The Significance of Color

ashish
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I wonder if you knew that visitors to your website form an instant opinion? And they form it about you and your offer. This instant opinion is created subconsciously. It happens automatically within the visitors mind. It happens automatically. Your site visitors can't help themselves. It matters not a jot how clever the text is on your page. You can have paid an expensive professional to produce your copy for you. The visitor need not read a single word, and yet they will form their instant opinion.

The quality of the images on your web page won't make any difference. Their quality doesn't affect in this instant opinion. You might think if you make an unrepeatable offer, that your visitor is bound to be swayed by that! I'm sorry, the instant opinion clicks in, and your brilliant offer lies unseen. This is because the instant opinion is made when your web page is displayed to your visitor. You may have guessed there is something subliminal at work here. In a way, that is right. Immediate opinions are formed by visitors to every single website. You may have already worked out that the answer is colors. When your web page appears to your visitor, the colors you've used go to work on the subconscious of your visitors.

The reason this happens is because we all react psychological and intuitively to colors. There isn't anything we can do about this. Colors has an affect on each of us. This is one of the reasons why companies can invest millions in getting the colors exactly right for their products and marketing promotions. They invest this money as they know how the psychology of color works. In their business propositions, the big companies understand that the use of appropriate colors is a key element. And so it is in web design. The colors of your web pages also convey feelings and emotions to the subconscious mind of your visitors.

By the psychological power you could encourage your website visitors to leave your page the instant they see it. This can happen even if the copy on your website is compelling. The chances are that visitors who are put off by your colors are unlikely to read your copy anyway. But all is not lost. In the same way that colors can be a turn off, it is possible to create a positive feeling through the use of colors. This isn't a new discovery. The psychological power of colors is well known in the offline marketing world. It's been around with us for decades. It doesn't make any difference whether you know about color power, your subconscious mind is affected.

What we need to do in our website design is to ensure the color combination on our web pages convey a positive feelings. Your choice with your color selections is to send a sense belonging, trust and warmth. Conversely, the feeling sent may be one of distrust, coolness and rejection. Here is a list of colors showing the types of feelings each will evoke:

RED
Love, strength, sense of power, energy, excitement, danger, leadership etc

ORANGE
Comfort, friendliness, confidence, courage, steadfastness, playfulness, cheerfulness etc

YELLOW
Curiosity, intelligence, brightness, amusement, caution, joy, organization etc

GREEN
Harmony, nature, healing, life, food, health, money etc

BLUE
Patience, love, peace, tranquility, trustworthiness, stability, acceptance etc

PURPLE
Wisdom, independence, nobility, ambition, dignity, luxury, royalty etc

BROWN
Earthiness, nature, durability, tribal, comfort, reliability, primitive etc

BLACK
Elegance, sophistication, health, dramatic, power, formality, style etc

WHITE
Goodness, easy, simplicity, cleanliness, purity, fresh, innocence etc

Finally, be aware that your website color scheme should reflect the product or offering you make. What happens is that the subconscious mind of your visitor will attempt to reconcile the colors with the message. If it can't, it will lose interest. And you will lose your visitor. You should spend time in determining what are the right colors for your web pages. Try and make sure your colors and message are in harmony. If you can achieve this, you will produce better results from your website. In summary, the difference between the right and wrong color scheme on your website can be the difference between profit and loss.

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12 Design Tips for Building a Small Business Website

ashish
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Designing a Website can be hard work, what skills do you need? can you do it yourself? should you do it yourself? When should you start to think about a website? After your company is up and running or is your business based on the web.

These are just a few questions you may be asking yourself and probably ones you should try get the answers to, by getting help from mentors or a web design company you should be able to come to the right answers.

Ive put a list together of things you should take in to consideration when planning, designing and building your website, the main aim being delivering content that visitors like but also being good to get ranked on search engine.

1. Design a logo, make sure you have a good logo. This is your brand and what you want people to remember you for. This will generally be at the top of your site, so its the first thing people see. A logo/brand can say a lot about you so this is important.

2. Text on each page needs to be relevant, a minimum of 250 words, having keywords about your product or service is good to have in there. Possibly look at having copy written by a professional that knows how to write for the web.

3. Images are important also, good quality shots of a product can say a thousand words, bad pictures can bring down the look of the site. But make sure you don't overload on pictures.

4. Each page should have its own page title, meta descriptions and meta keywords, a very important part in building your website.

5. Try use CSS (cascading style sheets), this works better for search engines and will also make for easier changes on the website, ie colour, font or font size.

6. H1-H6 tags should be used to highlight the main title on the page of where your text is, this usually relates to the page title, H2 tags would possibly follow as the titles of the following paragraphs. Bold text should be used to highlight keywords within the paragraphs also, but don't overdo this.

7. If you can use text navigation as this allows search engines to index your website better.

8. Make sure it's easy for an end user to buy your product or find the service, If its not easy to find what chance have you got to promote it. This all goes towards the conversion and bringing in the sales.

9. Links from your pages to other internal pages is also good, promote other products or services, making it easier for a user to find other things on your site. Again don't overdo this too much.

10. Build a site map, this makes it easier for search engines to index, you can upload an XML site map to Google webmaster tools which is beneficial in indexing all pages on your site.

11. If you are gathering any info from the website, ie through a form you should have a Privacy Policy.

12. Finally install Google Analytics, this is very important as the data that if gives your back about your visitors and where they come from is invaluable.

This is only a few points to think about, but it should give you a start when you are thinking about the design and build of your site. I would recommend that you consult with a web design company as they should be able to design and build a site exactly to your requirements and generally more professional in hitting the mark of your target audience.

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Does your Website need a Redesign?

ashish
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You may have a beautiful website, it may win awards for excellence in design, but unless the designer has taken into account the principles of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), you may need to consider a redesign. You may have an old website, it does its job, it tells people about your company, but it's slow and the content, it's a bit out of date. In both cases, you definitely need to consider a redesign.

Both websites will struggle to get the volume of traffic that they could receive. The new well-designed site may get traffic for those looking specifically for that site, but anyone using a keyword search for your product or services won't find you.

The older site with out of date content loses out because the Search Engines think (due to the lack of fresh content) that the site is dormant or dead. Both of these websites could receive great traffic and a potentially lucrative increase in business, but without consideration of SEO, they won't get any share of that possible income.

So what should one look for in a site that might need a redesign?

All Flash

Although there have been significant advances in Search Engine technology and they are beginning to read some flash, a site that's all flash is likely to be dreadful for Search Engines. They will be pretty, but the Search Engines won't rank them highly because the content is essentially unreadable. But what about major corporations that rank highly but have flash-only sites? These sites have such a high rate of linkage that their flash content probably doesn't matter, unless you can compete with a major corporation, an all flash sites is a no go.

Frames

Frames in your website make it difficult for search engines to index its pages. What's more, human visitors really struggle with frames, they're difficult to read and it's hard to get an impression of the site. Some browsers don't even support frames, meaning your site is entirely unreadable for those potential customers.

Splash Pages

Web designers using splash pages really make a visual impact on the visitor. Imagine the entire webpage as an animated page, straight out of a cartoon. Very impressive. Unfortunately, from an SEO point of view, they're horrible. Splash pages generally contain little or no text content; have no links and full of flash and other software which the Search Engines still find difficult to assess for a ranking. You may impress with your Splash Pages, but kiss goodbye to many potential customers.

Slow Loading

Very simply, a slow loading page puts off both human visitors and search engine crawlers. Human visitors may not have the patience to wait for the pages to load and search engines almost always rank the faster loading pages above the slower ones. If your site has slow loading pages, they need replacing.

Out of Date Content

First, the Search Engines will simply ignore this site as if it no longer exists. It may have been ok in the past to leave your content for months without updating it, but these days, it will soon slip off the radar without regularly updated content. What's more, nothing puts off a human visitor more than out of date content.

If your site contains any of the above SEO problems, you need to implement a redesign; it's costing you potential income.

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Repair/Reinstall Windows Components

ashish
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Often part of Windows start messing up and not working, this is often because the files belonging to that component are missing or corrupt. The good news is that often these components can be reinstalled with out reinstalling XP. It is best that you run Tweak #6 first but it some times dose to repair some components of Windows XP

The way to do this is first put in you Windows XP CD then go to the folder C:\Windows\inf and right click the .inf file that belongs to that component of Windows that you what to reinstall and press install. I have started to put together a list of what each .inf file belongs to, if you know what one .inf that I have not listed belongs to please PM me.

Accessories accessor.inf
Communications communic.inf <– the components in the Communications folder in Accessories.
COM+ comnt5.inf
Windows Defragmenter dfrg.inf
Distributed Transaction Coordinator dtcnt5.inf
Fax services fxsocm.inf
Windows Fonts font.inf
Windows Games Games.inf
Internet Explorer ie.inf
Internet Explorer Short cuts ieaccess.inf
Windows Internet Games igames.inf
Web Tools iis.inf <–Includes FrontPage
Windows Messenger msmsgs.inf
Multimedia multimed.inf <–Volume control and Sound Recorder and Media Player
Network Management and Monitoring Tools netoc.inf
Outlook Express Shortcuts oeaccess.inf
Out of Box Experience oobe.inf <–oobe folder in C:\Windows\System32
Pchealth pchealth.inf <– Pchealth folder in C:\Windows
Pinball pinball.inf
Indexing Service setupqry.inf
Search srchasst.inf
Terminal Server TsOc.inf
Windows Management Instrumation wbemoc.inf
Windows Messanger Shortcuts wmaccess.inf
Windows Media Player Shorcuts wmpocm.inf
Tour XP wmtour.inf
Wordpad worpad.inf
Accessibility Tool optional.inf

One .inf file of importance that dose not install any thing is sysoc.inf It controls what you see in “Add/Remove Windows Components.” If you open it you will so that most lines end with ,,7 (or some other number) and ,hide,7 (or some other number) adding hide hides it, removing the hide shows it. This can be useful for administrators that what to stop components being installed or removed.

There are 700 .inf files in C:\Windows\inf so that is a very small part of them, I am trying to get a full list.

Hope you find this tweak useful

Remove Unwanted Context menu items

ashish
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When you right click a folder do you notice that programs have added them selves to the the little pop up menu. You can remove these program entries, by editing the registry. It is best to have a full back up of the registry just in case some thing goes wrong. To backup registry right click a folder(key) and press export and save it where you could find it if needed. In this case you only have to back up..

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder

Once you have done that have a look in

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\OpenWithList
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

And delete the folders(keys) to the programs who’s entries you want removed be carefull that you delete the right one. Reboot and they will be gone.

Remember editing the registry can cause problems, if you do the wrong thing. Do not do this unless you feel safe editing the registry

HTML vs. XHTML

ashish
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XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of HTML 4.0. What this really means is that learning XHTML is basically the same as learning HTML. The main difference is a few simple rules - as XHTML is more strict than standard HTML.

1. Stricter adherence to the HTML specification

Many browsers are very lax in how they interpret HTML. This leads to incongruities in how the pages are displayed, and XHTML doesn't allow that. The best way to correct this is to use an XHTML validator such as HTML Tidy.

2. Write well formed documents

What this generally means is avoiding overlapping elements. The following nested code is acceptable: p Paragraph em. emphasized ./em ./p because the tag is opened and closed within the p tag. However, this is not allowed: because the em tag overlaps the p tag.

3. Write tags and attributes in lowercase

XHTML is a case-sensitive markup language, so LI and li are potentially two different elements.

4. End tags are required

In HTML, some tags which actually contain elements do not require the end tag.

The most common of these is the p tag. XHTML requires that the /p tag be used. For singleton tags, such as br you should include a trailing slash in the tag itself, e.g. br /

5. Attributes must be quoted and include values

What this means is that non-quoted attributes such as

are invalid. And attributes which used to stand alone, must now be written as name="value" pairs. For example: br noshade="noshade"

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Shooter Bindra wins India's first solo gold

ashish
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Vote for us at Favelets

BEIJING (Reuters) - Abhinav Bindra won India's first individual Olympic gold medal on Monday with a thrilling come-from-behind victory in the men's 10m air rifle.

Bindra had been fourth after qualifying but had a brilliant final round and the Indian, the epitome of tranquillity, hit a near perfect 10.8 on his last shot to pull in front of Henri Hakkinen of Finland, who fell to bronze with a poor final shot.

That late stumble by the Finn allowed China's Zhu Qinan, the defending Olympic champion and heavy favourite, to salvage a bitter day with silver. Zhu sobbed uncontrollably on the podium and again at a news conference.

"I can't describe how happy I am," the ever-calm Bindra told journalists. "It's the thrill of my life. That's about it. It's hard to describe. I just went for it. I knew I was lying in fourth. Thankfully it went my way and I just went for it."

Zhu suffered a lapse in concentration in the qualification earlier when he had to rush his final shots to make the time limit, dropping to second behind Hakkinen ahead of the final.

"I was under tremendous pressure and at times I felt really agitated," Zhu said just before stepping on the podium and breaking down in tears. "But I tried my best."

Moments later at the news conference Zhu was crying harder.

"I've been through a lot of hardship and shed a lot of tears in the last four years, there have been successes and failures," he said. "After 2004 my only aim has not changed. I had so very much wanted to be a champion at the Beijing Olympics."

He added: "In the last two rounds I made several mistakes because I had used up all my physical and mental energy."

Bindra, who faced criticism for failing to deliver on the great promise he showed as a child, said he was not thinking about making history in India with a first individual gold medal. In fact, he said, he was "not thinking about anything".

"I was just trying to concentrate on shooting," he said. "I wasn't thinking of making history. I was two points behind the leaders. I was just trying to shoot good shots. I wanted to shoot well and shoot aggressively. And that's what I did."

His 10.8 of a possible 10.9 on his final shot sparked loud celebrations from group of fans from India.

Hakkinen, who was even with Bindra before his mere 9.7 on his last shot, said that crucial shot felt like the nine before it.

"It just wasn't my turn," he said. "It shows that shooting is a sport from the first to the final shot. Every one counts."

Randhir Singh, Indian Olympic Association secretary-general and former shooter who was present at the range, was stricken by nerves as the competition reached its climax.

"I haven't prayed so much in my life. With the second last shot they tied together and then he (Bindra) shot a 10.8. It couldn't have got better," he told Indian television.

Bindra won the 2006 world championships and finished seventh in Athens four years ago.

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