We've learned from our work with SharePoint for various medical devices clients that creating "pretty" functionality means thinking quite a long way past "Out of the box" and applying some "outside of the box" approaches. Content Formula have developed several good looking and interactive applications using a combination of Flash, JQuery and HTML/CSS. None of these required any SharePoint development, instead using standard SharePoint features and some creativity from our developers! Because of this, they cost our clients a lot less to develop than if we'd used the in-house development team.

This is just a little taste of the sort of things you can create with some good SharePoint knowledge, lateral thinking and just a dash of wizardry. Read on...

No, not that Flash.

Flash receives a fair amount of criticism these days. Steve Jobs and Apple would have you believe that it’s game over for the adaptable web veteran, but Adobe are sticking to their guns. Who’s right?

No Flash on the iPhone or iPad

Flash is notable by its absence on Apple’s popular mobile devices the iPhone and the iPad. Many thought this was a strange omission initially (myself included). Apple recently posted a statement was posted on their website explaining their position. Read on…

Is your site missing out on potential eyeballs, just because they’re accessing it using a mobile device? Native interface elements that feel familiar to handheld device users can easily be implemented by combining two standards-compliant techniques and directing your visitors to a specially formatted version of your site or blog.

As long as 10 years ago, web standards champions the W3C afforded the web designer a way to optimise their layouts for handheld devices, however the methodology was little known and was implemented even less-so.

The advent of touch screen devices has changed the way users interact with the mobile web, and manufacturers have, to varied degrees, enhanced their built-in browsers to meet the new requirements.

I highly recommend you get around to doing this for your site or blog. We’re not just pandering to Apple device users here – the UI controls will cascade gracefully to other brand devices, whether they incorporate a touch-screen or not. Using a variety of design and coding techniques you can catch that huge cluster of mobile web users and keep them returning. Read on…

Last week, Facebook revealed their latest tool to help webmasters “Socialise” their sites – Facebook Open Graph.

Open Graph is Facebook’s latest foray into search engine functionality and if all else fails, it’s best to think of it simply as the first step towards a social search engine. Facebook is hoping that as people browse the web they will “like” pages by clicking a Facebook button which then informs their friends via Facebook.

Open Graph will enable sites which you’ve never been to before display recommendations and information tailored for your tastes based on what you or your friends have previously “liked”. At surface level then this is just a slightly more powerful version of those buttons you see around the web which enable you to share stuff you like with your friends. But the story of Open Graph is going to be so much more than that.

Read on…

Recent Google Webmaster Blog posts highlight the new features in Google’s Webmaster Tools which webmasters and site owners can use to submit information to Google. Also highlighted is the need for businesses to keep an eye on what the search engines are asking them to do, else they risk being left behind their more savvy competitors!

I will be concentrating on Google here, but we can apply the below to other search engines.

A lot of people will already know the basics of SEO

• Create page titles which carry information, rather than just one or two word titles.
• Create the page content & copy with audience and keywords in mind.
• Structure the page using headings, paragraphs and lists in the code.
• Give images descriptive alt text and titles.
• Add metadata descriptions to your page. (This is becoming less and less important, but it is still often used on the search engine results page!)

Following the above guidelines goes a long way to achieving a good ranking on any search engine you care to mention, but any SEO consultant will be at pains to tell you that there’s a lot more you can do.

Read on…

In his book, A Technique for Producing Ideas, the advertising creative James Webb Young proposes a simple 5-step process:

• Gather research and materials
• Go through the materials and allow the mind to “digest” them, generating tentative or partial ideas
• Walk away from your thinking to go and do something completely different and relaxing
• Allow the idea to come to you passively (this could happen anywhere and at any time)
• Revisit your idea in the cold light of day and refine it

The process has been lauded by many creatives inside and outside the ad industry. Even though the book was published in 1965, you’ll see from recent reviews on Amazon that it is considered to be just as relevant today as it ever was. However, what if you are trying to generate ideas for a website? I am not talking about ideas for a simple brochureware website, but a site that truly engages its audience and actively draws them to visit it. Does Young’s technique still apply for generating website ideas?

Read on…

Navigation is of utmost importance to your site: visitors expect to achieve their goals in very few clicks, whether those goals relate to contact information, products, or services. If that information isn’t reachable in a short space of time, you are not only wasting your own time, but that of your visitors!

I highlighted examples of well-thought-out navigation in a previous post, illustrated by a handful of sites that were a mix of e-commerce and blogs.

Since then, we have seen a number of new trends in site navigation. We look at three of the most interesting.

Read on…

The internet has been abuzz recently with talk of a new kid in town: HTML5. There has been a slew of articles detailing the new features that this version of HTML offers and what they mean for the web, but the real question is whether or not HTML5 can topple Flash from its position as the king of rich media.

What is HTML5?

HTML is the coding language that the internet is built on. With this in mind, HTML5 is just an upgrade providing some new tricks and features as well as some judicious trimming of the fat and old outdated code.

Read on…

Usability is generally trumpeted as a major consideration in website design. What is often ignored are the results of a website losing its usability – or, indeed, its familiarity. Yesterday, a number of users were unable to log on to Facebook. Why? Because they weren’t actually on Facebook.

What happened was that, for a couple of hours, Facebook slipped off the top Google rank for the search “Facebook login”. Instead, a blog called ReadWriteWeb (an excellent read, by the way) slipped into first place. Not noticing the change, users simply clicked on the top link anyway and were taken to a ReadWriteWeb article about Facebook, which looked entirely unlike the actual Facebook page.

Read on…

Art by Kelly “Suuqin” Chan – Words by Geoff “NotWelshMan” Scaplehorn

Click here to see another cartoon from us!