A Day of the Dog
G'Day Sizzlers!
First a quick apology for the tardiness of this newsletter, after a careful review of our server we decided that it was prudent to send out a very bare bones subscription notice that should make it through to most subscribers. Also we have noticed that many of you are using Earthlink as your provider. If you are using their Spam Filtering system please pre authorize the Sizzler to be received. It would be very time intensive to do all of then by hand to reply and put the "We are a Real Person" numbers in. These spam filtering systems seem to work very well however are you receiving what you want to receive. This is why we really embrace SPOT's coming. Everyone that wants to know What's New, New Releases or the Sizzler Newsletter will be signaled directly on their desktop and on top of that it will be free software for receiving our feeds. Once you try RSS and load up some feed whether it is News, Weather, Newsletters, Personal and Corporate Blogs, the information as is with the web anyway is limitless.
One other issue I would like to address is that we had 5 posts to the helpdesk asking if it was really Sausage that sent out the inquiry for subscription. It seems that people have been duped into believing they were subscribing to something that they wanted and ended up as an opt-in for thing that they didn't consider very nice.
To quote from last weeks Sizzler:-
"Where does this leave RSS? Is this syndication architecture really as useful and important as the RSS advocates claim? Well, let me put it this way. In the 1990's the world was turned upside down by a web based tool called the "search engine". This gave everyday people the ability to sift through huge droves of information in a matter of minutes. Thanks to the power of RSS
syndication, people can now do it in a matter of seconds. You be the judge." -
TM
What a week !!! Thank-you all for your orders it's been quite
overwhelming. Life is a learning experience, right? One of the first
things that we didn't expect was that approximately 3000 HotDog
registered uses all of a sudden needed to change their email address
in the database so they could upgrade online. As a service to we
have a new addition to the helpdesk, it is curiously called Update
Your Email Address. Hind site is 20/20. Support for everything at
Sausage whether it is Domains, Hosting, or Software can be found at
http://www.sausagesupport.com/help . Need to mention a little
program from New Zealand that was really helpful in returning phone
calls and giving people dates for delivery. Castle Software puts out
a remarkable little program that can keep track of your worldwide
endeavors it's called WorldTimer 5 we purchased it and then sent him
an email to let him know we like it. So, What does Campbell Mander
the owner of Castle Software do? Being in the Hoilday spirit himself
he decided to give all of the wonderful Sausage/Sizzler people a
half price offer. You can find WorldTimer 5
here. May we have a drum-roll please. We have just received our
1500th order at 1:38 PM on December 18, 2003. Bill Viergever of
Sacramento, California received a phone call, congratulations and
upgrades for life. It's now 4:44 pm and we just received a delivery
of 1,000 more CD's. Word has come down that we will be extending the
sale till January 5th, and then it's over. Also all orders received
by 12:00PM PST on Sunday December 21, 2003 will be Next Day delivery
in case you need it for Christmas. Didn't get the last SizzlerNews
Letter? Let me tell you what it's about. If you go
here you will see two offers, both are on CD. The first
one is the HotDog Family CD Special. It includes all our software
offerings and one other that is not mentioned onsite anywhere.
HotDog HTML Publisher, what is it? It's a WYSIWYG based HTML Editor.
What does it cost you on the CD, absolutely nothing. We are giving
it to the CD purchasers as a introduction to the new product that
will release in January of 2004. Yes full registration is included
and free upgrades. The HotDog Family CD Special includes HotDog Jr.
and 20 megs of webspace with email and domain name registration.
This special was created for people that have youngsters that want
to get their first experience at web development.
The HotDog Professional Webmaster CD includes
FlashPoint and
Boomer
both flash oriented drag and drop, WYSIWYG flash creation tools.
HTML Publisher is included in this also. There are 22 programs
included in the CD delivered software and a 75% savings just for the
holidays.
These specials can be found
here.
These deals are unbelievable when you consider HotDog Professional
7.03 alone for download is priced at $99.95.
Best of the Holidays to All,
- Travis Martin
Contact me
here
Next weeks articles will be "Where we've been and where we are
going" we thought you would like to know.
Professional web design has been compared to
composing a musical masterpiece. It is important to realize that a
web site is not just fabricated, it is actually molded with a
thoughtful personal touch that reflects the ideas and emotions of
that specific designer. I have personally watched someone spend 16
hours solid working their web site so that it would come out "just
right". The dedication, that is spent on web design projects, is
truly amazing to me. With so much heartfelt effort going into each
page, it does not take long to begin to overlook the more practical
aspects of web design.
In this article we are going to examine some common areas that
designers tend to "overlook" when they are knee deep in code, as
they race the clock to make that ever so important deadline.
Eye pleasing color design-
There is no question that content is king in the world of successful
web sites. One overlooked area that is not always accounted for is
the page's color scheme. If your site colors are not pleasing to the
eye, your visitors are not going to want to come back. Keep a close
eye for background and font color conflicts. Nothing is worse than a
web site with great content, but is almost impossible to read,
because it is blinding you with a poor color combination.
Keep it simple-
Web designers tend to get "carried away" when creating a
web site. They tend to create lots of complex flash menus that lack
clear, concise text links. Perhaps they are using a ton of fancy
scripts and a large number of images, that will not be displayed
correctly in all browsers. Complex navigations can, in some cases,
be a hindrance to search engines as well. You will find that
visitors will respond positively to a clear, crisp, easy to read web
site navigation. Don't spend hours trying to "wow" people with your
skills. It does nothing but make things more complicated than they
need to be.
Readable font size and face-
A standard font size of "-1" allows web site visitors to
easily read your content. Use a professional font face such as
Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif whenever possible. Avoid using
fancy fonts like Comic Sans unless it is a personal website.
Webpage Dimensions-
One important aspect of a layout, is keeping track of dimensions of
the web page. Most successful commercial websites limit the width
and height of the webpage, so that the important content of the
webpage lies within the top 600x600 viewable area without scrolling.
It is important to eliminate the need for a horizontal scrollbar. To
avoid a horizontal scrollbar, set the page layout to expand and
shrink with changes in browser window size. Web page height ideally
should not be more than 4 scroll lengths on each page. If you need
to add more content, create a link that takes the visitor to another
page.
Limit file size-
Webpage size is defined by the total size of text, images and
supporting files, that is downloaded from the server to view a
webpage. Keeping the web page's file size to a minimum is
imperative. Both bandwidth on high volume websites and web page load
times are important considerations when designing a web site's
layout. As a general rule of thumb, a visitor will leave your site
if the loading time is more than 8 secs.
The web site layout tips mentioned above are not just my opinion.
They are a proven fact with the continued success of web sites, like
sausage.com. This
does not mean that there are not situations when there are
exceptions to these tips. Occasionally, you will have to "bend the
rules", so to speak, depending on what you or your client is
wanting. On the whole though, you should try to remain within the
proverbial borders mentioned above.
So when you are pounding away on your keyboard, feverishly trying to
make that approaching deadline. Just remember that web design is not
just about fancy bells and whistles. It is also about providing a
pleasant, easy to navigate environment for your visitors to browse
quality content that is of value to them. -TM
