Nothing is worse for an Internet user than to get to a website and have to wait a long for it to load, especially if that long load time is the result of one seemingly tiny image at the bottom of the page. Here are a few tips you can follow to make sure your website images are actually ready for the web:

1. Use compression, either of the JPEG or PNG variety. PNGs will need to be crushed in order to not be huge file sizes. Your front page should not be filled with images over 10kb (aside from maybe the banner). If you have a blog, try to keep images under 50kb. You can have users click on thumbnails to see larger versions.

2. Use appropriate sizes. If your HTML declares an image to be 250×150, the image should actually be that size. If you resize a larger image, the visitor’s browser will still have to load the full sized image, which takes longer to load.

3. Use the appropriate alt tags. In order to be standards-compliant, all images on any page should be properly described in alt tags so that visually impaired visitors will know what they are.

4. For large packs of images, use a gallery. If you are going to be displaying images in bunches, use some type of gallery or light box (modal windows). People who see the initial page will still get fast load times, and if they want to see the images up close, they can choose to wait longer.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Website owners, take note. Microsoft is releasing a new version of its Internet Explorer web browser. Slated for release in the coming months, Internet Explorer 9 is different from previous versions in that it relies much more heavily on computer hardware to render web pages with its support for GPU-accelerated HTML5.

What does this mean for you? You should install the preview version to make sure your site is compatible with the browser. Although I’m personally a fan of Firefox and Chrome, most web users browse with IE, so it’s important that your site work flawlessly in Microsoft’s browser.

Photo | Flickr

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The digital age has created many words in the English language and so far, no single standard for spelling them has prevailed. Is it ’smartphone’ or ’smart phone?’ Should you capitalize ‘Internet?’ ‘Ecommerce’ or ‘e-commerce?’

Yahoo is attempting to set a standard with its new Yahoo! Style Guide. Whereas other style guides focus on newspaper style, Yahoo is useful to webmasters and domainers because it bases its standards on what people actually search.

According to Yahoo, for example, ’smartphone’ is better spelled as one word because that’s what more people search. Sites that use this spelling are better optimized for search engines.

Continue reading: Yahoo launches web style guide

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Monitors seem to get bigger and bigger every year. Whereas 17-inches used to be a normal screen size, now monitors as large as 24-inches are the norm. While having a big monitor makes getting work done easier, you can get an even bigger productivity boost from installing a second monitor on your computer.

If you register domains on a regular basis or build a lot of websites, you probably have multiple programs open all the time. Domainers work with a lot of data and often have to scramble to make a registration before someone else. Having two monitors allows you to see more data at once, increasing your efficiency. The same is true for web designers, but they also get the benefit for having an HTML editor in one window and the under-construction site in the other.

The best part about having dual monitors is the cost. Who says you have to go buy an expensive monitor? Repurpose a display from an old computer or buy a low-end model on sale at a local store. The amount of productivity you gain will pay for itself ten times over. As for me, I’m looking into adding a third monitor to my computer setup.

Photo | Flickr

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If you’re getting started with HTML or want to create a CMS website, you might be wondering how fast of a computer you need. Most people are surprised to learn that building a website does not require an expensive computer.

Unless you plan on using high-power software like Adobe Dreamweaver, the computer you’re using now is probably fine. In my opinion, any computer with a modern CPU and at least 128 MB RAM should be able to handle website construction. You can create and edit HTML files in text editors like NotePad. If you’re using a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla for your site, any computer that can run a recently-released web browser will suffice.

An older system might stop you from installing certain software, but it shouldn’t limit your creativity.

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VeriSign has announced a “.com 25″ list of some of the most important websites, and their creators, the world has seen in 25 years of the internet. The honorees were selected by a panel of Silicon Valley elites and includes names such as Pierre Omidyar of eBay, who was also nominated in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people list for 2010.

The 25yearsof.com website states:

In the last 25 years, .com has transformed nearly everything in our worlds from the way we shop, connect with our communities, make weekend plans, engage with our government, educate our children and even how we think! So commonplace is .com, that we now take much of these daily life changes and its profound impact for granted. Yet none of this would be possible without the great minds, innovators and risk takers that made .com what it is today.

The 25 years of .com list is as follows:

Continue reading: From AOL to YouTube: Verisign celebrates 25 years of .com and the internet

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We have been covering the developments of HTML5 in the Web world, but we have not yet explored exactly how to get HTML5 video onto a website. The good news is that embedding HTML5 video is painfully easy. It only requires one basic tag: <video> . To make something a little fancier, website creators can add additional attributes.

HTML5 video will take the following format on your website:

<video src="crazycat.ogg" controls="controls">
We're sorry, your browser does not have HTML5 video support. Please download the video
</video>

There are a number of additional options:

autoplay - The video will start playing automatically

controls - Displays player controls

height - specifies height of video

width - specifies width

Once you have the video the way you want it, paste the code into your website, and it will work in any browsers that support HTML5 video. Since some do not, you should provide an alternate method of viewing the video as well.

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A relevant keyword domain by itself is pretty much useless for SEO. Search engines algorithms pay much more attention to factors like inbound links and page content than the domain name keywords. But having that perfect premium domain can be the ticket to better rankings.

How so? You can use the keywords as your site name. Say for instance I sell online Passport photos and buy PassportPhotos.com. I could name my site “Passport Photos” and legitimately ask that my links contain those keywords.

Granted, a lot of my links would be titled PassportPhotos.com, but I would still pick up some of the former. A keyword domain is the cheapest way to get relevant links in the long run.

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Japanese firm Rakuten Inc. has announced that it will acquire web retailer Buy.com for $250 million in a cash deal. The site is well-known in the United States a competitor to Amazon.

Rakuten is Japan’s number-one e-commerce site. Hiroshi Mikitani, the company’s CEO, stated:

We feel it has a great strategic fit with our global expansion. Our goal is to become the number one e-commerce company and Internet company in the world.

Buy.com has 14 million customers as well as sites for Canada, Germany, the UK, and France. Besides this aspect of the sale, owning a domain like Buy.com will be a major advantage to Rakuten if it truly wants the world e-commerce domination Mikitani mentioned.

Source | Wall Street Journal

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Question: What is SVG?

Answer: SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. It is an open, XML-based graphics format that is being incorporated in Web standards. Many browsers already support SVG to some degree. It can be used for both still images and animations. Because SVG is a vector graphics format, the images can be resized and manipulated without degradation, which is why they are considered scalable.

For example, rather than having three different image sizes for an icon, a website can be configured to use an SVG image scaled to all three sizes. Even when enlarged, it will still maintain its quality. If your browser supports it, you can view an example here.

SVG file sizes can get large, depending on the amount of metadata included in the XML code, especially if the file includes gradients and animations. To compensate for this, there is standard SVG file compression, using gzip, that is lossless and reduces file size by 50%. As browsers continue to adopt HTML5 standards, SVG is expected to play a more significant role in web development.

Photo Source: Flickr

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