Last week Google tweaked their favicon (that little 16×16 pixel icon in your browser’s tab), changing it from an uppercase G to a lowercase g.

Now, a change like this is normally something that shouldn’t matter — it’s not like they changed their actual logo to begin with a lowercase g, or made any changes to their home page. They just tweaked the 256 pixels in the browser’s tab. But this is one of the strongest brands in the world, and tabbed browsing has become a standard feature in all browsers.

Favicons are no longer an optional “nice-to-have” — users come to rely on them as a usability aid, so those 256 pixels are an extension of a company’s brand. Add to that the fact that people generally don’t like change, and the result is hundreds of blogs complaining about how ugly the new icon was.

Personally, I don’t mind it. The new icon threw me at first — the big G was instantly recognizable, and being able to jump to a tab based on that visual aid is a crucial part of how I navigate. However, after a few days of getting used to it, I realized that change was inevitable, for a number of reasons: Lowercase letters just look better at small resolutions. I don’t have any data to back this statement up, it’s just my opinion. Lowercase logos say “friendly and hip Web 2.0 startup“. Uppercase logos say “stuffy corporate”. Google has started to make efforts recently to open up and engage with their user base more; this supports that approach. The G was starting to look a little old. With mobile services forming an integral part of Google’s future offerings, it would have been difficult to make a big impact with a tired logo. Google’s Marissa Mayer obviously isn’t completely sold on the new look though — Google is crowdsourcing the next stage of the icon’s design, in case someone outside of Google can come up with an improvement:

he design process was much harder than we thought at first. By no means is the one you’re seeing our favicon final; it was a first step to a more unified set of icons. If you have your own notions about the Google favicon, please send them to us … maybe your idea will be the one that people see billions of times per day.


If you think you can do a better job, Google have opened submissions for improvements on the little g. You have until June 20 to submit your image.

Name: Daniel

Age: 16, almost 17

Website: Latest Site: http://www.osofa.co.uk/

How long have you been a web designer? About 2 years doing serious work, but have been messing about for about 5.

What got you in to web design? I have always been into design and have liked using the computer. As the Internet began to grow and I started using it more frequently, I felt the need to create something of my own to go onto the Internet. I found this really enjoyable and that's why I do it today.

What keeps you at this job? I find every moment fun and exciting.

Would you say web design is your job or just a hobby? It's not my job as of yet, as I am a Student, but in the future who knows - probably it will be. As of now it is my hobby.

Have you made many website in your time of being a web designer? I have made about 4 sites in total, but only 1 has been a real success.

What are the ideas behind your websites? Most of them have been computer based and revolve around communities.

Where do you go for inspiration for your websites? I take a look at others sites and try to figure out what makes them work and what I could use and do better for my own.

Where did you learn the skills to make such a fantastic website? I began by being self taught, however I quickly turned to some courses and books to help me work to web standards and designing.

Since you started web design have you noticed more or less interested in your work? I have become more interested in my work as time has gone by. It can be a bit boring to start with, but once you get going, the only way is forward.

The economic decline has affected many major companies all over the world. Has it affected your web design company? At the present time, no it hasn't.

Microsoft is rumored to be preparing for redundancies, with staff expected to be cut on January 15.

MiniMicrosoft, a blog dedicated to watching the company, has reported snippets of reports talking of internal reorganizations amid budget cuts and staff interviewing for their jobs in the server and tools business and in the online services group.

The long-running blog, by an anonymous Microsoft employee, said staff are being been called into "meetings and interrogations about the work they are doing", set impossible coding tasks and asked to account for their work by the hour.

The blog said one 120-person organization in the server and tools business has been broken up for lack of budget while 70 people in online services and the SQL Server business - which is part of server and tools - have been given six weeks to find alternative employment within the company.

According to the blog, Microsoft's Live Meeting "is one of the worst places to be right now" and in its "death throws". Live Meeting is the online conference service.

A Microsoft spokesperson told The Reg it does not comment on "rumors and speculation".

Rumors of layoffs are on the "financial grapevine" and - if they come off - would come exactly one week before Microsoft announces its second-quarter results to Wall St.

That quarter spans the normally lucrative Holiday shopping period, when consumers usually snap up PCs.

This year, that period is likely to make for the opposite of good reading. With the US in recession, the UK about to hit recession, and employers in both countries announcing massive layoffs consumer spending is down. That's impacting sales. Retailers, meanwhile, are discounting heavily - impacting profits.

Any cuts - thought to be Microsoft's first in its 30-year history - would follow a hiring freeze and come after years of massive expansion, to try and grow a successful online services business. Head count has grown 28 per cent to 91,000 in just two years as it has hired individuals and bought companies like online ads shop aQuantive - Microsoft's biggest acquisition at nearly $6bn. The payroll has expanded by 49 per cent since 2005, with increases across R&amp, sales, marketing, and support.

If true, it seems like the cuts are in the lighter, services end of the company's business spectrum and would be in keeping with expectations.

The online services group is home to search and advertising, which have consistently failed to make a profit despite billions of dollars in investment being pumped in. Microsoft kicked off December by announcing Yahoo!'s former president of search and advertising technology Qi Lu was joining to run the online services group. ®

10 Usability Principles to guide you through web Design

Motivate Design your site to meet specific user needs and goals. Use motivators to draw different user "personae" into specific parts of your site.

User task flow
Who are your users? What are their tasks and online environment?
For a site to be usable, page flow must match workflow.

Architecture –
Build an efficient navigational structure. Remember – if they can't find it in 3 clicks, they're gone.
Affordance means obvious
Make controls understandable. Avoid confusion between emblems, banners, and buttons.
Replicate
Why reinvent the wheel?
Use ergonomically designed templates for the most common 8-12 pages.


Usability test along the way
Test early in design using low-fidelity prototypes. Don't wait until the end when it's too late.Know the technology limitations Identify and optimize for target browsers and user hardware. Test HTML, JavaScript, etc. for compatibility.

Know the technology limitations
Identify and optimize for target browsers and user hardware.Test HTML, JavaScript, etc for compatibility.

Know user tolerances Users are impatient. Design for a 2-10 second maximum download. Reuse header graphics so they can load from cache. Avoid excessive scrolling.

Multimedia
Good animation attracts attention to specific information, then stops. Too much movement distracts, slowing reading and comprehension.


Use a stats package
Monitor traffic through your site. Which pages pique user interest? Which pages make users leave? Adjust your site accordingly.

10 Important Tips for a fast loading web site

It is important to have a reasonably fast loading web site so that viewers are not made to wait for a long time and to accommodate users on slow internet connections. Search engine algorithms also do take into consideration your load time.

Follow these tips while designing and developing your site:

Optimize your HTML code: Make sure that your site doesn't have any unwanted tags and that it is optimized.

Effective Table designing: Design using nested tables instead of using cell merges and splits. Use separate tables where ever possible. Not designing for 100% height is better as if you use just one outer table, the web page is displayed only after the table is loaded fully. If many outer tables are present [you can have different tables for the header, content, footer, etc.] the page displays the content of each table as soon as its elements are loaded.

Maximize content area: This not only reduces load time, it enhances the readability of your site.

Minimize use of graphics, Flash, scripts: These are the major contributors to the size of your web page, so try minimizing them. Try using background colors and fills instead of heavy images.

Optimize all heavy files: As much as possible optimize heavy graphics, Flash files and scripts. In editors like fireworks and flash you can see the various options in the preview panel to reduce the sizes. See how popular web sites like google and yahoo have pages that are very small in size and thus load in seconds.

Stick to simple designs: Most fast loading sites have very simple designs. Take the hint! Complicated designs will slow down your pages.

Spread out your content: In case you find yourself having very long pages of content, break them down into separate sections and thus bring down the sizes of the individual pages.

Use Text Links instead of graphic buttons: basically try to make use of HTML as much as possible. Use CSS Styles for text links to make them as attractive as buttons. Read our CSS Styles tutorial

Use Server Side Include (SSI) files where ever possible. SSI files once called from the web server reside in its cache so on subsequent requests they load faster.

Using Layers instead of tables is a new concept for better load time. We will be bringing out an article on it soon.

Happy new year from the ST Web Design team!
Everyone at ST Web Design would like to wish you all a very happy new year and from today the new STWebDesign ideas are coming in to place.

New malware is spreading via Christmas and holiday greetings, security researchers said today, a tactic reminiscent of those used last season by the notorious Storm Trojan horse.

Researchers at the Bach Khoa Internetwork Security Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, reported today that a new piece of malware, dubbed "XmasStorm" by the center, is spreading through holiday-themed spam.

Touting subject lines such as "Merry Xmas!" and "Merry Christmas card for you!" the spam includes links to sites that purportedly host electronic greeting cards waiting for the recipients. In fact, the sites are serving up malware that hijacks the visiting PC, then installs a bot that waits for commands from the hacker controllers.

Nguyen Minh Duc, manager of Bach Khoa's application security group, said that XmasStorm originated in China. Hackers have registered at least 75 domain names relating to the malware campaign's holiday theme in the last month, including "superchristmasday.com" and "funnychristmasguide.com." According to WHOIS searches, those domains were registered to a Chinese address on Dec. 1 and Dec. 19, respectively.

"Special occasions such as Christmas and New Year have always been the periods when hackers distribute viruses via fake e-card with malicious code," said Nguyen in an e-mail Wednesday. "Therefore, users should be careful on receiving greeting e-mail from unknown sources for safety's sake."

Similar attacks have been monitored by other researchers, including those at ESET LLC, a Slovakian security company that has offices in San Diego. On Monday, ESET researcher Pierre-Marc Bureau reported a spike in holiday spam that pointed to sites hosting a file named "ecard.exe" that was not, of course, a greeting card, but instead malware.

"The reason this wave has attracted our attention is that it is very similar to the Storm worm attacks we were seeing last year," said Bureau in an e-mail.

Although Storm used a wide variety of stratagems during 2007 and early 2008, a year ago it rode on the back of a spam campaign based on New Year's greetings. Just before those messages flooded in-boxes, Storm's creators had tried to tempt computer users into clicking on links promoting Christmas-themed pornography.

"[But] this is not the resurrection of the Storm botnet," Bureau cautioned. "Analysis of the binary proves it to be different. It was programmed using a different programming language and includes different functionalities."

Although Microsoft Corp. researchers said that their company's Malicious Software Removal Tool had beaten Storm into submission earlier this year, other security analysts had disputed the botnet's demise.

"What we are observing today is proof that malware authors are learning from each other's errors and successes," said Bureau. "After seeing that Storm was able to infect thousands of systems last year with Christmas-related social engineering, the criminals behind other malware families are now trying to emulate that success."

Dual-screened Laptop
My fast laptop was a dell laptop and i thought it was boss. Since then i have moved on to a dell desktop and also added some more monitors. I never thought i would see the day when a laptop would have two screens. I often get people asking me “why have 2 screens” and saying “It’s just a waste of money” But i find when you have to screens it just makes life easier.
Lenovo boasts its dual-screened Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds laptop that comes equipped with a powerful Intel Core 2 Quad processors and the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M GPU, 8GB RAM and 960GB of SSD / HDD storage. This unique notebook PC offers a 17-inch screen and an integrated WACOM digitizer. It is priced at $3,600 upwards.

Multimedia Watch

This watch is not only a music player, voice recorder, image viewer, digital camera and an e-book reader - it also comes with a feature that most of its competitors are missing; the capability to record video.

Features:
1.8″ TFT screen, 160*128 pixel image
MP4 Player + Music Player + Video/Voice Recorder +Digital Camera + Digital Watch + Photo Album + E-book reader + PC Camera, all in one featured product
Built-in 8GB flash memory
Built-in Video Camera - Photo resolution: 640 x 480, Video Resolution: 352 x 288
Built-in speaker
PC Web Camera feature
MP4 watch, support MP4(AVI/3GP) video
Shows time/date and watch design is outstanding
Supports MP3, WMA and MP4(AVI) format, up to 8 hours of music playback
Supports JPEG format, also displays lyrics and picture
High-quality digital record, song circulation function and support several languages
5-equalizer modes: common, popular, rock classic, jazz
E-book browse function
USB 2.0 High Speed transfer
Auto Power Off Function




The MP4 Watch with Video Camera is yours for $129 from the USB Brando website.

ST Web Design would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas. From the 1st of January, we have many new ideas which will be coming in to practice. Our blog will have a post a day for the whole of the year. Our hosting plans will become cheaper, and our domain names will have free DNS control. Our Affiliates program will be up and running and free to participate in. Our online support will be running from 4pm to 7pm or from 5pm to 8 pm and the support ticket system will be up and running.

Web Design

We have been working very hard on our web design pricing and the way we go-around setting up a website for a client. We feel that we are ready for anything that you give us. If you are interested in setting up a website (an online shop, personal site, blog, forum etc), then please contact us. Our contact details are at the bottom of the page.

Hosting

ST Web Design now provides even more affordable hosting. The prices on the website are incorrect because of the recent change in prices but will be updated soon.
Domains

If you have a .uk domain name hosted with another company, we'll also allow you to transfer the domain to us for free! You'll find most other companies will charge you a transfer fee to do this.

To be with a chance of winning a .com domain of your choice, please visit our Blog at www.stwebdesign.co.uk/Blog and then click on competitions.

2009

Due to all the hard work we have put in and all the new ideas coming into place we think that 2009 will be the best year yet for us.
Thank you
Simon