ABQweb Blog (ABQweBlog?)

The computer revolution seems to have come to a fork in the road. On the one hand, we’ve got multiple screens and higher resolutions. On the other hand, we’ve got netbooks and smartphones. More often than not, both hands belong to the same person! What to do, what to do?

A long time ago in a galaxy far away (apologies to George Lucas), we had to worry about whether people were viewing web sites in VGA (640×480) or SVGA (800×600) resolution.  From there, it was a pretty straight line to high speed connections and high resolution displays.

Until recently.

Now, we are just as likely (more likely?) to view web sites using our smaller screens as we are to view them using our larger ones. As a web designer, this creates a major problem – do we build sites for high res screens and live with the results on small ones or do we build sites for low res screens and live with the results on big ones?

Yes.

Some take the first road, some the second, but very few travel on both.

I try to build sites that look acceptable on a wide variety of displays. I take my queues from my clients, but I also try to educate them on the positives and negatives of their choices. Usually, I think we reach a happy medium.

You can see it in most of the sites in my client gallery (www.abqweb.net/abq-gallery.htm). As you change the size of your browser window, the site automatically adjusts. Get really small and you may have to scroll left to right, but usually you won’t. Get really large and you may see wide margins, but you’ll probably just be able to view the page with less scrolling.

If you want your site to look good on netbooks and smartphones, use a short header so your visitors can see the opening text on your page. Use more words and less graphics so that each page loads more quickly. Don’t start audio and video clips automatically.

Of course, most of these techniques will also make your site look better to everyone who visits, whatever type of display they are using. And that’s the most important thing to remember – your goal should be to give your visitor the best experience possible.

Easy to say, hard to do, but worth the effort.

One of the biggest problems we face is dealing with the daily deluge of email messages. Some of these messages are obviously from spammers, phishers and other “bad guys,” but many of them are from people we know (or at least they “look legitimate”). After many years in the computer industry, I’ve become a real skeptic and I’d like to share a few tips that I think can help you avoid some common problems. Here are my four basic email rules for messages that have links or attachments:

1. If you don’t know who sent it, don’t follow links or open attachments – just hit DELETE. I know, this is pretty obvious, but you’d be amazed at how often I hear from someone who “forgot” about this rule.

2. If it seems to be from someone you know, but the message is really generic – just hit DELETE. “Here is the file we discussed” sounds official, but have you ever really sent someone a message with only that text and nothing else? No greeting, no salutation, no “how’s the kids?” The only time I have EVER violated this is when I’m actually on the phone with someone and I send them a message while we are talking, then wait to make sure they receive it while we are still on the phone!

3. If it seems to be from someone you know but you weren’t expecting it – VERIFY it before clicking any links or opening any attachments. Send a message back to them (but type their address in manually) or call them on the phone and make sure this is really something they sent to you. If something is really time sensitive, chances are you already knew about it before the message arrived (see Rule #4 below). If it isn’t time sensitive, the delay while you verify it won’t matter.

4. If it seems to be from someone you know, it is personalized, and you were expecting it, GO FOR IT! To me, you’ve taken every reasonable precaution and it is probably exactly what it seems to be.

Of course, none of these rules will matter if you aren’t protected with an up-to-date browser and good anti-virus software. The “bad guys” are getting smarter all the time and will probably find a way to get around even these precautions.

But for now, at least, if you follow these rules, you will be much less likely to follow the wrong link or open the wrong attachment. If this works for you (or even if it doesn’t), please let me know.

Copyright 2009 ABQweb, a division of L&S Marketing, Inc. Feel free to link to this post, but you can’t use all or part of this content without permission.