You can probably guess by how often I’ve been blogging lately just how much I can come up with to write about this, so instead of trying and risking humiliating failure, I will instead direct you to what our professional writing-stuff-about-stuff people had to say about it, as well as list some quotes from the key people who actually built it about why the new site is so sweet:

 Colin: Development Team Lead “I like the simplified homepage experience. It directs users to our major areas of interest so they don’t get lost. I think we made a more typographically engaging website, which is easier to read and digest.”

David: Senior Designer “It’s search engine optimized, user experience driven, and pretty darn cute… it’s custom tailored for our users based on statistical analysis and client feedback, we’re deploying a strategy that has been 10 years in the making. Looking good, being seen.”

Kyle: HTML Programmer “The new site is a lot more “clean” and more focused… I think it is more engaging overall with more of a doorway into our office instead of a window peek.”

… and new individual section designs are still being added to the site, so  keep checking back. Hey, we might even fix my bio pic so that I no longer appear to have lost both of my eyes and then had the side of my forehead caved in by a shovel (which I presumably couldn’t dodge due to the aforementioned eye deficit).

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• 5+ Years of Industry Experience: They seemed to find our doubling of that sufficient
• 15+ Web Sites Per Year: Check
• 50+ Clients: How does 500 grab ya?

Though we of course remain humble, we would like to take this opportunity to say “go us”. So check out our award-winningly-dependable Web design, and remember that our custom programming, hosting, colocation, marketing and SEO services are pretty darn stalwart as well.

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Once again, the CWSA has done a better job of describing their event than I can so please check here for details. I will say that the initial meeting is a two-parter, the first part of which was actually last Sunday, but you can still make it to the concluding meeting this Sunday, February 24^th at 5:00pm at Caribou Coffee in Rocky River.Why would I fail to post this before the initial meeting? Because I can’t just sit here being focused and vigilant all day on the off-chance that someone somewhere decides to schedule something. I have things to do, people. Important things. Like partaking in intense psychotherapy over the whole helicopter incident.

Beginner developers should also check out the TKG Institute, our ongoing evening program here at The Karcher Group for teaching developer basics tothe youth of Northeast Ohio that are in to that kind of thing.

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A file format was created in 1996 to improve and replace the standard GIF format, but never really caught on due to lack of browser support.  Over a decade later though, PNG is starting to take notice in the web design community, and has finally become widely supported by browsers.  A PNG file is superior to a GIF (and often a JPG) in every way.  PNGs use a lossless data compression, and yet are still almost always smaller than the identical file in GIF format.  Since a GIF is limited to 256 colors while a PNG can be up to 48 bit, one must be very careful to limit the colors included or the file size might become quite large. Because of this, many think that PNGs are much larger than the GIF file size.  They are trying to compare a 256 color image to a 48 bit image, thus the
misconceptions.

The transparencies of a PNG are also far superior to a GIF, as they allow for multiple levels of transparencies rather than just ‘on’ or ‘off.’  This opens up a whole new world for web design!  Creating multiple containers in order to fake a drop shadow is a thing of the past.  With PNGs, you can create a true drop shadow with only one image.  The alpha transparencies can be used in a variety of other situations as well; imagine making a site with multiple semi-transparent images with a repeating background.  The images will appear to include the background.  With a simple background change, all of the
semi-transparent images will also change.  This eliminates the need to recreate and cut new images just so they match the new background you applied
(saving you a LOT of work).

Another nice feature of the PNG format is that they can store meta data.  This means that search engines will actually search information stored within the image rather than just the image name.  This will increase the filesize however, and should only be used strategically in images such as logos or other definite branding images.

Browser support for PNG today is very good, with the typical exception of Internet Explorer 6.  IE6 can display an index colored PNG fine, but has issues when working with alpha transparencies.  The browser actually supports transparencies inherently, but it is not enabled.  As a designer, will need to use certain “hacks” in order to get them to display properly.

While it might be a little more work, in the long run it is definitely worth it to use PNGs in my opinion.  The next time you shift-ctrl-alt-s (save for web) in Photoshop, please keep all of this in mind before you automatically hit that GIF button.

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