YouTube was among the first big brands which decided to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 and today Google joined the IE6 ban. Like many others Google is using more and more Javascript technology to realize Rich Internet Applications (RIA). The main issue is that JavaScript is not supported in the same way by different browsers and especially preparing a working Internet application for IE6 is a time consuming trial and error challenge.

Last week Dell announced they earned over $6.5 million through Twitter alone. This message gained a lot of (social) media attention. But I doubt the credits of the success should go to Twitter alone. Dell is putting a lot of effort in social media like their blog, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and multiple Twitter accounts. Their social media effort generated this additional turnover not Twitter. Unfortunately till now Dell is the only good example of a successful social media strategy.

The adoption of social media is increasing at high speed. You only have to watch the impressive increase of Twitter and Facebook accounts. They offer both new opportunities and challenges to stand above the crowd. If you listen to all the advice there is hardly any way to escape from it. On the other hand the group of users is still rather small. Besides many accounts are hardly used and there is a big group of very passive users. Depending on your type of business this means you have to analyze carefully where you can meet your potential clients. Because there is still a big chance you have to meet them offline! The social media area might still be a geek domain.

This week we were unpleasantly surprised when we noticed the appearance of one of our clients in the Google search results had dramatically changed.

Soon the surprise changed into curiosity. It appeared we missed some Google news. Google recently announced showing the site hierarchy within the search results for some sites which offer hierarchical breadcrumbs in their navigation. And it looks like this:

To be honest it is still not clear if this is really what users are looking for. I think most users in general just click the clickable title. Besides not every website user will like that Google lets the user browse away.

Imagine you have an appointment. It’s a blind date. Can you remember such a moment?

You arrive at the agreed time at the agreed place. You look for that folded news paper or red flower.

Then you notice your date. What is the first thing you check?

Be honest what do you do when he or she is not what you were looking for? I know some friends who told me they just walked a way. Some of them fortunately sent an sms message that they wouldn’t manage.

photo credit: eflon

We are facing the same issue when people are visiting our website. Within a split second, to be honest about 4 up to 10 seconds, most people decide what they do, stay or go. But if they go in general they don’t send an sms.

The burning question is of course how to make them stay? The answer is easy: seduce them!

Have you ever thought about CSS like about a simple programming language with simple syntax. Long hours of hard work suddenly disappear. Instead of writing many lines of code you can use a simple loop or easily define the whole layout grid.

We get many requests to increase website PageRanks and to make websites search engine friendly. In many cases I really don’t understand what people are bothering about. Why would a rather locally oriented company be willing to spend a fortune for a high PageRank on keywords that nobody is going to use? To be honest I think too many companies are wasting too much money on an issue that will never pay-off. Please check the conversion rate on your website first before you start thinking about spending any money on SEO and PageRank improvements.

The purpose of using widely available frameworks is surprisingly not always clear to everyone. Some even prefer not to use any framework at all. Obviously for some it may be  harder to understand than for others. The question remains: why using Open Source frameworks is so important and valuable?

Among environmental designers, the word “css framework” is becoming more and more popular. But what is it? What are the benefits and drawbacks are we facing here. Below you will find the first part of the article on css framework.

Do you want to check if all the links on your website work correctly? Moreover, do you want to check how your website behaves when users click on various URLs and open pages in a different order? This is possible with Apache JMeter, but it isn’t easy to use for the first time. I had a lot of problems creating an appropriate test plan, but finally I made it. In this post I will share the results of my work with you.