Design Archives
By Justin
Posted on Jun 5, 2008
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Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provide an outstanding architecture on which to design and implement custom user interfaces and controls. Through the use of the XAML specification, the creation of UI's and custom controls has never been easier or more rewarding. In this post I'll be showcasing a very useful and completely custom new control built within Silverlight, the InetSolution File Uploader control.
Continue reading "What is Silverlight? - Part 2: A Custom Control Using Silverlight" »
By Justin
Posted on May 30, 2008
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Microsoft Silverlight is a brand new technology built on the heels of Windows Vista's GUI, or more specifically, the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Silverlight currently exists in two versions: version 1.1, which is the only stable release out right now, and version 2.0, which is still in beta, though its expected to be released to the public in stable form sometime in August 2008.
Continue reading "What is Microsoft Silverlight? (and what it is not)- Part 1" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Nov 27, 2007
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If you've ever tried to print something from Internet Explorer, you've probably realized what a headache it can be. Whatever you were trying to print mostly prints on 1 or 2 pages, but the right 20% of the page seems to be cut off. Sometimes your printer might spit out 1 or 2 pages with that other 20%. If you're trying to write a research paper, cut off words and sentences can be a real headache. Even if you (or your customers) are just trying to print a simple coupon, cut off information is a pain.
Continue reading "Change the way your site looks when it prints using CSS" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Oct 30, 2007
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The goal of ads on your website is to generate clicks. As marketers, we have trouble limiting ourselves to just one ad on our home page, and eventually our home pages become a cluttered carnival of ads. Each additional ad dilutes the impact of the other ads on the page and thus click-through rates decline.
Donovan and I are working with a client whose home page has this exact problem. Our new design will show only one large graphic ad (instead of the five it shows now) on the home page, but the company still needs to show multiple ads throughout the campaign period. We had to decide whether to show a single, but different, ad on each page refresh, or to use code to change the ads every X seconds while the user sits on the page. How did we decide?
Continue reading "Rotating versus Static Ads - Which to Use On Your Website?" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Oct 22, 2007
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No matter how creatively you plan your web site design, the underlying structure of (X)HTML is grid based. Even if you aren't laying out your site using tables (you aren't right? good) you can think of multiple DIVs, headings, paragraphs, and images as a piece of your grid. So, if you're creating your web site mockups in Photoshop, dragging out some grid lines should be the first move you make.
Continue reading "Photoshop Web Tip: Use guides in Photoshop to plan your layout" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Oct 10, 2007
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On the NYTimes.com website, they've added a new E*Trade advertisement in a rather questionable location that makes me wonder whether their designers are just careless, or if they're intentionally trying to trick visitors into clicking the ad.
Continue reading "Shady Advertising Motives or Just Thoughtless Design?" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Oct 9, 2007
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I was searching for live chat software to integrate into one of our websites when I found the LiveHuman.com website. The photo on their home page reminded me that it's important to test your landing page designs, including photo selections, with real users before launching ad campaigns.
Continue reading "Why You Should Carefully Select Your Website Artwork" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Oct 7, 2007
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How many times have you opened up a photo that you took on your digital camera in Photoshop and tried to print it? I'm willing to bet that you get a message telling you that your photo is too large for your paper and it will be cropped. Well, what if you just want to print some 5x7s or 4x6s? If you're using the image resize method to specify your size, you might be losing detail in your prints.
Continue reading "Photoshop Pro Tip: Resize your photos for print w/ out actually resizing them" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Sep 23, 2007
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In the age of color photos and mega-pixel digital cameras, black and white photography has become pretentious and artsy. But, good news, now you can create pretentious and artsy black and whites from your color digital photos.
Continue reading "Photoshop pro tip: Turn a color photo into a stunning black and white" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Sep 20, 2007
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Everyone wants to hire a designer whose visual design skills make jaws drop. But most people never consider the HTML coding skills of their website designer an important factor when choosing a design firm. As long as the site looks good, does it really matter how the designer constructs the HTML code? If you answered "No", you'd better read on.
Continue reading "Hiring A Skilled Designer Can Lower Your Hosting Costs" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Sep 16, 2007
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Have you stumbled across a web site or two that just had amazing photography? Everything looked sharp and professional, nothing like what your pictures look like. For some reason, your photos are always blurry.
Whenever you resize a photo in Photoshop, you are reducing the number of pixels and blurring them together. Thankfully Photoshop has a filter built in to help correct the blurring and make your photos look professional and sharp.
Continue reading "Photoshop Pro Tip: Sharpen photos when resizing" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 29, 2007
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How important is pork seasoning to an Orthodox Jew? While I'm not Jewish, my guess is that it probably doesn't appear high on the grocery list of most Jewish families. So I wondered why a company would use a pig to try to sell a kosher product?
Continue reading "What A Pig Can Teach You About Website Design" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Aug 5, 2007
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From time to time, I manage to impress our clients, as well as Jason, by using a simple technique in Adobe Photoshop to add rounded corners to a photo. I came up with my own method of rounding corners when I was first learning Photoshop over 8 years ago. Over the years I have simplified and improved my method.
Continue reading "Adding rounded corners to photos and other visual elements with Photoshop" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 1, 2007
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Ever needed a quick way to resize one or 100 pictures without a lot of effort? Here's one way free and easy way to do it.
Continue reading "How to Resize Hundreds of Pictures (or even just one) with Two Clicks Using Windows XP Powertoys Image Resizer" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 16, 2007
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High quality photography is one of the key elements that separates professionally designed websites from those that suffer from "the boss's nephew designed it" syndrome. But top notch stock photography from well-known sources like Corbis, Getty and Comstock can cost over $200 per photo. At that price, stock photography can quickly chew up a large chunk of your website design budget. To save money, some companies buy a digital camera and take a DIY approach to photography, which usually results in the obvious "you get what you pay for" look.
Before you power on your digital camera or download a single clipart object, checkout these online stock photo sources that we use to get unique, professional looking stock photos for a few bucks (US $) or less.
Continue reading "Best Cheap (or Free) Stock Photography Sources for Your Website or Blog" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 7, 2007
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Your home page is the most valuable real estate on your website, but also the hardest page to choose content for and layout. A good home page will drive visitors into your site, while a poor home page will drive visitors away. But how can you tell exactly how visitors are using your home page?
Continue reading "Using heat maps to see how visitors use your website" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jun 4, 2007
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While shopping at a local Meijer store today, I watched a frail, elderly couple make their way, slowly, to the pharmacy at the back of the store. The woman moved a few inches with each shuffle of her feet, while the man rolled at a similar pace in an electric scooter; both looked as though a collision with a butterfly could hurl them to the floor. I glanced at the other people in line at the pharmacy, and saw several older folks whose days of running marathons are distant memories. Assuming that older folks account for a notable amount of pharmacy revenue, I wondered, "Why did Meijer put the pharmacy all the way back here?". I then recalled that the Rite-Aid stores, the Kroger's and a handful of other pharmacies in the area also have their pharmacies in the back of the store. Why?
Continue reading "place your pharmacy at the front of the store (aka, design for your users)" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Mar 16, 2007
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Recently, I was asked by one of our clients to come up with a way to make one set of input fields required if a particular radio button was checked and another set of input fields if the other radio button was checked. That would be just a simple JavaScript form check, however we also wanted to use CSS to visually let the user know that the field had just become required by making the text bold as well as adding a red asterisk (*) to the beginning.
Continue reading "Creating conditionally required input fields with visual feedback using DHTML, XHTML, and CSS" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Sep 15, 2006
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Mike, the owner of www.jobsitejoe.com, attracted 230 visitors to his website that matches landscape contractors with customers in a local area. Mike asked for feedback about his website home page.
Continue reading "Site Review - simplify home page layout to help visitors find next steps" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jun 28, 2006
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From time to time we come across a client who does not have any digital files for their branding. The original designer or printer (sometimes one in the same) never delivered the source files or they were lost after being created several years ago. Many times all we have to work with is a scan from a business card or brochure.
Continue reading "Recreating low resolution logo scans as print ready vector graphics" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jun 28, 2006
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Before you begin to start switching CSS styles on your web site, it is very important that you have already developed it using structural XHTML. It is also necessary that you have created at least 1 style sheet, and for the purposes of this tutorial, 1 alternate style sheet.
Continue reading "CSS Style Switcher: A quick and dirty how-to" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on May 3, 2003
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Low online prices and special offers are great, but do they actually help you build credibility with your credit union members or bank customers? The latest research might surprise you!
Continue reading "Website Design Credibility Is A Key To Bank and Credit Union Website Success" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 14, 2003
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It’s normal for a credit union to design a web site with its current situation in mind, but the web site architecture should allow for some reasonable level of expansion. In many cases, after the web site is launched, departments within the credit union emerge that insist upon being included in the main navigation. These items, not identified within the initial architecture, appear as a visual and functional afterthought, frequently crippling usability and cohesiveness that the initial web site had.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Ten - Failure to Develop and Adhere to a Web site Growth Plan" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 13, 2003
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Something as simple as a link to a missing page can tarnish the credibility of a credit union web site. When links are broken or pages are no longer available, a reputation is at stake and business may go elsewhere. From intermittent outages by third party service providers like home banking, to loan application forms that don’t submit properly, credit unions are quick to point a finger at their service provider. In the end, it’s the member that loses faith in the on-line system. Credit unions need to be as mindful of their web site appearance as they are a clean, bright lobby. Housekeeping applies to all representations of the credit union.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Nine - Insufficient Web site Maintenance" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 10, 2003
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After a member spends the better portion of his evening rounding up financial records, placing very sensitive information into an on-line loan application and submitting all of it in good faith he receives this confirmation: Thank you for your information, expect a reply sometime soon.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Eight - Insufficient Communications Post-Transaction" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 9, 2003
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It’s much easier and less stressful for a member to walk away from an on-line transaction than from an in-branch transaction. Therefore if someone is frustrated with an on-line loan application, she’ll just close her browser and take her business elsewhere. Frustration is most often derived from unclear pathways and unclear progression in crucial forms and applications. Lengthy forms should be divided between two or more pages and present clearly to the member where in the process he is. Aside from a simplistic “next” button, there is often little in the way of feedback for members with regard to where they are in the process, how much work remains, or what to do at any point if there are questions.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Seven - Leaving Dead End Pathways During Crucial Transactions" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 8, 2003
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Clearly there is demand by credit union members to have on-line access to their account information, the ability to pay bills on-line and review canceled checks. However, this is not the only reason to maintain a web site for a credit union. Maintaining this small-picture thinking will only position the web site as a welcome mat for third-party services. Web sites need to spark interest and invite members to return on a regular basis. They need to function as a resource that members refer to and rely on to provide instructive, practical information. Members rely on their credit unions for financial advice, but too few credit union web sites deliver on this member expectation.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Six - Positioning the Credit Union Web site as a Narrow Gateway to Services" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 7, 2003
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Too many credit union web sites evaluated use navigation systems that frustrate more than help users. The worst offenders are drop-down or fly-out menus that are slow to display, but disappear quickly if the user does not exercise precise control over his mouse. Many of these menus are not compatible with many older version web browsers, especially Netscape. What members with these browsers get in return is navigation that fails to appear at all, and if it does, it flickers. Members who want to easily manage their finances on-line consider poor navigation a frustrating nuisance.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Five - Navigation that Uses Temperamental Menus" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 6, 2003
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As credit union web sites grow, and are forced onto the same playing field as banks, the need to add services like on-line banking, bill payment and credit card statements is the cost of doing business. However as credit unions add this functionality to their web sites, it’s fair to say that the term “integrated” doesn’t always exist in these implementations. In many cases, the member must use a separate ID and password for each service, sometimes up to five IDs for a single credit union web site. Add to this equation the disparate interfaces that members must learn, and you have a system that is less than usable.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Four - Use of Multiple Log-ins for On-line Services" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 2, 2003
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Think about how your member conducts business in your physical branch. If a member needs to withdraw or deposit funds, there is a form to complete. Are they applying for a loan? Another form. If they have a question, they ask to speak to a manager. Rarely do you need to teach a new member how to conduct business in person. But what works in person, doesn’t always translate to the Web.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue Two - Crucial Forms Lack Guidance" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jan 1, 2003
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Surely these forms aren’t meant to be hidden intentionally…they are simply hard to locate, buried under layers of clicks. Blame poor web site architecture, lack of growth-management, non-standard maintenance or a new term, “link decay” which refers to shuffling pages and links without proper testing. Regardless, if a member has to search for a loan application, membership change of information or inquiry form that resides three or more clicks below the surface, research shows they are not likely to use them.
Continue reading "2002 Credit Union Website Usability Issue One - Crucial Forms Hidden from View" »
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