Verecom Web Design Blog

A study found that for blocking malicious website which can lure internet users to download virus or trojan, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 is not only leading four other commonly used web browsers: Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, but also the leading margin is growing up.

Research report from Product analysis firm NSS Labs point that: Windows Internet Explorer 8 provides the best protection to help protect against social engineered malicious software. Such malicious software can lure internet users to trust a website, but the website has been embedded with malicious software, and can be directly downloaded to the victim’s computer and execute it.

Reporting statistics is done by testing 562 this kind of website, and IE8 blocked 85% of them, the best performer. Compare with, Mozilla Firefox 3.5.7 and Apple Safari 4.0.4 each of them can block 29% of them. Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 blocks 17%, while Opera 10.10 can only block less than 1% of the malicious websites.

General speaking, the test of NSS Labs is first collected 12,000 malicious sites, and then confirmed that 562 of them still in operation with definition of social engineering malware sites, and then run the test.

Remember, the browser security has also include other important aspects, such as plug-ins , JavaScript, or implementation of security-oriented plug-in, functions of block drive-by exploits, and security vulnerability response time.

Edited By Henry Lu

In recent years it is popular to use website as a marketing tool, but how does website operator know exactly the information of website traffic, page views, browsing rate, advertising and other related? This Article will introduce four powerful tools for website-related statistics, so you can quickly analyse your website and generate a professional report.

SeeTheStats

As the name suggests, It can assist the Webmaster to export data from GoogleAnalytics, but only if the webmaster must sign up for a Google Analytics account first in order for SeeTheStats help to automatically generate variety of charts or reports.

In other words, Google Analytics and SeeTheStats have a complementary relationship. SeeTheStats is able to compile the Google Analytics data into clear and easy understand reports and statements.

This tool has very clean and simple user interface, similar to Office software which can produce all kinds of statements. SeeTheStats can help users to quickly establish a clear and beautiful data reports, users can also set up website to show their own analysis of data, as well as a daily automatic update function.

GoingUp

GoingUp would come in handy when you want to improve the sale and visits rate of your website.

GoingUp features a rich AJAX interface which is very easy to use. The interface is clear and user friendly which using a large number of line charts, graphs and pie charts to clearly point out web data, such as visitor tracking, monitoring of sales, browsing rate and also provide web page optimisation tool to improve the search engine strategy. In addition it also provides a detailed analysis of the reports, such as enterprise collaborations and integration solutions etc…

W3Counter

Similar to previous web analytic tools, W3Counter also use a large number of statistical tables and charts to show the web visitors behaviour, such as the where the users come from? What search keywords they use? Which topics is the particular interest? Which web page or links attract most users to click? W3Counter can record these data and provide detailed statistical reports.

In addition, W3Counter has a special function called “Live Visitor Map”. From large area like country to small area such as towns the visitors’ location can be marked, simply open the map function which will tell you which area the visitors come from most, and it updated map information regularly to allow webmaster to fully control the web analytics. W3Counter provides free and paid services. Free user can track up one website only with one account, and can have 30 kinds of real-time dynamic Web site records without time limit. However, there are still restrictions for free user and it can only record up to 5000 data everyday.

mon.itor.us

In the web analytics tools, the user interface of mon.itor.us is more beautiful, clear and simple, makes a very pleasing look. Not too much text description and emphasise that “there are pictures and the truth”. It is almost complete use of variety of statistical tables and charts to provide a detailed description and it is free.

mon.itor.us use software as a service (SaaS) concept and emphasising monitoring as a service (MaaS), in addition to accurately record the visited web pages, advertising page clicks, browsing time, visitor maps, it also provides web-based solutions, easy and efficient maintenance and management tools. For company, mon.itor.us gives your website more enormous commercial potential, such as e-commerce or blogs sale, to adjust marketing strategies in order to achieve significant results, thus creating more profits.

Edited By Henry Lu

With the booming Internet marketing and e-commerce, the web design is beginning to emphasise visual, interactive technology, and hence the RIA ( Rich Internet Applications ), the new web design techniques, become the hot topic. In order to grab this business opportunity, Microsoft has also launched a new generation of RIA product, Silverlight 3.0 and stressed that it would allow Internet users have a better interactive experience.

Compared to the traditional HTML web design technologies, RIA uses vector-style animation, multimedia and database integration, to make the website has computer desktop use patterns and functions, hence allows the integration of multi-media Web site content, and improve the visitors loyalty with more intuitive, more friendly, more interactive use experience. “Website interface and content design is from simple text-and image-based rendering and go to the era of RIA rapidly” said from Microsoft’s develop team.

RIA’s technology characteristics, not only suitable for applications in entertainment, leisure and marketing fields, but also recently used in general business applications, so there are more and more enterprises are beginning to use the RIA technologies to develop the various services. For example, the United States Continental Airlines, uses RIA technologies to develop a customer service and reservation system to process booking enquiry from 70000 customers every day, and significantly enhance the efficiency of booking and customer satisfaction.

As the bullish prospects on RIA technologies, Microsoft developed RIA design tools, Silverlight, two years ago. Now there are 400 million computers around the world have downloaded and installed Silverlight. Microsoft has also released the latest version of Silverlight 3.0, in addition to supporting HD 1080P high-definition video and off-line implementation; it also supports Windows 7 multi-touch features. Microsoft develop team believes that in the future, Internet-based media, financial institutions, as well as electronic billboards, will be the RIA’s main market.

Edited By Henry Lu

Speaking of social networking website, many people will immediately think of Facebook or MySpace. But in fact In addition to these friend making, entertainment social networking website, there are more professional or commercial orientation websites, which Among them, LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) is the outstanding one.

Founded in May 2003, LinkedIn is growing rapidly since past few years, and becomes a favourite website for white-collar and business people to connect and make industry friends with similar business background. TechCrunch reported that according to science and technology media, LinkedIn’s rapidly growing number of members and recently has more than 60 million members registered.

As the Business Social is more important for many professional people, including hiring, cooperation and other business acts require a social networking platform for the coordination of inter-personal, hence make LinkedIn becomes popular. In December last year, the number of members is 55 million, but there are 5 million new members registered during January this year, which shows a strong potential in this site!

LinkedIn actively expand its global market, recently it set up two offices in India and Netherlands, and that it will soon expand the business to the world’s major countries.

Edited By Henry Lu

The available global IPv4 Website address is less than 10% now, and will fully deplete next year. If this issue is not tackled immediately, new users will face a problem of no IP Address available in the future.

According to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the deployment of next generation Internet protocol IPv6 site transition should hurry up, to avoid this situation. Secretary of Global website resource allocation management institutions, NRO, Raul Echeberria said that with the popularity of Internet, mobile phones, notebook computers, servers, routers and other devices, which are consuming IP addresses greatly, and cause the imbalance of supply-and-demand.

CNNIC experts, Zhang Jian said that due to China doesn’t have the control right of ip address, only 4.5% IPv4 resources are allocated for China, but the rate of Internet users in China keep growing, so China is facing with IP Address “supply and demand gap,” the situation is even grimmer.

Zhang Jian pointed out that in the next five years, the demand of mobile network IP Address is expected to reach 500-900 millions, the current IPv4 site resources are far to meet the rapidly increasing demand, if not take timely response, then operators, users and equipment providers, will have series of adverse knock-on effect.

Zhang Jian believes that to face the scarce IPv4 resources, network administrators should take immediate measures to promote the IPv6 network deployment plan.

CNNIC published “the 25th China Internet Development Statistics Report” shows that Chinese Internet users reached 384 million, with growth rate of 28.9%, and the growth rate of IP addresses number is far behind this.

Edited By Henry Lu

Apple’s product line between the iPhone and the MacBook less one thing, and it is not a Netbook, but a iPad which is on the hands of Steve Jobs.

iPad appearance, as predicted, like a an enlarged version of iPod Touch, supports multi-touch, storage capacity from 16G to 64G. 0.5-inch thick body, 1.5 pounds, plus 9.7-inch IPS screen; as about the power issues, it claims to have 10 hours for normal use, and stand-by to a month. Most of the hardware does not seem too much surprise us, but it is worth mentioning that Apple’s own 1GHz A4 processor, its performance should be part of the expectations.

In the software part, iPhone’s App can be used on top of the iPad the, Apple also unveiled the iBooks Store, Steve Jobs even claimed to use Amazon as a sample to develop its own online shopping mall. The game entertainment is another big highlight, Electronic Arts (EA) has sent (Travis Boatman) to express the new racing game for ipad, and the direction and motion-sensing games (such as baseball) will be the next new trend.

In addition, Apple will also unveil the iPad dedicated iWork software: Keynote, Numbers, Pages and it is only 9.99 U.S. dollars each, that is very attractive!

As we are most concerned about the price, the cheapest 16G model(supports Wi-Fi) is 499 U.S. dollars. For the model that supports both Wi-Fi and 3G costs 629 U.S. dollars. Top of the 64G models (Wi-Fi +3 G), is 829 U.S. dollars, compared to the original forecast of 1000 U.S. dollars, it is cheaper than we expected.

Edited By Henry Lu

Adobe AIR is cross-platform executable software; you can perform variety of networking applications on the desktop. Therefore it is more and more popular and many independent web developers have begun to develop variety of interesting applications with the Adobe AIR platform. In this article we introduce the seven AIR-specific Web design programs, whether in visual design, interface design, interactive design and Web developers Adobe AIR program can be found useful for web designers.

Em Calculator
James Whittaker developed this Em Calculator to help web designers for computing the most appropriate font size, table alignment and so on, and automatically generate the corresponding CSS code with size, line height, borders and many more.

Download URL: www.jameswhittaker.com/blog/article/em-based-layouts-vertical-rhythm-calculator/

ColorPicker
Although the standard 32-bit screen can display 1,677 million colours, but there are limited numbers of colours which are suitable for Website, so ColorPicker can mark suitable colours and its 16 colour-coded decimal values for web designer. If the selected colour is not available from the value of Web standard, ColorPicker can also adjust the colour options for users to choose the most similar colour.

Download URL: colorpicker.riaforge.org

AIR Icon Generator
Sometimes web designer urgently needs to make a temporary Logo to client, but if designer use Illustrator or CorelDRAW with normal procedures to design is often slow in coming, hence AIR Icon Generator will come in handy. Designer just select the desired style (currently there are only two can be selected) and colour, and then enter the text to display, Air Icon Generator can quickly generate Icons automatically; It can generate a total of 4 different sizes Icon files.

Download site: clockmaker.jp/labs/air_icon/

Google Analytics Reporting Suite
Most web maters installed Google Analytics on their websites to analyse site traffic, but each time had to connect to Google Analytics interface to manage multiple site traffic, and is not convenient. The Google Analytics Reporting Suite can import multiple websites at the same time, as well as generate variety of statistical tables.

Download URL: www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&loc=en_us&extid=1282521

Shrink O’Matic
Why should use expensive Photoshop software to scale images? In fact, with AIR application Shrink O’Matic, designers can easily set the output parameters such as thumbnail size, the output name and format, and then drag images to the Shrink O’Matic window to immediately complete the thumbnail work.

Download URL: toki-woki.net/p/Shrink-O-Matic

WebSnapshot
Web designers need to collect a number of exciting design web pages for reference, but some web pages iare too long and by pressing Alt + Print Screen is not enough. This time WebSnapshot can come in handy, and user can choose to retrieve the thumbnail or the entire web site picture, or part of the current web page you want to browse.

Download site: myspyder.net/tools/websnapshot

Pixus
How do you find out the size of a button or tables of web page? Pixus is a very interesting AIR application and its function is very simple, it displays information on the desktop with a semi-transparent box, the user simply put Pixus on the object which user want to know the size, and it will display info immediately on the box.

Download site: code.google.com/p/pixus

Edited By Henry Lu

Google announced the launch of the new search features: Near Me Now, for Android browser and iPhone users to use Google Mobile Search and enjoy this feature.

However, the phone users must first be able to use Google Mobile Search page link below to access the location data set. After that, Google Mobile Search page will appear the search button “Near me now” link. When user clicks the link, the page will return a list of a variety of topics of local places, including restaurants, cafes and bars, or the bank or ATM and so on. Click the menu “Explore right here” will show users bunch of the nearby shops. And this option is only available when users provide accurate location of mobile phones.

Google Operations Engineer John Eric Hoffman, and Jussi Myllymaki explained in their blog posting, “Near me now” feature is designed to help users find information on where they lived, making certain common search, such as cafes and ATMs easier.

At that time Google has also announced other technologies, including Google Goggles and the iPhone and Android supported Japanese voice search. With the growth of mobile computing devices and the popularity of portable devices, Google will keep developing more mobile applications for users.

Edited By Henry Lu

Microsoft’s search engine Bing Beta version was introduced in China in June 2009. Right now, although Google gaining the market share, but Baidu still dominates in China.

Analyst said that in China even the world’s largest search engine Google have failed to take over the local search engine giant, Baidu, hence Microsoft Bing still have a long way to go. For new search engine, it requires time to obtain user recognition, and it needs to compare user’s current recognition of existing search engine. Hence Bing needs time to achieve a breakthrough in China’s search engine market.

Microsoft needs new search technology and User experience to enhance its market in China, but Bing is still not particularly prominent in these two aspects of the performance, hence with 1 to 2 years, Bing won’t threaten the current positions of Baidu and Google.

Edited By Henry Lu

Google has signed co-operation contract with another 24 news media,
Including the Forum (Tribune Co.), and McClatchy Newspaper Group.

Since 3 months ago, Google launched FastFlip, a website has 50 newspapers, magazines, news agencies, television and radio stations, and total of about 90 external website links for visits.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is the original FastFlip media Initially added, also there were “the British Broadcasting Corporation” (BBC), “The New York Times” (The New York Times), “Washington Post” (The Washington Post), “Ko Dream Bodin” (Cosmopolitan), “Newsweek” (Newsweek ), etc..

FastFlip allows users to quickly browse Google news media websites. Users can click large arrow on webpage to jump to the next article and the browsing speed is quite fast compare with others.

Edited By Henry Lu