Usability Tips - Filters

Filters are forms that are used to facilitate search operations for the user, filters can be text fields or combo boxes bellow or above the data listing, filters save user time, also they enable the user to find information quicker.

AJAX technologies can be used when implementing filters, AJAX allow filters to be more interactive and allow the site to be more responsive.

Optimization Tips - Thumbnails

When building a photo gallery for a website. It is a good idea to create a thumbnail for each photo, the thumbnail should be used when listing the photos.

The size of photo thumbnail should be usually 320x240, 160x120. If the photo gallery can generate thumbnails automatically, it will be great and helpful.

Using thumbnails can optimize much traffic, especially when there are huge number of hits on the photos.

Optimization Tips - Paging

Paging or navigation can be defined as loading the data part by part on the web page listing. Pagng is needed when a list of data is loaded from the server to a web page, such as loading emails messages, names, etc... Paging requires additional development effort, but it keeps the load on the server minimum, and makes the site user friendly.

Suppose you have 100 email message, and you want to list them for the user, then you can divide them into 10 pages, 5 pages, or any convenient number of pages. A navigation part is provided to the user in order to browse among pages.

Optimization Tips - Flash Movies

Flash movies can be helpful when thinking of optimizing the size of the web page, at the same time, flash should not be used very often in the web page. Using flash should be planned wisely.

Optimization Tips - Optimize the header of the website

It is always important when designing a website template is to keep the size of graphics and media on the web template header as low as possible, usually is it mandatory to keep the total size below 60kb, if the size could be lowered below 30kb then it will be great for your website

Optimization Tips - When to Use GIF

When you are working with images with small number of colors, and has little gradients, it is better to use gif format, that is, gif optimization algorithm works will on images with large areas with the same colors.

Optimization Tips - Progressive images

As the internet speed goes low on client side, it is mandatory to optimize images for the lowest acceptable size while keeping the quality acceptable. One way to do that is to optimize the jpg images using progressive option, progressive option allows the image to be downloaded on the browser stage by stage until it reaches the opriginal quality. Progressive images has respectivily more size than other optimized images.