Quick tips: Four things to nail down early in the web design process

By Ryan Boudreaux

 

Takeaway: Ryan Boudreaux identifies four areas where it's best to clearly define basics and work out details before getting too far into coding and design elements.

This group of four quick tips are all things you want to consider early in any new web design project. Sometimes the excitement of beginning a new project can tempt you, and an eager customer, to skip too far ahead before all of the basic details are fully worked out. Unfortunately, this can result in re-work, wasted time, or elements that don't mesh in the final product. Here are my top four areas to nail down when you start a new web design engagement.

#1 Content before code

Before starting any coding, design, and image work or getting a domain name for the new web site, it is a good idea to have the content up front. Building the site elements, layout, coding, imaging, and design before the content is like putting the cart before the horse — it goes nowhere fast. Once the content is clearly defined, then you can make the decisions on what elements will work and the ones that can be omitted, and this will save you and the customer a lot of headache, effort, and wasted time, which will also have a negative impact on the customer's budget.

#2 Branding and logo

 

In the same approach with developing the content, it is always a smart plan to have the corporate branding and logo well defined and memorable before launching thewebsite. If necessary, get the aid of a professional design firm to develop a logo and branding, and ensure they deliver a graphic that stands out from the rest and is easily recognizable.

#3 Test the usability

You don't have to necessarily hire a usability test firm to carry out your usability study, though many large organizations do, and there is nothing wrong with that approach. It always makes sense to find a group of folks who can pick apart your site before it goes live. Your test group should be instructed to find any bugs, glitches, or design flaws before you hit the streets with your new website URL.

#4 Web standards and semantics

Make sure your semantic code is set to a standard that accurately describes the content, and uses the right element for the job, for example, with effective and descriptive Class and ID naming conventions. Web standards and semantic practices will ensure that your pages are found and ranked among the popular search engines and improve the relative value of the website.

For example, many foodie bloggers were elated with the recent Google Recipe Search tool, until the discovery that the new microformat powered algorithms were excluding many of their sites, and many were not being ranked at all because their blog code did not have named element ids or classes such as "ingredient", "procedure", "amount", "preparation", "duration", "cooktime", "instruction", "yield" or "recipe" listed in the semantic code. Managing your microformats can be a daunting task, especially when having to convert them into existing code.

 

Five tips for optimizing your Internet connection

By Brien Posey

Takeaway: If your Internet connection is sluggish, try these tricks to perk it up.

Few things in life are as frustrating as a slow Internet connection. Unfortunately, there isn't much that you can do about many of the things that cause the Internet to slow down. Things like switch congestion or segment congestion (outside your network) are beyond your control. Even so, you can take a few steps to make sure that your Internet connection is functioning optimally.

1: Avoid DNS bottlenecks

 If you have an Active Directory environment in place, you no doubt have an on-premise DNS server. Recently, I have seen several instances of organizations virtualizing their DNS servers and placing them on host machines that have little capacity remaining. The basic thought behind this is that DNS does not require many system resources, so DNS server placement can be treated almost as an afterthought.

 However, your DNS server's performance has a major impact on the amount of time it takes for users to access Web pages. So it's important to make sure that your DNS server has sufficient resources to prevent it from becoming a bottleneck.

2: Use DNS forwarders

 Another thing you can do to optimize your Internet connectivity is to make use of DNS forwarders. The idea behind a forwarder is that if your DNS server is unable to resolve a query, it sends the 

 It's common to point the forwarder to the DNS servers that are owned by a company's ISP. The problem is that these DNS servers can be located anywhere. For example, my ISP resides in South Carolina, but it uses a DNS server in France. If you really want to optimize your Internet connectivity, your DNS forwarder should point to a DNS server that is in close physical proximity to your geographic location.

 If you aren't sure where your ISP's DNS servers are, I recommend using one of the visual trace route applications to determine where the DNS servers reside. The Visual Trace Route Tool is one free option.

 If you do determine that you're forwarding DNS requests to servers that are far away, the forwarder should be redirected to a DNS server that is in closer geographic proximity. If you don't know of another DNS server you can use, try checking out OpenDNS.

3: Use a proxy cache

 You can also optimize your Internet connectivity by using a proxy cache, which offers two main benefits. First, it provides your network users with a degree of shielding because it is the cache, not the user, that ultimately contacts Web sites. More important, a proxy cache can dramatically speed up Internet access.

 When a user enters a Web URL, the request is sent to the proxy server, which then issues the request on behalf of the user (similar to the way a NAT device works). When the proxy server receives the requested content, it forwards it to the user, but it also stores a copy for itself. If a another user requests the same content, the proxy server can deliver it without having to send the user's request to a Web site. Cached content is delivered almost instantly, so the result is lightning-fast Internet access for your users (at least for any content that has been cached) and decreased Internet bandwidth usage.

 The good news is that you may already have everything that you need to set up a proxy server. Microsoft's Forefront TMG can easily be configured to act as a proxy cache.

4: Secure your wireless access points

 You may be able to optimize your Internet connection by securing your wireless access points. I realize that this sounds ridiculous to anyone who is managing an enterprise class network, because all your access points should already be secure. But a tremendous number of small and midsize businesses are operating unsecured wireless access points.

 From an Internet optimization standpoint, the problem with unsecured wireless access points is that they allow an Internet connection to be used by anyone. A neighbor could potentially be consuming the majority of the available bandwidth.

5: Block streaming media sites

 You can further optimize your Internet connectivity by taking measures to prevent bandwidth from being wasted. One such measure is to block access to any streaming media sites for which there is not a legitimate business need. For example, you might block access to YouTube in an effort to prevent users from wasting Internet bandwidth by downloading viral videos.

Five tips for faster Web browsing

Takeaway: If you're wasting too much time waiting (and waiting and waiting) for Web pages to load, give these tips a try. You should see an immediate, noticeable boost in speed, making your browsing experience faster and more efficient.

Everyone wants faster Web browsing. After all, who has time to wait for Web pages to load these days? This is especially true if you're a tab-junkie like me. When you live with an open browser containing 10 to 15 tabs running at any given time, you know how crucial it is to have as fast a browsing experience as possible. But how do you manage this? Are there tricks to getting more speed when your pipe is maxed out already? You bet your sweet bits and bytes there are.

 Not every solution will work for every user, and not every solution should even be attempted by every user. However, if you like to eke out as much blood as you can from every turnip, let's see how you can squeeze a bit more speed from your browsing experience.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Use a fast browser

 Not all browsers are created equal. Some are simply faster than others. The top speed you will find, in the current crop of browsers, belongs to Google Chrome. If you've grown accustomed to Internet Explorer or Firefox, you'll notice a dramatic increase in rendering time using Google Chrome. Of all the ways you can speed up your browsing experience, this is by far the best. Google Chrome also helps speed things up by allowing you to enter search strings in the URL address bar. With this feature, you don't have to add yet another toolbar, thereby slowing down the browser even further.

2: Disable Flash

 Flash pretty much saturates Web sites now. It's almost impossible to get away from this technology. Problem is, Flash can be slow, so it directly affects the speed of your browsing experience. You can have Flash turned off by default and then re-enable it to view what you need to view. The biggest problem with this is that some browsers require an add-on to block Flash. For Chrome, you need the extension Flashblock. There's also a Flashblock extension for Firefox. Internet Explorer has a built-in tool you can access by clicking Tools | Manage Add-ons. In the Manage Add-ons dialog box, double-click Shockwave Flash Object. Then, click the Remove All Sites button. This will disable Flash for all sites.

3: Save your temporary Web files on a RAM disk

 I wrote an article awhile back on using a RAM disk to help speed up disk-intensive applications. Since the RAM disk will be much faster than your standard hard drive, using it to save all your browsers temporary files will create a faster environment for your browser. However, this solution is not for the newbie, and you will need to use a third-party to better achieve this task.

4: Get rid of all those toolbars

 You've seen them in the wild: browsers so filled with toolbars they take up the majority of real estate in the browser window. Most users don't realize those toolbars tend to slow down the browser in many ways. Some toolbars simply take up precious computer memory, while others eat away at bandwidth by sending and receiving data in the background. The math here is quite simple: The more toolbars you have, the slower your browser will run. Some of those toolbars might seem essential. But if speed is really your top priority, you will want to jettison that extra baggage for the speed you will gain.

5: Use tabs, not windows

 Too many tabs can cause problems, but they're still your best bet for browsing efficiency. How do tabs speed up your experience? A couple of ways. The first is all about organization. With multiple tabs in a single window, it becomes quite a bit faster to locate the page you need to work on. You don't have to maximize a window, discover that it's not the right one, minimize it, maximize a new window… until you find the correct one. A single window open with multiple tabs is far easier to search. This is not the only way tabs can help you. Browsers like Chrome treat each tab as an individual process (instead of a child process of a parent). So when a Web site causes a tab to crash, you can close that one tab and not lose all the other tabs. This behavior is not a standard at the moment, so you'll need to switch over to the Chrome browser to take advantage of it.