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Did you know that a site visitor forms his or her first impression about your site within the first nine seconds of a visit? Making sure your color scheme is in contour with your

site’s content and visitors, is very important. You want the color scheme to enhance your site and it’s content, not distract or confuse your users.

Colors express your site’s values, goals, and personality (as well as that of the company it represents). To illustrate, it lets looks at two retailers interfaces:

* The key to successful Web site design isn’t sophistication, it’s simplicity. Designing for simplicity is anything but simple (as if I needed to tell you that). But well-thought-out simplicity is what makes the successful Web sites successful. When you want to learn to be the best at something, do you study the amateurs or the pros?

* The best Web sites load in about 10 seconds at 28.8 Kbps. Your designers may have T1 lines or DSL or cable modems, but 93 percent of your customers don’t. Plus, all sorts of things further slow down download times. But the bottom line is that nobody is going to wait more than 10 to 15 seconds for your page to appear. Want your site to appeal to most people? Well, most people still surf at speeds under 56K, have their monitors set for 800 x 600 resolution, and don’t even know they can change that, much less how.

* On the Web, visitors look first for relevant text, not graphics. Make clear, strong text available right away. That will also keep them interested while graphics load. Use graphics only if they help prospects understand what they are looking for or if they convey information that can’t be conveyed effectively through text. And keep graphics as simple as possible so they load quickly.

* The best Web sites have simple and consistent navigation. Your average prospect will view two to three pages before leaving; so, at best, you’re two clicks away from dead in the water unless you help her get where she wants to go quickly.

* Respect conventions. Blue, underlined text means hyperlink, or “Click here,” to almost everyone. Don’t confuse anyone! Avoid underlining or using blue text for anything else. Place your navigation cues on the top or left of every page, with the same links arrayed at the bottom. Use categorization schemes that make sense (a series of tabs or something similar works well) for multiple elements.

* Make everything obvious. First and foremost, help your prospect see the information — white backgrounds are quick to download and help information stand out. Label stuff, and do so clearly — no jargon. Offer concise explanations. Always remember: If your visitor can’t find a function, it’s not there!

* Never leave your prospect stranded anywhere on your site. Imagine you’re lost in the middle of a huge store with no signs. Where’s housewares? Where’s checkout? Where’s the bathroom?! Now, how much do you like this store? How much do you want to buy now? So, on your site, provide clear navigation from anywhere to anywhere, and do it on every page. And for heaven’s sake, keep all your navigation links within your page. Unless you want to encourage your customers to leave, don’t direct them to the Back button on the browser. Any trip to the menu bar is an opportunity for your prospect to kiss you goodbye.

* The best Web sites don’t assume the client is an expert user. Technology is a wonderful thing, but Joe and Josephine Consumer are years behind the tech types. Therefore, your GUI should be simple (GUI, graphical user interface, pronounced “gooey” — the sort of stuff you won’t want your prospects stuck in). Also, never make them download plug-ins. Average shoppers don’t know how, and even if they do, why take them away from the shopping process and force them to do something else because some designer thought it would be cool? They won’t say, “Wow!” — they’ll leave. If you can’t design it into your site and still have it load quickly and do all that other important stuff, leave it out. And give your prospects simple, clear instructions and helpful tools to guide them through the buying process. (If they can’t understand checkout, they won’t.)

* Keep in mind: Visitors are looking for a reason not to trust you. Pay attention to the details: Check for typos, grammatical errors, screen error messages, images that don’t open, browser compatibility problems, functions that don’t work — everything. Then have someone else check again. The best Web sites build their brands by creating a great user experience.

* Short and sweet. Here’s what the top 100 Web sites have in common — fast download times; few graphics; little, if any, multimedia; no frames; similar navigation systems; high-contrast text with lots of white space; most links in “traditional” blue, underlined text; no background imagery; very few obvious JavaScript tricks; no DHTML; no splash pages; and a solid database-powered back-end. Simple.

Am I beginning to sound like a broken record? Good! Now, pucker up and give your prospects a big, delightful KISS.

The Flex application development process
Here are the typical steps involved in creating a Flex application:

Define an application interface using a set of predefined components (forms, buttons, and so on.)
Arrange components into a user interface design.
Use styles and themes to define the visual design.
Add dynamic behavior (one part of the application interacting with another, for example).
Define and connect to data services as needed.
Build the source code into a SWF file that runs in Flash Player.
This is just a typical development process; you don’t need to do these steps in this exact order.

The elements of a Flex application

A typical Flex application consists of the following elements.Flex framework
The Adobe® Flex 2 framework contains all the components you need to build rich Internet applications, which include:

Containers that you use to layout the application

Controls you use to gather data from users and to manage the user interface (Text and Button, for example)
Extensive data binding, formatting, and validation features
An event-driven development model that provides rich user interface transformation features such as effects and transitions.
The Flex framework is contained within a shared component library (SWC) file.

MXML
Every Flex application contains at least one MXML file, known as the main application file. MXML is a markup language, an implementation of XML that was designed specifically for creating Flex applications, and you use it to declaratively define the structure of your application using tags.

ActionScript 3.0
You add dynamic behavior to your applications using ActionScript 3.0, which is an implementation of ECMAScript and is similar to JavaScript. You can add ActionScript to Flex applications directly in the MXML file as script blocks or you can create separate files of ActionScript functions and import them into your MXML files.

CSS
Style attributes in visual components (buttons, list boxes, and so on) are controlled by component properties. For example, a button component has a fontFamily property that you use to set the font. Style properties are controlled by a theme, by styles defined in a CSS file, by styles defined in style blocks in an MXML file, or by setting individual style properties in the component instance itself.

Graphic assets
Like most applications, Flex applications contain a variety of graphic assets such as icons and other images.

Data
Some components are used to display data (a combo box or data grid for example) and you can populate these components with data by using arrays, collection objects, data models, external XML data sources, and so on.

How Flex applications are compiled and deployed
All of these elements end up either compiled into or linked to your Flex application, as shown in this illustration:

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A Flex application is compiled into a SWF file, which runs in Flash Player. When the source code is compiled into a Flex application it is converted to ActionScript classes and is then merged into the SWF file along with graphics and other assets. At run time, the Flex application SWF file interacts with external libraries, services, and data sources as needed.

Standard Flex applications do not require server-side Flex services. Therefore, you compile them locally on your computer and typically deploy them to your users from an HTML page on a web server.

You can, however, create Flex applications that use Adobe® Flex Data Services 2, the Cold Fusion Flash Remoting Service, or other Java and J2EE services. Flex applications that use these services are deployed from an application server.

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Flash movies are still used a lot as ad banners because they have much higher click-thru rates than static gifs, their usage as web site intros has decreased and I am sure you would have noticed it too. Why has that happened? Well, there are several reasons and in this article I will discuss the merits of Flash web site intros - The advantages and disadvantages of using animated Flash movies as web site intros - which hopefully should point out the reasons.

A direct question - Should Flash be used as web site intros?

Flash has indeed caught on the web. It provides an easy way to put animated and interactive movies on web sites which would otherwise not have been possible. When Flash first made its impact on the web, it was put to two main uses - Animated banner advertisements and Flash intros. Web designers thought that Flash lent a professional look to their web sites - If a web site had Flash, it was like a feather in the web designers hat as it meant that the latest technologies were employed on the site.

Flash actually got the power of animation in the common man’s hands, because it was so easy to create animation and develop interactivity. So we saw a profuse use of it in the form of Flash web site intros. I am sure that all web designers assuming they know a little Flash have developed a web site intro one time or the other in their careers.

The advantages of using web site Flash intros

* Flash in catchy

Yes, Flash is catchy esp. if the animation and interactivity is used well. At the most, Flash intros can indeed provide cheap thrills to your visitors. So if visitors have lots of time on their hands (highly likely), they might be appreciative of your Flash intro.

IMPORTANT, if your web site caters to people who are either ready to wait for the intro to load or are on high bandwidth connections, you should use a Flash intro especially if it can portray your company objectives better than a static page. For example, if you are in the gaming industry, visitor will definitely expect to see some Flash on your homepage. In such cases, Flash intros can really serve as elegant introductions to your company products and services.

* Interactive menus

You can build nice interactive menus in the Flash intro. If created well, these menu systems can serve as good navigation guides for human visitors. Do remember to also include static HTML links from the homepage for the search engines bots.

Something better than a Flash intro

A newer trend in using Flash on web sites is putting it in the page headers - either as full flash headers or a part of the masthead. You will examples of such Flash files in several web site templates.

Disadvantages of using Flash web site intros

* Increase in file size of the homepage
This is one of the important disadvantages of using Flash intros on your web site - it increases the time the homepage takes to load. I don’t think you will create a Flash intro that has only vector objects. There would definitely be images (raster graphics). This increases the file size of the .swf file which in turn increases the total time taken for the homepage to load fully. A greater offence, is embedded graphics and images that are not optimized or publishing the Flash movie with the lowest compression for images.
Expecting the visitor to first wait while the Flash intro loads and then expecting them to read your animated sales pitches - well, that’s too much of expectation from your time conscious visitors. The question you need to ask is, would you wait for a Flash intro to load on a web site and would you indeed go through text and be enthralled by the images in the intro? I don’t think so!

* Music and sound files in the Flash intro

Music and sound on web sites has been one of my pet-peeves. I am an avid music fan - in fact, I believe that that I listen, therefore I am. But I want to listen what I like and not what is forced onto me. Also, music and sound files embedded in Flash movies increase their file sizes which in turn increases the download time.

* Flash intros and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I consider this the most important disadvantage of using a Flash intro. As you know, search engines cannot index images and graphics, but with Flash, they cannot even properly index the text embedded in the movie - The text that you so carefully and painstakingly animated is of no use to the search engine. If you think this problem can be overcome by putting keywords in the META tags or inside HTML comment tags (a search engine spamming tactic)… you are wrong. Google.com which is now the preferred search engine on the web has difficulty in indexing text and cannot follow the links created in Flash movies. This is what they replied when I asked them if the Googlebot can follow links from Flash files:

The Google index does include pages that use Macromedia Flash. However, this is a new feature, so our crawlers may still experience problems indexing Flash pages. If you are concerned that Flash content on your pages may be inhibiting Google’s ability to crawl your site, you may want to consider using a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site. If features such as Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
You may want to consider creating HTML copies of these Flash pages for our crawler. If you do this, please be sure to include a robots.txt file that disallows the Flash pages in order to ensure that these pages are not seen as duplicate content.

Even if GoogleBot improves, I would still prefer to use plain old text instead of putting it in a Flash file.

* The purpose?

There are so many Flash intros I have seen serving no purpose that I have put this point as a disadvantage. Just because it can be done, does not mean you should do it! If a thing serves no purpose on a web site, except in boosting your (or your clients) ego, don’t use it. Visitors come to your web site looking for information and not for entertainment which they can derive animated and interactive in Flash intros.
Finally, it is your job as a web designer to educate and advise the client on the merits of using Flash intros. Explain to them the disadvantages and ask them if the intro has a purpose. If not, they should consider dropping the intro idea.

* For example, if you use Flash, and you can make something that works with the Flash  don’t add some little cosmetic feature that requires you to save it as a file that only works with Flash
* Sometimes even if it can be done slightly more effectively utilizing features only available on the latest browsers, it is better to compromise and make a page that works for a wider audience.
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can Make our site as fast as possible?

* A. Make fast-loading pages.
o Keep the size of the HTML file to a minimum.
+ Eliminate everything that doesn’t show on the surface of the page. Eliminate multiple spaces, returns and tabs in the HTML code. Remember that any amount of “white space” is reduced to one space on the surface of the page.
+ Remember that color changes, font size changes and tables add to the size of the file. Consider not using these.
+ Be careful when using HTML editors. Most, maybe all, insert a lot of unneeded duplicate code, resulting in files much larger than necessary. If you learn enough HTML to edit out the “junk”, you can often more than halve the size of the file.
o Make your pages cache-friendly.
+ Design pages that can be cached, both by Internet or proxy cache and local cache.
o Avoid other things that slow down the loading of your pages.
+ Avoid CGI, SSI on pages that can be static pages. Your page will be faster. This also allows the pages to get cached which may allow the visitor to get your page even faster.
+ Don’t use images or use only a few small ones. Using an image for the page title is not so bad. However, it is so easy to add images to pages, that inexperienced writers often put in too many.
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# B. can we Make fast-displaying pages?

* What makes a visitor wait is not only the amount of time it takes to download, but how long it takes for the page to display.
* Traditional, straight-forward formatting allows visitors to read the top of the page as the rest of the page is downloading. Full-page table formatting and frames cause visitors to wait.
* Remember that what may seem acceptably fast for you on your computer may seem painfully slow on a less powerful computer.
* Avoid multi-column full-page table formatting. This includes pages with a column on the side for navigation buttons. The problem is that your page will seem to stall as the computer is waiting for the rest of the page to come in.
* Include the HEIGHT and WIDTH code for all images. This way people can be reading your page while the images are still loading in.
* Remember that the more HTML formatting there is, the longer it will take for the page to layout. Using many color changes and font size changes will require more time for the computer to layout the page.
* If you feel that you must use SSI or CGI to put a page counter, a randomly-selected image or randomly selected text on the page, put it at the bottom of the page, so visitors can be reading your page while waiting for the delay caused by SSI or CGI.
* Be careful not to include too much “navigation.” Some poorly-designed pages devote a higher percentage of their file size to “non-content” navigation and advertising than they use for presenting “content.”

# C. can we Make your site fast to use?

* Don’t make your pages too large. Don’t make your pages too small. If pages are too large, visitors must wait a long time for the pages to load in. If the pages are too small, visitors spend a lot of time clicking links and reconnecting to your server to get the next page.

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For the first time anyone can now create a customized, complete, professionally designed website.

* Webstyle provides a range of designs. Each theme has alternative page layout options to create an entire website with a consistent, high quality look and feel.

* When you change a chosen theme color, Webstyle automatically creates all the graphics required for the web page

* You can create graphic NavBars (button bars) with cascading menus and sub-menus. Webstyle creates all the required DHTML and JavaScript.

* Once you’ve selected a design and color scheme you’re happy with, you can easily create additional web pages, using the same or other layouts from this theme, and copy all the key theme items such as colors and graphics.

Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver, add-ins are provided that allow graphics to be inserted and edited directly from within your web editor program.

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