This is where I heard a statement that kind of jarred me.

“Oh I know, I make MySpace layouts….” – it brought my brain to a halt.

It wasn’t anything personal with her, but it was the realization I had that there are likely 1000s of young people just like her also doing the same. Some people are even making a career / making money off making MySpace layouts.

So why is this harmful to impressionable minds?

For starters, MySpace was never designed with the intent that a user would be able to toss the site theme in favor of something of their own design. To make one, you basically have to unlearn everything you knew about HTML and CSS in regards to site layouts or themes. For those who haven’t done anything with websites before, learning all the ins and outs of how to get a myspace layout to work are filling their heads with useless crap. Other social networking sites such as Virb are designed to allow the user to apply their own stylings in a non-insane way. I was actually quite impressed with Virb because it also allows you to disable all custom layouts at your discretion- something MySpace can’t do.

My best advice to her was to ditch MySpace layouts all together, and purchase a cheap web hosting account with WordPress. She would then at least have full access to change anything in the site layout while learning invaluable knowledge and design at the same time. That’s how I got started 12 years ago on Geocities (remember them?).

Could you imagine if there were sites that let you code your own add-ons, and it required you writing some screwed up PHP or Coldfusion that wasn’t accepted anywhere else in the world? How about a home builder who didn’t follow industry standards when building your home?

Can you believe some colleges still teach web design using tables and code generating software? Crazy isn’t it? It was like that when I was there and from what I’ve heard, not much has changed.

The thought of people having to do absurd CSS and table structuring just to make the myspace layout look a certain way just disturbs me. We have standards for a reason, and one of those reasons is to not repeat the sordid browser wars of the 90s which is where a lot of that mess stems from.

So for all you folks out there looking to get into web design, young or old, if you’re going to do something do it right. Refer to the giants: Zeldman, Meyer, Snook, Cederholm, etc… strive for greatness.

Baywood Greens is a scenic golf course community located just off Route 24 in Long Neck, DE.  This quaint location provides easy access to both the towns of Rehoboth and Millsboro while offering quiet, luxury homes in resort style living surrounded by an exclusively public 18 hole golf course. The Baywood Greens Clubhouse is host to a restaurant as well as a banquet facility, weddings, and other events.

The inventive new website contains numerous improvements with new features like virtual 3D golf course fly over videos of the new Duneside 9 holes, an interactive event calendar, current weather conditions, and abundant photo galleries of floral arrangements, gardens, weddings, and events. The golf course section website includes new pictures for each hole.

“We could not be happier with the site and we had a great experience working with the Inclind Inc team. The whole project was handled very professionally. We love it!” says Mark Coty, General Manager of Baywood Greens.

About Baywood Greens:

Robert W. Tunnell, Jr., principal of Tunnell Companies, is the visionary behind Baywood Greens golf course, the Clubhouse, Communities, and all their amenities. It has taken a lot of hard work, skill and determination to make his vision come to life. Now that it is finally here you can come and experience the beauty of it first hand.

The initial layout and design of the course was by Bill Love ASGCA (formally of Ault, Clark and Associates). Final design was completed by land sculpture extraordinaire Larry Dewitt and owner/developer Rob Tunnell, who turned original sketches into a work of art.

Baywood Greens is a public golf club located in Long Neck, Delaware that is consistently rated as one of the very best in the state.

The front nine holes are nicknamed the “Woods Nine”, while the back nine holes carry the “Water Nine” nickname. A third 9-hole grouping is planned on the north side of Route 24, which is supposed to be the “Sand Nine”.

The course is noted for having over 200,000 flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees that decorate the playing area.

With the future construction of a large hotel, the owners hope to vie for PGA tournament status.

To learn more about tee times, tournaments, restaurant menus, wedding packages, or events at Baywood Greens please visit their website at www.baywoodgreens.com or call (302) 947-9800. Call toll free at 888 844-2254. For more information on website development, please contact Inclind Inc at (302) 856-2802 or online at www.inclind.com.

There are 4 major internet browsers a user has an option to pick from (in terms of reliability, speed, security, support, and rendering):

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Apple’s Safari
3. Internet Explorer
4. Opera

There are of course others, like WebKit, Konquerer and the like, but for the typical home user, these are the only ones you want to look at.

Personally, I use Mozilla Firefox 2 (version 3, beta 5 at home) for work and play. Despite its memory usage, I consider it the best, most secure browser around. Version 3 will be released in June for public use (right now beta is available for developers and testers), and it has huge improvements in its memory use, loading speed, security, and page rendering. It also has literally thousands of add-ons and themes to customize Firefox, some of which I could not live without. Mozilla offers their browser for free as well as an email client called Thunderbird which supports POP3 and IMAP (in case you want to replace Outlook Express, too.. go for it.).

Closely behind that, I have used Opera. It doesn’t have the add on support as much as Firefox does, so I don’t tend to use it too often. It is also extremely strict on security, phishing, and spyware filtering, just like Firefox but perhaps even more so. It’s fetching and caching methods offer lightening speed browsing on broadband or higher connections, and is nearly ACID2 compliant (most websites will render correctly in Opera). Beyond that, its pretty safe to say that if you put Opera on your PC, there is less risk that a family member could find trouble on the internet (as opposed to using Internet Explorer) and is extremely reliable for transacting business online.

I have used Apple’s Safari for Windows, and despite what articles are saying, its pretty poor. Just the fact alone that it doesn’t have any malware/spyware/phishing filters and the browser doesn’t allow third-party themes or add-ons, I wouldn’t use this browser until this is addressed (‘Beta’ be damned, this is important). Safari also doesn’t support extended validation (EV) certificates either; EV certificates provide better site identification than the regular certificates that encrypted sites use. This caused the CEO of Paypal to tell all of its customers to not use Safari when doing transactions and conducting business, which is a pretty big black eye for Apple in my book when an internet giant like Paypal is telling people to not use your product.

PC World goes more into depth on this subject, and while PC World tends to be a little elementary in its write-ups and articles, I think this one is pretty informative for the average joe.

Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?

While my profession will require me to use Internet Explorer, I can’t express my distaste for it enough. Beyond simple surfing, thats about all its good for. Even with version 8 looming at the end of the year, its nothing more than what Firefox was 4 years ago, or Opera 6 years ago. It just simply does not cut it. It still has major CSS rendering issues, javascript incompatibilities, pseudo PNG support and other screw your day up type problems. While I consider myself an IE6/7 web developer expert at this point, we shouldn’t be at the mercy of Microsoft to jump through hoops for their half assed browser, even though we’ve been doing it for years with Windows. Too late now I suppose.

Note: Delaware Web Design Inclind Inc fully supports cross browser compatibility on both frontend and backend applications. This article is to inform you that using Internet Explorer is basically like leaving the doors to your home wide open in a bad part of town. Try Mozilla Firefox or Opera, you’ll be glad you did

American Portable, and CKY Alliance are now being featured on various websites, including designsnack.com and screenalicious.com.

It feels great that our clients websites make the rounds like this on top websites. For our clients this just adds to the traffic they receive, spreading the word of their service, product or existence on top of the hefty search engine optimization work we already do for them. We have the top graphics design team on the penninsula combined with the best application programmers in the area.

This bodes particularly well for the two projects that got featured, as American Portable is expanding around the nation every month with franchise operations from here to California. CKY is on the cusp of releasing their new album this Spring on their new label, RoadRunner Records. CKY has always done things their way, on their terms. Inclind knows just how to handle their web presence and coordinate it with marketing, web content, and the fans. Like all of our clients, they love us and we love them!

Want to be successful?

If you feel your website is bland, boring, or isn’t doing for you what you’d like it to do, contact us or give us a call at (302) 856-2802 and talk with us.

Launched 3 websites, featured on design showcase sites, and Friday I turn 25. Doesn’t this week kick a little ass!

Keep on the lookout, Inclind is everywhere!

DesignSnack and Screenalicious are websites where people upload websites, the community votes on them, and then site admins determine who gets “approved” through their guidelines and placed on the front page. Tom submitted two websites, his personal site at tbbjrgrafx.com, and a recently completed project of Inclind, Gavin Goodfellow.

Also submitted was American Portable, well received by the community there as well, which is pending approval.

Way to go Tom.