Website owners should always be concerned about the latest news and developments with the web browser wars and Web standards. Decisions made by these third parties can directly affect how your website is presented to your viewers and whether you need to make adjustments.

Our original post centered around Apple and Google’s unwillingness to adopt the open Theora format, citing its inferior performance quality to the proprietary and patent-laced H.264. This is still the case with both Apple and Google producing browsers that support the video tag from HTML 5 but do not support Theora. Youtube has added support for it, but it does not work in Mozilla Firefox, which, as an open source browser, cannot distribute H.264 technology.

It seems dismal, and Microsoft has still added little to the discussion, although they have at least joined it. All of this, however, might be about to take an unusual turn for the better. The Theora format was created by On2 Technologies and then released as open source later. On 17th of February, their stockholders approved a merger with Google and possibly future development on open video formats. This could be good for all parties in the end.

Source: On2 Technologies

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Whether you are a multi-national corporation or an individual with dreams of having a popular fan website about your favorite actor, you have undoubtedly invested a good percentage of your money and time into your website.

Although the assumption has long been that a good-looking website and some good marketing is enough, that really only takes care of half of the equation: getting people to your website. Once users are there, will they flop around like fish out of water or swim smoothly through your site and find exactly what they need? For this you need to build a website with good usability.

Usability entails five factors:

• Ease of learning
• Efficiency of use
• Memorability
• Error frequency and severity
• Subjective satisfaction

Usereffect.com provides a 25-point website usability checklist. It is worth a read, and if your financial budget permits, it is a good idea to hire a usability expert to make your website a success.

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Templates are a great way to give your website a professional look without hiring a professional designer, but can do more harm than good if used improperly. Here are three important tips to keep in mind when using an HTML template:

1. Change the logo.
Chances are good the template designer did not intend for you to use the default logo. The right logo can turn any cookie-cutter template into something that looks original. If you don’t know how to design a logo yourself, learn how on a site like Good-Tutorials.com or hire a designer. This can often be done for as little as $20.

Continue reading: Tips for using web templates

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Webmasters, take note! Google is now in the process of launching Caffeine, a new search algorithm that will introduce some big adjustments. Among them is a new ranking feature that will change which sites get the top ranking.

Google will now put a great deal more emphasis on how often your site is updated, how fast it loads, how much time visitors spend on your site, and more. The new algorithm will also display fewer search results, but work at twice the speed as its predecessor.

What does this mean for webmasters? Once the new update is completely launched, you may very well see a change in your site’s Google ranking, for the good or for the bad. The new search is more keyword-relevant and gives preference to new content. This will no doubt benefit bloggers and hurt owners of static HTML sites.

Photo | flaivoloka

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Yesterday, we learned how to create m3u playlists to stream your mp3 files over your server ondemand. Anytime users open the playlists, the mp3 files will be played for them. But what if you want to skip this step and have the media play directly from the website? It will require your users to have some time of player plugin, and most will. It is a good idea to still provide a download option with a direct link to the m3u file.

To setup an embedded player, type a code snippet such as this into your html file:

<embed name="music_playlist"
src="music_playlist.m3u"
width="300"
height="90"
loop="false"
hidden="false"
autostart="true">


Replace “music-playlist.m3u” with the name of your playlist. Save the file and then try it out in your browser. Users should now be able to stream mp3 files directly from your website without downloading anything. Since this method still requires a player plugin, you might also consider a Flash player alternative. In the future, HTML 5 audio will also be an option.

Photo: Flickr

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Some web hosts offer an HTML editor called Site Studio with their plans. While the software can be useful in some situations, the name is misleading.

Site Studio is a web-based WYSIWYG editor. Unlike alternatives such as Frontpage, it runs completely in a web browser and does not provide a blank template to work with. Instead, users must select one of several dozen templates for their sites.

Because it lacks basic customisation options and only runs from a browser, Site Studio is not a good choice for most people. Users will find that they are severely limited in what they can do with the software. Anyone with serious web development ambitions should look elsewhere, though if you know know absolutely nothing about web design and only need a small site, it’s a great solution.

Photo | Flickr

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Unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, chances are good you don’t have a multi-million dollar website budget. Most website owners find they have to balance their resources between multiple aspects of their site, including: the domain name, web hosting, design, and content. Because it’s the most noticeable part of the site, many people focus too much on web design and don’t pay enough attention to more important areas.

These days, I see a lot of small business websites using Flash or otherwise graphics-intensive templates. While these sites look good, they are often slow to load and lack interesting content. I’ve also seen more than a few promising sites ruined because the owner didn’t pick a good domain.

If you want your site to succeed, pay attention to all aspects of it. You need fast hosting, a good domain, and stellar content. A pretty design is helpful, but not vital if it means diverting resources from other areas. You can put a fresh coat of paint on a broken-down car and it may look nice, but in the end, it’s still a piece of junk. Think of your website in the same way.

Photo | gokoroko

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Once you have successfully developed a website, you will need to perform periodic evaluations to ensure that it continues to meet web standards, accessibility guidelines, and is usable on multiple platforms. You can have the most beautiful website ever created, but if it is too slow and crashes a user’s browser, you have lost a visitor, and possibly a customer.

An easy way to test your website’s speed in the worst conditions, is to load it on the slowest computer you can find, on the slowest possible connection. The more single-page text, styles, images, and animations you have, the longer it will take for a browser to process it and display it.

There are also two website speed tool tests you can try: iWebTool has a speed test that will measure up to 10 domains at once. It will download your website’s actual pages and tell you how long it takes. Pingdom has a test that will examine the entire page, telling you the load times for each content item, including images. Both tools are useful, and after you have your results, compare them with other websites of similar size and content. Finally, make the necessary changes to your site, and reap the benefits.

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Speed Tracer is a new extension released by Google for its Chrome web browser that can identify and help fix website performance issues. It’s easy-to-use and best of all, free.

If you ever experience poor performance at your web host, take advantage of this tool. It and others can give information vital to fixing many problems.

Often times a a site might seem to load fast to you, but in reality is quite slow. The typical web user will not wait more than a few seconds for something to load, so it’s important that your website be as snappy as possible.

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Frontpage is a WYSIWYG editor created by Microsoft. Though it is now legacy software, having been replaced by the company’s new Expression Web, there is still significant demand for Frontpage web hosting.

The good news is most hosts still provide Frontpage extensions, the technology needed for the software to sync with your provider. The number of hosts supporting Frontpage will likely decline in the coming years, however, so users of the software would be better off switching to a newer alternative.

Also keep in mind that a good many hosts provide their own free WYSIWYG editors. If you don’t know HTML and only need a simple site, such a tool would probably meet your needs.

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