Why Wait Webs

Apple, developer of Mac OS X

Ok, it’s true. I am a big fan of Apple products. I do most of my work on a 24 inch iMac, and I find myself using my iPhone constantly throughout the day. I like these products because I’ve tried the alternatives, and I have found that for me, these are by far the best solutions. However, even though I’m a fan of Macs, I would never condone a website that doesn’t support PCs. I believe that right now, there is no reason why EVERYTHING computers can do shouldn’t be done cross-platform. That means OS X, and even Linux.

You see, applications and websites that are built from the ground up with these smaller platforms in mind don’t take any extra effort. Supporting an extra 12% or so of the market is easy to do, but yet so few developers do it. I came across an excellent article today about why game developers should support Mac OS X and Linux. But the concept extends beyond just game developers. Software developers of any kind, including website developers, should take heed to this information. Continue reading to see why.

[click here to read the rest of the article]

One of my most popular services is my ability to work with Flash. I believe in Flash, and what it can do. But that’s not what this article is about. Just because I believe in and use something doesn’t mean it’s the end-all, be-all to web design and development! In fact, Flash has a TON of downsides that I think should be taken into consideration every time you’re thinking about using Flash on your website.

The logo for Adobe Flash CS4

For those of you who don’t know, Adobe Flash, formerly Macromedia Flash (and before that, “FutureSplash”), is a web plugin technology. Developers make animations, games, and other media using any of the Flash Authoring Environments (most notably Flash itself). The end-user downloads the plugin for their browser, and then views the content integrated or embedded into the page.

Flash has been around for quite a while now, and through the years it has been used for animation, games, all kinds of other interactive media, and even full-on websites or web applications. Rightly or wrongly, Flash has been adopted by both consumers and developers as the standard for all of these things. This is evidenced by the fact that today 99 out of 100 Internet-capable computers have Flash plugin installed (statistic provided by Adobe).

Both designers and business owners alike should seriously weigh their options when it comes to implementing Flash as part or all of their website.

[click here to read the rest of the article]

With Safari now hovering around 8% of browser market share, it is important that web developers and designers test it almost as thoroughly as they would Firefox. Although the numbers don’t lie, plenty of developers/designers still don’t test Safari at all. Even those who do are easily prone to missing this one, as it’s rather difficult to see on lackluster monitors. There is a little-known issue in Safari where color in images mismatches with the CSS background colors. I won’t pretend to know the nitty-gritty details of how this works, but essentially Webkit renders CSS hex codes slightly different than it renders image colors.

Safari Background Image-Color Mismatch

Normally this background image/color mismatch is not noticeable enough to be a problem. However, if you are trying to fake transparency, and part of your image is meant to look like the background, the image/css color profile difference becomes immediately visible on modern monitors, since the background image intended to blend with the CSS solid color does not quite match up. This is shown in the image to the left, but again, you have to have a nice and bright monitor to see it. In case you’re having trouble seeing it, I highlighted the edges of the image, where the gray varies slightly, in the second image below and to the right.

[click here to read the rest of the article]

Thank you for visiting the brand new Why Wait Webs Blog.  This blog will be aimed at two distinct audiences: the web designer, and the business owner.

For business owners, I will be covering various techniques that will help your website do a better job for you.  Examples of some topics I might cover include general search engine optimization techniques, things you can include on your website to keep your visitors glued to your page, and easy marketing techniques.  I will also be covering some general Internet and computing principles that will help the less technically inclined to get along in a very high-tech world.  This section will not go into the technical side of things much at all.

For my fellow graphic and website designers, I will be offering articles ranging from the basics of web design and development to intermediate design and coding techniques that you can implement right away.  Many of the principals in these posts will be universally applicable, while others will focus more directly on certain software or languages.  Most frequently I will be covering Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

I sure hope that at least some of the information in this blog is useful to you, whether you are a fellow designer, a client of mine, or a business owner who happened on my site.  If you would like to see a particular topic covered, I’d love to hear your ideas.  Shoot me an email using my contact form, or make a comment on any of my blog posts.

Hope to see you soon!