HTML 5 and CSS 3 are actually very flexible Programming Languages

A couple months ago, a good friend of mine asked me about Designing for them a Website for their upstart business. This site would be a little promotional project, which when completed could showcase their portfolio, blog and contact information.

Not long after she decided to look into using a Drag-n-Drop Editor, in order to allow for future upkeep on her own, and while I was quite ok with this decision, I had to quickly point out to my friend that the "Mobile Ready" version of her Website that the Editor had created had a major flaw to it which would effect her ability to draw clients.

You see, the problem with the tools that My friend used to build her site through the Editor, actually left her with a Mobile version that took out the two most important promotional tools of her Site, Her Blog and Portfolio due to it stripping specific elements out of the original code

Meanwhile, The Website for Inertial Zen Designs, was coded using the Standards of HTML 5 and CSS 3 only, actually returned a website that displays exactly the same way, no matter the platform it is loaded on, this is evident by the screen captures,shown below, of the website on the OSX Version of Google Chrome, Safari on iOS and the default browser on Blackberry's QNX Operating system being ran on the Playbook Tablet. Using just HTML 5 and CSS 3 returned a Website that will even display the blog you are reading (which has been embedded via the use of a HTML standard called an iFrame).

Inertial Zen Designs Website, as seen on iOS, QNX and OS X

Now, as a Company, ask yourself Which Website do you think meets your needs?

Why a Pre-Design Questionnaire makes Sense for a new Client/Designer Relationship

One of the biggest details that can lead to a Client and Designer having a happy, professional relationship through the Design process.  Can you as a Designer get the concepts that your client envisions? Can your client be assured that you are envisioning the concepts much the same way that they do? Is there a way to help bridge the communication gap?


There is a simple, one document solution to the questions raised, a Pre-Design questionnaire.  A Pre-Design Questionnaire, while a fairly simple document, covering the general basics of what should be going into a Website Project.  But, in actuality it goes beyond that.  With something as simple as a two page document, that your client can download and print, you as a Designer can actually have a large amount of information on hand, before you even start the design layout.  That information can include

-Desired Budget
-Desired (or Confirmed) Domain name and extension
-Site Concept
-Number of Pages
-Color Scheme
-Types of Content
-Keywords (Important to the start of strong Search Engine Optimization)
-Formatting and Embedded Elements
-if Your client plans to maintain the Site themselves after completed

Including a Design grid image, like the one below, also will let your Client get a general idea of how things can be mapped out in a working area of 1000 pixels wide.  This way you, as a Designer, have the modern version of a "Napkin Sketch" to work with when you sit down to start framing out the client's project

Design Grid for Websites- Feel Free to Download and Use

Why Does Inertial Zen Designs avoid designing using Flash?

Adobe's Flash software, for the longest time, was the go to platform for designing interactive and non-interactive content in Website Design projects.  However times are changing and Inertial Zen Designs tries to avoid using Flash as much as possible, choosing to favour elements of HTML 5 and CSS 3 instead.

As a potential client with Inertial Zen Designs, you may be wondering why this is the case, and as such please allow us to present our top 5 reasons as to why Inertial Zen Designs prefers to not use this platform.

1.Flash Platform Security issues
In March of 2013, Apple took the step to block older versions of Adobe Flash on computers running OSX citing security risks. Part of this is due to Malware that can spoof Flash upgrade requests.  Where this can work against you and your Website is that customers can actually think that the problems from other site's malware may be caused by the Flash content on your Website.

2. Flash works against your Site's ability to be Optimized for Search Engines
Lets face it, one of the most important details you want for your Company's Website is to have it come up at the top of Google/Bing's search results.  Flash works against you in this aspect as the Spiders that index the World Wide Web can not read Flash, so the more content you have embedded in the Flash wrapper the less content is working in your favour when it comes to indexing.

3. Future Updating of your Website
Lets say you decide to change one colour in the logo of your Company's website and you want that colour to flow through your existing Website.  With a CSS /HTML Website this change is actually fairly easy to do,usually through the change of one Hexadecimal colour code.  With a site coded in Flash, the entire site has to be re-rendered, every page has to be taken into software and physically have the changes made in every spot that requires the change.

4. Half the Mobile Market does not support Flash
In the mobile computing world, there is a constant back and forth shift between which platform dominates between Apple's iOS and Google's Android Platforms.  One of the selling points Google has positioned their platform on is that Android supports Flash, However Apple does not, and with more users going to Mobile Computing solutions, do you really want to risk alienating half of your potential audience due to lack of processing of content?

5.Adobe themselves is Killing Flash (so far at least on Mobile sites)
Lets face it, how much do you want to back a fighter when it's own cornermen have thrown in the Towel? That specifically is what Adobe did last November when they announced that, at least on Mobile Platforms, they would no longer be developing new versions of Flash Player, the exception to this being security upgrades.

But as covered in Point 4, half of the Mobile Computing Market does not support Flash anyway.  On Desktop systems, Google has moved forward with their own installed Flash plugin called "Pepper flash", however that is but one browser and the question has to be asked just how much longer the global market will continue to support Adobe's animation tool when even sites like Youtube are moving in the HTML5 direction.

And that is Five reasons why Inertial Zen Designs tends to design Website projects without Flash elements when ever possible

Google was Down for 5 Minutes, Did losing your "in the Cloud Drive" effect you?

Recently, its was announced that on Friday Aug 16th, Google had a 50-70% error in requests sent to their servers. This included Google Mail, Google Plus and their Google Docs and Drive Cloud based services.

In an article pertaining to the outage on Forbes, author Tim Worstall poised the rather interesting question of

"…Should we actually expect Google's systems to run perfectly all the time anyway? How much downtime should we accept as just being part and parcel of the way the world works?"

As the computing world continually suggests that we move towards a Cloud based computing model, the question that Mr. Worstall poses in his article are rather sound.  Sure, in this case it was a Five minute outage of Google's services, but just what does happen if Google, or any other Cloud based company, has a Major and expended outage.  What back up plans will your Company, or you personally, can you rely on in this situation.

truly something to consider, if 5 minutes without Google dropped 40% of Internet traffic, what happens if it's 5 hours? 5 Days? or even 5 Weeks?

Why Can't the Computer/Gaming/Mobile World of Users be "Friends" ?

Last Monday (Aug 19th) an article came across my radar on Cnet titled

Android or Apple? How about agnostic?

To basically sum up the article, the Author was attempting to address another published article stating that "Half of top iPad apps either unavailable or not optimized on Android", and how this detail does not play as a factor when he choses his devices.

This article, and it's almost predictable "Us-vs-Them" battle of platform supporters in the comments,  actually lead me to a very deep pondering question.

The Human Species likes to considering ourselves individuals, in fact we have the capacity to make choices in everything, from how we eat to what shows we watch on TV, to how we dress and ESPECIALLY to what works for each of us Technology wise.  So if Individual choice is such a fundamental right to us Humans, why is it that day in and day out we see people ready to linch up other people because they prefer iOS over Android, Windows over Mac, Xbox over Playstation (or any of the I'm sure thousands of examples that could be plugged in here…like Coke or Pepsi) ?

As a Web Designer, I actually have to look at this debate from a completely different view point.  The content that I create for my clients needs to be able to reach EVERYONE, and that means that it does not matter if the person accessing that content is using Windows 95 or Windows 8. Android (any of it's flavours) or one of the last 2 to 3 supported versions of iOS, they expect this content to display for them properly.  And while, in my personal life, I do prefer Apple products, as I do a lot of graphics and audio work (area's that Apple has supported quite well over the years), I have found myself actually recommending to friends to go with a Windows machine if they are into PC Gaming or just looking for something they can word process and surf the Internet on. same goes for Mobile Phones as well.

Why do suggestions like this actually happen when asked my opinion, that is simple, because the first question asked to them before an opinion is offered is "What do you need it to do for you?" Maybe, just maybe that is something we all need to ask before jumping in to try to sway someone to our personal way of computing.

How Website Design can be put to use in your local office / business Environment

Usually, when the concept of Website Design is brought up, it has to do with a Site that ends up being deployed on the Internet, and accessed from any Computer / Tablet or Web Enabled device, but what many may not consider is the use of using the elements of Website Design for an internally networked (intranet) access point for consumers.

If you think about it, Website Design can actually work benefits for places like Shopping Malls, Airports and Office buildings.  Imagine the use of technology, like the DISPLAX Multitouch screen, being used to create navigational screens.

How would a screen like this actually work better than the current static, backlit screens that we see in modern times? Well lets take a Mall map, like the one on top in the images below.

Sure it shows you where you are in the Mall, and it shows you where the desired store is, but what it does not show you is what the store looks like, so you know what to look for when you reach that area.  Now look at the mockup on the bottom.  Not only are you able to see where you are located, but with a popup window, that comes up off a link, the Shopper can now see the very story they are looking for, so when they reach that area of the Mall they know the store they are looking for.  Something to consider for your business.

Images and the Web Designer's Tool Kit

To the untrained, it may seem one of the major aspects of a Web Technologist's work is put in with the coding languages of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. However, one area that many tend to overlook is the need to edit Images for Content.

Now it should actually be pointed out that by "Edited for Content" a Web Designer does not actually mean editing in much the same way that you would see a Movie edited for a Television Broadcast, although there are times when every once in a while a potentially offending detail needs to be be removed from an image.  A Web Designer actually spends more time editing in order to fit a scaled image into a Web Site while at the same time reducing the image's DPI (Dots Per Inch, or the number of pixels of colour found in an area of an image).  Reducing an images DPI is actually done to allow the image to load faster as the Web Browser downloads the content to the User's screen.

These edits can be handled through many different pieces of software depending on if your Web Designer works on an Apple Mac or Microsoft Windows PC, and can range from the top of the line industry standard Adobe Photoshop to lesser priced (and even in some cases free_ programs like G.I.M.P (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) and Paint.NET.

You may ask just why such edits are important, and the fact is, edits, like reducing the DPI of an image, speed up the time it takes for the User to receive their requested information on your Company's Website, a detail that in this modern age could result in either a Sale or a Lost Customer in the matter of 3 seconds time.