This is a pretty significant change since just two years ago IE had about 67% of the market.  The good news is that it doesn’t affect search engine optimization or any other aspect of the website other than usability.

What does this mean? For eye9 Design it really doesn’t mean a lot since we test all of our sites using IE, Firefox and Opera browsers anyway (were cool like that).  But what it means is that more people with be seeing web pages as they were intended. This isn’t a shot at Microsoft it is simply a comment on our 10+ years of web programming experience and the constant tweaking & bugs presented by IE users.

This also means that less and less people are using ActiveX and/or native IIS (Microsoft) based applications. Certainly Microsoft’s SharePoint has its well defined niche in the corporate world but this signifies a trend. PHP rules when it comes to web surfing.

Check out the full article on StatsCounter.com by clicking here.

eye9 Design is a Colorado website design company, specializing in web and graphic design, web development, and seo optimization. Denver, CO.

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Here are a few things to know about creating a website optimized for Google TV.   Many of these are great things to keep in mind when creating a website for any delivery method.   The section on perceived vs. actual performance is spot on.

This information is provided by Google at http://www.google.com/tv/developer/ if you would like to read more about it.

Designing for TV: A Primer

Here are a few tips for those who haven’t designed for TV before. In a television environment, you must:

• Understand that content is king.
• Remember that TV is social. – Offer ways for individuals to use your site or apps in social settings.
• Learn the pros and cons of TV screens and audio.
• Make it easy.

Simplicity above all

Successful TV interfaces are simple in both concept and design. Very simple. Here are some ways to achieve an interface that is easy to understand and to use:

• Identify the vital parts of your interface before you start work. – Group content, controls and interactions by priority.
• Stick with one visible mode of navigation or one information hierarchy.
• Make the primary action reachable in one click.
• Avoid the temptation to use abstract icons.
• Limit vertical scrolling.

Navigation is critical

Getting the navigation right is essential for success. Users will quickly abandon a screen whose navigation frustrates them.

Remote controls, arrow keys, and directional pads

All input devices for Google TV will have QWERTY keyboards, but users will often navigate using a directional pad. Like remote controls, these limit the navigation model to up, down, left, right, and enter.

Users need interactions that are fast and easy to do—at a distance, with one hand, in the dark. When designing a navigation scheme:

Mouse navigation

On a TV screen, the mouse moves a pointer that is small and far away from the user. Mouse control is difficult.

To assist your users:

• Make each click target (link, button, and the like) large with ample padding for an expanded target area.
• Add a hover state to links and buttons to highlight when the pointer has hit its target.

A new kind of screen

TV screens and computer screens differ in canvas size, aspect ratio, safe areas, resolution, cropping, and pixel shape.

When designing for TV screens, you should:

• Avoid highly saturated and very bright colors.
• Make UI elements slightly larger, specifically:
• Make buttons and other click targets larger.
• Take advantage of the wide screen.
• Design for 1280×720 and 1920×1080 resolutions.
• 1280×720 resolution. Recommended width is 1152×648.
• 1920×1080 resolution. Recommended width is 1728×972.

 If you must choose one resolution, design for 720p resolution and Google TV will scale it up on 1080p resolution.

You can specify a property that controls the width of the page in your CSS.

Color

TV screens have higher contrast and saturation levels than computer monitors. Follow these guidelines when working with solid colors:

• Use pure white (#FFFFFF) sparingly. Pure whites cause vibrancy or image ghosting in TV displays. Instead use #F1F1F1 or 240/240/240 (RGB).
• Bright whites, reds, and oranges cause particularly bad distortion.

Even TV needs text

For TV, avoid lightweight fonts or fonts with both very narrow and broad strokes. Use simply constructed sans serif fonts and apply anti-aliasing to increase readability.

• Limit each paragraph to no more than 90 words.
• Break text into small chunks that can be read at a glance.
• Keep line length at about 5–7 words per line. Never go shorter than 3 or longer than 12.
• Remember that light text on a dark background is slightly easier to read on TV (compared to dark text on a light background).
• Target body text to be around 21pt on 720p and 28pt on 1080p.
• Don’t use any text smaller than 18pt on 720p and 24pt on 1080p.
• Add more leading (larger line spacing) for onscreen text than print text.

Sound matters

Google TV will often be connected to the best speakers in the household. Sound is not disruptive on TV (as it often is on a computer), So think about ways to use sound in your interface.

Keep in mind:

• Sounds should be appropriate to the living room environment.
• By default, the volume should be low.
• Some users will be listening to music from a player application running in the background. Provide a simple way to mute your website or application, and don’t make interactions entirely dependent on audio cues.

Flash on Google TV

Google TV is capable of playing 720p and 1080p Flash videos. For best performance:

• Avoid adding continuous-playing, Flash-based banner or sidebar ads on a page that includes a video. If you cannot avoid such ads, unload or stop them when a user starts watching the primary video or goes to full screen.
• To ensure a smooth video-watching experience, make sure your content uses only one instance of the media player at a time.
• Handle errors or crashes gracefully with proper recovery messaging.

Perceived vs. actual performance

Users are the ultimate judges of whether your application performs well. Developers may measure application performance in terms of how long certain operations take or how many instances of objects are created. However, those metrics aren’t important to end users. Sometimes users measure performance by different criteria. For example, does the application operate quickly and smoothly, and respond quickly to input? Does it have a negative effect on the performance of the system as a whole?

Ask yourself the following questions to measure perceived performance:

• Are animations smooth or choppy?
• Does video content look smooth or choppy?
• Do audio clips play continuously, or do they pause and resume?
• Does the window flicker or turn blank during long operations?
• When you type, does the text input keep up or lag behind?
• If you click, does something happen immediately, or is there a delay?
• Do other applications respond poorly when the application is running?

The distinction between perceived performance and actual performance is important. The way to achieve the best perceived performance isn’t always the same as the way to get the absolute fastest performance. Make sure your application never executes So much code that the runtime isn’t able to frequently update the screen and gather user input. In some cases, achieving this balance involves dividing up a program task into parts So that, between parts, the runtime updates the screen.

eye9 Design…Your Denver Web Design Company!

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• Why keyword research is foundational to SEO (search engine optimization)
• How the free Google Search-based Keyword Tool can be used in keyword research

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1. Search engines can index them easier without all the odd characters: & ? =
2. They are easier to read in Google’s search engine results pages, and keywords from the users search terms are made bold
3. Static URL’s are easier to use in marketing materials
4. They are simpler to give out when obtaining backlinks

Number one was by far the most important factor, as it was assumed that static URL’s improved your rankings. The other factors, while still relevant, related to appearance only.

However, Google has now turned all this on its head, releasing an official blog post that they prefer dynamic URL’s. In that article, they say

While static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls, the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.

Google regularly makes changes to how it ranks websites, though they are usually not this dramatic and far-reaching. This illustrates the importance of having a SEO optimization firm in your corner that can help keep you up to date with these important developments!

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Google was used 63 percent of the time in August, compared to 61.9 percent in July, according to figures released Friday by comScore , which tracks online trends.

Yahoo came in second in August at 19.6 percent, down .9 percent from July. Microsoft garnered 8.3 percent of traffic in August, down .6 percent from a month prior.

With our seo optimization process we focus on getting your website ranked in Google’s search results. These techniques will still allow you to gain rankings in the other search engines as well. However, Google’s dominance makes it clear that they are still the best bet.

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I am sure that a quick Google search could return a number of articles from those with similar experiences, and perhaps tips to keep from “getting burned” again. However, I want to approach this article from a different angle, that of a potential service provider.

We often deal with clients coming off negative experiences with companies who lacked competence, were dishonest, or communicated poorly. For the majority of these clients, our steady, thorough, and documented approach to setting up projects allays their fears. However, there is a minority who unintentionally sabotage the RFP process because their previous experience has left them deeply hesitant.

So here are a few tips to help you navigate the proposal process with a potential design firm or SEO company:

• Ask but don’t assume : If you have a particular area of concern, be sure to bring it up in your conversation with the service provider. However, try to share it in a friendly manner that does not put them on the defensive by assuming they are just like that last company .
  An example of what not to say: “You know, graphic design companies always seem to be ripping people off. How do I know your cost is what you say it is?”
  Here is a better approach: “Communication and clarity are very important to me. I am coming off a negative experience with a previous designer, and I know from other experiences that can be avoided by establishing a thorough scope of work up front. How can I be of assistance in creating a detailed project description?”
• Everything in writing : A common problem our clients share is that their previous service provider was constantly submitting “surprise invoices” for work they thought was in the original scope of work. Ask your service provider “How do you setup a project so that the scope and cost are clear to both parties? How do you deal with out of scope work?
• Work milestones : ask the service provider if they can break up the project into 3-5 milestones that associate a payment with the completion of a task. As an example, we have setup small design projects with 33% up front, 33% after approval of site design, 33% on completion. This gives the service provider a tangible goal, and you the peace of mind provided by spreading out payments.

Leave us your comments. What are your recommendations for interviewing a potential service provider?

eye9 Design is a leading Denver design firm providing website development in Colorado and SEO Optimization .

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