Can you believe that on one given day in a street if you asked a bunch of people they wouldn’t know what a browser was?
Video 1: What people think a browser is – Youtube video 1
Video 2: What a browser is – Youtube video 2

There are a multitude of browsers on the web to download right now and new things are being added to them all the time. Some browsers, like Firefox, have add-ons which are little applications that you can use whilst you surf the web all by loading up your browser!

Anyway, with all this talk of browsers, I thought I would draw you to the new Google Chrome app store, which has apps for everything (sound familiar??)… Yup now Google have taken charge of their own app store right in the browser.

You can download social apps like Facebook and Twitter to update what you’re doing whilst checking up on the world, or if you are a gaming person or just want something to pass the time you can install games that work directly from a browser window. They have just added Angry Birds and there are ones for the spelling bee in you with word games but I want to review a few of the ones that may actually be useful to a web designer like yourselves…

I decided to go look at another free webs package from webs.com to see how free for all designing has changed and what you can expect from them. Will free website hosting completely disappear because of the lack of interest and wanting more options or will they continue to thrive into little online cities that govern themselves!?

When I made an account on Webs.com I was pleased at how easy it was to set up and get started adding things.

The things I like about it are:

• Easy quick photo albums… no code to worry about
• Ability to upgrade to a .com address if your site takes off well. (charges may incur straight away to your bank/building society)
• Stats for website which is hosted by a company called Clicky.com and it even allows for Twitter search. You can easily opt out of this. But I wont be going into detail about that as it isn’t what I am focussing on…
• Easy file uploader that can have multiple files sent in each upload… The files are shown in a nice clear way. In this website builder you can upload files by email which some free hosts will not allow… Even the free Geocities wouldnt let people connect using FTP!
• The format for a free site on Webs.com is http://yoursitename.webs.com/. Personally I think that is rather good as on Geocities free it would be your email address as the url which is a pain in the neck as people can spam your email and you can end up on a black list. so format for that is http://youremailaddress/index.htm
• Some Google account abilities from Google Webmaster.
• Email notification for numerous things including guestbook comments and new site members.
• WYSIWYG editing which is useful for people who can’t code in straight HTML.
• Community Forum where topics surrounding your site can be discussed and evaluated by others….
• Search Engine Optimisation for adding your site to Google and Yahoo etc which helps to be found easier. Site linking and sharing are part of the deal.
• Add social networks to your site so others can see what you are doing elsewhere: Twitter and Facebook integration. Members integration with Email Blasts so you can notify of new posts. Facebook Connect available.

Payments may incur when you decide the following:

• Google Adwords and custom display ads with iPromote.
• PayPal E-commerce (package details vary accordingly to what you have decided upon.)
• There are premium packages for more webspace and tools. Domain names only available on the Enhanced and Pro accounts. Multi email addresses also.

As a free website maker the free tools that are available are quite advanced to what other free makers are. If you want the site forever then I’d suggest you pay to get premium benefits and ways to enhance your site.

Main twitter is still GoldChoiceUK.

Which after reading that I thought I’d write a blog post. So, have a think for a minute: How much of your world is actually controlled by a computer? Where do you use it? What do you look for on the internet? Why has computing become such an important way of finding out news etc? Who uses it in their jobs? When is all our lives only going to be controlled by using a computer?

It is very frightening to think that almost all of our lives are already controlled by a computer. The alarm you woke up with this morning, the coffee machine, the CD player.

Losing Teletext isnt a huge issue really is it? Think how much better the internet is for finding information: it is fast, more reliable (?), easier to read, and finally you can get so much more information on a web page. I know what I’d go for if I wanted to find out the latest chart number 1 or the TV program listing for a later date.

So when you next read a news article think: we’re so fortunate that the internet was invented so that we can carry out complex tasks that Telexext wouldnt be able to manage!

I have tried flash layouts, frames, tables and layers in the hope that I would stick to a particular design. I have found that working with layers is the best way for me as I can use CSS to define the location and other style properties of items on the page.

My different layouts ALL had pros and cons to them, which I´d like to talk about here now.

The first layout consisted of only Macromedia Flash. Straight away I hear alarm bells ringing because some search engines will not pick up on Flash-only sites. I had a very curvy design for it. Later I gave the main menu the drag ability, so it could be moved around within the Flash movie. All this happened between March 2006 and December 2006.

Soon I started to listen to Boagworld.com´s podcasts, and listening to ´The Great Flash Debate´, I finally was persuaded that I should have a HTML alternative. I think that having Flash is good as most browsers/computers support that content, but a Flash-only option is not enough. So I got to work on that straight away.
During my experimenting I used frames for a while, but then I found out that some people turn frames off, thus stopping the site working if you don´t have an alternative layout. I found this a little stupid, but it all made sense. If anyone really prefers a frames layout for their site, (they are not *very* common now) I can say I know how to do them!
Frames are quite useful though as you can fit a lot into them because they will scroll if there is more than a page of text. If you have hundreds and thousands of links then you can get to them easily.

Then I used a table based design and things were much more simple. However you can only really position them in 3 places normally (left, right and centre). Later in 2007 (July/August), I decided to learn a bit of CSS, so that I could colour and position them where I want regardless of the limitations of normal HTML. This again enhanced my knowledge and reading a 400 page book certainly taught me well. I haven´t finished it yet as I have been changing my site too much.
Then I realised something was missing.

Into my life came DIV´s, a layers format, and everything was more user friendly. A DIV can be positioned anywhere you like and can even nest. All my sites are now designed with a DIV layout and I only use tables for things like data that has to be listed a certain way.

If you think this article was interesting or have something to say about it please comment!