Doing JavaScript pop-up windows the right way
Some would argue there is no right way to do a JavaScript pop-up since it disrupts the natural flow and usability of the web. I would tend to agree, but like all things web, there are exceptions to this rule and it may not be your choice anyway. That said there definitely is a very wrong way to do a JavaScript pop-up, and unfortunately there are literally hundreds of tutorials showing you how to do it the wrong way and even more websites implementing it wrong.
12 bad website practices to avoid
There are many things that web designers do (or are forced to do) that are just plain wrong or annoying and should be avoided if possible. Some items listed here are subjective and will of course depend on your demographic, but over all if these practices are avoided it will make your website better. If you disagree feel free to post in the comments section. Top sites like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter etc, tend to avoid most of these practices.
Keep Reading
Why Flash sites usually suck
I’m seeing much less full on flash sites than I used too, but I seem to be seeing more flash portfolios. If your only goal is to be a Flash developer than that’s fine, but if you want to be seen as a web designer / developer and your site is 100% Flash, you’re probably not going to impress anyone.
Why Flash sucks — most of the time
Flash usually sucks because it is used in places where it’s not needed, breaks usability basics, or tries to deliver a rich media experience to people who don’t care. Lets face it, most of us are not coming to a site to see Flash animations, flashy enter pages and load dialogues; sure this was impressive 5 to 8 years ago, but most of us are over it now. I remember animating menus, playing with collision and elastic algorithms I found on the web and drooling at the newest Flash in the Can awards which are still pretty impressive. It was really cool and fun, and there are a lot of places where this will still fly if done right, your website may not be one of them.
SEO tips for Google image searching
I have been trying to find ways of increasing traffic to my site lately and part of that includes SEO. Ever since I changed my domain name, traffic has dropped off the map and Google’s crawl rate is abysmal. I wrote about this in Where did all my Google traffic go?. That said, one article keeps pulling in traffic and at first I didn’t know why. At the time of this writing my most popular post is my Eternal Sonta Review. Every now and then I give a mini review to games I really like, but it’s a small part of my blog, and rarely generates much traffic, so the Eternal Sonata review really shouldn’t account for so much traffic, so why does it?
Where did all my Google traffic go?
I learned a valuable lesson this month. Over the past year that I have built up my blog I have slowly grown my daily traffic, while still not astounding, it was nice to see it slowly growing. My blog used to be blog.imhmedia.net, but it always had my name in the title. I decided I should buy www.ianhoar.com before someone else did and transfer the site to the new domain. Anyway, my traffic instantly plummeted to about 1/3 of what it was before the name change. Google is even crawling and indexing the site much slower than it use too.
Now for some reason I thought that Google would just recognize that it was the same site, but apparently not. After searching around a bit I quickly learned that changing the name / domain of your site is a very bad idea. Now I am slowly building up traffic again and preparing a redesign, but it was a lesson learned, and luckily my site was still fairly new.
