Johnson Box – How to create in Kompozer

There are many tutorials, articles on how to create border in Nvu and Kompozer. 
However, I am not able to find information on how to create a dotted Johnson Box.

Maybe I had not searched the information thoroughly. 
Anyway, I had discovered 1 of the ways to create a dotted Johnson box. 

I had used Kompozer to illustrate my points below.

Here are the instructions.
Open a new File Click on Insert from the menu bar. Choose Table Under the Quickly tab, just choose the top left box ( 1 square for this illustration) You can align to a smaller viewable box. I had aligned to 350px by 160px Right click within the box, choose “Table Cell Properties” Under “Table tab”, insert a 5 or any number in the Border field for the size of the border DO NOT click on the OK button now Click on the “Advanced Edit” button on the right. Choose “Inline Style” tab Type in the following command into the property field. Each command is to insert as a separate entry Property –> border-top-style Value –> dashed Press the OK Button to activate the command so that the following can be entered. Repeat Step 9 to 11 for the following commands Property –> border-right-style Value –> dashed Property –> border-bottom-style Value –> dashed Property –> border-left-style Value –> dashed Once you had finished the above 4 command entries. You are back to the “Table Properties”. Click Apply and OK to see result It might seem troublesome, but it works for me.
There may be more ways to create the Johnson Box.
Please comment if you have any new ways here.

Joomla Customization: Tailor the design to your requirements

As technology has evolved, there are a host of ways available to a developer to build websites. Joomla is one of the most popular open source solutions for content management system. A large number of developers are using Joomla to weave websites and powerful online applications. And for tailoring the website design to ones requirements, there’s Joomla customization.

What makes Joomla the choice CMS system? Foremost is the free availability of Joomla. Joomla is an open source software and anyone looking to build sturdy websites with little to no cost, will be amazed at the host of in-built features available by its use. Next comes the ease of use and extensibility. Check Joomla Extensions and one can find a large number of extensions that are readily available for use by website designers.

Joomla Customization offers developers a chance to add all those features that are not already available in the ready-to-use Joomla extensions. It is like tailoring the website to what one wants his/her website to function as. With the world turning online to shop for its requirements, a large number of websites have to function as an online store that is open 24×7 and transacts on behalf of the entrepreneur.  Many others would be happy with their website serving as a regular content platform. For all these diverse requirements, there’s Joomla customization. 

Because of customization, Joomla has become the base for creation of a diverse range of websites. Some of these include E-commerce websites or portals, websites of small businesses, online publications websites, corporate website or portals, websites of educational institutions, Government and NGO websites, and personal websites.

However, Joomla is not free from its share of disadvantages. Although it offers a SEO friendly website design, it doesn’t go beyond this. The loading times may be higher. Also the Javascript and CSS may get bulky.

After customization, the Joomla designed website will function greatly as the following:

Through Joomla customization, the website may serve as an online gateway for collecting and publishing articles. There are separate areas for authors where they can sign up and submit, edit and delete articles. Not only this, there can be added as many article parameters as one wants.
If you are planning to develop a database of all your contacts with a variety of ways by which to organize the details pertaining to each contact.
So if you haven’t yet decided what technology you are going to use for designing your website, Joomla will come out as a potent technology.

How to Choose a Website Designer

A good quality website designer is going to help you go a long way in having a great looking site that is professional and high quality. A great professional web design site will speak volumes about your company and brand image. Here are some tips to help you select the perfect web designer of choice!

Check out the freelance sites

Nowadays many companies have realized the benefits of outsourcing their custom web design work. Today there are plenty of freelancing sites that advertise quality works of such graphic designer companies and individuals. The good thing about this is that you get to have your website designed on a budget and yet with a high quality finish! You could even manage to get a complete website designed replete with flash animations for as little as 30 or 50 dollars!

Get sample works

Before choosing any website designer for your website designing needs, be sure to collect previous work samples from all of these designers. It will help you gauge the quality of their work and also see if they can really implement a custom web design for your site. Maybe you could even have a small test for them to check their ability, before you actually select them.

Assess the reputation

It is extremely important that you go for a graphic designer that has a good track record and reputation online. Otherwise you not only risk taking on a designer with poor quality of work but you never know how professional they are! Any professional web design company that has a good credibility will adhere to deadlines, submit high quality work and will ensure proper communication methods always.

Search engine friendliness

One of the traits of a good quality custom web design company is that it will usually have a thorough understanding of search engines and how design can affect them. For example having a home page with lot of flash animations may not be a good idea as search engines do not recognize Flash. These are some of the suggestions that the design company may provide you, thereby resulting in a professional web design finish.

Navigability

Another important requisite of any good website designer is that they will ensure your site has easy navigation. That means users should ideally be able to search for information easily without much hassle. Also, the information and content represented on the website should never be overpowered by the design. For example, too much of flash animations, blinking text as well as other design elements can take away from the central purpose of the page. These are some of the suggestions that a good quality graphic designer will suggest to you.

Future Of Website Development In India

In a country like India, the Internet industry has at last come of age. From just being exclusive to the section of people who needed to know HTML coding and web development scripts, it has now become something so simple and easy that any average guy can accomplish it with just the proper softwares. Being one of the most note worthy innovation of our time, its growing force and the massive size of its influence cannot for one minute be ignored. Thus, one can see a sharp rise in the number of websites and with it the market for website development and website design in India is also increasing.

Still, in spite of all these, one can never know for sure what will be the future of website development in India or for that matter anywhere else in the world. There has been lots of changes in the recent past and one is the shift from static websites to dynamic website pages. Previously, the website pages were just there to impart information and did not much think about connecting with the browsers or the audiences going through the sites.

Nowadays its vitally important that the web page be designed and developed in such a manner that there is some kind of interactivity, making it user friendly and reachable. From the use of audios, videos, message boards, guest blogs, trackers etc, it has created a platform for the people to participate directly, something which will prevail even in the days to come.

According to experts, the newest implementation of JavaScript has also enormously increased its performance and will keep on doing so in the near future. With HTML5 already into quite a good start, it might be a hard time for the RIA frameworks to beat the new generation of HTML, JavaScripts and even CSS applications. Specially, keeping in mind things like SEO for a website, HTML, CSS and JavaScript will always get the job done more smoothly.

With Microsoft launching Silverlight, various kinds of animation works on the web pages will still be the design options and interest for the website developers in the future. Plus, with animation comes interactivity and that is something that the clients and even the web users look forward to in India today. Almost all website pages that we see today have Flash elements incorporated into the web pages.

In spite of all these, one cannot ignore the obvious, that the Internet is slowly headed towards a world of small interconnected devices, through which one can very easily and quickly access information. Accessing any information from anywhere and at anytime through the various mobile webs available is an experience that can even give the desktops a run for their business.

Like any other country, India is also fast catching up with all the latest technologies that are coming up today. People are much more tech and gadget savvy today and also quite up-to-date on all the recent developments that are taking place. Whatever the future of the website development holds in India, its going to be more innovative, original and interactive in the days to come.

At Contadgreen all the latest website designing and website development tools are used to come up with the most dynamic of websites possible.

Joomla and It’s Advantages

Joomla is an open source Content Management System (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. In August 2005, Joomla originated from the Mambo content management system, which included the source code, as well as the development team. As Joomla code is open source, so it’s easy adaptable for anyone to write modules and extensions of the system. Joomla allows web designers to develop websites by combining modules, and requires no programming knowledge. Joomla framework is written in PHP, as are the modules used to customize websites.

Why Joomla?

Why is joomla so popular among web developers? There are various reasons for its popularity depending upon the joomla users. Mainly, as an open source system Joomla is free, Secondly Joomla environment is very flexible which meets the needs of different user accordingly. Thirdly, it can be downloaded from the Internet absolutely free of cost and also, because of its ease-of-use, extensible and accessible environment it so popular.

Characteristics and Benefits of Joomla

Completely database driven site engines. Each and every element in joomla is stored in a centralized database.
The content that is displayed on the website can be scheduled as per the requirement of the web editors.
Fully customizable layouts – there are thousands of templates to choose from so you can change the look and feel of your site without affecting the main content.
Joomla supports multiple languages.
News feeds from various websites can be gathered using the News Feed Manager available in Joomla.
Runs on any platform including Windows, Linux, several Unix versions, and the Apple OS/X platform. It also depends on PHP and MySQL database to deliver dynamic content.
Apart from these characteristics, it provides many benefits such as

Easy Management: Joomla is designed to be easy to install and set up even if you‘re not a programmer. Once Joomla is installed, configured, it is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images and to manage the critical data that makes your company or organization go.
Joomla Components & Modules: The popularity and flexibility of Joomla modular architecture has made it possible to develop a wide range of components and associated modules. One can find nearly any component or module which meets our requirements and then just download and plug it into your content management system.
Joomla Templates: There are number of web designers who develop and design Joomla Templates which can transform the look and feel of your web site. All you have to do it find a template you like, download it and apply it to your content management system (CMS). Many of the templates come with predefined module positions so you can display modules in various different positions.
Joomla for Search Engine Optimization: Having your website found by the search engines (Google etc…) is vital in most cases for a successful website. Joomla has built-in SEO functionality. (SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization). The SEO tab in Global Configuration (in Administration backend) takes care of global SEO settings for your Joomla site. Joomla provides (SEF) search engine friendly URLs to ensure you get the highest search engine ranking position
Joomla is an internationally developed application, with many developers contributing to the growing movement by submitting their own web services components and plug-ins to the Joomla Extensions Directory. It is a platform where you can plug-in smaller applications as per the needs of the user. Hence, scalability is an important factor to be considered for organizations that requires CMS.

Joomla is used by organizations of all sizes for Public Web sites, Intranets, and Extranets and is supported by a community of thousands of users.

The real power of Joomla is found in the application architecture that enables thousands of web developers around the world to create powerful add-ons and extensions to this powerful content management system.

Hand Tool of Flash: Giving a Helping Hand to Designers

After doing much magic in the Flash site design segment for years, Flash is still the No1 choice in designing and animation. Flash web designer are still heavily using this highly sophisticated program bringing the best results in the industry. What makes Flash so special? Aren’t there any other designing and animation tool in the market?
Well, today there is no scarcity of any type software in the market. With rapid growth in the software industry, programs for all purposes can be easily found and designing and animation are also not an exception to it. If you browse the web, you will see a number of designing and animation tools available in the market. But Flash is still going strong because of its usability and all-in-one tools package. With a single software, you can accomplish a plethora of designing as well as animation activities.
The Hand tool of Flash is a popular tool which is used to move around the stage. Looking like a little hand, the tool helps you playing with large Flash movie. Basically, it’s difficult to work on minute areas without zooming it. And there are also occasions when you find difficulty in navigating to different areas of the movie even after you have zoomed it. With the use of this function, you can literally move the stage. By just clicking the tool and dragging it to the desired location, you can do it effortlessly.
In order to design a Flash movie, Flash cs3 designers take advantage of the Hand Tool from different angles. For example, by double-clicking the Hand Tool in the toolbar, a Flash web designer can set the stage to its maximum size. Even if he does that, everything just remains visible. Besides, it become centered helping him work at ease.
All in all, the Hand Tool of Flash is a very handy tool helping Flash designers a whale in Flash cs3 design, Flash web site design as well as in designing of Flash banners and ads.

Guide Your Clients Through Shopping Portal Designing

What do you want a visitor to do when he comes to your shopping portal? Shop for sure? But is that enough? Don‘t you want him to come back to you again, and check what other stuffs you have? In order to make your shopping portal carry out all these tasks, you need to be extremely careful with your Online shopping portal designing. Let us now just study how you can carry out all these tasks in just one visit that a visitor makes to your website.

While a visitor is on your Online shopping portal the first thing that he should understand from your website is the prime objective of your site. If the prime objective is to buy a bunch of flowers he should be directed to the flower section through such an imaginary path which will give him an overview of other things that your website has, and what other service he can avail.

It is easy to open a shopping portal website, but to conduct sales through these shopping portals is quite a taxing task. It is the job of a good e commerce or shopping portal designing to lead the visitor to their desired place in just a click. In order to do these, the portal designers often use techniques that are unlikely to be used in other non-commercial websites. One such technique is the use of sales letter. On such web pages, the only external link is the link to the order form. This is known as sales letter pages, which direct the visitor to the sames page directly.

The concept of shopping portals is similar to our real life shopping malls. Where there is variety to see and buy, similarly an Online shopping portal cannot be restricted to just one product or service. It must have a whole range of products and services which the user can choose from. Here lies the skills of good shopping portal designing which will lead the users from one section to another, keeping his interest intact.

A perfect shopping portal designing project will have two task successfully accomplished. First, the generation of sales or lead and second the re-visit ratio of the traffic that flows in. Your shopping portal is successful only when people are ready to return to it again and again to but your products.

Guide to customer friendly ecommerce web designs 

From mere vehicles to vend products online, ecommerce websites have been significantly revolutionized by ecommerce website design India both in terms of looks and features. Their Ecommerce business solution tends to furnish the best of designs with their online ecommerce services, as below-
Product management through catalogues, shopping carts, stock management, search options. Customer services via email notifications, newsletter information, repeat customer recognition. Payment options facilitate payment on delivery, payment processing gateways, e-check payments. Administration and security through use of web based cart control, password protection, and back subsystems. Ecommerce website design India usually makes use of-
Customization – ecommerce websites should not be like templates set on stone. The custom web site design India offers for customization properties through website builders using which the web developers can update the services available at any point of time.
Appearance of online products – “A picture is worth a thousand words”, and indeed in ecommerce web site development incorporating photos or videos of the products displaying their captivating features can fetch high dividends. The site developers can integrate zoom tools with 3D imagery that allows the customer to look into every nook and cranny of what they are going to buy.
Eye-catchers – Judicious use of colors, text styles and fonts can prove very helpful to a customer in need. For example, the catalogue can use one kind of color for the descriptions of their products and another kind for their prices. Moreover, special price discounts can be quite arresting to eyes when they appear suddenly as colorful pop-ups.
Easy navigation- A customer willing to purchase should not be found beating around the bush when searching for his products. Items should be well organized and tabulated in categories, through well-connected links.
Customer satisfaction – Most customers doubt the authenticity of the websites when it comes to monetary transactions over the web. Payments through the internet should be secure and confidential. Any hall marks, accreditation certificates etc must be displayed for the satisfaction of the customers.

Guidelines to Choose the Best Web Designer

It takes immense talent and skills to design a web page which is creatively designed, neatly coded, easily downloadable, displays properly on different browsers and above all, can be indexed easily by search engines as well. This is why it becomes more important to choose a company which has a team of talented web and graphic designers, equipped to give you a high quality web solution.

Here are some useful tips to help you choose an efficient web designer.

Check out the previous works

Ask the company to show you the portfolio of their web designs. Most good web and graphic design companies will have a neatly done portfolio in their website itself.

The prior works of the designers highlight not only their talent but also what you can expect from them. Analyze whether all the pages are easy to navigate, whether the designs are impressive and professional, is the layout effective etc. Only after you are satisfied with the previous works, you should move further.

Give importance to HTML knowledge

Make sure that the web designer uses HTML to build a site along with cascading style sheets i.e. CSS. The knowledge of CSS is important for a designer as CSS allows the designer to easily and quickly make system-wide changes to the site.

This helps in saving time and energy and of course, cost. A good designer must be in the know of these things. If your designer is not familiar with CSS, then you’d better leave the task for some other designer.

Know about the features

Enquire what kind of features your web designer can provide you in your website. There are plenty of features available in web solutions today but you must know what exactly you would need. Your web designer must be able to suggest you the features that would make your site attractive and user-friendly.

For example, if you are building a product-selling site, you can have some flash components to enhance the appeal of your home page, a good admin panel to manage visitors and sales, security features to ensure secure payment gateways and so on.

Updating criteria

It is essential to know beforehand, how the web and graphic designer plan to have the site updated. It is better to have the ability to update the website on your own with the help of Content Management System (CMS), or user-friendly admin panel type interface which allow one to make changes to static content. Paying the designer every time you need to update your site is an expensive proposition and quite unnecessary in today’s hi-tech web world.

Performance of your website

To make sure your website performs well, ask your designer beforehand about the time required for loading a page and search engine indexing. If your site takes more time to load than the average website does, take it as a warning signal. It might be due to bad HTML coding. A good web designer will code the page in a way in which it loads within seconds and is easily indexed by search engines.

Get in touch with previous clients

Apart from just going through the testimonials online, it is worthwhile to get in touch with the previous clients and ask them about their experience with the web design company and the web designers. You can contact them either through phone or e-mail them seeking their opinion whether they were happy and satisfied with the kind of quality and service they have got.

These are just few guidelines that can be taken into consideration while looking for a good professional web designer. These are by no means the only criteria but it will surely help to find the good ones who can be trusted with your dream project.