Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

Before you start coding your application with PHP or whatever remember to test out your MySQL in your MySQL GUI such as SQLYOG or even the CLI

What are the advantages?

* You don’t have to worry about the Script/MySQL syntax clashes (quoting etc)
* You only have to think MySQL and not say PHP as well
* You can see the data produced or not produced
* You can test your concepts

This tip is in the shorthand article mentioned earlier, but I use it so much I’ll repeat it here: in CSS, when you use hexadecimal colour notation and a colour is made up of three pairs of hexadecimal digits, you can write it in a more efficient way by omitting every second digit:

#000 is the same as #000000, #369 is the same as #336699.

And remember that octothorpe (#) before the colour code.

Another colour related tip is that you can specify web safe colours by using only digits that are multiples of 3 for the red, green, and blue values: 0, 3, 6, 9, C, and F. #99c is a web safe colour, #98c is not.

When CSS is used with XHTML, element names in selectors are case sensitive. To avoid getting caught by this I recommend always using lowercase for element names in CSS selectors.

Values of the class and id attributes are case sensitive in both HTML and XHTML, so avoid mixed case for class and id names. If for some reason you do use mixed case, make doubly sure to match the case in your CSS with that in the markup.

First up are the sizeof and count functions. They can both be used to count the number of items in an array but does one do it better?

sizeof vs count
sizeof: 3.75928902626 seconds
count: 3.33035206795 seconds
Time saved: 0.428936958313 seconds; 12.8796280262%

The evidence says yes. The count function was over 12% faster in this test. Both functions are fast though taking 3-4 microseconds to count an array with 100,000 items. You might think it isn’t worth it but remember count is also a character shorter. Not only is it faster to run but it is also faster to type!

For millions of people Google is an indispensable search tool that they use every day, in all facets of their lives. From work or school, research, to looking up movies and celebrities to news and gossip, Google is the go-to search engine.

But instead of just typing in a phrase and wading through page after page of results, there are a number of ways to make your searches more efficient.

Some of these are obvious ones, that you probably know about. But others are lesser-known, and others are known but not often used. Use this guide to learn more about, or be reminded of, some of the best ways to get exactly what you’re looking for, and quickly.

1. Either/or. Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator — or use the “|” symbol (pipe symbol) to save you a keystroke. [dumb | little | man]

2. Quotes. If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. ["dumb little man"] will only find that exact phrase. [dumb "little man"] will find pages that contain the word dumb and the exact phrase “little man”.

3. Not. If you don’t want a term or phrase, use the “-” symbol. [-dumb little man] will return pages that contain “little” and “man” but that don’t contain “dumb”.

4. Similar terms. Use the “~” symbol to return similar terms. [~dumb little man -dumb] will get you pages that contain “funny little man” and “stupid little man” but not “dumb little man”.

5. Wildcard. The “*” symbol is a wildcard. This is useful if you’re trying to find the lyrics to a song, but can’t remember the exact lyrics. [can't * me love lyrics] will return the Beatles song you’re looking for. It’s also useful for finding stuff only in certain domains, such as
educational information: ["dumb little man" research *.edu].

6. Advanced search. If you can’t remember any of these operators, you can always use Google’s advanced search.

7. Definitions. Use the “define:” operator to get a quick definition. [define:dumb] will give you a whole host of definitions from different sources, with links.

8. Calculator. One of the handiest uses of Google, type in a quick calculation in the search box and get an answer. It’s faster than calling up your computer’s calculator in most cases. Use the +, -, *, / symbols and parentheses to do a simple equation.

9. Numrange. This little-known feature searches for a range of numbers. For example, ["best books 2002..2007] will return lists of best books for each of the years from 2002 to 2007 (note the two periods between the two numbers).

10. Site-specific. Use the “site:” operator to search only within a certain website. [site:dumblittleman.com leo] will search for the term “leo” only within this blog.

11. Backlinks. The “link:” operator will find pages that link to a specific URL. You can use this not only for a main URL but even to a specific page. Not all links to an URL are listed, however.

12. Vertical search. Instead of searching for a term across all pages on the web, search within a specialized field. Google has a number of specific searches, allowing you to search within blogs, news, books, and much more:

* Blog Search

* Book Search

* Scholar

* Catalogs

* Code Search

* Directory

* Finance

* Images

* Local/Maps

* News

* Patent Search

* Product Search

* Video

13. Movies. Use the “movie:” operator to search for a movie title along with either a zip code or U.S. city and state to get a list of movie theaters in the area and show times.

14. Music. The “music:” operator returns content related to music only.

15. Unit converter. Use Google for a quick conversion, from yards to meters for example, or different currency: [12 meters in yards]

16. Types of numbers: Google algorithms can recognize patterns in numbers you enter, so you can search for:

* Telephone area codes

* Vehicle ID number (US only)

* Federal Communications Commission (FCC) equipment numbers (US only)

* UPC codes

* Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airplane registration number (US only)

* Patent numbers (US only)

* Even stock quotes (using the stock symbol) or a weather forecast regarding the next five days

17. File types. If you just want to search for .PDF files, or Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets, for example, use the “filetype:” operator.

18. Location of term. By default, Google searches for your term throughout a web page. But if you just want it to search certain locations, you can use operators such as “inurl:”, “intitle:”, “intext:”, and “inanchor:”. Those search for a term only within the URL, the title,
the body text, and the anchor text (the text used to describe a link).

19. Cached pages. Looking for a version of a page the Google stores on its own servers? This can help with outdated or update pages. Use the “cached:” operator.

20. Answer to life, the universe, and everything. Search for that phrase, in lower case, and Google will give you the answer.

A quick way to get to the sites you love—even the ones with addresses you only vaguely remember. The new Firefox 3 location bar learns as you use it—it’s so highly evolved that we like to call it the “Awesome Bar”. Over time, it adapts to your preferences and offers better fitting matches. Type in a term and the autocomplete function includes possible matching sites from your browsing history, as well as sites you’ve bookmarked and tagged in a drop down. For example, you could enter the tag: “investments” to find “www.fool.com”. Matched terms are highlighted, making the list of results easy to scan.

We’ve seamlessly integrated this feature into your surfing experience. Choose to “remember” site passwords without intrusive pop-ups. Now you’ll see the “remember password” notification integrated into your view at the top of the site page.

Flagship content is naturally keyword rich.  As a central component of your blog, it should focus on your main message and therefore contain tons of your keywords. When writing your cornerstone content, you should focus on creating value for your readers - after all, compiling a useful resource is one of the ways to generate incoming links. One of the things that your flagship posts should accomplish is to answer the most relevant questions that people searching for your content are asking. Ask yourself “what kind of content would ensure that my readers get the most out of my blog?”

When you place flagship content with a high keyword density in a prominent position on your blog and reference it in future posts, it helps to promote the post in search engines and makes it more liked to be linked to by others. Amazing flagship content has the potential to go viral, because a useful flagship post or series of posts gives people something to link to, recommend, and remember.

When preparing content for your website, it’s important to remember that writing for the web is very different than writing for print. You need to get your point across quickly and engage your readers before you lose them.

Here are some quick tips to get the best results from your web copy:

Write Compelling Headlines
Always start with a relevant, attention grabbing headline - it can make the difference between the user feeling compelled to read more or choosing to ignore your page. Use sub-headings to define different sections of your content and help your readers locate the information they are looking for.

Make it Short, Sweet and Scannable
In general, people don’t really ‘read’ on the web, they ’scan’. Web readers are impatient - they want quick and easy access to the information they are looking for. Write succinct paragraphs and use bullet points and lists to break your content into scannable chunks.

Emphasise important words
Use Bold and italics to draw attention to important words. This helps improve the ’scanability’ of your content by ensuring the user is drawn to important words.

Use a Conversational Style
Keep it personal and avoid the marketing hype, it doesn’t go down well online. Write as though you were talking in person to your reader.

Build Trust
Establish trust and credibility with your readers by featuring testimonials and case studies. Have you read about the psychological phenomenon of Social Proof? Simply put, it’s when people form their opinions based on the opinions of others. Testimonials can be a very powerful tool for your website.

Use images
The old adage ‘A picture tells 1000 words’ is still true - but don’t go cliché. Photos of smiling, happy business people are overused and ineffective. Consider including some professional photos of your staff, customers, premises or products instead. You can also source suitable and low cost imagery on stock photography websites such as istock.

Consider Layout
Although multi-column content layout is common in print material, single column layouts work best on the web. Web layouts should be clean, simple and uncluttered.

Websites that you link to create your neighborhood of websites if you will. If websites that you link to are known to be spammy websites by the search engines then the search engines may also think that your web site is spammy. Link farms would most likely be included as spammy websites.

What you want to do is link to websites that have good content and websites that are reputable. If you choose to link to high quality websites then web surfers will associate you as a high quality website also.

It’s important to remember that sending people to other websites is not sending customers away from your site since they are going to leave at some point anyway. What is more important is creating a friendly neighborhood of useful information so you viewers will come back to you time and time again.