Chico Web Design is teaming up with 51 Fifty Energy Drink to make a website to display their product catalog, purchase online, and display their event calendar!

Chico Web Design has already helped 51 Fifty Enterprises create 51 Fifty Apparelwhere they have an online ecommerce store for their apperal.

Internet Explorer has been well publicized for having flaws: lackluster performance, security issues, second-rate features, and more. When Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 7, it showed that the company was serious again about the web. Then Internet Explorer 9 followed, which showed an improvement that definitely put them back into the browser war.

But still the browser suffered from a lack of quality. The performance side of the browser fell behind other browsers such as Google Chrome, especially when executing JavaScript – a major shortcoming when many of us now spend more time on JavaScript intensive websites such as Facebook. Also, the browser failed to meet web standards such as CSS3 and HTML5, which made it easier for competitors to get an upper hand.

But now Microsoft is getting ready to release Internet Explorer 9, making it available as a public beta for testing. So far, I really like what I see.

When you first load up IE9, the first thing you notice is that there is far less of it, as the browser has been simplified. Microsoft has clearly taken notes from Google Chrome and their success, where the desire was to remove as much of the “browser chrome” as possible, such as menus, toolbars, etc. IE9 changes have made it sleek, stylish and minimalist. They have simplified it so much that there are no menus and only three icons: home, favorites and settings. The minimalist browser lets you get right to the point of browsing the web, nothing else. The only thing that popped out while I was using the browser is the back button; does it have to be that big?

IE9 default search engine is Bing, which works really well and a lot of people may stick with it. Just as Google Chrome, IE9 also has a single address bar/ search bar and, when you start to type, auto complete will give a list of suggestions for you.

When you’re typing into the address/search bar, Bing can find images relevant to the search term and include those in its suggestions. This is a quicker way to get what you want than having to go hunt down and use a search engine.

We all have a site that we visit frequently – it might even be your own site. So, with that in mind, IE9 has made it easy for you to drag the tab for the site onto the task-bar, giving you one-click access at anytime. It’s features like these that are going to bring back users to IE9. This feature allows anyone to access their favorite site by simply clicking on it, making it as simple as launching a program.

The new interface has some well thought-out little touches, too. For example, clicking on a site within your history, which is now kept with favorites, not only takes you to that site but also closes the history sidebar automatically, saving you the extra click.

The performance doesn’t even compare to the IE in the past, which makes it radically better. Internet Explorer used to be at the bottom of my list as far as rating browsers, but now I would put it close to the top. IE9 is quick, whether it’s rendering flat pages or JavaScript applications. The speed increase is definitely noticeable, and if you have the appropriate hardware, IE9 can be faster still, as it uses hardware acceleration features whenever they’re available.

Finally, IE now has support for HTML5 and CSS3, an area where they had really lagged behind the other browsers, much to the annoyance of the world’s website developers who’ve been waiting to see these standards across all browsers. Here at Chico Web Design, we know what a pain it was to develop for IE in the past, having to hack and spend more time on making it look the same throughout browsers. But Microsoft’s support for both HTML5 and CSS3 has been a big jump from non-existent to very good, although in some areas it still lags behind other browsers, such as Safari. Regardless, it is a really good start for being the beta version, and it leaves room for improvement.

Although we’ve only scratched the surface of the changes that were made to IE9, it’s clear that this a substantially better browser than all of its predecessors. IE6 may have secured the market, but it was technically poor. IE7 and IE8 were basically Microsoft working to catch up, and so, finally, with IE9 beta they are close to getting there. This new browser is unquestionably a good, solid, fast, standards-compliant browser. If IE is your browser of choice, upgrading to IE9 should be a no-brainer. And if you used to use Internet Explorer, and have switched to another browser, this would be the time to give Internet Explorer a second chance.

Most smart phones, by default, will display your website in a fairly usable and understandable manner. However, having the information optimized, precise, and easier to find, may help a potential client or customer find your phone number or address more easily while in the car, or walking around.  Keep in mind that with an optimized mobile website for iPhone or Android, you get the flexibility of quicker load times which works well over a standard 3G network.

Chico Web Design’s Mobile Website

We recently launched our optimized iPhone, Android, and Blackberry mobile website.  We kept the design and functionality to a minimum because we feel that most people visiting our website on their phones, will be looking for basic information like phone number, and address.  If they want a full experience, and are looking to hire our firm to create a web presence, I would only presume that they would be using a desktop or laptop computer to do so.  Therefore, we took the most relevant content, created a few new design templates, and created a mobile website.

Why a Mobile Website and not a APP?

This is a relevant question that I, as a business owner, debated before going down the mobile website path and here is why.

1. Cost
2. Multiple device compliant
3. No eCommerce
4. Content value

Cost
The cost to develop a mobile website is far cheaper then developing an application for a specific device. Our mobile.chicowebdesign.com took about 15 hours total.

Multiple device compliant
This was probably one of largest factors in my decision to go the mobile website route.  Do you make an app for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry?  Or do you make one for all? Since we opted to not create a specific application for each operating system, we are essentially providing the same value no matter what phone or device that you are on.  Therefore, like your Mac or PC, we are suited to handle any request by any device.  Not to mention, if someone wants to visit your site, they do not have to download, enter passwords or go to any app stores to get it. Therefore, our exposure is higher.

No eCommerce
Since there is no shopping done on our website, we decided again, to not go the app route.  If there were transactions taking place, I.E. bill payment, or product purchasing, we may have considered it.

Content Value
Since our mobile website is purely informational and content driven, this lead to the fourth and final check mark as to what to design.  We aren’t releasing a game, and we’re not providing any entertainment value other then information, phone numbers, and addresses.

If you or your company is interested in optimizing your website for mobile browsing on an iPhone, Android, or Blackberry, contact us today for a quote.

As a well known law firm In California, McCarthy & Rubright needed a website that would match the professionalism of their reputation.

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Read More About the Boys & Girls Club of North Valley

Despite the growing demand for HTML5 and its deployment by many big online players, its commercial introduction is premature, as there is no standard for the new technology, says Philippe Le Hegaret, leader of effort at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Le Hegaret also told reporters, “There is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it’s a little too early to deploy it because we’re running into interoperability issues.” These issues are particularly apparent with the video content; different devices and different browsers aren’t handling HTML5 consistently, as it’s lacking standardization.

“I don’t think it’s ready for production yet,” the official continued. “The real problem is, can we make it work across browsers? And at the moment, that is not the case.”

W3C estimated that HTML5 video interoperability issues should be fully approved within the next two or three years. Until then, officials say, Flash and Silverlight are still going to remain approved and viable web technologies.

Regardless of these issues, HTML5 is off to the races and gaining momentum with each new design. Not only is HTML5 getting praise from the big tech companies, but also by the developers who have been using it to create stunning and innovative new web projects.

But based on HTML5 issues, we are fairly uncertain that any developers will stop deploying HTML5 websites simply because officials say the specification and APIs are still undergoing changes. Certainly, the same developers who are using HTML5 now will not likely want to develop with Flash and Silverlight, or for older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.

The Basics of HTML and CSS

Since the early days of the internet, the tools for building a web site have been HTML and… Not much else. For web designers, trying to design a web site with only HTML made it repetitive and restricting. This is where CSS came into play.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets; they are files that tell web browsers how to display an HTML page. Basically, HTML is the basic framework of a web page, while a CSS document specifies how the specific elements of a page should look. CSS gives you control over the fonts, font colors, background styles, and so on, of an HTML page.

Essentially, CSS makes it easier for designers to map out and build a web site. Before CSS, designers using HTML had to specify how all individual headers and components of a page looked and acted. There were ways around this, but HTML was often misused and the web developer would have to go in and individually change every element of every page. But CSS made it less complex and less time consuming to change the styles on a web page so that, finally, editing web pages became more efficient: you could make a change to one document, and then apply the change across your entire web site.

What’s New?

Now, HTML5 and CSS3 are the latest and greatest of markup programming. HTML5’s new video element, which makes it easier to add video to a web page, has been getting a lot of attention. But that’s just one of the many features HTML5 offers that will put it in the forefront of web design, making it significant for users and web developers alike.

Flash-Free Video and Animation

So why is everybody talking about the new video feature? Well, HTML5 allows you to watch videos without using plugins like Flash or Silverlight. This can help immensely, because a plugin like Flash can slow down your computer since it runs by using up system resources. Using HTML5, however, the video feature is built right in, making the process faster and less tedious. What’s more, it’s free.

But as of now, the HTML5 video is still inconsistent between browsers. Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer 9 support HTML5 video that uses the H.264 format. But Firefox is on a different page, supporting only HTML5 videos that use the Ogg Vorbis format. The people over at Mozilla justify this by stating that the use of the H.264’s closed source nature could create possible problems with licensing in the future. Truly, only time can tell what will happen or how these “licensing issues” may develop.

Regardless, web designers are going to enjoy using HTML5 and CSS3 because it’s easier for them to create animations and interactive games without using Flash. Additionally, there are numerous games and animations on the web that are now using HTML5 and CSS3, and all you have to do is search for them. But even though these two could have tons of potential, they haven’t been able to replace Flash entirely, just yet.

Offline Storage

Some of the new features in HTML5 are helping to improve web applications, which are becoming more and more complex. HTML5 gives web apps the ability to store information and internet utilities that you can use anytime. This means you can preserve and access data through the web apps, even when you’re not online. Then, when you log back online, the web apps can load faster by using the saved work that you did offline, since the structure of the page has been saved in your browser’s cache. Thus, all the work that you did offline should be there when you log back on. Wasn’t that easy?

The offline storage feature allows you to specify which sites you want your browser to frequently cache without having to save each page. In other words, without this feature, you would have to go to each page and click “File-Save As” so that they would be stored while offline. Using HTML5, you can set your browser to automatically save certain types of pages, so they will already be in memory. This increases the loading speed when you’re browsing online, so you don’t have to wait for the entire page to load. Again.

New Design Tools

HTML5 and CSS3 help to make for more attractive web apps and websites. For example, the features in CSS3 are highly dynamic and decorative features, compared to the simple HTML page. It provides exciting, brand new features such as:

• Rounded corners
• Multiple backgrounds
• Direct web fonts
• Wrapping to the text
• Stroke and shadow to the text
• 2D transformation to the object, animations
• Gradients
• Opacity
• HSL and HSLA color
• Background clipping
• Outline
• Box resizing
• Box shadow
• Top-right- left-bottom navigation
• Attribute selector
• Overflows x and y

… And even more; all helping to create a more eye catching web page, and probably something closer to how the designer actually wants the page to look, instead of having to mimic images to get the look they want.

The Compatibility

With HTML5 and CSS3 just recently being released, the face of the web is already changing. Some the current browsers such Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supporting most of the features that come with HTML5 and CSS3, and some even more than others. Even still, most of the older browsers, such as Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.6, are not as compatible as the new browsers.

But this direction and these developments look like great news for present and upcoming web designers. HTML5 and CSS3 both provide “less write, more gain” kind of potential for web designers. This means that we can be bothered with writing far fewer lines of code, and instead have considerably more playtime with significantly more features.

In short, HTML5 Web Design is the future.

Today is a major milestone for me and my company. We’ve now moved on to our fourth major portfolio redesign steaming from 2004 when this business was officially, official. It’s pretty astonishing to see how far we’ve come as a creative firm in such a short period of time. Six years to a large businesses can be just a blip on the radar, but to us it’s a true testament to our team of talented graphic designers, web developers, and network administrators that have lead this business to it’s success over these years.

To say that the landscape of Web Design and Web Development hasn’t changed much, would be a complete fallacy. Six years ago there was one major browser, we all used “tables” to develop our websites, and the world of freemium and dynamic websites was still in it’s infancy. Today we must code for over 6 various web browsers, one line at a time, and dynamic interactive websites are the new black. Gone are the days of throwing together a “simple” 5 page website, and in with the days of “does it work in Internet Explorer 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome”?

Every great design firm must have a web site that showcases their talent and gives potential clients an idea of what they can get by hiring that firm. The challenge is how often we get to do that. In a normal year, we may work on upwards of 75 projects. Having time to update our own website sometimes falls to the back burner and has for almost 3 years. If a design firm has the time to update their website too often, it may make you wonder…”Shouldn’t they be actually working on paying clients”?

Today we launch our fourth major overhaul of Chico Web Design, a business started in a spare bedroom six years ago and today employees seven. We did not take any shortcuts on this website. We are pushing the boundaries with the brand new technology of HTML5 & CSS3. I could get into a lengthy conversation about Transitional HTML5 & CSS3, however we’ll save that for another blog entry, but just know that very few sites have adapted to this technology. If you are using an older browser such as Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 2.0, you will see a degraded version of what more sophisticated web browsers will view. The beauty of Transitional HTML5 is that it gives us the availability to be backwards compatible with all older browsers.

A special thanks to the Chico Web Design family, Sean, Brent, Ben, Ryan, Dennis, and Neil for being apart of all this and to your families as well for letting you work so hard!

Below are the four major website revisions captured. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

7 Fundamental Aspects of Great Website Design

1.Professional Appearance

When designing a website for a client we often ask some basic questions such as; what is the target demographic? What will your clients or customers be looking for? Knowing your audience or target demographic is key to help building a professional look and feel for your website. If your target demographic is other businesses (B2B), then perhaps you may not want to build a website with florescent text and technicolor blinking backgrounds. Potential clients will leave your website even if you have great content. A theme for your website should be kept consistent so every page looks alike and is easily readable. There are a lot of websites that are difficult to read due to font choice, size or color. Make sure that there is enough contrast between the color of the text and the background because we don’t want users straining their eyes to read the content on the page. You have three seconds to capture their attention. You better act fast!

2.Clear, Concise, and Consistent Navigation

If users cannot figure out how to navigate your website quickly, they will most likely exit your website. Throughout your website it is ideal to keep your navigation structure consistent. When designing navigation for your website make sure that your links stand out and do not look similar the rest of the text on the page. There should be a navigation link to go to the homepage on every page of your website. A common practice is to make the main logo a link to the homepage. The desired content should never be more then “2 clicks” away.

3.Professional Photography

“A picture can speak a thousand words.” This is a very old but true statement. Not all users enjoy reading. In today’s world, everybody wants everything right now. And there’s no better way to illustrate what a piece of content is about than a visually striking image. Making your website visually stimulating is the goal. When adding an image to your website make sure to give it a file name related to the image. Search engines like Google and Yahoo cannot read images but can read titles, file names, and alternate descriptions. Image alternate descriptions lets the Search Engine fully understand your image by adding alternate attributes to your images. These alternate attributes should include keywords describing your image. Reducing the images file size is very important because people who have slow Internet connections or people using PDA’s will lose interest if the page takes too long to load. You want to give users a fast load time by having the highest quality image and the lowest possible file size.

4.Load Time/ Page Speed

Responsive and fast loading websites make users feel empowered and in-control. You can get faster load times by properly sizing images, audio, and video. If not resized properly they can drastically reduce your page load speed. “Who wants to sit around for 10 seconds and wait for a page to load?”…Not us! The benefit of a fast loading time, from a search engines point of view, is that faster loading pages provide a better browsing experience for the user, which translates into the kind of quality links that they strive to deliver. Recent statements from Yahoo and Google about slow load times is that it may effect your website’s Search Engine rank.

5.Cross Browser Compliancy:

By definition, cross browser compliancy refers to the ability for a website, web application, HTML construct or client-side script to support multiple web browsers. It is important for your website to be usable across all operating systems, web browsers, devices, mobile devices, and any other platform that displays your website. The problem with cross browser compliancy is that there are new browsers and devices debuting what feels like monthly, yet we still have the older web browsers like Internet Explorer 6 lingering around. In order to maintain cross browser compliancy, you must adhere to standards based compliant HTML code. This will ensure the highest likelihood that your website will look identical on all devices and browsers.

6.Quality Coding Structure:

When developing your website it is imperative to make sure that it is coded properly using standards based HTML and CSS. HTML provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. The title tag is what is displayed at the top of your browser. This gives users a brief description of the content on the page. Search Engines display the title tag when listing results of a search. CSS deals with the website layout, color, font, backgrounds, and other items. CSS defines how HTML elements are to be displayed. Styles are normally saved in external [.css] files. External style sheets enable you to change the appearance and layout of the pages in a website, just by editing one single file.

7.Content:

Good quality content on website is vital. It is important that your content is relevant to your website. Paragraph lengths should be brief and only be about 1-4 sentences long. It is recommended to not have long blocks of text. The sentence length should be about 10 words or fewer. If you do have medium to long sentences they should be spread out and not clumped together. Lists are a great way to make the page look more organized. Bullets and numbered lists help keep those long sentences out of your content. Your content should contain numerous terms that are related to the keywords you wish to target, as well as variations of those keywords. Spelling and grammar should be double checked to ensure that Search Engines will not drop your rank due to misspellings. It is recommended that you or your company frequently update your content as much as possible. This lets your users and Search Engines know that your website is being maintained and that new content is added on regular basis.

Without being well-versed in the process of creating a new interactive web site or web-based application, getting started planning your site is difficult. By understanding what goes into the creation of a dynamic web site, it will become easier and faster to explain the structure of your web site in a way that will make sense to everybody involved from the designers to the developers to the end users.

How do I get started planning?

At the core of any good application is a solid structure. The structure defines all of the objects that are represented on your website and how they fit together. Objects on your website will mirror the objects in your business. As web designers, we have knowledge of how to create a useful website but not how to run your business. This model should contain all of the objects necessary for somebody to understand what your application does and the connections between the objects should provide how the application is intended to work.

The model for your application can be compared to the framing of a house. A solid frame is required before continuing construction of the house. Likewise, it can be difficult to go back and move a wall after the next steps in the construction have taken place.

By working out this model before construction begins, you can be assured that your application contains everything that you need to communicate with your users. A solid plan guarantees that neither party needs to waste time re-clarifying the purpose of the site or a specific function further down the road.

Creating a Model

Objects represented in your database can be anything that you need to keep track of. In this article, we are going to be creating a model for an application to keep track of employee hours and their activities for a delivery company. We will be keeping track of office locations, managers, delivery drivers, their time sheets and their meetings. Each type of object can contain properties for storing more information about the object. The time sheet object may contain properties to further describe the hours worked for a day such as whether or not to deduct time for a lunch break or if these hours are to be counted as overtime.

In the diagram above, objects are arranged vertically with parent objects on top of child objects: a user will belong to a user type and a location, a time sheet will belong to a user, locations contain links to both users and finances, etc.

Web applications can allow for multiple types of users to log in and be presented with different information. In our time sheet application we have two types of users: managers and administrators. Managers have the ability to log in and input time sheet hours and meeting information for their own employees. Administrators can log in to add and delete managers, their delivery drivers, and even their time sheets. Planning out these roles on the website are crucial to ensuring proper function and security.

When moving to the next steps in the design of your web site it is useful to provide estimated quantities of each object type. By giving this information up front we are able to make the best decisions on how to design the software and what type of hardware to run it on. Some quantities are easy to figure out; in our time sheet application, each employee will have one time sheet for each day. Some quantities are specific to your operation; an application to keep track of fifteen employees will require less resources than fifteen thousand employees.

Connections

Just knowing what objects are going to be represented in an application is not enough. In order to figure out how the application is going to work, the connections between them must also be defined. There are three types of connections between objects that are useful in planning your model.

One to Many

The most common type of link between objects is when an object contains links to many of another type of object. In our time sheet application, each user will have many time sheets and each time sheet will belong to an user.

One to One

The simplest type of connection is when one object of a particular type is linked directly to one object of another type. If we wanted to keep track of which computer an employee is currently using we would need to state each employee has one computer. The computer object would contain properties such as the computer’s serial number and what programs are installed on it.

With connections that define when one object has only one of another object it may seem like it would make sense to combine object types. It may seem possible in the above example to keep track of the employee’s computer serial number as simply a property of the employee. This type of oversimplification can cause problems when you want to keep more information about the computer or transfer the computer to another employee.

Many to Many

The last type of connection is when one type of object is connected to connected to another type of object many times in both directions. If we wanted to expand our time sheet application to include projects we would need to link an employee to many projects and each project to many employees.

What does a completed application look like?

Designing the site is where our expertise in user interface design can transform your model into a streamlined interaction for your users. After agreeing upon a solid model that covers all aspects of the site it is possible to make useful interfaces for your users to access your website. Your model will allow us to allow us to find the easiest way to transmit the necessary information from your website to your users and from your users back to your website.

We can begin calculating the best ways for people to interact with your web site in order to minimize input errors and eliminate confusion about how to use the site. Most websites begin with some wire frame diagrams on paper to decide what information is going to be on each page.

Our work designing the website is similar to figuring out the interior design of a house. The framing to define the rooms is necessary before deciding where to put the furniture in a room. Multiple kitchen arrangements will yield varied productivity just as different user interfaces will effect how successful users are at interacting with your website.

Our recently completed Creation Gardens Web Application provides their business with a tool for automating their time sheet system in a simple, usable interface.

After the interface has been decided upon, the site can be completed. Similar to the plumbing and electrical systems of a house, the back end system is the last step to creating a fully functioning website.