In development of our upcoming PHP Typography project, it became clear we needed a PHP based solution to parse and reassemble HTML and its contained text. We were unable to find anything that suited our needs, so we built one. When done, we realized that what we had built was powerful, flexible, efficient, and valuable… even outside the initial PHP Typography project. So, we are releasing PHP Parser as a stand-alone project for your use. We hope you find it as helpful as we have.
Articles & Notes
Web Strategies to Grow Your Consulting Practice
At the recent IECA Conference in San Francisco, Jeff King presented a workshop entitled “Web Strategies to Grow Your Consulting Practice”. It addresses search engine optimization and effective techniques to convert website visitors into customers.
This presentation is now available online via the Web in Focus podcast, complements of KINGdesk Web Design. You may view this presentation by:
- free iTunes subscription to Web in Focus (if you have an iPod or iPhone),
- viewing the video directly at the Web in Focus website, or
- listening to the audio directly at the Web in Focus website.
If you find the presentation helpful, please keep KINGdesk Web Design in mind for your future web design needs.
Aesthetics Over Usability
A recent stay at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco provides an excellent case study in the consequences of choosing aesthetics over usability. This real world example highlights a common pitfall in web design.
I despise air travel. Rising before the rooster, driven to the airport, herded through security, enduring flight delays, belted to an undersized airplane seat, and couriered to the destination hotel… I avoid this whenever possible. After arriving, my sole desire is to get to my room and put down my luggage.
A Story of Frustration
So, upon my recent arrival at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, I was amused — in a twisted way — with the missing front desk. After wrangling my luggage through the revolving door, I was greeted by an electronic “Welcome” sign, and a single escalator descending from the upper floors.
continue reading…From the PortfolioNew Frontier 21
After the hiring of a new marketing manager, New Frontier 21 approached KINGdesk and asked us to refresh the previous design we provided them. This is an example of KINGdesk’s preference for evolution over revolution. Because the underlying structure of the original site was sound, cosmetic changes could be made without the need for a complete redesign. The original investment New Frontier 21 made in quality web design greatly reduced the expense of this redesign.
The original website design was purposefully created with a monochromatic color scheme intended to evoke the urban focus of this educational consultancy. With the introduction of the new marketing manager, there was a desire to introduce livelier colors. At the same time, the focus of New Frontier 21 was adjusted so that the original front page — which featured recent articles — was of less importance than drawing attention to nationwide institutes they were hosting. Consequently, in tandum with the color refresh, the front page was reworked to direct users to registration for upcoming institutes.
From the PortfolioD.C. Boone
When your job is to sell a dream of how your product or service can improve your client’s life, quality photography is an invaluable resource. Residential remodelers find themselves precisely in that position. As such, we worked with D.C. Boone to acquire professional photography of their finest projects. This photography has been integrated into every aspect of their website.
Further, the D.C. Boone website takes advantage of the latest in web browser support, yet degrades gracefully in less capable browsers. In Safari and Firefox, the bounding boxes have rounded corners. Internet Explorer does not support this specification, so IE displays square corners. IE6 does not support transparency, and as such, the background of the content box is opaque. Other browsers, including IE7 and IE8 incorporate semi-transparent backgrounds, allowing obscured details of the background image to bleed through while maintaining adequate contrast for legible text. This website is a wonderful example of how web design can reach beyond the lowest common denominator, yet remain well-styled — even in out-dated web browsers.
From the Portfolioa.king's note
When a.king’s note approached us to develop branding, logo and graphic design, we fell in love with a wonderful project. Fun textures and layered graphics contribute to the handmade crafting feel central to a.king’s note’s product offering.
From the PortfolioTelematics Weekly
Can a site without color or graphics be beautiful? Telematics Weekly is just that. With a targeted user-base of Industry executives and upper-management, their time-constraints directly affected the design of this site. Quality typography and scannable content make both honor the user’s needs and demonstrate that beauty can be found in simplicity.
In addition to user-interface optimizations, KINGdesk developed an algorithm to automatically distribute front-page stories to balance multiple column lengths. Until now, standards-based web technologies did not allow for such precision, but KINGdesk continues to develop innovative solutions to meet our client’s needs.
From the PortfolioWeb In Focus
A website with a focus: webinfocus.net is designed for one purpose: distribution of podcasts. Given it’s simple mission, the purposefully simple interface fits right in.
User testing revealed that the primary objective end-users is to access the most recent episode of the podcast. Given this, and the straight-forward architecture, the website header was greatly minimized — limited to site identification and search. All other functionality was moved to the footer.
Force Alt Text with CSS
Content management systems with WYSIWYG editors are great tools, in that they enable easy publication by those not familiar with HTML. But that same ease of use may enable non-valid or inaccessible HTML markup. Some CSS rules have been suggested by others to enforce good markup by penalizing bad markup. For instance, use of depreciated tags can be forced to display as big, bold and red:
font {
font-size: 50px;
font-weight: bold;
color: red;
}You may view this as overly confrontational. But I just conceived a way to use CSS (with a bit more constraint), to enforce accessible markup. One of the most important accessible practices (and easiest to implement) is the inclusion of alternate text for images. The following HTML demonstrates proper inclusion of the required alt attribute.
<img src="/pic.jpg" alt="Jeff's mug" />If someone uses a content management system to display an image that is missing this attribute, you can use your CSS stylesheet to suppress the image from displaying with the following code:
img {
visibility: hidden;
}
img[alt] {
visibility: visible;
}A few thoughts result from this implementation. Not every screen reader will ignore hidden elements, but that is not the point. If an image is not accessible to everyone (by way of an alt tag), this ensures that the publisher of the content recognizes that same inaccessibility.
Second, visibility is used for several reasons.
- It does not conflict with your other
displayrules that may give images inline or block value in different context; visibilityleaves a void of content, making it clear to the publisher that the image is not displaying; anddisplaycan be turned off with a value ofnone, but there is no valid value for turning it back on (without contextual knowledge of whetherblockorinlineis appropriate).
Lastly, this proposal breaks in Internet Explorer 6, as IE6 does not understand attribute selectors. This can be resolved with the inclusion of conditional comments in your document head. For example:
<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<style>
img {
visibility: visible;
}
</style>
<![endif]-->Now images will display as normal in IE6.
Right the Ship — 5 Ways to Optimize Your Website
I’ve had a number of conversations recently with business owners who are intimately aware of the importance of having a web presence. Having them explain to me these benefits (i.e. method of attracting new customers, educate existing customers about their business, increase customer confidence, cost effective means of promoting their books and services, establish credibility and trust, separate themselves from the competition, etc.) has been impressive.
Of course this makes sense when you realize that in North America alone nearly 250 million people use the internet, this represents a tremendous pool of potential customers.
But what happens when you factor in a slow economic environment? Most of the time, these understood truths are tossed overboard in a misguided effort to store up resources until things pick up.
So what is the outlook for today’s internet climate? “… the Internet should be better poised to withstand the storm given its ability to combine performance-based advertising along with broad-based branding.” stated David Silverman, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Translated — the answer to increasing your business in a slow economy is not eliminating your marketing efforts but, rather, maximizing them. Focusing on the following 5 elements of your website will help you weather this economic storm. It may even lay the foundation for growing in these troubled times.