Regardless of the purpose of your website, you always want it to be user-friendly. There are all types of specializations available in this smarter world. For any professional reasons of acquiring a web identity through a website that’s intended to achieve a great user experience, I guide you straight over to the relevant specialization dealing with web design and development as it makes more sense than pouring your own sweat and losing your own sleep behind something that’s out of your knowledge domain.

Creating a good, user-friendly website can be done only through a professional skill, systematic planning and finally its implementation. Here is the best way to accomplish this purpose: FIND A RIGHT WEB DESIGN COMPANY FOR YOU!

Here are the three important reasons why you should do it:

• Here, I am excluding those who will wait till the end of the world and have their website built up through some internal divine inspiration! Barring these, all the dynamic, thrusting minds would like to settle for no reason for their website to not get completed in a timely and efficient manner. A professional web design firm would give you no worries in the matter of work delivery and its quality. An experienced company will finish the website as quickly as you need them to and that too with all your preferences and expectations gone through.

• I genuinely find it better to have an affordable, user-friendly web design getting you quick ROI than to linger on with an unprofessional, below-the-standards, or simply good-for-nothing web design that has not had a single penny spent on it. Your professional web host will not only provide you with the options raising the usability and functionality of your website but will also make sure that everything runs smooth for its visitors. A link not working or a picture not showing up, they will be there to fix everything. Your website will always look attractive and be professional and accessible.

• What more on the brighter side of it is that you will end up having more time for you to focus on your chosen business. You will not be so occupied working with design issues that you get no time to develop policies, answer emails, manage PR, or tackle other tasks. Therefore, considering a professional web development company, your extra time will be spent making yourself more available to other serious business tasks.

My last and final word would be “resort to a professional website designer and your road will be smooth.” You will definitely get something attractive, user-friendly, and functional for your needs.

PLAVEB is a great option if you really want to set your mind free from all troublesome web design concerns.

Behind the scene

It was quick call from one of our client regarding issue that images are not being displayed on IE8 while checking their beta website. With my surprise, same site is rendering all images properly in Firefox 3.6, and Google Chrome. I tried once again with check back into the code and verified all the relevant IMG tags and it seems everything is fine.

Cause of Problem

The reason is Internet Explorer has issues displaying JPEG images that have been encoded using CMYK, rather than the default RGB encoding. Even Internet explorer does not supports other image formats like EPS, GIF created in CMYK mode.

Typically, JPG files are encoded in a three-channel RGB format.  It is possible, in some programs like Photoshop or Corel Draw, to create JPG files that are encoded in four- channel CMYK color format. Microsoft Internet Explorer is unable to display JPG files that are not in three-channel RGB color format.

Example of RGB vs CMYK images

Firefox 2.x and earlier version also doesn’t support images created in CMYK color format. You can refer below browser matrix that supports CMYK encoded images.

Solution

To resolve this problem, simply open the file in Image Editor i.e. Photoshop or GIMP, and re-encode it by copying the image, going to File > New, and making sure "Color Mode:" is set to "RGB" at "8-bit". Once the new canvas is open, paste the file, and save as a JPG.

Quick Solution for Photoshop users

Check the color mode of the image. In Photoshop, by clicking "Image," then "Mode," you can check it. If CMYK, change it to RGB before saving it for use on the web. To avoid JPG saving in CMYK, you can also use the "Save for Web" option in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, instead of choosing "Save As…" and choosing JPG. "Save for Web" will convert your image to RGB before saving.

Now Firefox 3.x supports CMYK JPG

Good news for Firefox users is… Firefox has resolve the CMYK Image rendering issue and now Firefox 3.x supports CMYK images. For further reference, see Mozilla Firefox CMYK Image rendering Bug Post in their Bugzilla system… https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44781

Browser Matrix for RGB vs CMYK Image rendering support

Conclusion

CMYK format is universally accepted format for Print Media, while Web Designing always prefer to encode your images to RGB format to avoid CMYK image rendering issue in IE. If your website’s images are not displaying in IE8, check the image in Firefox 3.0 or greater. If it displays there, it’s likely to be in the CMYK color mode. Fix the problem by changing the color mode of the image, re saving it and then replacing in your website.

First, ask yourself why do you need a web design? It’s not a display of art to exhibit on net. You, of course, don’t aim to get visitors praising the fancy of it, but you want them for a purpose. Right? You want them to understand something about you which can be of your and maybe their benefit too. Thinking this, you are in the right direction. So, what will make a website a website of great value?

Find out who and why would come to your website. This is crucial. How informative your website is for your visitors would largely state how they would respond to it. Unless they are aimless web browsers, they would like to know your website from productivity point of view. Think what would be the specific target groups. Your information, for the most part, should be more appealing to them than any web wanderers. However, I cannot stop myself admitting that great websites do happen to be so thought provocative that all those who get engaged would have not essentially come by choice.

There should be a clearly defined purpose of a website. A clear idea of what is desired by it would ease up its designing. Selling, debating, thought sharing, or anything else – if you know it well, your website design will get a proper theme to match it.

Now, do you expect people to open and study your website first for it is too complex! You can’t be doing so. Hence, experienced developers would always structure or engineer a website to achieve a great degree of user-friendliness. You need to figure out the fewest number of pages that would possibly harbor the best information. Even the navigation, menu, sub-menu categories are to be so structured that it is simple to understand.

The combination of the functionality and layout will determine the look and feel of your website. You need to get absolutely convinced that when it rolls out visiting is going to be an eventful journey.

Web development would make sense to many if I say that it is web designing, database management, content management, client-server communication, hardware and software configuration, or in other words if I say it is developing applications to communicate over some form of network that may be accessed by some client device, i.e., a web browser, a mobile device etc.

Let’s understand where do Silverlight and Flash stand in web development, how are they characterized, and how do they compete.

Position

Client-side web development skills can make use of the following set of technologies. The list includes only the most common technologies in use.

•     HTML/XHTML/XML
•     Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
•     JavaScript
•     Ajax
•     Flash/Flex
•     Microsoft Silverlight

Characterization

Silverlight was released by Microsoft in October of 2008 as a free runtime programmable web browser plug-in using the .NET framework that could power Rich Internet Application experiences and deliver high-quality, interactive video across multiple platforms and browsers. It uses XAML (text based) with a simple XML object able to output it. Its rich internet application enabling features include vector graphics, animation, and audio/video playback.

Flash was introduced in 1996. Originally acquired by Macromedia, currently it is owned by Adobe Systems. It is a frequently used multimedia platform for ads and games and more recently has been positioned as a RIA tool. Containing an object-oriented language called ActionScript, it has a control over vector and raster graphics that empower it for animation of the text, drawings, and static images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video.

ActionScript, coming from the early days of DOS, would mean adopting an imperative approach, while XAML is a rather declarative approach.

Competition

Let’s start with Silverlight. What all it offers! Silverlight supports animation through a time based model and not a frame-based. Known as WPF animation model, it has entirely eliminated matrixes. The system figures out the function just with the defined start and end conditions. It supports JavaScript, VB.NET, and C# programming languages and has an exclusive support for popular JPG and PNG formats. It allows the use of true type fonts directly. From a debugging point of view, it is relatively much more easy and versatile than Flash.

Setbacks: Can’t work on Linux. Missing features like buttons and grids affect functionality for some of the tasks. Socket programming and sound processing unavailable, useless for websites like YouTube.

On the other hand, Flash can work on Linux, and that’s a very important feature. It contains certain useful features that are missing in Silverlight such as buttons, list buttons, list views, checkboxes, and grids. It supports GIF and BMP formats.

Setbacks: Inability to work with .avi and.mov files and also to bind to models or connect to the network and obtain data.

Though not yet as prevalent as Flash, Silverlight definitely has emerged as a powerful cross browser and cross-platform browser plug-in able to design, develop, and deliver complex applications for companies on the World Wide Web. It also allows for rapid development. Its growing popularity can be measured by the fact that it has been used for video streaming in many high-profile events such as 2008 Summer Olympics and 2010 Winter Olympics.

Silverlight is a powerful development platform introduced by Microsoft for the creation of rich media applications for the web, desktop, and mobile devices. It is compatible with multiple web browsers used on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

The technology:

Microsoft's entry into the sphere of rich internet applications reflects the company's desire to extend the reach of their .NET framework. Going beyond the traditional HTTP/HTML limitations, this technology uses XAML and .NET framework to write Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications. It can be used with the JavaScript and can also work within AJAX-enabled web pages.

The applicability:

All kinds of companies are using Silverlight to build interactive applications and deliver flawless streaming media to audiences on all types of screens wherever the web works. It provides high resolution images, great pixel shade effects, videos, 3D graphics, animations, rich internet application productivity, web designing, 60+ controls with source code, and smooth streaming. All its application processing takes place on the client machine that enhances the web experience for the client and decreases server resource utilization.

Well, it supports the usual array of Windows Media Video, Windows Media Audio, and MP3 content without requiring Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player ActiveX control, or even Windows Media browser plug-ins. Thus, we get an advanced internet multimedia center where there is no need to download different plug-ins for the same application.

The benefits:

With Silverlight 4, the latest version, the users are offered many improved or new functionalities like:

• Enhanced animation effects
• Enhanced data binding support
• Rich internet application (RIA) services
• Support for Google Chrome browser
• Microphone and web cam support
• Support for printing
• New and enhanced controls such as a RichTextBox
• New hosted browser support to render HTML inside Silverlight
• Clipboard and drag and drop support
• Deep zoom performance enhancements
• Out-of-browser support features like full keyboard access while running in full-screen mode and programmatic access to the local document folder of a user.

Progress path:

Though newer than its contemporary technologies Adobe Flash/Flex and AJAX, Silverlight promises to serve a good future to internet applications.