AdesBlog.com

For those who read AdesBlog.com through RSS Readers: a while back I have introduced miniblog on AdesBlog. It is located on the homepage just below navigation menu (see screenshot). These are posts that are usually short (i.e not more than 3-4 lines), they could be updates from AdesBlog, links to various websites that might be useful to you but do not need a full review in the blog.

Mini posts are not published in RSS, mainly because I do not want to fill my RSS with short posts. So, if you do not want to miss these posts, check back adesblog/miniblog once in a while. Because you might miss something that could be really really useful for you… ;)

I have been in web design business for 6 years now. Over the years many things has changed. Some of the major changes in the industry include:

1. putting behind the 90’s designs that had a lot of colorful and flashing texts (thank God for that!)
2. putting behind the flash frenzy and choosing usability over fully-flash based websites (flash websites are now used for certain type of websites only i.e portfolio, restaurant..etc). Remember how every website on the net was a flash website few years back? Even the corporate sites were using fully-flash websites then.
3. shift from HTML based websites to CSS based websites, thanks to softwares like Dreamweaver that makes this transformation easer. And to organizations like W3C for pushing for the implementation of these new, better standards.

   However the transformation is still not 100%, most of the sites now limit CSS usage to text styling only. I guess that’s because of the difficulty in CSS design, because CSS is more like a programming than web design to many web designers — who got used to WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) way of doing things like in photoshop.

4. and now, shift from static websites to CMS based websites, thanks to CMS systems (including wordpress) that make it easy to build such database driven websites. Good thing about these systems are almost all of them are free.

How does it affect Web Design Industry?

So far, the effect on the web design industry has been only positive. When the flash was introduced by Macromedia and got a huge popularity by everyone. It affected web designers in a positive way. Because now web designers were able to charge a lot higher for their works. (As you know flash websites cost more than double of what normal HTML sites cost).

Similarly, now that the blogging is a huge hit, it too brought a huge opportunity for web designers. Because, blog and design goes hand in hand. Due to huge demand for blog designs, many web designers now have turned into pure “blog designers”. I personally find it easier designing a blog than designing a website. That’s because blogs will usually have the same pre-defined sections (i.e categories, archive, blogroll…etc) most of the time.

Future of Web Design

Few years back I thought in the near future (i.e now) web-design industry will be made irrelevant by big players like Microsoft and others who are interested in internet technologies, who I thought will make it easy for anybody to design a website. I thought people would be able to design websites just by dragging and dropping.

But now, after a decade, web design industry is more relevant than ever. Was I wrong in my prediction or is it just not time yet? We see that there is already some transition from custom web-design to using ready-made templates. But that transition doesn’t really affect web design industry, because, those templates still have to be customized by web-designers for the people who have purchased them. So, they will still be referring back to some freelance web-designers or web design companies to customize their templates.

And even if in the event that there will be some drag and drop technology to create websites in the future. I am sure not everyone will want to use them. Because businesses want to be unique i.e they don’t want to have the same website like their competitor.

Conclusion

I think the web design industry will stay as long as the current HTTP based internet technology stays. Because the current internet technology needs websites to be run in the way they are running now i.e through hyperlinks, and that require web designing. So, unless some other “new internet technology” replaces the current one, which will change the way we interact (maybe we won’t need websites anymore in the future, who knows) the web design industry is here to stay.

CNET’s Download.com is one of the most popular sites for downloading softwares. If you are a software developer, I strongly recommend listing your site on Download.com for the following reasons:

Firstly, from my own experience (listing my color picker) I noticed that this is a great way to reach wider audience. Because your software not only appears on Download.com but on their whole network of sites (see AdesClrPicker on ZDNet.com, ZDNet Australia, TechRepublic, The New York Times, CNET Asia, CNET UK…etc) over 20 sites.

Getting your software on Download.com is already great, but getting it on more than 20 popular sites is even better.

Secondly, listing your software on Download.com can save you bandwidth, especially if your software is big in size or if the download traffic is too high. Download.com can host your software on their server for unlimited amount of downloads.

It’s also the trusted source of download for your customers, unlike many free file hosting services that could hurt your reputation.

Thirdly, I see that other smaller download sites see Download.com as their source for new softwares and software updates. So, getting your software on Download.com means — getting your software on hundreds of other smaller sites for free.

How much it costs? Is it worth the money?

Uploading your software to Download.com is done through its other site Upload.com. They have two different listing packages; one costs $9/month and another $99/month (see details).

I took $9/month package, with what I have listed above I would say it totally worths the price!

P.S Consider listing your software on Snapfiles.com and Tucows.com too.

I have been working on the new version of my color picker software - AdesClrPicker. The new v2.2 version is out now, you can download it here.

For those who are not familiar with AdesClrPicker, it’s a software for picking colors from anywhere on your screen. With one click you can get the color code of that spot in 5 different codes (HTML, RGB, Delphi, C++ and VB). For example if you click on a white space on your Desktop, it would give you #FFFFFF (it will be copied to your clipboard). Setting up your AdSense ads will be very easy with this program ;)

New features in this version

Floating Panel

Floating Panel (see image to the left) has been redesigned to include most used functions of the program. Previously it used to show the last 10 captured colors only. Now it has a lot more useful features on it. Floating Panel just sits on your screen, on top of all your windows. It’s small in dimension, so it can easily be positioned in any corner of your screen. If you do not want, you can always minimize it to taskbar.

Export Captured Colors as Image

New export feature has been added. Now you can export your captured colors as an image (jpg, gif or png) as well, in addition to Adobe Photoshop table export feature that it has. Exported images will have a colored box + color code. These images are useful if you want to share your colors with others. Instead of sending just the color codes, now people can actually send the colors together with the color codes.

This is how the exported image will look like (image + color code):

Change Preview Pane Size & Zoom Level

I have also added a new feature that allows you to change the preview pane and its zoom level. Some people suggested that they want to have a bigger zoom level. With new version that will be possible!

As you can see, a lot new exciting features are added to the new version. But it’s still small in size, only 1.5MB.

Promotion: Get 50% Discount

The program costs $9.99, but I am giving 50% off to all AdesBlog readers. Just use the following coupon-code on checkout page ACP-4CJB-BLOG and you will get $5.00 discount. Expiry date for this coupon is 20th May 2008 (another 7 days).

Warning: Using cracked version, illegal copies , cracks and serials of this software is not allowed. Failing to do so will make you liable for legal action.

Don’t you agree with me? I think WP is moving towards that direction now. In the very near future, I am positive that it will become full fledged CMS (content management system) instead of being just a blogging platform.

With its open source and open platform nature, it will be so much easier to setup a website (for anybody) then. Just like now, there will be tons of plugins that would be built for standard website requirements (i.e payment gateways, statistical tools, newsletter integration, photo gallery.. etc).

I hope that WP 3.0 version will move in that direction.

My friend Nurbek pointed me to this news, which I thought was pretty amazing.

Source: MercuryNews
———–
So if you are not already using Twitter, make sure you register today ;) Because you never know in what (emergency) situation you might find yourself in, especially when you are overseas.

As you know Twitter supports SMS updates from your mobile phone internationally. After you have registered, don’t forget to verify your mobile number. Also don’t forget to add your Twitter account to your mobile’s addressbook (for easy SMS). An of course, you should inform your friends about your Twitter account. Otherwise, rescue mission might take considerable time ;)

Keep an eye on my twitter from time to time too ;) Especially when my blog goes un-updated for a long time. (God forbid).