A Custom Icon For Your Web SiteWritten by Amrit Hallan
WHAT IS FAVICON (Or Icon in general)It is little thing you see on your Location bar (History/Address bar) when you visit a web site, on left of http://. For example, if you view a site through Internet Explorer, you see an e superimposed over a blank white paper sheet. The icon also shows up when you press CTRL+D to save link in your Favorites folder. I think icon is showed anywhere you store link, whether on Desktop or some other place. But some web masters prefer to have their own icon. Apart from being an ego issue, it makes web site memorable, and more prominent in list of hundreds of Favorite links (gosh! do you ever visit them?!), or repulsive if you make an ugly icon COMPATIBILITY It only works with IE5 or higher versions. Otherwise browsers like Netscape Navigator and Opera do not support such an indulgence. Well, to be frank I haven't checked with current versions (I have IE5, Netscape 4.7 and Opera 5 on my machine). But last time I read, more than 75% surfers are using IE5 or plus these days. MAKING THE ICON In following steps, you can create an icon from your web site. This reminds me, a more complex icon can be created by a software like Microsoft Photodraw where you can first enlarge view without distorting pixels, create icon, and then reduce to normal size and then paste it into an icon editor. Look out for a similar editor if you don't have it. Take care that icon you make/draw/scan/steal has a dimension of 16 x 16 pixels. Preferably, in 8-bit color. Now go somewhere, where there are lots of downloadable programs, and download "Icon Collector Graphics Editor" from http://www.greatowl.com. I mention this software because somehow I have it on my computer, and don't remember when I installed it. Probably I was trying to make a Favicon for myself but then changed my mind. On second look, I didn't change my mind after all. The icon does show up if you load my web site - http://www.bytesworth.com - and maybe in buffer it doesn't show up.
| | Stop Driving Your Visitors Away!Written by Bill Daugherty
Your web site may contain flaws or glitches that are driving your visitors away! Such a thought is enough to give most laid back webmaster a migraine. How can you uncover and fix any problem areas that may be lurking in dark recesses of your site? Relax gentle readers, there is a simple answer.All you have to do is follow a few basic guidelines that all web sites should adhere to and you can be assured that your site is in tip-top shape. It's not unlike giving your automobile a little tuneup. 1 - Slow Loading Pages Nothing drives a visitor away faster than having to wait around for a web page to load. Most experts will tell you that 8 seconds is maximum load time for your pages, and anything slower needs some attention. But, this doesn't take into account visitor's modem speed. Here are results from a load time check I had conducted recently on first page of one of my sites. -------------------------------- This diagnostic checks how fast your page loads up under 6 common modem speeds. Connect Rate Connect Time -------------- --------------- 14.4K 10.12 seconds 28.8K 6.05 seconds 33.6K 5.34 seconds 56K 4.41 seconds ISDN 128K 2.04 seconds T1 1.44Mpbs 1.00 seconds LOAD TIME CHECK.......................EXCELLENT ------------------------------- I have included these results so you can see difference in load time for various modem speeds and use it as a guide instead of 8 second benchmark you are often given. Please note that page tested has very few graphics. A page with more graphics will load slower, but may still load in an acceptable time. Slow load time is usually caused by either too many graphics or by graphics that are too "fat." You can have those "fat" graphics optimized by an experienced HTML programmer. If your problem is too many graphics, you need to eliminate a few.
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