The Difference between a Web Designer and a Hacker

Being  a Professional Web Designer can at times be a very trying time when it comes to interacting with friends, family and the general public.

So much has shifted from traditional ways of being accomplished to being handled online that the general view has been unable to catch up. So, what really is the differentials between what a Web Designer does and what qualifies a person as a "Hacker" anyway?

First, lets take a look at the Web Designer. A question I get asked often is "What does a Web Designer actually do?"

 My solution to explaining this actually hit me a couple years ago when My parents relayed me the detail that they were having a tough time explaining to My elderly Grandmother what I do.

Lucky for me, since My Grandmother had, years earlier, helped in the publication of a book that chronicled the local history of My home town. I told My parents to describe it as being like a layout editor on a book, only instead of physical photos, paper and using scotch tape, my workspace is a computer screen and the published work is read like reading something on a TV.

Now, lets be honest, that is a pretty basic description as Web Designers work with many programs, platforms and coding languages. Those coding languages is really the common ground between a Web Designer and a Hacker however.

Hackers come in three classifications. White Hat, Grey Hat and Black Hat Hackers, and yes the descriptions are very much like the wild west with the White Hats working to expose problems in coding platforms and the Black Hats exploiting those code issues for their own gain.

Many of them have knowledge of the same programming languages that us Web Designers do, as well as many languages, software and hardware tools that the average Digital Publisher, and lets be honest, really that is what a Web Designer is, would use in day to day activities.

Web Designers, are a unique breed, We spend our days positioning images, creating interactive elements and positioning images in order to get our customer's messages out to their intended target audiences.  As such, We come equipped with knowledge of multiple platforms. We write code that allows content to resize to what ever size screen the end user is accessing information on.

as for the interaction with our code and Hackers, there are limits as to just what the public facing Web Designer can account for. Most of the exploits that place user information in danger of being exposed occur at the platform level, usually due to a hole in a Flash, Javascript or other platform- including the programming code of the browser or even the Operating System.

Hackers, be they White Hats, Black Hats or the line balancing Grey Hats, serve a valuable purpose. They cause evolution of programming platforms and languages, leading to the patching of holes in code or, in some cases, the retirement of a platform all together.

More information on the Hacking Lifestyle, ways to keep yourself safe and other questions can always be researched online. Two suggestions I would Make is to look up the websites of Steve Gibson's GRC research and Darren Kitchen's hak5.org


Dave for Inertial Zen Designs  

Legacy and building your Social Media Online Brand

Recently, a friend of mine went through a career change, one that seen her go from holding a representation as a regional Crown Holder to breaking into the world of Film Acting.  In the process of this transition, She deactivated her Group and Fan Pages that had been created as part of her Pageant Run.

The deactivation of these pages are perfectly ok for a user to do, but they also create a very interesting detail that may not have been taken into account at the time of their deactivation.

In the Technology world, there is a well known concept, known as Legacy Interaction. Legacy Interaction can allow for Designers to bring forward aspects of a program or application that has been beneficial in the success of a Company's existing success.

This same concept can actually be applied to one's Social Media presentation. be it Company who is being bought out by another company, or, as in the case of My friend making the transitioning from Beauty Pageant Contestant to Actress one thing that should be an important aspect to focus on is that you have created a presence online, and that presence has generated a collection of fans and supporters of said online presence.

When transitioning from one element of your online Social Media Presence to another, one of the strongest elements working in your favour is the supporters you have built with your existing brand, how you transition from one part of your social Media Presence to the new venture can either make or break the new venture.

People have invested in your online presence, they believe in it and have come to support it. They want to grow with you, continue to support you and become brand ambassadors who can give the public confidence in what you are selling.

That product can be anything from the newest Widget, a clothing line, Software App, or in the caee of My friend a successful career on the silver screen. What one needs to remember is that this can't happen if your audience is given the chance to follow your evolution and are invited to follow along before changes are made to the Social Media Platforms.

This means that to make a successful transition one really should do the following

1. Select a specific Date of when your existing Social Media Profiles will go dark

2. Set up your new Social Media Profiles-pages, groups, twitter etc.

3. Make the public aware of the new Profiles and invite them to follow you over to the new Profiles

4. Be thankful and make your supporters feel that you are grateful for their support, Let them come along with your established brand as you build it into a much stronger brand

5. Reap the reward of being able to walk into your new endeavour with a established audience that you can offer the support of to new contacts.

Using this five simple steps will allow your Social Media Presence, providing that  nothing already has happened to damage your brand, to leverage the legacy you have established as a foundation which will allow for a successful building of a very successful brand.

When Malware on Windows can cause a headache on OS X (and even possibly your tablets)

The idea of Cross Platform is a beautiful one. The idea of starting a movie on Netflix on one device and picking up on another, or being able to research something at the office, fire up your browser at home and continue to look at the same site through a feature that sync’s your browser over any device sounds great and can be very handy.

But, as with many other things in the modern cloud based connected world we live in, there is a underlying dark side to the force that every so often rises up and causes problems.

That very dark side hit me over the weekend when I launched up Google Chrome on my Windows based tablet, only to find that one of those nasty little silent drive by installs has performed a browser highjack.  

My search engine was changed from Google to some ad spewing site as well as my home pages being changed from a combo of Facebook, Google Plus and inertialzendesigns.com tabs to the website for this hijacking piece of malware.

Not a problem I figured, I’ll just log into the Mac and search up how to clean this little annoyance up, a practice I’ve been used to doing over the years as even with Anti-Virus and Firewall softwares, sometimes these little annoyances get through. But then it hit Me

My Mac got hit with the SAME CHANGES TO THE HOMEPAGE AND SEARCH ENGINE SETTINGS!!!

You see, Google’s Sync settings worked too well, without realizing it the checkboxes were set to sync the options for search engine and home page on all devices  along with allowing cross platform sync’ed tabs and history were checked. As such, the result were what they were.

So, just how do you, My fellow users of the Internet, make sure the same thing does not happen to you?

With these steps is how:

1. Open Google Chrome and type in chrome://settings into the search bar

2. click on Advanced sync settings

3. Change just what you want to allow Chrome to Sync, in the case of making sure that Malware remains isolated to only the infected device, the areas where is it wise to uncheck are your settings and extensions, consider your History as well if you are extra cautious.

Finally click ok and resume your activities knowing you are a little bit safer.

David for inertialzendesigns.com

Building a Website, or putting the puzzle together.

Since I first started getting introduced to Web Design, back in the mid 90's , I have heard many say the following

"Web Design isn't THAT hard to do..."

and they usually follow it up with something like

"All you do is drag that image here, place that youtube video there, write up some text and publish it"

If only the truth of Web Design was REALLY  that simple. What a Designer does is actually more like trying to build a fairly advanced puzzle from the ground up.  To help with understanding this lets just break down a few things about the anatomy of a Web Designer, shall we.

First, unlike many programers, Web Designer's do not have the ability to pick only one language to work with. Sure there are programming languages people know about, but here is a short list of the areas a modern Web Designer should have a working knowledge of

• HTML -Hyper-Text Markup Language
• CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
• Java
• Javascript
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby
• Sql
• Flash (although this is going the way of the dodo bird thankfully) 

Each of these languages carry their own formats on how they are written, and in the caee of some like CSS and Javascript the Designer can actually end up writing one language inside the carrier of another. Usually this is done as inline entries in the HTML document.

The next part of the puzzle that a Designer has to figure out is just how will the final Design be viewed. Sure there are standards in how the above languages are written, but deployment is not always handled the same way depending on options the end user picks from those listed below

platform: Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Xbox 360/Xbox One, PS 3/PS 4, or Chrome OS

browser: Internet Explorer, Safari (Mobile or Desktop), Firefox, Opera, Chrome (mobile or Desktop)

connection speed: Dial Up, Mobile  or Broadband

screen size: Ranging usually from a 4" Smartphone Screen up to 80" Television screens thanks to System on a Stick computers that plug into TV's HDMI Port, like the Chromebit  and the Intel Windows 8.1 Stick

With sub categories for some of these, Windows 98 vs Windows 7 for example, the list goes on.  

Then there is the Multimedia aspects, Photos may need to be processed in Photoshop at different resolutions in order to deliver crisp looking images that load on a page in 5 seconds of landing so that a quick, accessible and eye pleasing experience occurs.

We Designers also have to stay up to date with what formats platforms are supporting, a long standing example of this being the fact that Google and Apple have different views on the now retired mobile version of Adobe Flash. Apple has always stuck to supporting HTML based implementation of graphics, electing to promote using things like GIF  files or embedded movie files in place with a linked embed code. 

On the other hand, Google elected to develop their own version of Flash, called "Pepperflash", to handle what Adobe's format used to.

Web Design does not stop with all the above back end coding though. With all this to take into account the Designer then has to reformat a Client's content, in the process coming up with an efficient layout which delivers said content in a manor which is both meeting the client's vision while delivering a usable and engaging website for the end user. 

Of course, we are not forgetting the detail of "Search Engine Optimization".  SEO, as has been discussed in other blog entries, is the practice of finding the correct search terms so that a Website ranks as highly as possible, coupled with factors like Domain Age and Link Back scores (the number of websites Google considers relevant that host links to your website).

Websites, in many countries, are expected to meet accessibility standards so that users with accessibility issues, like those who are visually impaired, can use the Website. All of the above also is expected to meet W3C Standards and be wrapped into a format that is visually pleasing to the end user regardless of the device used.

So, to bring us back to the original statement of "Web Design isn't that hard to do..." Permit me to say that by the elements, this is indeed true, and through the use of products that allow Drag and Drop design, or "What you see is what you get" results this statement is indeed correct. However when looking at using the WYSIWYG method the results are in line with expecting the quality of a high end  sports car at the cost of a entry level import.

-David for inertialzendesigns.com 

Down the Great SEO Rabbit Hole

Search Engine Optimization

The very term has become a buzzword in Website Design as every Expert says one of the following collection of phrases

• Your Website needs it
• Your Website doesn't need it
• Some aspects rank higher than others when applying SEO
• Doing SEO is a waste of time as it's useless

and the list of opinions go on as Web Designers pound our heads against the keyboards of our Design Rigs looking for that magical answer of just how to land up on page 1 of Google's results.

This exercise is one I've first hand been going through with the inertialzendesigns.com website. Hours upon hours being spent making minute adjustments in the code that powers the back end of the Site. Adjustments like 

• Making sure every image file was properly Tagged
• Using Keywords in the Site's Meta Tags description data
• Optimizing images, code and copy for speed while balancing image quality
• ensuring that the Website is Mobile Friendly and coded with Responsive Design
• Staying to W3C coding standards where ever possible within the limits of any code being entered for plugins.  

Everything above is in fact elements of good responsible design, and yet still the Website does not return a perfect score when tested for SEO. 

So, what is a Web Designer to do in a situation like this, you might ask. The answer is you do what any good company does, research your competition and see what is working for them.

The elements for this research were quite simple, and as follows

Search Google for a list of Web Designers in My local Community

Armed with this knowledge pull up the following two Websites

      seositecheckup.com to check the score for each site

      smallseotools.com to check backlinks and Site Age

Using these tools and a spreadsheet program chart the results.

With My Company's Website, and the competition list in hand, the results of this exercise becomes very telling, as you can see by the image of the spreadsheet below (Results that if you have the desire to replicate, you can using the sites listed above)

The competition for the purpose of this research is listed in order of Google's returned listing, below the listing for inertialzendesigns.com . Besides each site is their score on SEO site checkup based on the 45 Metric Test each site faced. Also listed is the age of the Website and where available the number of Sites pointing towards any given site.

So what exactly did I end up learning from this little experiment?   

• Website Age appears to have been weighed high in the ranking, even if a site's SEO Checkup Test scored lower than My Company's site
• Backlinks, while important, are not everything when it comes to SEO
• Good Coding Practices that meet W3C Standards will allow your Website to have a fair User Interface when it comes to ease of use, and following the standards will not really harm your ranking in SEO, on the other hand the jury is still out if it actually helps

It should also be pointed out that not all "suggested" metrics of SEO are a win-win, take for example the suggestion that CSS should be put minified to "speed up" the website.  

Minifying one's CSS code is the practice of shortening hex codes and removing white space from the document prior to uploading. In the case of inertial Zen Designs' Website code doing this actually knocked the elements of Mobile Friendliness and Responsive Design offline, which in turn caused the Mobile Browsers to render the Desktop version and Google's Web Developer Tools interface docking points due to the site not being Responsive.

So, just what is the answer to the question of how to handle SEO for a website? That is going to be a ongoing debate for some time to be honest. However, as a Web Designer how can one handle this aspect of Website Design?

In My opinion. Code for creating a user accessible experience, keep your client's message consistent across all platforms, make sure the project is well tested on multiple platforms while meeting the standards of good coding and advise your client that if they want to rank high on Google that time, patience and getting their site into the public's view space are going to play major factors.

If you have any questions about this posting, please leave comments and I will do My best to answer them

-David for inertialzendesigns.com

One wrong Social Media Post can risk derailing your campaign

Take a moment to look at the image below this opening paragraph. Ask yourself what  it makes you feel as you look at it, then ask yourself this follow up question

“Would I care enough to throw My support behind this cause based off this image?”

I can tell you my answer to that question was 

“Why would I bother? If I have already lost all Privacy and am being told to get over it then why even stand up in support of a movement that claims it wants to speak for protecting one’s privacy?”

There is a lesson to be taken from this posting by Canada’s OpenMedia.ca watchdog group. A lesson that any business who is looking into the design of a Website and a Social Media Campaign, and it’s a simple two word lesson at that

CONSISTANCY COUNTS

The traffic you desire to have driven to your Website is looking for a consistent presentation by your organization. they want to feel that the message being delivered remains steady over the posts and the calls to actions that your Business is promoting to potential clients and supporters.

Now, since this image ends up being a factor for OpenMedia because they linked to a blog article by Michael Geist, this actually becomes a rather unfortunate side effect of the way Facebook shares links mixed with OpenMedia’s Social Media team potentially having missed taking one step that could have seen them share the article without the image Mr Geist chose to have a company what is a otherwise a very insightful and well written article.

You see, We live in a modern culture of sound bytes and memes. The end user is likely going to spend anywhere up to 15 seconds on a modern website , 55% of users according to a March 2014 post by hubspot.com.

In fact the Hubspot article actually lists the following Data Points as take aways from the statistical information found in the article

1. People Engage with Newsworthy Content more than Evergreen Content

2. Social Media has little Effect on reading Engagement

3. Banner Ads Don’t Work

Now lets take points 1 and 2, apply them to the above image and again ask yourself, if this crossed your social medial stream, would you care enough to get involved?

I know how I would answer, but how would you? 

-David for inertialzendesigns.com

It’s not your ISP giving your information away but your Torrent File

“Notice and Notice system broken in 8 days” read the headline linked to the story about how scare tactics were being employed to convince Canadian Internet Users that downloading but one song file illegally could cost them $150,000.00 for doing so. Copies of the message ISP’s are asked to forward from representation of specific artists and labels.

In fact, there is a sample of the very letter that can be found in an article by Michael Geist  here. This article was actually shared by Canada watchdog Openmedia.ca on their Facebook page and returned comments like this one in the feedback

“Thank you!!! Now, Canadians should be asking why companies are getting ISPs to let them sniff your data traffic…”

Honestly, the MPAA and RIAA don’t actually HAVE to get companies to sniff our data traffic to get the information, because it’s already openly accessible to them thanks to they very device being used to download that file…the Torrent file.

Torrents, inherently in the way they have been designed, take small blocks of a file from every user who is sharing it and rebuilds it on the end user’s computer. For this to happen the Torrent needs to know where to seek out these blocks so it does the following,

-Computer 1 sends out a request for information to a central hub

-Hub looks around the other computers connected to it and says “Yes I can pull information from computers 2-100 (or however many there are with the information available)

-that information is then reassembled like a star trek transporter does on computer 1’s system, with computer 1 now hosting the file with the other computers for additional users.

The way the Industry manages to get this information without having to go through the ISP’s for data sniffing is they send out the same request that computer 1 did and use the same protocol, only they have protocols in place that let them read the addresses of the postal system.

you see the internet in many ways works like a big digital version of the snail mail postal system we all know, Computer 1 is your home represented with an Internet protocol address, much like a house number, written in blocks of 3 digits on the back end of systems.

When you request something from a site like Facebook or Amazon, the system says “Hey 123.456.789.000 can you hand us information to send to 000.987.654.321” or what ever your specific computer has been handed for an address.

Torrents work the same way, so along with that bit of that Taylor Swift song that is requested by your computer adds this address information to the data footprint of the song.

Once the Industry has that information saying that X number of data blocks came from your computer they can run that through a IP trace and be told that you IP Address is in a specific city and with a specific service provider, then they contact that service provider and have them forward to you the notice of copyright infringement.

So as you can see, the stool pidgin is not your Internet Service Provider, but in fact the very software that you are using, the message of infringement is only sent through your ISP because they have the information of who is at what address.