M.W.D. News

Recently I have been exploring avenues to include music or sounds on specific sites that are/were being built by MWD. Some people or companies have expressed interest in having background sounds such as a “click” when hovering over web buttons or intro music to spruce up a flash element or intro screen. Others expressed interest in having a full range of music at their fingertips thus creating a virtual radio station. This allows a site to capture web surfers and create unique experiences creating brand loyalty. One such site that MWD created was Bungie Energy Drink. This was a new site for a new energy drink coming onto the market. Although defunct now, the site used Last.fm as its musical engine, which I could place on any site that needs music streaming in the background.

Another company expressed the same desire to place a radio station or music onto their site. I had explored Last.fm a while back and like other technologies keep coming back to the site to see if any major enhancements were made to their technology. Luckily, Last.fm finally allowed users to select tunes listed for streaming onto a personal playlist and generate a web-like flash widget to allow surfers to experience the same playlist or radio station.

On the Bungie Energy Site, the radio station was accessed by clicking the tiny red arrow in the banner (once) and allowing the playlist to load. Although this list is mostly modern techno or dance music, it conveyed the message that this product is an action based modern energy source. The playlist or station though can be any radio format. Simply create a new account for each genre desired.

Now that Last.fm has changed its business model to include pay-to-play, on demand listening and monthly subscription capabilities, it also boasts a way to create a virtual record label and pays small royalty fees for each song listed that is played. I still employ widget based radio stations and enjoy its fruits on a daily basis. Why clog up your web server with hundreds of costly songs when you can outsource a song list for free?

A favicon or favorite icon is the little icon that is associated with a particular web site that you see sometimes next to a browser’s url. This alerts the web surfer that you are at a specific site address and brand’s the site with a memorable identity. If you bookmark the site, the icon shows up next to the address in the favorites dropdown list, hence the name favicon or favorite icon.

This holds true for most popular browsers in use today. Simply pull up the address and the icon appears magically. There is one catch though. Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser on the market and the way it displays a web site needs to be addressed when designing a site so it looks good to the surfer and does not detract any potential customer or information seeker from exploring further. Internet Explorer has a nasty habit of not registering objects correctly. They also do not show favicons regularly so some site’s favicon fail to show up and only the familiar “broken page” symbol with the little “e” displays.

So how do you avoid this little side effect? After spending hours designing a neat looking 16×16 pixel icon that looks good, you upload the new web page with the icon code included along with the icon file itself but notice that nothing appears in the browser window next to the address.  

In the past if you searched for the term favicon in a search engine you would get the code as presented below:

<link rel=”icon” href=”favicon.ico” />

This would work in years gone by, but is not generally recommended any more. The new style of adding favicons to a website would be to use the new code listed below:

<link rel=”icon” href=”favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />
<link rel=”shortcut” href=”favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />

Remember to replace href=”favicon.ico” with the full address:  

href=”http://www.mysite.com/favicon.ico”       

This would cover most bases and alert Internet Explorer the exact location of the icon file and the type of file to process. Most of the time it works as expected, but Internet Explorer still does not handle these types of requests on every visit to a web site and even with the most care, avoids showing the favicon.

If you think a favicon is not showing simply slide the “broken e icon” onto the web page itself. This would force the page to reload and most of the time cause the hidden icon to suddenly appear. It is still hit or miss as in this blog, but adding a favicon to a website is still reccomended for all sites designed today.

Recently I’ve noticed that certain sites in Internet Explorer 7, even bigger ones like Microsoft do not “register” the objects found inside their web pages. You know the things that add dynamic elements to a site like flash menus, scrolling marquees, banner animations or music. I feel that a website should act and behave much the way a TV station acts such as Bloomberg TV which seems at first glance like a larger piece of software.

I would hope in the future that all websites become object aware and behave like a larger piece of software behaving seamlessly to web surfers. We’ve all seen sites that are well formed and look good but are only pieces of objects across a website. Try to immediately use an object and you get the all too familiar dotted line surrounding an object and the annoying message, “click to active to use this control.” As a web designer, I feel that this is unprofessional. A site should seem flawless to the naked eye and not have broken elements. You wouldn’t walk into a modern supermarket and expect to have to activate the elements contained in the automatic POS cash register. That being said, either web designers are unfamiliar with managing objects or are focusing on the larger Internet picture such as making web sites Web 2.0 compliant or AJAX aware.

The problem with most web sites can also be contributed to the fact that snippets of code to handle object registration may also cause a site to crash. The worst thing a site can do is to fail the first time a web surfer visits your new modern site, as it only take one wrong element or a slowly loading or missing graphic to keep visitors away from your site and future visits. That being said, more and more designers are opting for modern elements, even if the familiar yellow stripe on top of the browser window displays the message, “To click to install new activex control,” if it means a better browsing experience.

So how do you register your objects? There are several tried and true methods, but I’ve used one method a few times and seems to work fairly well with little incident. In a web site file, immediately after the Meta tags add the line of code as follows:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”ieupdate.js”></script>

This instructs a web page to include the code contained in the file, ieupdate.js a javascript file that contains the registering functions for your entire set of objects. In ieupdate.js add the code as follows:

var bo_ns_id = 0;
function startIeFix(){
if(isIE()){
document.write(’<div id=”bo_ns_id_’ + bo_ns_id + ‘”><!– ‘);
}
}

function endIeFix(){
if(isIE()){
document.write(’</div>’);
var theObject = document.getElementById(”bo_ns_id_” + bo_ns_id++);
var theCode = theObject.innerHTML;
theCode = theCode.substring(4 ,9+theCode.indexOf(”</object>”))
document.write(theCode);
}
}

function isIE(){
// only for Win IE 6+
// But not in Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000
var strBrwsr= navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
if(strBrwsr.indexOf(”msie”) > -1 && strBrwsr.indexOf(”mac”) < 0){
if(parseInt(strBrwsr.charAt(strBrwsr.indexOf(”msie”)+5)) < 6){
return false;
}
if(strBrwsr.indexOf(”win98″) > -1 ||
strBrwsr.indexOf(”win 9x 4.90″) > -1 ||
strBrwsr.indexOf(”winnt4.0″) > -1 ||
strBrwsr.indexOf(”windows nt 5.0″) > -1)
{
return false;
}
return true;
}else{
return false;
}
}

Save the file in your root directory of your web site and add the following code to your website file immediately before and after EACH object snippet:

<script type=”text/javascript”>startIeFix();</script>

<object>…</object>

<!– –><script type=”text/javascript”>endIeFix();</script>

Even with the best of intentions, some objects behave dynamically drawing information from various sources. This makes registering object next to impossible.

Google has a popular way to blast out your company’s message, which could be better than a blog forum. Although non-interactive, such as through a blog, one can gain “eye-balls” in an affordable way. You set the budget limit and Adwords do the rest. Most Search Engine Optimizations use weighted Keywords to place importance on content, when vying for the top spot. This algorithm works well in most search engines, but runs the risk of having people spam and/or use popular “doorway” web sites to entice search engines into believing that the site has more clout than another choice. My company, Monmouth Web Developers, uses some of these more acceptable methods quite effectively. Most engines that use these algorithms tend to place my site at the top of most search engine rankings. This is fine for the occasional surfer or web Designer who comes across a smaller search engine.

But what about the larger engines? The most popular search engine online is Google. They use an algorithm that also counts the popularity of a site, meaning how many times other web sites link to their site. The better recognized the site, the more weighted the link has in its algorithm. This being said, a web designer can not readily use a doorway program to change the ranking much. What most companies do now is to become affiliated with a “placement ” company that has already established relations with some companies that fare stronger in the ranking. This makes such an endeavor more cost prohibitive, approaching a true ad campaign, which most companies try to avoid.

To help alleviate this problem, Google uses Adwords, while Yahoo uses a company called Overture, which is now fully owned by Yahoo. Overture uses affiliate advertising that also places your ad on such sites as CNN. There are others out there, for other search engines but these are the most popular. They place tiny ads next to the free listings that search engines return using their own algorithms. The only charge, is for each click on your link. This is known as CTR or Click Though Rate.

Hello:

Let me introduce myself. I’m the owner and webmaster for a NEW Web Development and Design company, Monmouth Web Developers. We create web sites and e - commerce sites. Although my company is new, I’ve been working with Internet Technologies since 1990. We’re located on the New Jersey shore - Monmouth County and welcome discussing your web design needs. Drop us a line today using our contact page or post a reply to our blog.

Monmouth Web Developers will use this blog to discuss issues that affect web developers and surfers, from a usability standpoint to new sites that interest us or ways of saving money online. If you have a site that is important to you, drop us a line and we will review it and possibly add a link to it in an upcoming post. To get a historical overview of the Internet, follow the link below.

History of the Internet

Thanks,
Larry Enzer
Owner/Web Specialist