Although there are lots of posts that evaluate different design blogs, I haven’t seen many that focus specifically on corporate websites.

Therefore, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the homepages of the Top 30 technology companies and assign them a PASS or FAIL rating based on the quality of their homepage design.

Click on the screenshots to check out each website.

1. Amazon.com: PASS

Although it may be a little cluttered for my taste, it would be short-sighted to say that the Amazon.com homepage is a FAIL.  Amazon has created a company that has landed at the top of the InfoTech 100, and the fact that one hundred percent of their sales are made online shows that they understand how to use their website to attract and retain customers.

2. Apple: PASS

As an Apple user, I may be a little biased, but I honestly don’t think that anyone could look at the Apple homepage and say that it fails in terms of design.  The homepage is uncluttered, provides easy to use navigation and gracefully showcases several of Apple’s products.

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A quick snippet of JavaScript to convert values to pixels from any string. Below is a quick function:

function px(val) {
    return parseInt(val)+"px";
  }
}
To use it, just wrap your string with the function
and it should convert it to pixels for you:
var oldValue = '65';
var newValue = px(oldValue);

EID MUBARIK to Muslims all over the world

Talented Front-end Web Developer Chris Wallace of Walmedia and Designer&Developer is back again with a free, brand-spanking new, beautiful, professional WordPress theme.

Annexation is a clean and usable professional WordPress theme that features a two-column layout and a prominent search bar for easy searching of your website. An RSS button provides not only a visual compliment to the design, but also makes it easily accessible to website visitors.

Some features

Integration with Twitter including a custom-designed Twitter icon created by Chris Wallace for your tweets.

Integration with the Last.Fm Records plugin in the footer to showcase the music you’re currently listening to (note: screenshot does not reflect Chris’s true taste in music).

Compatible with WordPress 2.6+

A widgetized sidebar for easy customization.

Preview of the Annexation theme

Here’s a live demonstration of the Annexation WordPress theme on Chris Wallace’s site:

• Live Demo

What’re you waiting for, download the theme already!

Current version

• Version 1.1 (ZIP, 242 KB)

Previous versions

• Version 1.0 (ZIP, 244 KB)

Change Log

Version 1.1

• comments.php fixes
• updated readme.txt

About Chris Wallace

Chris Wallace is a Front-End Developer and President of Walmedia, a web design company. Chris offers free WordPress themes and writes about web design and development on his blog, Designer&Developer. Be sure to check out other themes he’s giving away free.

Designer&Developer is in my “Top 20″ group of RSS feeds (favorite blogs I follow) and I highly recommend subscribing to the Designer&Developer RSS feed.

Alfresco is an open source enterprise level CMS application.

It provides document management, collaboration (in beta), records management, knowledge management, web content management and imaging.

Alfresco is built with Java & can be installed in both Window & Linux environments via “all-in-one installers”.

Some features of Alfresco:

• Web Content Management
  • Web content authors can access and contribute content
  • Simply preview in-context changes to any web page or web application
  • Reduce the risk of error with simple a virtualization of changes against a live site
  • Use your tool of choice, such as Dreamweaver, for web interface development
  • The ability to preview in-context changes to any web application, including PHP, Ruby, JSF, Tiles, Struts, Groovy and .NET
• Document Management
  • All content is available via a shared drive interface
  • All content is available from within MS Office
  • Work in an MS Office environment for authoring and viewing
  • Save, version, share, search and audit
  • & many more..

This application is great for any company who wants to manage all the information from one central including websites, documents & knowledge.

Requirements: Java Enabled Server

Open Web Messenger is an open source live support / chat application.

It enables customers / visitors to chat with an operator & get support (where all the chats are logged).

The application supports unlimited operators, visitors & chats. With a web-based admin interface, operators or admins can:

• Send canned messages
• Track where visitors clicked from
• Search porevious chat conversations
• Reassign/transfer chat to another operator
• Mark/highlight nuisance visitors
• View active chats (admins) & more

When there is no available operator, visitors can leave a message & they can be contacted later.

The look & feel of the chat window can be totally customized with the theme support.

This free live support application requires PHP 5 & MySQL 5 to run.

Context menus are very helpful, specially in admin pages & web applications, for easier navigation. With just a click, you get the options / shortcuts.

This is a jQuery plugin for creating effective context menus with ease.

The menu can produces valid XHTML & can be customized totally via CSS.

Items in the menu can be disabled & they can be browsed with keyboard too.

For users without JavaScript enabled, it gracefully degrades.

The common mistake committed by most novice online businessmen is coming up with a product without determining a hungry market. Why is this dangerous? Because the product might not cater to a certain demand. Without demand, no one would buy the said product, and such would surely be disastrous for any business.

So the first lesson in any internet marketing course should be about finding profitable markets.
Now, despite how intimidating this subject may sound, it’s actually quite easy to pull off. All you need is an idea. Yes, like one of those eureka moments. This idea can come to you at any time… while watching a movie, for example. Or while reading the morning papers. Or while viewing the billboards by the road your way to drop off the kids at school. This idea may also be inspired by your current or previous profession, or a passion you nurtured when you were still enrolled as a student.

It is always advisable to carry a small notebook with you, so that whenever these ideas pop up, you could write them down so that they won’t have to fade from memory. If you have a personal digital assistant (PDA), the better it would be for you.

So how would you know if the idea that enters your mind is the right one to build a business for?

This wouldn’t be difficult to figure out. Surely, an idea would entail thoughts of various possibilities you do with the same. An idea about dog grooming can make you think of a dog grooming service, for example. Or an idea about pest control can make you think of a do-it-yourself pest control eBook.

Once you have an idea, it’s time to determine its profitability. For this, you would have to use the tools found at: www.inventory.overture.com &
www.nichebot.com

Simply type in the idea you have in mind, and press the submit button. You will then be presented with a list of keywords and key phrases that are related to the subject you have entered.Each keyword or key phrase would have an indication of the number of searches that they have gathered from internet users. The number of searches made for a particular keyword or key phrase is a good barometer of the demand for the same.

Naturally, you would want a keyword or key phrase that has gathered many searches, right?
This shouldn’t be the case. Demand is just half the battle. You would also need to determine the number of competition you would have for that particular market. To do this, you just have to run a search using the particular keyword or key phrase you have selected. Look at the number of web pages catering to the said subject. If this number is less than the number of searches made for the same, then you have a profitable idea indeed!

Let’s illustrate.

Your idea is about dog grooming. So you use the tools mentioned above, and type in the phrase “dog grooming.”

You’d immediately get some keywords or key phrases like “shih tzu dog grooming” or “dog grooming cases.” The searches for these terms are greater in number than the web pages catering to them. As such, you could consider them as highly profitable markets. These markets are what many people call as niches. Finding a niche is the first integral step in making money online.

Once a niche is determined, focus on it. If you’re not familiar with the subject, do some research. Build a website that would provide accurate and educational information about the topic. Employ marketing strategies to give it the exposure it deserves.

It all starts with finding a niche. The sooner you discover one, the sooner you will realize the many promises that the online world can offer.

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An effective web design is one in which your users are able to find information quickly and in a logical fashion.

Do they visit the content you want them to visit? Are they looking in the right places of your web page? Are you able to keep your user’s attention, or do they just leave quickly?

It’s not just about the content either. If your design loads slowly – or if moving from one section to another takes a long time – it affects the user’s experience.

These things can be the make-or-break factors between a user clicking on a link to find more information, or the back button to find it elsewhere.

Some things to consider:

• Are important information being seen by the user?
• Are the navigation and action items intuitive?
• Is the user being directed to sections in a logical manner?
• Does the web page load quickly enough to not turn away the user?

If you’re interested in analyzing and optimizing your page layout – here’s some extremely useful tools that you can use to help.

1. ClickHeat

ClickHeat is an open source visual tool for showing “hot” and “cold” zones of a web page. It allows you to see which spots users click on most, and which spots are being ignored.

It’s very easy to implement on your website, you only have to include an external JavaScript file.

Download: Clickheat on SourceForge.net.

2. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg offers a myriad of analytical tools to help you visualize what visitors are doing.

Features include: Confetti - allowing you to see what people are clicking on based on certain factors such as their operating system and where they came from, Overlay – providing you with tons of data about particular links, and Report sharing – enabling you to share the data with team members and clients.

The free version only allows 4 pages to be tracked – so use your top landing pages to get the most data.

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Cheat sheets (also known as reference cards, reference sheets, etc.) not only helps you remember things quickly, but can also serve as wall decoration for your workspace.

In this post, you’ll find 28 excellent, useful cheat sheets in various file formats for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, colors, typography, and other web-design related topics all in one page with pictures of each cheat sheet.

Photoshop

1- Photoshop CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet

Downloads: PDF (Windows), PDF (Mac)

2- Keys for using the Layers palette (HTML)

3- Photoshop Toolbox Reference (HTML)

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