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Top 10 Tools for Acquiring Web Design Feedback

Introduction:


For designers, among the most vital parts of a project is acquiring reviews and advice on however to meliorate designs. After all, they create designs that will be used by several other people. Acquiring an outside perspective helps spot issues and validates design choices.

With the World Wide Web power to connect us to people from all over the world, acquiring feedback has never been easier.

Sometimes a web designer ignores a lot of things which are required but polling is the successful way to receive creative ideas which you ignored.

This list of top 10 tools will help you to share your work and receive reviews of it.

You’ll find websites dedicated to offering free design reviews in addition to tools you will be able to exercise usability examinations with real people in order to benchmark your design’s effectiveness in the wild.

1. Please Critique Me

Often designers visit online forums, social networking sites for their website feedback. But they do not actually get the clear picture of their website’s flaws. Please Critique me is the web community designed for the designers who can get valuable feedback for their websites.

Please Critique Me is not only about getting your designs reviewed by professionals, but is also a way to adopt effective design principles by reading achieved critiques.

How to Use it:

Members of the board admit recognizable names such as Chris Spooner, Deck Smith, Alen James, and more. In order to submit your web design for reviewing, just read out the guide lines mentioned in the web community.

please_critique_me

2. Critique The Site

You can heavily rely on this web tool for reviewing and collecting feedback and trusting on the social webs excited taste for discussing things,

How to Use it:

The tool acts upon merely by adding a left frame alongside the subject web page where users can leave their comments about the website. Commentators must first log in using a popular web service such as Gmail, Twitter, Facebook or OpenID before leaving the feedback for a website.

crtique_the_site

3. Bounce

Bounce as a simple web application gives web designers a platform for hooking thoughts and feedback for their website.

How to Use it:

It is visceral to use — connect your web design’s URL and it generates a screenshot of the site which people can make comments on.

Moreover this can be a fun & affordable way of collecting feedback by using web services such as Facebook and Twitter, if you have a social network of web designers.

bounceapp

4. Five Second Test

Five Second Test is a great web application for reviewing your website. Its evaluation is based on the simple mechanism. Basically the application presents the capture screen of the web design to the reviewers. After that they need to appraise in five seconds.

How to Use it:

Its evaluation is based on the two methods:

1. Memory Test

2. Click Test

Memory Test:

Memory tests present users a web layout for five seconds, then demands them what they remember afterward.

Click Test:

The most prominent areas of the website appears in front of the reviewer(again the time frame is of 5 seconds).  The idea is to see if a web design is good in making important design elements visible and memorable.

Other Information:

This web tool has two options to use, one is free and other one is paid which range between $5-15. And Paid tests are assigned higher priority in the test queue than in free.

five_second_test

5. UserTesting.com ($39)

UserTesting.com allows for conducting a cost-effective way to test your website.  A reviewer will address as he or she goes through to your site. You will be able to acquire feedback about your website by a viewing a video as well as from written summaries of the problems they have encountered.

6. Usabilla

As Usability means “The Quality of being able to provide good service”. So Usabilla is another web based tool for conducting usability testing. If you want to redesign your website then usabilla is the right tool for doing this.

Usabilla measures task performance and collects feedback from the site reviewers via integral annotation tool & with powerful features.

How to use it:

The tool presents the online screen and allows visitors to click on the most prominent areas of the website, and thus examines the time it takes to complete the task.

Other Information:

Usabilla is free to use for the web page. Moreover it can include equal to 50 players per test.

Its paid version is available for $49 and $950 per year where the requirement of players and web pages exceeds than in free version.

usabilla

7. Feedback Army ($15)

Feedback Army enables you to collect a more pored discussion around the critique of your design.

How to use it:

You can submit a feedback request with 4- 5 questions that you want to know by reviewers.

Questions can be:

1. What elements of the website confuse you?

2. What would you suggest in order to improve the website design?

Other information:

You are able to get 10 reviews with an approximated one to three hours turnaround time, which is avid for speedy and cost-effective critiques of your work

feedback_army

8. Reviews and Critiques – SitePoint

A brief Profile of Site point:

It’s an online Media company which publishes articles; e-books aspired at web designers and developers. Site point has a forum of 350,000 registered members specifically for acquiring design reviews.

In the website Review section of the forum, designers can submit their website and acquired the feedback of the users. Moreover they have a large community developed via forum which can help you in getting the effective feedback for your website.

reviews_sitepoint

9. Concept Feedback

Concept Feedback is based on the following four factors for your website:

1. Design

2. Purpose

3. Originality

4. Engagement

With the concept feedback web application reviewers are boosted to take part and provide superiority feedback by game mechanism such as achievements and achieving different ranks (for example elite, titan etc…)

Other Information:

This web tool is available for free, but you need to review five concepts before you post of your own.

Premium services are available at $ 10-15 per concept.

concept_feedback

10. Userfly

Sometimes you are not required to get direct feedback from your reviewers. Userfly work same like any analysis tool. You are required to place a simple code (userfly generated code) into your website, and this tool will show you stats about how users are interacting with your interface.

Other Information:

Its version is free but there is also a premium plan between $ 10-200 per month which gives you more appropriate (results)

userfly

Please Leave your comments and tell us about what Feedback tool you use for reviewing your website.

URL Rewriting- Top 5 Ways of PHP URL Rewriting

Introduction

In this era of technology enhancement, Internet has become the major source of information. If we need any kind of information, we usually consult from the Search Engines (particularly Google). Why? Because of the reason, Search Engine’s increased searching capabilities.

Thus every website owner wants now online visibility on top search engines. And for this you need to follow search engine guidelines. These are the guidelines which are helpful in the Search engine optimization of your website.

URL Rewriting is one of the good techniques followed in Search Engine Optimization. Consider more understanding of URL Rewriting and its importance:

Static URLS Vs Dynamic URLS

Static URL’s are more to be recognizable than dynamic URL’s for the number of reasons:

  1. Static URL’s generally rank better in Search Engines.
  2. Search Engines Crawls the Content of the static URLs much faster as compare to the dynamic URL.
  3. Static URL looks pretty or friendlier to the end-user.

Consider the Example of Static URL’s Vs Dynamic URL’s:

Static URL/Pretty URL:

http://www.design.com/web design/custom web design

Dynamic URL:

http://www.example.com/web design.aspx?design=custom&ID=2065

The above mentioned Dynamic URL has the following problems discussed below:

  • When this URL is crawled by the Search engine, it will have very less chance to become on top ranks because the URL do not defines what the page is all about, thus cannot become visible for any keyword.
  • The type of URL exposes the underlying technology; in this case it is Asp.net.  This can give clue to the potential hackers about what data they should send along with query string for a front door attack to the website. So technology extensions should keep hide from the web pages.
  • The type of URL contains the sticky elements like question mark & ampersand. Those special characters included in the URL are problematic in the case when another website owner will link to your website using this URL it can have issues with their xHTML.
  • Some of the Search engines do not crawl or index those pages whose URL’s are dynamically generated.  They’ll see the question mark in the URL and just turned back if they found it.

URL Rewriting Methods:

Readable URL’s are not only demanded by the Search Engines but by the humans as well. The reason is Search Engines are made for human beings not for Machines.

Consider the Example of How URL can be Rewrite for the Search Engines Optimization of your website:

Case to consider:

http://www.yourdomain.com/profile.php?mode=view&u=7

There are two ways by which this dynamic URL can be rewrite:

Methods Default Format After Rewriting
Single Page URL http://www.yourdomain.com/profile-mode-[VALUE]-u-[VALUE].html http://www.yourdomain.com/profile-mode-view-u-7.html
Directory Type URL http://www.yourdomain.com/profile/mode/[VALUE]/u/[VALUE]/ http://www.yourdomain.com/profile/mode/view/u/7/

URL Rewriting in PHP

There are the following requirements for Rewriting the URL in php:

Index Requirements
1 mod_rewrite module must be loaded in apache server.
2 Need to enable FollowSymLinks option otherwise you may encounter 500 Internal Server Error.
3 After that you need to create a .htaccess file in the root folder of your web directory.

Consider the Five different aspects of URL Rewriting Examples:

1. Rewriting the test.php to test.html

Add the following code into the .htaccess file.

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^(.*)\.htm$ $1.php [nc]

After placing the code, when the URL like http://localhost/test.htm is called in address bar it calls the file test.php.

Here:

$1=First regular expression of the part of the RewriteRule

[nc]= not case sensitive

2. Rewriting product.php?id=12 to product/ipod-nano/12.html

In this technique, you can smartly place the keyword in the url. Like in the above mentioned url, ipod-nano is the product name which is placed in the url after rewriting.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^product/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+)\.html$ product.php?id=$2

3. Redirecting without  www URL to www URL

Sometimes you might have noticed that when you type yahoo.com, you will be redirected to the www.yahoo.com. If you want this type of URL Redirection you can use the following code:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{ HTTP_HOST} ^optimaxwebsolutions\.com$

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.optimaxwebsolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L]

4. Rewriting yourdomain /user.php?username=xyz to yourdomain.com/xyz

By the code mentioned below, you can rewrite your URL according to the Method of Directory type as mentioned above in the heading URL Rewriting Methods.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ user.php?username=$1

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/$ user.php?username=$1

5. Redirecting the domain to a new subfolder of inside public_html.

Consider the case: If you want to redevelop your site, you can place the new site into the folder named new. It means all the files of redeveloped site is placed inside the root directory of folder named new. Here you need to understand that there can be a mess to paste all the files in the root folder (or can be a hectic process), so we don’t have this option. It means now your website can only be assess by “http://www.test.com/new”. So after placing the following code into the .htaccess file , you can access “www.test.com”, whose files are actually placed in the new folder.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^test\.com$ [OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.test\.com$

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/new/

RewriteRule (.*) /new/$1


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Company Profile:

We as a Leading Web Design Company Offers Best and Cost effective Web solutions to our clients in USA, UK and Canada. I being as a Project Manager: Kaitlyn Em is available for your support, you can drop me an email at kaitlyneml​y@aim.com, And can Call Us by visiting our website http://www.cyberdesignz.com/clients/

We implement your needs and requirements with the use of latest web trends and technologies in an effective way.

12 jQuery Demo’s Focused With Website Interactivity

Introduction:

We as a Professional Web Design Company has selected these jQuery Plug-ins for your knowledge & awareness.

In Web Development, jQuery is the most powerful invention at the present age of technology. By referring my last Post on jQuery “Effective Use of jQuery to your Web Pages” , it is known that client side technologies are pretty much helpful in adding interactivity to your website. Take the example of Ajax, Flash Scripting, Java Scripting (previously) and Now jQuery.

Now take a precise look at Website Interactivity:

  1. When we talk about Interactivity, generally it means that “Capable of acting on or influencing each other”.
  2. In the web context interactivity means that how effectively your website interacts with your potential customer?
  3. The Key to success in a website design is the interactivity.
  4. Interactivity makes the website design more usable and friendly.

Imagine the scenario: There are two shopping stores & they are right next to others. Both are dealing in the same goods but one shopkeeper is earning more than the other shopkeeper. What could be the reason? Only the possible reason is the concept of interaction with the people. And this interaction can be done on the basis of customer feedback, customer suggestions, attractive offers etc… So when you relate the overall scenario with the website interactivity, it means how much your web design is interactive so that a site visitor is well communicated.

I would like to share advance jQuery effects the simple but yet inspiring by which interactivity can be added to your designs.

Interactive jQuery Effects For your Website


1. J Query Plug-in Named Flip!
Flip is the “jQuery plug-in” which adds the functionality to your text to be flipped in all directions. Review down the complete tutorial by click on the following image:

2. Image Flow Plug-in
“Image Flow plug-in” of the jQuery works as the same like of a traditional Image Slider. But its transaction on a page is really fine. Consider its real time implementation by clicking on the above mentioned image:

3. Map Building With a jQuery Instead of Flash

You can easily use jQuery code along with Ajax to build up the engaging interface as mentioned below:

4. Image Zoom Out Effect
Consider the “Image Zoom Out” effect which is implemented with the jQuery as mentioned below:


5. Marvelous Background Image Navigation
It’s a great Background Image Navigation which is more of less a custom web design.


6. J Query Panning Slideshow
Here jQuery Panning Slideshow plug-in is implemented as a diagonal navigation. View it:


7. Forming an Interactive Picture With jQuery
This type of functionality can be add-up with those websites which requires extensive screen spaces. Clicking on the different sections of the website exposes a model box which displays further information about clicked section.

8. Cloud Zoom Plug-in of jQuery
Cloud Zoom is a jQuery plug-in, which works absolutely great for the photo’s showcase website likes models, Fashion outlets Image Gallery. Moreover consider it features and result:

9. Make Retina Effect With jQuery
This “plug-in” will easily be understandable for those who are great fan of Apple products like iphone, ipad or iPod touch. There is a Retina effect in the jQuery which zooms the small text greatly.

Consider its real implementation:

10. Fancy-  jQuery Photo’s Transition
With the use of this jQuery Plug-in, you can view your photos like a slide-show with a fancy transaction. Have a Look:


11. Avia Slider
With the jQuery Plug-in you can create an image slide-show with unique transitions among the images.
A Few transactions are as mentioned below:

  • Randomized Transitions
  • Dropping Curtain
  • Fading Curtain

12. Photo Shoot Effect With jQuery & CSS
Photo Shoot effect is beautifully handled with the jQuery. This effect is implemented in the image slide show. Consider the following link to operate this plug-in:

Conclusion

Although Flash still has importance in web designing & a powerful tool we have. Designers use it where it is required but jQuery is the client side technology launched as a new framework API of Java Script which implements Flash functionality with less effort.

Please Leave your comments about this post of “jQuery Focused with Website Interactivity” !

12 Magnificent Freeware Tools for Graphic Designers

Introduction

Few years back there was not much scope of graphic designing, but with the passage of time, the networks of network (internet) has grown up to optimum level and this increases the scope of graphic designing in the web industry.

The use of graphics in the web is known as web designing. Web designing is the art of making the content attractive and appealing to the site visitor so that web masters get the benefit of less bounce rate and conversion with the high traffic.  There are the designers who are engage with the professional web design companies in order to deliver quality results.

We as A Professional Web Design company deals in web design, web development and internet marketing of the websites. Considering your needs and requirements we deliver the best and cost effective solutions for your organization.

We recommend the best graphic design freeware tools which you can use for adding the graphic into the website.

1. Flockdraw :

Summary:

It is a Freeware Web based Painting/drawing tool.

Features:

It has almost every feature of MS Paint; with drawing you can also have the chat facility with the other people in the chat room.

Usage:

It can be extremely useful when you want to show your drawing/creativity to your client, for instant purpose you need to understand some points visually you can use this web based software and invite your client on the chat room. This web based application can also be used for the entertainment purpose by designers.

2. Paint.net :

Summary:

It is really a professional tool for drawing, painting and photo editing. You can download it and use it as a desktop application. It has a great and user friendly interface. But there is one requirement that is you must have windows upgraded version like SP3 or windows Vista.

Features:

An innovative user interface with the support of layers. You can do unlimited undo, can add special effects & a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

Usage:

Paint.net has the active and online community which provides tutorials, online help and various plug-Ins. It can be positively used as a graphic design application for creating most powerful elements for your website.

3. Blender :

Summary:

Blender is the freeware 3D Multimedia content creation suite. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Features:

  1. It has the Flexible and fully configurable window layout.
  2. Undo support at all levels.
  3. Built-in text editor for comments and editing Python scripts
  4. Unwrapping methods like angle based unwrapping.
  5. You can build animation (skeleton) with fast creation mode.
  6. Automatic skinning support.

Hence many advance options are supported by the Blender Application which provides you an easy way for 3D designing.

Usage:

It can be best used as a 3D making software, and you can make cool and attractive animations which can be inserted into your website.

4. Myna :

Summary:

If you want to merge some audio with your graphic works, then this application is best for this kind of work.

Features:

  1. You can make your audio tracks remix which can be inserted into your graphic design.
  2. Moreover you can independently modify the audio file like sets its tempo, merge other audio effects, high nodes, low nodes effects.

Usage:

Very interesting and entertaining software to modify your music files. And you can place these unique music files into your website background.

5. Boxee :

Summary:

With the help of Boxee Tool you can view your design media under one place. It is a freeware tool. Moreover they have their own services which you can avail it and view all the media either into your laptop or in your big Screen LCD TV. They have full tutorial available for attaching your laptop with your digital TV.

Features:

  1. It can manage all multimedia items like videos, audios.
  2. Sharing feature is also there for

Usage:

You can download it, and customize this software for your website, and can merge all the multimedia items into one platform.

6. ImgBurn :

Summary:

ImgBurn is the software application used to burn your web projects into the CD, DVD or even HD/DVD.

Features:

  1. It has several Features which includes read, write or build mode.
  2. Read mode provides the DVD to read for an image file.
  3. Create Image file from your computer files.
  4. Write the files or image into the Disc.

Usage:

It provides the useful means of transferring data into reliable media sources and excellent choice for graphic designers to use the functionality free.

7. Phoenix :

Summary:

Phoenix allows basic image retouching to advance or complex effects. By viewing its home page you can get the clear picture of what kind of work it can do for you.

Features:

  1. It is a complete web based image editing tool available for designers.
  2. It has a toolbar on its left side of the browser window likewise fireworks or Photoshop.
  3. It has different panels for editing image.
  4. Useful options for layer handing or effects like transparency.

Usage:

Phoenix provides the complete image editing features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity & ease of web based application.

8. BeFunky :

Summary:

It’s a Smart Photo Enhancement tool & provides means of editing images with a single click.

Features:

  1. BeFunky provides image modification and effects to the daily usage pictures.
  2. It easily fixes your daily photo’s problem with less effort.
  3. There are digital goodies available which can be add-up with your photos like frames, glasses etc…

Usage:

You can modify your images personally for yourself, can modify your face book profile picture, or as a designer you can add different effects online.

9. Splashup :

Summary:

Love Photoshop but hate the price? Then use Freeware photo editing web application that is Splashup.

Features:

  1. It is not recommended to install any big application software for designing tiny elements. You can use splashup for speedy work online.
  2. It is very light in use, so any user can use it online with less to medium connection speed.
  3. All featured tools are available for editing or adding effects to the image.

Usage:

Designers and general public can use it easily for image editing.

10. Picasa :

Summary:

Picasa is the freeware Google product for graphic designers that make your pictures look great.

Features:

  1. Manage your photos; organize your digital photo album with Picasa.
  2. Can create slide shows, prints & wallpapers.
  3. You can easily do basic fixes of your photos with less effort and time.
  4. Tuning options are there for images.
  5. Collage feature allow you to combine your best pictures together with a cool background.
  6. You can create virtual photo albums.
  7. Picasa has the powerful searching capabilities by assigning tags & stars to photos.
  8. With the Sharing feature, you can share or sync your photos online easily.

Usage:

Google Picasa can easily be used by the general public and professional designers.

11. Dropbox :

Summary:

Dropbox is the great tool we have to manage our all data either multimedia or simple text.

Features:

  1. One of the great features of the dropbox is that it is meant for synchronizing your all data. So wherever you go for travel, you will get all of your files same.
  2. It gives you the file access by assigning you a single magic box, which can be assess into your laptop, pc or mobile phone.

Usage:

The persons, professionals, designers who use to travel much frequently can use dropbox. Even you can place your photos, multimedia items into the dropbox.

12. Executor :

Summary:

Executer is a multipurpose launcher program and a customized version of Windows Run Functionality.

Features:

  1. Programs / short-cuts.
  2. Documents / files / folders.
  3. You can assign number of keywords like shutdown, logoff,  show date, week, show (ip),  start screen saver.
  4. Executer has the fastest searching mechanism based on the assignment of keywords, because keywords are the searchable by the user and are easily to be remembered.
  5. Auto Completion is supported for keywords,
  6. Send emails
  7. You can do fast calculations
  8. Manage and View running applications.

Usage:

The Designing is the act of making the content much attractive with the use of different designing tools. Sometimes it’s become so hard to locate the element or item related to designing. So this tool can help you in this regard to keep track of your all data, software’s, applications, and multimedia items. And provide you an easy way to perform tasks efficiently.