Moving over from core coding to Content Management Systems

These days core coding ways of developing web sites is getting out of trend and the main reason for that is more use of Content Management Systems.For the new comers it is highly advisable to learn all the basics of core coding. Develop few sample websites so that they could understand the basics as how web pages becomes a website. After getting hands on to the core one should immediately move on to content management systems. The reason for moving from core to content management systems are:

1. There are certain web development standards, which are not so easy for the freshers and also not so easy for the experienced persons. They should learn those standards from CMSs as those standards are already implemented in all CMSs.

2. This is the era of smart word along with hard work. Do hard work on learning the coding skills and do smart work by implementing those coding skills via CMSs.

3. CMSs are easy to implement, as they have their own standards. If we go by the options and features they provide us, we can develop very efficient websites with in very less time.

4. Most of the CMSs are free and their tutorials and manuals are easily available.

5. If you have learned coding thoroughly and you are working on a CMS, then you can excel very well because if you want to develop some advance website features then you have to create certain plugins or modules that are not available in that CMS. If you create a plugin, and you think that could be useful to others as well then you can get that plugin patent and fix a price for that. If it will be really good you could earn a lot from it.

6. These days screen sizes are much variable, which creates problems for the designers but many of the CMSs provides templates that are much responsive, means that got fit to any screen size weather tablet or smart phone. One should just not implement it but simultaneously learn as how to do.    

How to easily generate CSS3 for your website

All the fresher web developers these days should focus on new techniques for styling and creation of web pages. CSS3 is very good and provides so many design features from earlier CSS, but the thing is that how new comers learn about these styles. They know, there is CSS3 but they do not know as how to use it. Here I am explaining a very simple way to generate and apply CSS3 code for their websites. One should not make a habit of this, but it is very good for learning as well as for quick design development. 

There is a website, www.css3generator.com that provides a feature to generate CSS3 code, that code could be understood and can be copied and applied to your website very easily. Let us take an example step by step:-

1. Go to  www.css3generator.com

2. From the drop down chose the type of CSS style you want to give. In this example we will use text shadow.

3. Give the parameters as you want and you can see the changes in the preview area. In this example we have given 4px horizontal length for the shadow, 3 px vertical length for the shadow, blur radius is 2px and shadow color is e6092e. You do not have to specify the shadow color, when you click on the text box of shadow color, color picker will appear and you can easily pick the color and its code will be displayed in the box. You can easily see the text shadow in the preview area.

 4. In the box next to the browser icons is the code of the CSS3.

5. Click on the notepad icon on this portion of the webpage. The CSS3 code will be copied to your clipboard. 

6. Now go to your web page code in which you want to apply this CSS. You can make a class or ID for this. 

If you want to make a class they you have to write code as

.class_name{

text-shadow: 4px 3px 2px #e6092e; filter: dropshadow(color=#e6092e, offx=4, offy=3);

}

and if you want to use it against an ID then you have to write code as

#id_name{

text-shadow: 4px 3px 2px #e6092e; filter: dropshadow(color=#e6092e, offx=4, offy=3);

}

class_name and id_name could vary according to your naming methodology. 

7. Then give the reference of this CSS in your text element. For suppose you have a text element as:

<h2>Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2>

Hello, This is CSS3 Generator

and it will be displayed as above. If you want to give that styling that we have generated then you can give

<h2 class="class_name">Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2> 

if you are implementing as a class

or

<h2 id="id_name">Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2> 

if you are implementing as a ID.


When you implement this you will get the result as below:

Hello, This is CSS3 Generator

Make your Website Device Friendly using RWD (Responsive Web Design)

After reading the title for this post you must be thinking of what is RWD i.e. Responsive Web Design. It is not a technology but just a thought given by Ethan Marcotte, in his book “A Book A Part”.  The idea is that our website should response to the device on which it is to be shown by adapting the resolution, layout and design of that particular device so that our website fits on that particular device.

Now the coming era is of smart phones and hand held devices like tablets, iPad etc. and the main question to keep in mind is that are our web designs ready to be viewed on different types of screen resolutions? The usability of web browsers has changed from desktop based browser to mobile based browser and so does the change in expectation of the users. Now they want to use the websites in the same manner as they are using on their desktops and laptops. It is easy for them to expect but it is not as easy for the designer or the developer to develop. But after the invent of RWD it became easier for the designer to code the things for the unknown device. In the next few posts I am going to explain the complete fundamental of Responsive web design in a simpler manner.

ENTERPRISE 2.0 – SOCIALIZING YOUR BUSINESS

Enterprise 2.0 helps the organizations by involving the employees, customers, suppliers to share, collaborate and organize information for the benefit of the organization using web 2.0 technologies. Harvard Business School professor describes Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”. Some people think that it is bringing something of the kind Facebook into the internal atmosphere of the organization but it is much more than sharing comments and photographs. Social business platforms are now providing features like link to emails, IM tools, keywords and hashtags to find people, discussion forums, corporate blogging and many other features so as to dig out the employee’s brain.

CMSWire, de Gier in an interview quoted the term “creating this type of corporate social business connectivity solutions will help in expanding corporate brains”.

 

 

CEMEX’s Social Business Platform: Shift

CEMEX, a $13.5 billion company, world’s largest building material supplier and the third largest cement producer has taken an initiative in 2009 to blend social networking concepts and the idea of Enterprise 2.0 and develop an internal social network for the employees which became fruitful in 2010 and its results were beyond the imagination. The Shift is being used by more than 95% of the company’s employees. The results were so paying off that they cannot imagine. More than 500 communities were made by the employees and where they come together and collaborate on certain specific task related to a particular subject of the task and the CEMEX has admitted that the working culture and productivity has increased after doing so.

Richard Foo, the Collaboration Director of Nike Inc., has admitted that in just 60 days he has experienced a drastic change in the live production by adopting the social business platform from CISCO based social business network that creates enterprise-wide discussion and information threads. Nike is also trying to make it a Mobile Enterprise Business Solution that is integrating the social business platform onto mobiles and many vendors in the market are trying to provide certain trying to provide certain functionality.

If the organizations truly wants to maximize their benefits then they have to adopt social business platforms and not just that they have to make them mobile friendly as much as possible because this is the era of smart phones and internet.