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Archive for the ‘HTML’ Category
404 – It’s all about Error Handling and User Experience
September 10th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star
For those not in the know, a “404″ error is also known as a “page not found” error.
When a 404 page is encountered, many people will not make an effort to find the missing page.
While some people might hit the Back button and try again, some might just leave and move on to another website.
In other words, every 404 error is a potentially lost visitor and loss of opportunity.
But there is no reason to allow visitors to leave disappointed, so why not create a custom “404 page” that can help visitors find what they thought they’d find on your website and keep their stay on your website longer?
When creating a custom 404 page, here are some things to keep in mind: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in HTML + Technology + Tips & Tricks + Web Design | 
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Get Your Tabbed Design Right
August 24th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star
Since the time Amazon made a tabbed interface popular, web designers have been talking about the design pattern. Are tabs good? Are they bad? How do you make them?
Amazon has since removed tabs from their site, but it’s still a useful metaphor when done right. So what’s right and wrong? The Usability Post shares 5 tips for tabbed navigation:
- Connect the active tab to the content
- Make other tabs a different color
- Change the font color on the active tab
- Have the link area span the whole size of the tab
- Make sure the landing page has its own active tab
Each step is illustrated with the right and wrong way, and explained. That’s helpful. Now you can include tabs on your website without the wrath of the entire design community (you’ll never avoid all the wrath, no matter what you do). Just don’t look like Amazon in 2000:
If you’d like to implement tabs and don’t know how to do them, you can’t miss with this classic A List Apart tutorial.
Originally posted on PlanetSean.com
Posted in HTML + Web Design | No Comments »
Validate all your HTML from a Google Sitemap
August 2nd, 2007 by Blogging Rock Star
Thanks to a few Google searches, I came across a cool web application to help automate and simplify the process which uses a sites Google sitemap to help validate pages.
That’s right, validate your entire website in one shot! No need to manually check pages anymore. Just set it and forget it.
The application written by Chris Riley is called Website Validator. Pretty catchy name don’t you think?
How it works is you enter your sitemap URL in the box and hit Validate. Bam. You’re done.
Magically it will validate each page in your sitemap and report back on any that don’t validate.
Keep in mind that if you have a large site full of content and dynamically generated pages, it could take a while to check everything.
Don’t worry because remember, it’s automatic. You can set it and walk away, then come back and check your results.
I ran my own site against it earlier and actually found a few posts that needed some fixing.
I still have a couple more to clean up but with this nifty web application, it won’t take long to track the issues down.
Posted in Google + HTML + Web Design | No Comments »
