Many of my Clients Ask Me These FAQs:
- What is HTML5?
- What is XHTML?
- What is CSS?
- What is CSS 3?
- What is Responsive Web Design?
- What is SEO and why is it important to my website?
- What is difference between SEO and SEM?
- What is a "Static Website"?
- What is a "Dynamic Website"?
- What is "Tableless Design"?
- Can you define the different types of eCommerce Sites?
HTML5 is the latest version of HTML or Hypertext Markup Language. It is currently only fully supported by a handful of browsers but the next year should see a large increase in usage. It isn’t expected to be completed until 2014, but the features that are available now are a great way to become acquainted with HTML5 and add some cool elements to your website.
Steve Jobs famously refused to allow Flash on the iOS due to the many bugs and crashes it experiences, therefore, learning how to use the more intricate features of HTML5 is going to be a must for those who want to develop apps and iOS-friendly websites. With Google rolling out an HTML5-friendly version of YouTube, many developers are starting to see how important this system will become in the near future. However, with Firefox resisting some of the advent of HTML5, developers and designers are still feeling the need to cover all of their bases when implementing new features on a website.
HTML5 is a cooperation between the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG).
WHATWG was working with web forms and applications, and W3C was working with XHTML 2.0. In 2006, they decided to cooperate and create a new version of HTML.
Some rules for HTML5 were established:
- Reduce the need for external plugins (like Flash)
- Better error handling
- More markup to replace scripting
- HTML5 should be device independent
- The development process should be visible to the public
XHTML is a hybrid between HTML and XML. XML was designed to describe data. HTML was designed to display data. XHTML is much stricter than HTML and developers must carefully follow rules. XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation on January 26, 2000. Many designers were starting to use XHTML 1.0 in place of HTML 4. Now, many designers are instead promoting HTML5.
By combining the strengths of HTML and XML, XHTML was developed. XHTML is HTML redesigned as XML.
While work was proceeding on XHTML 2.0 there are still browsers that don't support XHTML at all and so a decision was made to drop XHTML and develop a new HTML instead. Based on progress to date HTML 5 will be a recommended standard around 2014.
Abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheet, a feature of HTML developed by the W3C. With CSS, both web designers and end users can create style templates (sheets) that specifies how different text elements (paragraphs, headings, hyperlinks, etc.) appear on a web page.
CSS also controls the layout in a tableless environment. CSS can be implemented site-wide, producing considerably leaner code while providing the same visual output. Some companies have cut their monthly bandwidth consumption literally in half as a result of switching to CSS/tableless based design, drastically reducing costs.
In addition, CSS makes updating and maintenance a much easier and less time-consuming process. It is important to you that your developer uses CSS on your site for the reasons mentioned.
CSS is used to control the style and layout of Web pages. CSS3 is the latest standard for CSS. CSS3 is completely backwards compatible, so you will not have to change existing designs. Browsers will always support CSS2.
CSS3 introduces the concept of 'modules'. Modules are chunks of code that allows the specification to be completed and approved more quickly, because segments are completed and approved in chunks. This also allows browser and user-agent manufacturers to support sections of the specification but keep their code bloat to a minimum by only supporting those modules that make sense. For example, a text reader wouldn't need to include modules that only define how an element is going to display visually. But even if it only included the aural modules, it would still be a standards-compliant CSS 3 tool.
Some of the most important CSS3 modules are:
- Box Model
- Backgrounds and Borders
- Text Effects
- 2D/3D Transformations
- Multiple Column Layout
- User Interface
CSS3 is a universe of creative possibilities. CSS3 offers some exciting new features to enhance the appearance of a website. Although these features might not be absolutely necessary to the functionality of a website, users are coming to expect a website to look awesome as well as operate cleanly. CSS3 makes it easier for designs that will make visitors “ooh and aah” over them to be implemented.
SEO means optimizing your website to get the best results on a search query. SEO generally refers to on-site optimizing techniques. There a many things you can do to your website to aid it to be "found" on search engines.
How do you do this?: Attract as many people to your website as possible. The higher number of visitors to your website, the higher numbers of possible customer conversions.
How do you get people to your website?: Your website appears high on the Search Engine Results page (SERP) as a result of a user inquiry. Statistics shows that most users click on the first page of SERPs (top 10).
How do you get your website to appear in the top 10?: You must have an SEO expert Optimize your website! There is a long list of procedures an SEO expert can do to optimize your site.
It is important to you so that your website will work for you. And work FREE! You must attract customers to your website.
SEM refers Search Engine Marketing or a Search Engine Marketer. It is a form of online marketing to make a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases. SEM generally refers to off-site Marketing. Examples of this are Google Ad-Words, Yelp Ads or any other kind of advertising to direct or redirect people to your website. SEM Marketers work full-time to bring an audience (hopefully paying) to your website.
A form of online marketing, is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases (in the free section - aka "organic" - of the search engine results page). This is FREE advertising! This is NOT the PPC model.
Bottom Line: Improve your business through your website.
Responsive Web Design is a very different way of designing websites. In the world today there are more than 5.9 billion mobile phone users. Did you know that roughly one thousand more are added every minute? Approximately 40% of time spent online is now done through a mobile device, making the mobile webpage more in-demand than ever. This is the reason why mobile Web browsing is becoming so important..
When smart phones started becoming a prevalent tool web owners realized they wanted versions of their websites that scaled down to fit the smaller smart phone format. So they might have a site designed for viewing on a standard desktop or laptop computer and a site designed for vertical viewing on an iPhone. Every website would have their normal 'desktop' version of their site, and as a bonus, a 'mobile' version. Designers soon asked the question what about tablets, iPads, netbooks, Kindles, or over-scaled, large monitors, etc? We need versions for those too don't we?
In May 2010, Ethan Marcotte of A List Apart wrote an article titled Responsive Web Design. Essentially, the article proposed addressing the ever-changing landscape of devices, browsers, screen sizes and orientations by creating flexible, fluid and adaptive Web sites. Instead of responding to today's needs for a desktop Web version adapted to the most common screen resolution, along with a particular mobile version (often specific to a single mobile device), the idea is to approach the issue the other way around: use flexible and fluid layouts that adapt to almost any screen.
Taking the user's needs into account doesn't just mean adapting your content to the screen size. It also means thinking about what that mobile user will require first when visiting your site and then laying out the content accordingly. Maybe you'll present the information in a different order. Don't assume the user won't need access to all the site information because she's on a mobile device. You might need to change the fonts or interaction areas to respond better to a touch environment. All these factors influence responsive Web design.
There are three technical core concepts to responsive web design:
- 1. Media queries and media query listeners
- 2. A flexible grid-based layout that uses relative sizing
- 3. Flexible images and media, through dynamic resizing or CSS
Truly responsive Web design requires all three features to be implemented.
- "Day by day, the number of devices, platforms,
and browsers that need to work with your site grows.
Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift
in how we'll build websites for the decade to come."
- Jeffrey Veen
Typically a website with no interaction to a database. For example it can be a simple website that is meant to inform. It has no shopping cart. A static website can even include a list of products, but this list is manually typed in - not "pulled" dynamically from a database.
A website that has interactivity. For example, a website that displays images, descriptions, and prices of products. This display is pulled automatically from a database. The website requires programming to achieve this. Further, these products may be tied into a shopping cart. More programming is required to add a shopping cart feature to your website.
In the past, many websites were driven by table-based layouts and font tags. While this produces acceptable on-screen results, rendering nested tables is slower than with a Tableless-based layout. Tables and font tags also create bloated amounts of code (increasing file-size), and have to be edited on a per-page basis because they are embedded in the actual HTML.
The layout of tableless design is controlled by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XHTML. CSS can be implemented site-wide, producing considerably leaner code while providing the same visual output. Some companies have cut their monthly bandwidth consumption literally in half as a result of switching to CSS/tableless based design, drastically reducing costs.
In addition, CSS makes updating and maintenance a much easier and less time-consuming process.
Therefore, the use of TABLE for layout and stylistic purposes should not be used in favor of stylesheets. It is generally replaced by using DIV tags.
Different Types of eCommerce:
eCommerce: Ecommerce is selling and buying goods and services over the Internet. It includes: consumers using the Internet to purchase goods and services online (B2C); as well as businesses selling and communicating with other businesses through the Internet. (B2B) As well as Consumer to Consumer (C2C). Required components include a secure server, a payment processing system and shopping cart software.
OS Commerce: osCommerce (for "Open Source Commerce") is a powerful e-commerce and full-featured online store-management software program. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. It is available for free under the GNU General Public License. Websites created with osCommerce can be easily maintained and administered by a non-technical person using the Administrative interface and a web browser. visit their website
CRE Loaded OS Commerce: (ready made on-line shop) CRE Loaded or just 'Loaded Commerce' is a content management program for creating online shops and Mobile Responsive E-commerce Sites. It is Open Source. Loaded Commerce is derived from another shopping cart called osCommerce - it has inherited all of its features and has added many more. visit their website