Designing a Mobile Version of Your Website

I’m a baseball fan. Specifically a San Francisco Giants fan. Yes, I know they are horrible this year, but that’s what makes me a real fan…I don’t care if they win or lose. One sentence in to this post and I’m already off topic.

MLB.com has a mobile website that, in my opinion, is one of the best and most useful mobile sites around. Today I’m going to dissect there mobile home page and tell you exactly why I think this site is so great. Read more

Is There a Standard for Tracking Website Visits?

At work I’ve been asked numerous times “How man unique visits do we get?”. To which I reply, “It depends who you talk to.”

We run a handful of traffic software packages to help get a handle on all the different statistics incorporated with running a successful website. Google Analytics, Mint and a very simple page view counter I developed in house. Each package takes a different approach to computing unique visits: Read more

The New News

It’s nothing new to get your news online. Whether it’s local, national or international, newspapers have used the internet as an extension of their printed product. Over the last decade newspapers in general have seen a decline in the number of print subscriptions sold and are trying new features and services online to compensate for the decline in readership. Read more

The Long Pause

Both of you may have noticed that I haven’t been writing much very lately. Such a drought in new content can be expected around the holiday season, but should always resume shortly after. Can you please find it in your heart(s) to forgive me? I actually have a reason for my absence. I’ve been at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada for the past week.

A week is a long time to spend in Vegas, but it was fun nonetheless. I have to say that I’m super excited about some of the gadgetry debuting this year. I’ve uploaded some pictures to my Flickr account for you to view.

Anyway, I’ve got some great business opportunities developing in the coming months as well as my final semester of school. So, you can expect some great discussions in the near future. Until I blog again!

Goodbye Macromedia, It’s Been Fun

If you happend to waddle over to Macromedia’s website today, you might have noticed the banner atop the page adorned with the adobe logo and off to the right text displaying “formerly macromedia”. Adobe completed the acquistion of Macromedia and has already set the wheels in motion to integrate the two design studios.

Announcements have been made stating that new software bundles will be released that includes software from both lines. One labeled a Design bundle with Adobe CS2 Premium and Macromedia Flash Pro 8. Another titled the Web bundle will feature CS2 Premium and the full Macromedia Studio 8. A third package is expected dealing largely in video, but nothing solid has been said as of yet.

I trust that Adobe won’t mar the great software that Macromedia has built over the years. I believe that this acquistion can bring design software to an all new level and maybe even some new web technologies.

macromedia, adobe, dreamweaver, flash pro 8, acquisition, web

Delicious Redesigns

If you haven’t been to del.icio.us today, then what is wrong with you? I mean….then you probably didn’t know that they redesigned their site. They split the main content area into two columns, one for recently submitted links and one for most popular links. I’ve always thought that del.icio.us had a nice clean layout that emphasized the content. Now, their layout seems to be much more intuitive then before.

None of the other pages on del.icio.us seem to have changed, other than a few color changes. No matter, the front page is where all the goodies are anyway.

Delicious, del.icio.us, layout, design, usability

Google Analytics

Google has created free analyzing software for your website. Google Analytics promises to be a sophisticated and easy way to track your visitor’s actions while they are on your website and, ultimately, allow you to optimize your site for the most click conversions per visit.

Google Says:

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You’ll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.

I have not yet been able to test Google Analytic’s capabilities because it takes the software twelve hours compile it’s initial traffic analysis of your site. All this information is tracked through a simple javascript include that is placed on every page you want tracked. Very simple for us bloggers to just include in our header file. God I love server side programming!

Google Analytics is being compared a new startup company called Measure Map. Although Measure Map does provide similar services, I believe that Measure Map is much more geared to bloggers and Google Analytics seems to be more aimed towards websites in general. This is all speculation on my part because Measure Map is STILL in closed beta. Come guys, just let me in to the beta, please!!!!

Google, Google Analytics, Analytics, Software, Tracking Software, beta, Web 2.0

First of Many

Welcome, to All Things Dev dot com! I decided to embark on this new adventure of mine mainly to allow me to post whatever I please on my personl blog and focus more on new and old web development trends here.

My name is Jeff Purcell. I am a senior at LCSC in the technological mecca of Lewiston, Idaho. I will be graduating with a BA in Web Development and Minors in Computer Science and Information Systems. I am by trade a PHP programmer and web designer, although I find myself avoiding web design at all costs these days. Something about working with Edna who wants to sell her “World Famous Jam” online just doesn’t appeal to me like it used to. Plus I’m not graphically creative enough to pull the big jobs.

The aim of this weblog is to discuss current trends in development on the internet. Be it programming, social browsing, or usability, we will be discussing it all. Please point your RSS readers to http://allthingsdev.com/feed/ and stay tuned. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

blog, usability, trends, ecommerce, php, web design