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I'm not a huge fan of creating sites with Adobe's Flash.  I personally find Flash sites difficult to navigate, bookmark, and retrieve worthwhile information.  However, I can understand why the more artistic Web designers and site owners out there prefer to use Flash when building a website.  But in my mind, one of the biggest drawbacks with Flash is that Google and other search engines have a difficult time reading and indexing Flash sites.  Let's face it, if Google can't search your site then it is highly unlikely your customers will find your site in the first few pages displayed by Google no matter which keywords are being used.

I'm not a huge fan of creating sites with Adobe's Flash.  I personally find Flash sites difficult to navigate, bookmark, and retrieve worthwhile information.  However, I can understand why the more artistic Web designers and site owners out there prefer to use Flash when building a website.  But in my mind, one of the biggest drawbacks with Flash is that Google and other search engines have a difficult time reading and indexing Flash sites.  Let's face it, if Google can't search your site then it is highly unlikely your customers will find your site in the first few pages displayed by Google no matter which keywords are being used. Luckily for Flash fans, Google has changed the rules by improving their search capability for Flash sites.

Free online design tool BgPatterns gives you a full range of options to make your own tiled/repeating backgrounds, whether for your computer desktop or to fill in the background space on a blog or...

The need for wireframes is ever present in our dear business of web design. Being able to effectively diagram a site's information and navigation proves helpful in the beginning concept stages, especially when presenting to people outside the domain of UI, IA and design. But selecting the wireframe tool that's right for you can be challenging.

Information overload, news fatigue and WADD (Web Attention Deficit Disorder) are creating a brutal landscape on the Internet.

Web-based web site editor SynthaSite has relaunched itself with a brand new and radically more friendly user interface. Select your site's color scheme and template, and then modify it using a what...

Because of the Web we are putting less and less trust in experts and organizations and more and more in people like us-our peers.

Words are critical to task completion on websites and in applications. Yet they are still chosen carelessly.

Earlier this week, BusinessWeek rounded up a smattering of web experts to compose the 10 Commandments of Web Design of 2008. With help from a variety of sources, including Steven Heller, co-chairman, MFA Design program, School of Visual Arts, Don Norman, co-founder, Nielsen Norman Group and Martin Wattenberg, founding manager and IBM Visual Communication Lab, a heavenly list of do's and don'ts was compiled.

Shouldn't there be a law against having politicians' pictures on websites, particularly on homepages? Taxpayer money pays for these websites. So what gives politicians the right to take taxpayer money and hijack government websites and turn them into campaign websites?

Planning to spend some time this weekend, or during one of those mythical "free" weekends, whipping your web site into shape? Open Web Design, a free and frequently-updated collection of site...

E-government is not about technology. It is about saving time and making life easier and more efficient for citizens and business.

This afternoon at the Web Content 2008 conference, Ken Walters’ PowerPoint for his presentation, Design is Good Content, was refreshingly elegant. Loved the font. He’s obviously a designer and a good one. (although I wanted to edit his and the rest of the world’s English for singular/plural compatibility.) Lots of examples of good and bad sites, and then great summary points:

From Cole Camplese, Should it all be Miscellaneous?: The idea that we can follow a book filled with instructions on how to do information architecture, web design, usability, and so forth may be crazy. Some great conversations going on about structuring dialogue within organizations, and the inherent tension between freely flowing conversation and institutional control over the messages contained within that conversation, and the need for quality control over content affiliated with an institution.