveys, moderated chat, and question-and-answer sessions. You control the presentation, or have us operate your slide deck in real time. Advanced webcasting also means fast publication to your Web site.

Video Production Services

2008-12-30T02:02:00.000-08:00

Video Production

Our highly-skilled video production team can take your message from concept development through postproduction to create high-impact videotape, CD-ROM, DVD, or streaming media products.

Basic Taping

A smart, cost-effective way to capture and distribute a time-sensitive or limited message. Document a meeting, communicate to staff, or get a dynamic clip for a PowerPoint presentation.

Multi-camera Live Production

Great for a live event or training presentation. We offer a full remote package with multiple cameras that make it possible to cut between speakers, graphics and audience shots.

Full Production

Carefully scripted and shot in multiple locations, a full production video engages the audience with a direct, creative message.

Virtual Private Networks

2008-12-30T01:56:00.000-08:00

Commonly referred to as VPN, this security option is useful for employees that need access to their own desktops or a central network from a remote location. VPN is particularly useful for people who must travel frequently for work, or regular tele-workers. It uses the Internet to carry the traffic between the user’s location and the central network. The data moving over the VPN connection is secure because it is encrypted in transit. The speed of data exchange depends on the Internet connection speed available at the user’s location.

Benefits of VPN

*Security:

Using the Internet without encryption makes the data vulnerable to public observation, tampering, or capturing. The DIS VPN Service is safe and reliable because it uses encryption to securely send transmissions. A "tunnel" is configured between the client workstation and the DIS VPN Service gateway so the data is kept private as it travels over the Internet. Additionally, the DIS VPN Service utilizes a secondary authentication method, such as secure token cards or key fobs, to ensure the that the data is transmitted intact and that the person transmitting the
data is who he or she claims to be.

*Affordability:

Customer agencies can recognize major cost savings by using the public Internet to transmit their agency data. The DIS VPN Service is one of the most affordable, safest, and easiest ways to conduct this business securely. Agencies pay only for their connection to the Internet, their local Internet Service Provider (ISP), and the DIS VPN Service monthly fee.

*Connectivity:

Customer agencies are beginning to open up their networks to remote employees, branch offices, business partners and customers by utilizing the DIS VPN Service, a transparent, secure, and private connection across the Internet. The DIS VPN Service uses the speed and pervasiveness of the Internet to connect your agency to business partners,clients and suppliers—whether they are across the street or on the other side of the globe

*Reliability:

Current private data networks may not be able to handle cable modem, digital subscriber line (DSL) or other extensive broadband traffic. High-speed access is vital to your telecommuters who use shared network media such as cable or DSL, and especially critical for those with wireless connections. Today, with extensive redundancy, carrier-compliance, and high-speed switch routers, the DIS VPN Service provides the high reliability and availability to meet users’ requirements for speed.

*Productivity:

The DIS VPN Service improves employee productivity and work flexibility while reducing access costs. The DIS VPN Service is becoming very popular and many agencies are already enjoying the benefits of lower costs and convenience. Expected benefits include decreased IT costs, streamlined business processes, increased employee communication, and improved customer satisfaction.

WACIRC (Washington Computer Incident Response Center)

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Since most of Washington’s state government is interconnected through the state government network, the security vulnerabilities or risks accepted by one are ultimately shared by all. Timely, accurate information sharing among agencies aids prevention and recovery from cyber incidents against government networks. WACIRC was created in 2002 to support this reality.

WACIRC also responds to Gov. Gary Locke’s 2001 request to the Information Services Board chair to “take decisive actions to ensure that the security of our technology stays ahead of any potential cyber terrorists,” and “work with the Board, the Department of Information Services and other state agencies to make state computer and telecommunications systems secure.”

With a membership of more than 60 state agencies and local government partners, WACIRC consists of authorized security contacts that share the State Government Network. It serves as the focal point for meeting the following
statewide goals:

* Establish a reliable process for reporting computer security related emergencies
* Coordinate the timely incident response capabilities of state agencies.
* Provide the means for communication of alert and advisory information about potential threats and emerging incidents.
* Promote incident response handling awareness within state government,
* Facilitate timely sharing among state agencies for references to technical security-related information, tools, techniques and methods.
* Foster cooperation among state agencies for the effective prevention, detection, containment, eradication, recovery and follow-up from computer security incidents.
* Provide a forum for learning and sharing information.

Secure File Transfer

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Increasingly, large data centers and computing facilities are prohibiting File Transfer Protocol (FTP) transfers of sensitive data over unprotected networks because FTP is unable to deliver encrypted data transfer. FTP can expose not only data but also passwords and filenames.

Secure File Transfer is the solution for the safe transfer of data needed to address required levels of authentication including digital certificates.

Secure File Transfer uses Tumbleweed SecureTransport™ service software designed to work with industry-standard technologies including SSL and HTTPS. Secure File Transfer encrypts all network traffic (data and control), and transfers files using a single TCP/IP port, allowing the transport to use a proxy server.

Client software is available for various computer platforms. Files can be sent securely and received via a Web browser, with a graphical client, or with a command line client. The command line client can be invoked in a script using commands similar to the FTP command set. Data is delivered more reliably than e-mail and at network speed.

Secure File Transfer integrates with the state's security architecture while it safeguards document and data delivery over the Internet. Agencies can use this software solution to cover a wide range of applications at the same time they cut private network costs.

Secure File Transfer — secure data transmission over open networks

Transfer data between any two locations securely with Secure File Transfer. Encryption-based, Secure File Transfer delivers enterprise-grade security, reliability, scalability and performance at competitive pricing. Using the Tumbleweed product, Secure File Transfer is a turnkey, field-tested solution that works in large production environments, and guarantees that data transmissions will remain secure traveling across open networks.

Benefits of using Secure File Transfer

* Transfer data between any two locations securely
* Available to state, local and county governments
* Requires only a Web browser
* Complete automated transfers with a client
* Meets Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements for transfer of sensitive data
* Provides userid password protection and encrypted login process
* Offers firewall-protected servers
* Transfer to and from almost any type of computer including the DIS IBM and Unisys mainframes

Secure Gateway Services: Fortress Anonymous

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This security service is the best choice when it’s important to protect the source of an online service or Web site, but your agency doesn’t need to know the user’s identity before he or she uses the service. The information accessed is public data and there is no need to verify the identity of the person accessing the data, or your
agency may provide its own user authentication.

Fortress Anonymous protects the identity of where the service is hosted for many services that are broadly available to the public, such as the Unemployment Claims Application, the Division of Child Support New Hire Reporting program and the personalized license plate lookup service.

Fortress Anonymous Functionality:

* Real-time translation of application URL's avoiding outsider recoding of applications to work with Fortress Anonymous.
* Real-time online customer registration and maintenance of anonymous applications.
* A replicated, actively load balanced production environment to support automated registration and setup for public applications.
* Includes development, system test, production, and customer test environments.
* A production system targeted at 24x7 availability via a load-balanced configuration. Technical staff members are on call 24 hours a day to resolve any system problems with the production environment.
* A customer test environment is targeted at 8AM to 5PM workday availability. (Subject to occasional temporary outages due to testing of new applications and troubleshooting customer problems).