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

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

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.

But according to the long-held AP Stylebook, the correct spelling is ’smart phone.’ Many high-profile websites still adhere to AP standards, even though it puts them at a disadvantage for SEO.

That doesn’t mean you have to be left behind, though. If you want to increase your search engine traffic, consider purchasing the guide when Yahoo releases it on July 6. Domainers should consult it to ensure the spellings they register are best suited for the web.

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

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.

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:

AOL (Steve Case); Alibaba Group; Amazon (Jeff Bezos); Andy Grove; Apple (Steve Jobs); Baidu; Cisco (John Chambers); Craigslist (Craig Newmark); eBay (Pierre Omidyar); eTrade; Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg); Google (Larry Page & Sergey Brin); Infosys; Jim Clark; Microsoft/MSN/Gates Foundation (Bill Gates); MySpace; Napster (Shawn Fanning); Netscape (Marc Andreessen); Paypal; Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Scott McNealy); Tim Berners-Lee; Twitter; Vint Cerf; Yahoo, (Jerry Yang and David Filo) and YouTube.

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.

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.

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

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

5. Social media websites
Too many people claim to be “social media experts” and it’s amazing how many companies are recruiting employees with “social media experience.” Sorry guys, I really don’t want to become a fan of my orthodontist on Facebook and half the crap on Digg is self-promoted content no one ever reads. Just focus on creating useful content marketed appropriately and you will get the visitors you deserve.

8. Websites with Flash Intros
Soon to be replaced by some other standard I’m sure.

2. Websites whose sole is to share things
I’m especially annoyed by sites that think I want to email every page to a friend.

Web developers have long had a love-hate relationship with Flash. Some would build entire sites based on it, while others shunned it for its lack of Web standards compliance, high CPU requirements, and proprietary license. For most web hosting companies it will not matter either way in the short term, anyone with a website will need to consider what devices are supported by their website.

Scribd will move to a Javascript/CSS/HTML5 web application that works better with their interface.

“Why do you need a special reading application just to view a document?” asked Friedman.

Unlike Flash, which requires the installation of a third-party plugin, Javascript and HTML are built into all modern browsers and are becoming increasingly popular. Many of the cross-browser consistency problems that drove developers to use Flash have since faded away, especially with Microsoft moving closer to standards compliance with each new Internet Explorer release.

Source: InformationWeek