Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

Validation in Website designing provides guidelines for the web designers to prepare well structure and browser friendly website. Website validation ensure that the websites comply with web standards. A validated web page defines which version of html or XHTML is used to code the website.
It is necessary for browsers to process the document correctly. Here are valuable Firefox adds on for web page validation.

1.  HTML Validator – Validates HTML documents using the CSE HTML Validator engine for Windows. This addson require CSE HTML Validator for Windows. It is very simple to use and efficient in its performance. This is a great tool for web developers and web admins who want to go an extra mile. An excellent add-on!

2. W3C RSS Validator -
Validates a page using the W3C RSS Validator. Once you open the RSS feed into the browser window, you can right click on the page or goto the Tools menu and validate the RSS feed. The results will open in a new tab.

3. W3C CSS Validator – Validates a page using the W3C CSS Validator. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the CSS of the current page. Opens the results in a new tab. Will only work on pages that have a CSS file associated. For example it will work with http://www.w3.org/ as the URL has a CSS file.

4. W3C Page Validator – Validates a page using the W3C Markup Validation Service. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the current page. Opens the results in a new tab. This is a simple extension that will work only for online pages.

5. W3C XML Validator – This is a very simple extension that validates W3C XML schema documents.

6. W3C Offline Page validator – Validates the source of a HTML/XHTML page via the W3C Markup Validation Service using the direct-input form. Validates a page using the W3C Markup Validation Service, even if the page is not public.

7. Validaty – One Click Validator. Provides you a button to validate a page using a validator like…

8. Total Validator – Perform multiple validations and take screen shots in one go. This 5-in-1 validator works with external, internal, or local web pages using the Total Validator service or local copy of the desktop tool…

So that’s my list of 8 extensions for web page validation which will make your validation experience better. Some of them are very useful and essentical for every web designers. What Firefox Validation addons is your favorite please leave your comments.

You have been at sites where you wait to website to load within couple of second and gets frustrated and leave. Click and refreshing multiple times for the page to load and still doesn’t load full. Sometimes the images doesn’t load or the styles of the page isn’t loaded. Users expect your website to load fast or within couple of seconds then you will lose those visitors. To avoid these hurdles we have few tips on how to optimize and speed up the web page to load fast.

1) Compress your graphics
Recently there has been an explosion in do it yourself kind of web site programs out there. Add your text and upload your images, but the problem with these kind of programs are these images are not optimize to load fast. Use image editing program like photoshop and other online image editors to compress your graphic before you upload from to your website. Uploading your images straight from you camera might not bigger in file size and too big for the web.

2) Remove unnecessary fancy stuffs
Removing unwanted flashy flash movies and animated gifs which takes every to load your website is key to make your web page load fast. Also generate unwanted javascript and ajex files for cool and animation can cause delay in pulling the website quick.

3) Use your content wisely
Don’t use PDF, images and flash for your content in the web page. Present your web page content in standard HTML. It loads faster and is user friendly and easy to download.

4) Use Clean Code
One of the reason for slow download of your web page is because of the junk code in your HTML. The advantage of building web pages with HTML complying to the latest W3c standards is it elimnate most of the junk code as well as your web page would be compaitable with all browsers. The other advantage is it is search engine friendly which allows the search engines to index your web pages faster.

5) Pick Good Hosting
Most of the time when a web page takes time to load is due to their web hosting server. Host on a server which has fast processors. Looking for cheaper hosting always end up in bad server where tons of websites are hosting. Check with your hosting provider if you have a web site slow loading problem and move to a better ones.

6) Use Efficient web programs
Often most of the web designers and developers pick the wrong web program for their website like ecommerce and Content management system.
These programs are created to make the website functional easily and faster. For example the CMS you choose d to run the website has a lot of junk code in it, then the loading of the web page will be slow. Apart from these drawbacks most of these programs are not search engine friendly. Check out the online reviews of these programs before you buy it.

The bottom line is a fast loading website don;t make your visitors leave fast also it is a user friendly to your users.

while designing and developing a website a web designer need to several tools to maximizing the effectiveness of the website. There are a wide range of different tools which is been presented here. Each of these tools is so important for a web designer.

1. 
   Web Page Analyzer Tool – This tool can be used to test the loading time of your web page. It gives a detailed report on how many objects and size of the objects on the page. These tools have several rating for each object like Green ratings is for good, Yellow for caution and Red for warnings.
2. 
   W3C CSS Validation Services – This W3C CSS validation Service is a web based tool helps web designers to check Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) are validated. The CSS can be validated here by three ways one is typing the URL, second is by uploading the file and finally by inputting the direct CSS code in the input box.
3. 
   Browser compatibility testing tool – By using Browsershots you can test your web designed pages in different browsers. As we all know the importance of checking the web pages with different multiple browsers. Browser compatibility testing is a critical element in the web development practice.
4. 
   Website Wireframe Tool – Wireframes are a basic visual guide for any web page layout design. Wireframe also allows maintaining design consistency throughout the site. Wireframes are very important part in the initial stage of the design process. Gliffy is a free web-based diagram editor. Gliffy free wireframe software makes it easy to create website wireframes and to share web mockups with anyone.
5. 
   Web color picker - This color picker will help you fine tune the hex color codes for your web page. These color picker tools are great for exploring colors and color schemes for your web design project.
6. 
   Screen Resolutions Checker – Quickly and easily test any Website in various Screen Resolutions! This tool allows you to check any web page in different screen resolutions. As web visitors uses different screen resolutions web designers need to check their web page design in different screen resolutions and make sure it looks in all of them.
7. 
   Dummy Text Generator – A dummy text generator will come handy to any web designers because when they wait for the content. Web designers can use dummy text generators to fill up that space.
8. 
   CSS Menu Generator – will generate both the CSS and the HTML code required to produce a text-based yet appealing set of navigation buttons. Menu generator makes it easy to create custom CSS menus without having to know all the complicated HTML and CSS
9. 
   Broken Link checker – Use this tool to check for Broken Links on a website. Broken links are links that lead nowhere; Clicking on the link will show an error page.
10. 
    Browser size checker - A nifty online tool for setting your browser size while doingWeb design.
11. 
    Robot Control Code Generation Tool – The only reason you might need to use a robots.txt file is if you want to prevent someone else from using this search engine to index your site
12. 
    Http header checker - Check your server to make sure the proper HTTP Status Codes (200, 301, 302, 304, 307, 404, 410) are being returned in the server headers.
13. 
    URL rewriting tool - This tool helps you convert dynamic URLs into static looking html URLs.
14. 
    htaccess tool – These tools will create .htaccess and .htpasswd files for you, without having to build these manually.
15. 
    Rounded Corner and Gradient Generator - This generates a basic box with rounded corners. It will create four image files and the necessary HTML and CSS code for you to put rounded corners around your content.
16. 
    Strip Generator lets you make your own comic strips. Users can even create their own Strip Blog, which combines the art of creating comic strips with blogging.