Newsletter issue #71 - 1st February 2010
This issue
Happy New Year! Welcome to the February 2010 edition of the Webcredible newsletter!
In this issue:
- Feature article: 10 useful tools to develop, monitor, evaluate or debug web pages
- Blog highlights in January
- New articles in January
- Useful program: List-O-Rama!
- Top link: Unicode code converter
Enjoy!
Feature article: 10 useful tools to develop, monitor, evaluate or debug web pages
When it comes to developing websites and pages we could all use a little help now and then when it comes down to the real detail. Fortunately there's a wide variety of tools on offer to developers that can be of use when it comes to developing, monitoring, evaluating and debugging web pages. Here are 10 of the most useful to you.
Blog highlights in January
Our most popular blog posts this month include:
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How can Spotify ads make money if I can't click them?
I know the title of this blog post may look a bit strange. No, I'm not suggesting that there's a widespread bug in the Spotify software that prevents me from clicking on ads. Things are a little bit more complicated than that. Unless you've never used Spotify or have always had a Pro account, you've probably listened to these 30 second audio-based ads...
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Which industry sector has the most difficult to use websites?
Between September and December 2009 we ran a poll on the Webcredible website asking the question of which industry sector has the most difficult to use websites? This may be a pretty generalised survey, which didn't focus on specific sites, but the results (which we released yesterday) were interesting nonetheless. This is how they turned out...
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Online shopping with a twist: Virtual Oxford Street
Love shopping but hate the crowds? The answer may be Near's Virtual Oxford Street. They're taking the world's largest and best loved shopping areas and recreating them in the virtual world, Second Life-style with a focus on shopping. Reports are that big names including M&S and Liberty have signed up to display their shop windows in NearLondon...
Our other blog posts were:
- New advanced web writing training course for March 2010
- Useful extension for simple CSS forms
- Guest blog - Disaster day
- PPC & SEO training special offers
- Google's new phone in its new store: A User Experience view
- Designing effective map-based browsing
- What's happening at Webcredible
New articles in January
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The importance of the !important CSS declaration
The !important declaration has been valid since CSS1 but it seems to have acquired a bad reputation over the years. Even if the !important declaration should be used with caution, it's a very useful and powerful expression that much deserves its place in our CSS world. This article offers a guide to what the declaration is, what it does and how you should use it.
Useful program: List-O-Rama!
zNeed to generate inline menus for your website quickly and easily? List-O-Rama! is a free Dreamweaver extension from DMXzone which enables you to create inline lists in seconds by automatically generating and inserting the code for you. You simply insert the text of the links, choose the menu type, pick the design and click on finish. Simply download the program and start creating inline menus for your website.
Top link: Unicode code converter
Unicode code converter is designed to help make coding simpler by allowing you to find out what text or code should look like in other coding languages, including HTML/XML, JavaScript escapes and CSS escapes. Simply type your text or code into the appropriate box, click convert, and it will show you what it should look like.
Usability, focus group & training facilities hire
Our purpose-built, state-of-the-art facilities are available for hire! From our London-based offices, we can provide:
- Usability lab hire
- Focus group & market research facilities
- Training facilities & room hire
Find out more about hiring our facilities
Training courses
Come on one of our training courses and become a web guru! Our 18 courses are run across 5 training streams:
- Usability & accessibility courses
- Website optimisation courses
- Online copywriting courses
- Web development courses
- Online marketing courses
Training courses are held every 2 weeks in London and are fantastic - small class sizes, highly interactive and taught by experts.
