Web design firms Kelowna

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DotCom Media – Kelowna based web design agency

DotCom Media is a Kelowna based web design agency founded in 2000 that utilizes the scalability and the power of the Internet to develop functional website solutions for companies that are looking for ways to increase their competitive advantage while controlling costs. Working with clients over the past 12 years we know that not everyone can afford a custom branded solution, but still want a design that works for their business strategy and provides maximum dollar benefit. From that need we developed Csek Creative to provide the Custom Branded experience and DotCom Media will work with companies requiring a functional design with CMS that allow them to be in charge of costs on a go forward basis. Every company has different needs and depending where they are at in their business cycle the choices need to be available. We can now offer those choices.

With over a decade of experience, DotCom Media’s work includes web design, online software development, content management systems (CMS), eCommerce shopping carts, advanced flash and action script, search engine optimization and positioning, and excellent technical support. We meet with you to hear about your business, we learn about your services and/or products, we ask what challenges you face and what goals you would like to achieve. We ask what programs and software you use to determine integration opportunities. Asking a series of questions, we are able to determine the technical skill set of employees and make suggestions to close any identified gaps. We look at your marketing materials and your day to day process to identify any technical inefficiencies. Based on information gathered, we create a realistic strategy. From that we also can determine whether your needs can be met by either DotCom Media or Csek Creative. Once we determine what it is you wish to do, we match a technology or group of technologies to achieve your objectives and goals. We offer real solutions for real businesses.

You can contact us at 1 866 862 8010 or 250 862 8010, email or visit us at our Kelowna office at 206 – 1441 Ellis Street. Website: http://www.dotcommediainc.com

The Importance Of Images

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As humans, our strongest emotional responses – both positive and negative – come from visual cues. That’s precisely why the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” has more than a ring of truth to it. When you’re flipping through a magazine or surfing the Web, the photos are what make you stop and look. Today, the images that are most effective in capturing the attention of readers and web visitors alike can be summed up in three words: ocean, water, life.

Imagery is Everything

Those who are in the business of advertising or web design understand that developing a wonderful product or a website full of useful information is important, but it’s only one component of success. Choosing the proper imagery to communicate to the potential customer or visitor can result in resounding success, while selecting the wrong images can be disastrous in terms of sales and web “stickiness.”

Carefully selected images can help to establish and reinforce brand awareness, can help to target niche markets, and can help to build customer loyalty. Today, lifestyle photography is the primary means of conveying consumer messages -so much so that product photography is often a small element of a print advertising campaign or a web design.

Lifestyle Photography Conveys Concepts

The primary purpose of lifestyle photography is to convey concepts. For example, a photograph of waves lapping on the beach can convey relaxation, freedom, luxury, and promise. Photography of crashing waves can communicate agitation, strength, and persistence. Images of still water with stormy skies can convey turbulence, doubt, conflict, and confusion. A hand reaching out of the water can relay a message of hope or of hopelessness. Photography that depicts surfing can communicate youthful exuberance or a hip, active lifestyle.

Finding Unique, Captivating Images

If you use these types of ocean, water, and life images in your advertising campaigns or web design work, you know how frustrating it can be to find the right photography to communicate your key concepts. Most, if not all, major stock photography companies have either a limited number of images, or images that are dated. When you’re looking for unique images that evoke the proper emotional tone, it often pays to patronize smaller stock photography companies, particularly those that specialize in ocean, water, and life images. The images that will allow you to stand apart from your competition may very well come from a company that is steeped in the surf and water lifestyle.

Besides offering unique stock images, the right stock photography company should be able to offer you exclusive rights, should you so desire, should track the use of all photos, and should consider commission ideas. In other words, if you need a certain type of ocean, water, or life image, the company should consider shooting the image for you and then adding it to their stock catalog.

With ocean, water, and life photography quickly becoming the most common images used in advertising and web design, it’s important to find a stock photography company that can deliver the unique images that will give you the edge and set you apart from your competitors.

Html5 – Not Designed For Business Applications

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HTML5 – Not Designed for Business Applications

HTML5 is the next version of HTML to come along since version 4.0 in 1997.

HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language and HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of web pages. The Internet would not exist as we know it today without HTML.

But HTML is not a programming language at all. This concept is confusing to some people. Web pages rely on a scripting language such as JavaScript in order to respond to user input. Think of it as HTML being a car and JavaScript being the engine.

JavaScript was introduced in 1995 by Netscape and coincidentally, that’s when the web started to really “take off”. This is an important fact to consider before we dig deeper into HTML5.

The open source nature of HTML and JavaScript has contributed to the growth of the Internet as a whole. Source code and design ideas are often borrowed from around the web and even from competitor’s web sites. This is facilitated by the fact that HTML and JavaScript are impossible to hide or protect.

HTML5 is no different!

There has been a lot of talk about HTML5 over the past couple of years and developers think that HTML5 is “cool” and “fun” to work with. But the logic ends there.

As usual with most new technologies, there has been confusion and misinformation over when HTML5 should be used and for what purpose. We aim to enlighten you about what HTML5 can and can’t do in this article.

New Features Same Old Concept

HTML5 includes new features such as the “Canvas” element, along with audio, video and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) content, some of which replace the “object” tags of HTML4. There have also been some modifications and standardization of tags such as (a, cite, menu) but the basic concept of HTML remains the same in HTML5.

Who’s Promoting HTML5?

HTML5 was originally proposed by Opera Software (makers of the Opera web browser) and designed by the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C.

An important point is that the W3C has been criticized as being dominated by larger organizations and thus writing standards that represent their interests.

The large organizations (Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Google and Facebook) have promoted HTML5 as the most up to date technology for web development. In fact the late Steve Jobs termed HTML5 as the win-win solution for consuming any kind of web content on all types of web platforms. But it is important to note that Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook each have an incentive for promoting HTML5; each own and operate very profitable “app” stores such as the Windows Marketplace, Google App Store, iTunes App Store, Facebook Canvas Apps, etc. Protection of intellectual property and trade secrets is of little or no concern to those companies and in fact it is almost a conflict of interest.

Fact #1: HTML5 is based on JavaScript, which is impossible to protect. Yes, that’s a fact!

As we discussed a moment ago, JavaScript is the core “language” of HTML5, whose source code is impossible to protect. The most evident reason is that anyone can view HTML5 and JavaScript source by just a simple click. JavaScript was never intended to be anything more than an engine for client-server communication and re-useable web content, including menus, buttons, tabs and the like.

Developers may argue that they can mangle JavaScript source code by obfuscation and pseudo-encryption (such as “minification”, where the code is compressed and “minified”). But this is a dangerously false sense of security. Any skilled developer can reverse engineer a “minified” or “obfuscated” JavaScript application. By design, JavaScript cannot be encrypted and it cannot be hidden. JavaScript files must be downloaded in order to run in a web browser.

To make matters worse, JavaScript also cannot be locked down to a specific web domain.

The code is accessible to be hacked by any competitor. No matter how many steps are taken to hide the JavaScript, the web browser eventually downloads the JavaScript file to run it within the client’s web browser.

For comparison, hacking a Flash or Silverlight application just by viewing the source is not very easy but anyone with a little knowledge of HTML5 can do it in minutes.

The hacks of famous HTML5 games like AngryBirds, Texas Holdem and many others are excellent examples of the insecure techniques employed by HTML5 developers. All security measures are useless once the code has been obtained and reverse engineered. No matter what any HTML5 or JavaScript developer may claim, these facts are true and irrefutable!

Fact #2: The concept of HTML5 Canvas is nothing new.

As we discussed already, HTML5 is based on the same concepts of HTML4. The most useful and talked about feature of HTML5 is the new “Canvas” object. Canvas makes it easy for JavaScript developers to “paint” within a web browser, simplifying the design of applications that utilize graphics. But you may be surprised to know that this functionality has been available in a simulated manner with very little attention since the release of HTML4.

Fact #3: There is a widespread misconception about HTML5

HTML5 has been labeled as a “cross platform programming language” which is a serious misconception. It is true that HTML5 is capable of running on all types of platforms such as Windows, Linux, Android and other mobile operating systems but let’s not forget that HTML5 is nothing more than web page markup, which is controlled by JavaScript. Classifying HTML5 and JavaScript as a true programming language would be incorrect. It is a browser integrated language that cannot utilize all the features of the underlying operating system.

When Should You Use HTML5?

The answer is quite simple. Use HTML5 when you do not care about your source code, intellectual property, or trade secrets. If you do not care that a competitor may steal your source code after it has been uploaded to your web site then use HTML5. As you can see, HTML5 is perfect for buttons, menus and website specific content, for which it was designed.

The Bottom Line – Better Options Available

The bottom line is that HTML5 and JavaScript are great for a lot of things, but you can’t effectively protect anything that you develop with them. This clearly doesn’t add up if you are using these technologies for developing business applications, which they were not designed for.

If you are developing a web application then consider using Flash or Silverlight, both of which run in all popular web browsers for desktop operating system, including Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you are developing a mobile application, there are far better options for iPhone, iPad and Android development that afford better protection of trade secrets, better security, performance and usability for the end user and also allow you to take advantage of the native features of the underlying operating systems. For iOS (iPad and iPhone), use the Object C programming language. For Android, use the Java programming language.

For Windows development, consider C++, C#, Delphi or other proven languages.

Although slightly more difficult to develop with, Objective C, C++, C#, Java and other low level languages are always the best option no matter if you are developing desktop, web, or mobile applications.

Permission to Redistribute

Copyright (c) 2012 by Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc. http://www.modulusfe.com All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute the article providing this copyright notice remains in place.

About the Author

Richard Gardner is Founder/CEO of Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc. In addition to his leadership role of the firms team members, Richard is an influential member of the financial technology industry at large, a globally-respected professional trader and software engineer, a guest speaker at industry conferences and among the inventors on over 70 technology patents.

Googles Newsshow Wizard

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Google always comes up with the best toys for your website. The latest is what is called NewsShow Wizard (http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/documentation/newsshow/wizard.html) This little tool helps you build the code to embed a Google NewsShow on your website. This is a slideshow of news that Google compiles for you based on different parameters that you choose yourself before Google writes the code for you. Lets look at how it works.

At first site of the page, you will see several fields that you can fill. Among these are style (size and shape), search expressions, search topics, News edition, User interface language, and result set size. After youve made all the decisions, the code is right there for you to copy and paste.

The value of this tool is what? Not only is it neat to offer your visitors a little bit of news and culture while they view your products or services, but if you are entering the right search expressions and topics, it could draw new visitors that otherwise would not have seen your website. For example, a website like CODANKs would use the terms Charlotte Web Design or Charlotte Technology News. This would lead to news stories about our industry eventually ending up on the page. Also, if you have a new website and not much content, Googles NewsShow is a neat, clean way to spruce it up a little and add some more filler to your website.

Googles NewsShow is not for everybody. It is always nice to see what Google is coming up with though and who knows maybe having a scrolling news marquee is exactly what you were looking for to add some goods to your current web design. Its also important to mention that for javascript and programming experts, the sky is your limit for this tool. Google provides extensive information and tips on how to make this work for your custom needs. CODANK is the leader of Charlotte Web Design and is ready to help meet your needs today. Give us a call!

Points Attract Potential Customers To Your Web Design

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Graphic design allows you to combine technology and creativity to communicate ideas, information, and unique design techniques relating to the business and consumers.Graphic design attracts attention, the added value of the message, encourage readers and readability, simplifies, organizes, provides for selective attention, and encourages unity.A layout the type and graphics on the printed publication, presentation, or web portal agreement. High quality layout should comply with the requirements of the designer, the organization is truly a visual and graphic way to readers and attract the reader’s vision. Thus, the main purpose of graphic design, printing or web content, organize, plan and organize the art that will affect the market or audience.

Layout of the volume determines how quickly the readers of your publication as a way to quickly have their own form, prepared to read it.Before you decide, you can grab your readers’ attention to the master, who read it and see where to put the weight. Your design can be worthy of your audience and their appropriate environment.When innovative design of the new layout, you should really beging major portions of design: line, shape, texture, space, size, value and color. These basic elements can produce a variety of layouts, depending on how they used.As critical means of the creative process, you need to build a powerful graphic design company.

Some thing that has height and width of the form. Unusual shapes can be used to attract attention. You can basically three sorts of shapes. Geometric shapes, especially triangles, squares, rectangles and circles, regular and structured way. These work wonderfully as a form of graphic design foundation. Natural forms such as animals, plants and people are irregular and fluid. Abstracted forms, such as icons, stylized figures, and graphic illustrations are simplified versions of natural shapes used in the graphic desidn, attracting an audience.

Graphic design is visually using text and images to information.It can be applied to any media such as print, digital media, film, animation, product design, packaging, labels and information communication process. Our designers along with their sense of aesthetics to create pleasing looking designs that fit into what you want to communicate with world.To to create an effective web site, it is advisable to create a captivating graphic design great pragmatic convenience. Linked to the most crucial and decisive requirement for a website to attract enough visitors. Graphic Design, located in visually aided technology is used to allure visitors to travel to you.

A good basis for graphic design history, theory and practical application will help you hit the ground operation. There are many resources available that you can find your graphic design. Do not set your expectations to high initially, as it will take years to become enthusiastic study great.A check online presence has become necessary for each competition and lead the company to secure a dominant position in the industry. It is not only important to take into account the company’s business strategy, your website, but it is equally important to engage your potential customers and partners in the company conversation.Graphics to someone with a strong background in media, graphics, web and promotional products. You have the ability to take multiple jobs and files and prepare for: the press, vendor, agent and client.

Grey pages is too much text crammed into them, and most people do not bother to read the text heavy page, no matter how well written, and it is important that the content is. In space, the page may seem too much load and leave the viewer confused as to where to start looking or reading. To create a uniform and consistent appearance, graphics should be in the same style, as well as the common property of a relationship with them. A good rule to have no more than two types of font design, in addition, make sure that the fonts used are appropriate to the design or site, such as the use of informal or handwritten font may not be a financial site, make sure that their work to the graphics have a reason to be there and not used simply fill in the blank space.

Webx Technology is complete Graphic Design and Web Designers Company