World Cup Web Design
It may or may not have escaped your attention that the World Cup is currently underway down in South Africa. For those of you that follow football or even just follow the World Cup, there are plenty of websites to keep up with the latest information.
I have three that I regularly look at and all three for different reasons.
Read MoreGoogle ditch planned homepage change
Google decided not to fully go ahead with the homepage redesign that was planned for the 10th June. Instead they pulled out after just hours after implementing the change apparently due to pressure from unhappy users.
Google had planned to add a full page background picture, one that changes daily, to highlight their latest ‘customisable’ options. This also seemed another step for Google to look even more like Bing. The Googlers backlash started from minute one with angry Twitter users opposing the change. Google reacted a few hours later and the familiar plain white homepage was returned.
Marissa Mayer, Google Search Vice President said, “”We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it, in the form of a link on our home page,” Marissa continued “Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our home page.”
For those of you, which includes me that actually LIKED the change you don’t need to worry. Look for the ‘Change background image’ link in the bottom left of the screen. You will need to be signed in to see this; also, if you’re in iGoogle you will need to revert back to classic view.
There are 4 different options to choose from.
‘From my computer’ is pretty obvious with the ability to upload your own image as long as it is larger than the 800×600 pixel minimum.
‘My Picasa Web photos’ simply allows you to use the images you have uploaded to the Google Web Album, assuming they are big enough to use.
‘Public gallery’ is again fairly straight forward with a range of optimized images from Google. They range from an Umbrella to your usually cityscape\Forest scenes. The sort of thing you see on wall art in high street stores. My favourite is the smiley post-it-note on a plain wall. It’s fun and unobtrusive and can cheer you up.
The last section ‘editor’s picks’ is not too much different to the previous section but whoever the ‘editor’ is must really love colour. They are pretty crazy. There is a lovely rainbow over a forest and also a really quaint looking aerial English Countryside scene. You can also choose from a few plain colour backgrounds.
Of course, you can always just use the search function until you find one that suits your style.
Read MoreGoogle Jazz
Reports were saying that on the 6th of May Google would roll out a complete redesign of its main pages according to the Internet Search Corporation.
The changes arrived as promised. Dubbed “Google Jazz” by web experts, the new design closely resembles Microsoft’s newly re-branded ‘Bing’ search engine. Last June Microsoft re-branded the ‘Live Search Service’ to ‘Bing’ and its tag-line ‘decision engine’. A large advertising campaign has followed. It contained a left hand nav and a more graphic interface.
This may have been the reason for the redesign from Google that includes everything including the logo. The logo now features brighter blue, red, and green and is now showing in a standard font without the logo and shadowing. The left hand side nav has been added that allows for differing search features and filters. Each individual option then opens for a wider range of settings within. This is sure to help the reader’s fine tune their searches.
This is now the third time in three years that Google has redesigned and this time it appears to have had the purpose of making the vast set of search filtering tools more available to the everyday googler.
Anyone for a Picnik
Yesterday Google announced that it was inline to buy Picnik, for those of you who don’t know Piknik improves your photos with easy to use editing tools, with the capability to apply and create effects, remove red eye and generally alter your photos to get a great picture. Google already own Picasa so this addition is definitely another interesting addition to their portfolio of recent acquisitions.
Read MoreIE6 to Die Out
Working for a digital design company you soon hear of web designers love of all things IE6.
When designing a site you want all people that visit your site to see it the same which is why IE6 has been subject to a lot of hacks. Google recently announced that they would join other browsers and no longer support IE6. Googles shift coincides with a lot of problems concerning compatibility and outdated technology and was/is a concern for general security and stability.
Read MoreHTML5 and the new structural elements
When HTML 5 finally becomes available and all new tags become fully compatible will be a good day. Front end development will become much more efficient to designers and will result in quicker and more clearer builds. New tag elements are in place to make the site more readable and understandable to anybody who undertakes the project.
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