September 27, 2010

Windows Live Outsources Blogging, Migrating 30 Million Users To WordPress.com

Well it looks like WordPress just won big in the blogging arena. This is one more reason Flowering Design uses them with our clients.

You can read the whole article here.


July 15, 2010

SNAC (Social Network Account Creator)

SOCIAL NETWORK ACCOUNT CREATOR

We have released the first version of our new SEO program that allows you to create multiple social networking accounts easily. All you need is Google Chrome and you can install this extension in to your browser. Once installed you fill out your account info one time and away you go. Submitting has never been easier. You can find out all the details here.


July 2, 2010

Horrible SEO & UI

Just the other day I browsed across MSN's website and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I am guessing this is some mix between graphic designers and marketing gurus coming up with a website.
You can see what I am talking about here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38053726/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

The bottom half of the screen is taken up by a non scrolling DIV that is full of supposed social networking SEO garbage. Once again the method of not helping the user out, but interrupting the user to get
something from them, which they are going to ignore in most cases. The only thing this is going to do is drive their customers away. How can I be sure about this? Well check out these screenshots I made:

800×600 screen resolution

I love this one because you can't even see the navigation bar without scrolling or the article, only the stuff you aren't interested in. Forget being on a mobile device, ipad, or netbook.

1024×768 – standard web resolution.

So now we can see the navbar but we can barley see the article.

Middle of article

Once again we don't have the navigation menu but we have huge block to promote MSN. Instead of wasting their time with that, they should have implemented our fixed scrolling header or something similar. Why not just have some social networking icons at the bottom or top of the article to share it? What boggles my mind is the amount of money that was most likely spent developing this, only to be a total waste to users and MSN.


June 30, 2010

What is a browser

This is why a good UI is important.


June 23, 2010

Fixed Scrolling Header

We had a team of people review one of the new sites (http://www.glenbridgepublishing.com/) that we had developed and one of the biggest complaints was scrolling. On most sites when you scroll the page you lose the menu bar and you find that you often have to scroll all the way back top of the page. Using jQuery it is very easy to lock the head of your document so that it re-appears when the user scrolls down the page.This is implemented on our site, so you are seeing a live example. What we wanted to do was share how this was done.

The first step is adding the javascript into the head of your webpage:

<script>
    jQuery().ready(function() {
        var $scrollingDiv = jQuery("#scrollingDiv");
 
        jQuery(window).scroll(function(){           
            $scrollingDiv
                .stop()
                .animate({"marginTop": (jQuery(window).scrollTop() + 0) + "px"}, "slow" );           
        });
    });
</script>

The next step is adding a div around the head div that contains your menu:

<div id="scrollingDiv" style="position:absolute;z-index:400;width:100%">
<div id="header">
        <div class="container">
        </div>
</div>
</div>

Finally you need to add padding to your content area so that there is room at the top of the page for your header div.

<div id="main" style="padding-top:165px">


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