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Web design trends come and go the same way like fashion. With businesses and individuals wanting to look better at the eyes of their audiences, many websites change the way their websites look on regular intervals while incorporating new functionality.
The most recent facelift has taken place on Gmail and other sign in pages of Google products.

If you don’t remember, this is how Gmail looked earlier.

The trend today for web layouts is clean and uncluttered. It makes a lot of sense when you consider the information overflow that we are seeing today across many platforms and media.
Research shows that most people scan web pages before settling on an element for further exploration. Therefore, a lot of emphasis is put on optimizing important web elements that a webmaster wants to promote. However, this is a hit or miss thing. Your audiences may like or hate your user interface (UI) elements depending on their preferences, gender, etc. This is not an easy thing to overcome and on top of that, getting UI elements right is a huge affair. Have you ever heard of the $300 million button? If not, that article should be the first thing for you to read after reading this.
One of the biggest challenges in web usability is keeping people on a web page. The balance has to be perfect on content, usability and interactive elements. At the best of times, this is a tough task. Since it is very challenging to strike a good balance, what most designers tend to do is crowd too many elements on a web page. This leads to a web page that looks very busy. A busy web page is not one of the best places for conversions.
The new way of design thinking is driven by wanting to make a website look simple. This involves a lot of things. For example, some web pages have multiple objectives to achieve. In such instances, ‘simple web process’ calls for re-evaluating and prioritizing these objectives. The design process is driven by these re-evaluated objectives.
The Gmail sign in page is a perfect example for the ‘simple web process’. When you compare the two layouts it’s perfectly clear that Google evaluated what’s important for their audiences. In fact, the number of elements on the page has increased; yet it’s hardly noticeable. A good design should be like that. People have to see it only when they want to see it. This design philosophy is something that’s going to drive our web design work in the future.
If there are any websites that you like, share those on the comments section. We’d love to see those websites you like and get your feedback.
Writing a blog post is one of the most painful things that a small business holder might have to do during their already limited work time. But in the current context small businesses rely heavily on their online presence and on SEO for being visible, blogging becomes an essential tool for staying ahead of the competition.
But with limited time being utilized for 1000 different things, how can somebody write a blog post, much less a great blog post?
Well the trick is simpler than you think! Are we talking about hiring somebody to ghost write? Absolutely not. Ghost writers don’t share the same passion as you do about your business. Writing something on your own is something that can give you immense satisfaction and it can also be a good way for you to identify weaknesses of your business and marketing approach.
OK let’s get down to business. The ideal length of a blog post is about 400-500 words. If you are wondering, this post is already 180 words long. One thing that can help you with blog post writing is writing about something you are passionate about. Take me for example. I specialize in Search Engine Optimization and whatever I write about it comes to me naturally.
Don’t try to write about really complex matters in a blog post. A blog is hardly the best place for something like that. If you have a great subject topic, break it down to manageable bits. You’ll find it easy to write, you are going to find more topics to write about and your audience will love you for an easy to read and easy to remember post.
Try to make your blog posts interesting and to the point. It is always a good idea to try to engage your audience in the first paragraph and build your case from that point on. If you know anything about the inverted pyramid model of news reporting, I’m talking about that.
Also, use a couple of images that you might find for free. Try flickr.com or photos.com. You can find images that you can use for free after giving the owners proper credit for their images.
Another important thing you can do is linking back to your older posts. This works for you in several ways.
So these are a few things that you can try when you are confronted with writing something for your blog. The best blog posts that I’ve written came off within 60-90 minutes like this one which has taken me about 66 minutes now. So get cracking and share your experiences with the world (me included).
Image Courtesy – PhotoSteve101
Date: September 18, 2010
Time: 2:30PM
Place: The White Table Foundation, 1109 E Las Olas Blvd, Ft Lauderdale, FL 33301
DESCRIPTION
Learn how to build a simple dialer from scratch and in the process work with the address book and place phone calls, detect phone calls etc. Sounds fun.
More info – http://www.meetup.com/AndroidSoFLa/calendar/14745300/?a=socialmedia
Date: September 18, 2010
Time: 1:00PM – 5:30PM
Place: Sun Electronics Warehouse, 690 NW 14th Street, Miami, FL, 33136
DESCRIPTION
BeEF Framework & XSS Attacks – Rod Soto will go over the powerful BeEF XSS framework and will demonstrate how to lay ruin to applications with XSS vulnerabilities and the users who are unfortunate enough to execute them.
Date: Saturday September 18, 2010
Place: Alvin Sherman Library – Nova Southeastern University – http://www.nova.edu/overview/libraries.html
DESCRIPTION
FLUX is hosting a Software Freedom Day to coincide with other SFD events. SFD Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) events will be held globally on the 18th.
Date: September 16, 2010
Time: 6:30PM – 9:00PM
Place: Wyndham Gardens Hotel Boca Raton, 1950 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431
DESCRIPTION
Celebrate the One Year Anniversary of New Tech Community – This event is free and open to the public – registration is required.
Date: Thursday September 16, 2010
Time: 7:30PM
Place: UM College of Arts & Sciences Gallery, 1210 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables, FL
DESCRIPTION
Speakers Ivan Mladenovic will be presenting on steps he’s taken to build his web and technology services company. Bryce Kerley co-organizer of the Miami Ruby Brigade will present a high level overview of what’s new in Ruby on Rails 3
When: August 19, 2010
Time: 6:30PM
Where: Wyndham Garden Hotel, Boca Raton, 1950 Glades Rd, Boca Raton, FL
DESCRIPTION:
’10 Key Elements of a Startup’ Presentation by Seth Elliot and Panel Discussion
Startup Founders and Partners Panelists
Seth Elliot
Alex de Carvalho
Ulises I. Orozco
Ryan Abbott
Seth Elliot
• Founder and Author of The Unchained Entrepreneur – Write regular articles offering tips and techniques on how to start, build, grow and finance entrepreneurial ventures.
Join the team at “The Groove Spot” on Thursday at 7:30pm for this month Refresh Miami where they will have two great presentations that will help to be iPad-ready.
First Damian Montero will present “How to Make Your Website iPad Friendly,” showing how to leverage HTML5 in order to play videos and more on the portable device.
The second presentation is by Luciano Ibias, COO of Zila Networks, the company behind the successful Friends Around Me, who will talk about “iPad App in a Week: How To Port Your App From iPhone To iPad.”
Follow the April speakers on Twitter:
Damian Montero @damianmontero
Luciano Ibias @ibias
Please RSVP Via Facebook
iPad Crash Course
Date: Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Grove Spot
3324 Virginia Street
Miami, FL 33133
Time: 7.30 PM
The South Florida User Experience Group will be celebrating its two year anniversary this month. This meet-up will be a good mixer for all the new people who have joined the South Florida User Experience Group in the last few months. Attendees are welcome to bring any site to put in front of the group and open it up for comments and suggestions.
This month’s presentation will be on remote automated testing: How to do it, what the benefits are, popular tools etc. This is going to be a great tool for anyone who works freelance or designs websites on their own. Testing can be an invaluable method for inspection into your sites usability. To do this, there will also be a demo of the Loop11 software, a great product for remote automated testing. The Loop11 competition will be launched while the meet-up and the details of the prize worth $1750 will be revealed as well!
Where
Panera Bread
1762 North Federal Hwy
Ft. Lauderdale FL 33305
954-567-5925
When
Thursday, April 29, 2010 7:00 PM