Aadi Creations

Good bye Internet Explorer after being with us for 27 years. You introduced us to the web. We loved you, then hated you, and finally loved to hate you. RIP.

Aadi Creations updated their phone number.

सभी के सारे सपने साकार हों, इसी अभिलाषा के साथ दीवाली की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएँ!

आपकी वेबसाइट और गूगल - BATKAHI तमाम सारे साथियों की वेबसाइट बनाने के बाद हम अकसर कई अजब हालातों का सामना करते हैं। वेबसाइट का एड्रेस देते ही दूसर.....

We are pleased to announce launch of much awaited .ngo domain name for your website for your NGO. .ngo domain name is not just a domain name, but it is a global platform of NGOs, Donors and Resource Organisations with each one accessing information about the other in this overcrowded digital world. For further details about .ngo domain please get in touch with us.

Life of a Website

Often we are faced with the question: What is life of a website? Direct answer is difficult. And even more difficult it is to explain it to clients.

Let’s try. Some 15 years ago the websites were generally made 640 pixels wide, the width of most of monitors at that time. Then came 800 pixels wide, to be followed by 1024 pixels and now 1366 pixels wide, all according to most common monitor resolutions of the day. Thus almost every four years website resolution has changed.

Does that mean a website designed today has a life of about four years and will have to be redesigned after that to keep it current? Well almost. But monitor resolution can alone not be the sole criteria. Web technology changes so fast that a website designed today may need re-designing even earlier.

Whom the website owner rely on to decide when his website needs redesign. He may do some internet search on latest designing trends. Then he may discuss with the service provider, who will help in arriving at a decision.

Listen to Your Service Provider

As designers we are often face piquant situation when our clients pester us to design their websites like some website they are highly influenced with.

Often these websites have loads of content, the tiny blocks which are beautifully and logically arranged to give them unique look and feel. But our clients simply do not have such content, nor raw content supplied by them offers us an opportunity to create such content. Many clients agree, but the rest stick to their perception and are not willing to budge. This usually leads to a bizarre looking product, or overtly complicated product, which is difficult to manage and maintain.

Having said that here is an unsolicited advice for the prospective clients: Listen to your service provider as he is the best equipped to offer a working solution to you. Ultimately, it is you the end user who will manage content of your website, unless of course you continue to depend on your service provider on this count till eternity.

Joomla vs WordPress

Too much material is available online on this and one will find Drupal included in the comparison. We do not intend to add more to this, but definitely want to share our firsthand experience.

We are committed Joomla users for over four years now and recently were ‘forced’ to do a website in WordPress by a client, because the client had conviction that WordPress was more ‘end user’ friendly. We faced many stumbling blocks while designing this website, and finally the website is ready.

The most stupid thing that we learnt during this entire process was the WordPress editor, which has got so limited functionality that one is not able to add tabular data without extending this editor. Even more stupid thing is if one installs some other editor, much functionality of WordPress itself is gone!

So our verdict is clear. We will continue using WordPress for designing blogs and Joomla for websites.

Wishing all our friends and associates a very happy and prosperous Diwali.

Web Page: Is it a Page or Not?

This question is frequently asked and as the technology advances the answer becomes more complex.

To find an answer, we have to go back to circa 1990 when the first website was put online on August 6, 1991 (screenshot of the home page of the first website is below). At that time and till almost at least one decade later the websites were just collection of web pages. There was no confusion and each page was displayed as it was made. There was no functionality.

As the web technology evolved, confusion grew. Today with the advent of content management systems, the confusion is at its peak. In any CMS based website, we don’t make pages. When someone asks how many pages his prospective website will have it becomes very difficult for us to answer.

We prepare articles, posts and modules and these are processed on server end to prepare ‘page’ and display the same in the user’s browser. Thus, the home page of a website like http://digitalinequality.org is made of seven articles and header, footer, horizontal menu, vertical menu, etc. Most of the inside pages are made of one article each. Not only this. The ‘page’ that one lands on clicking links like The Divide, Research, etc. have never been made!

Thus counting pages in a modern website is almost impossible and not desirable. But one can always count number of articles, posts and content module. And then the way these are displayed makes or mars the website.

Is it a website or a web site or a Web site?

This is the question that figured when the last post was being written. We have been using web site right since beginning, without an exception. At that time we concluded with the sentences: “By the way, while writing this it occurred to us what is correct or desirable web site, or website, or something else. We will address this question soon.”

So a little search (where else but on Google) revealed that the one-word, website is more or less the norm throughout English-speaking world. The exceptions are found in the US, where website and web site share almost 50:50 space, and Canada where the share is almost 80:20.

Incidentally, newspaper The New York Times, which is notorious for its conservatism with technical terms, writes Web site! The NYT is ideal for many US publications and they also write Web site.

Since Web site and web site are dead in British English, henceforth we shall use only website. We follow British English everywhere to the extent possible and are not conservative like the US publications!

Web Sites: Content vs. Design

We often face situations in which clients ask us to produce their web sites similar to one which they have seen and liked. When we visit those sites, we are left scratching our heads. The ‘dream web site’ of the client has 25 pieces of content on home page, while the client barely has five to display!

We gently tell clients this. Some accept immediately. Others realise the limitation as the work progresses. A very few obdurate clients brand us good-for-nothing-designers not worth investing time and money.

For the benefit of all, we are repeating here again what we tell the clients individually. A web site is a sum total of content presented in a way that is aesthetically appealing and promotes functionality. And content is not only written text; it goes beyond this as has been explained in the previous post.

By the way, while writing this it occurred to us what is correct or desirable web site, or website, or something else. We will address this question soon.

Content Is King

Way back in 1996 Bill Gates wrote his famous essay Content Is King. Interestingly, content continues to be the king almost two decades after his essay.

Though the context here is different from that of Gates, the importance of content needs to be specially reiterated for clients – mainly small to medium non-profits and educational institutions – we serve.

Most of the educational institutions opt for a web site because that has been made mandatory by regulatory authorities. In the process a few have gone to the extent of simply pasted scan from college prospectus written in shabby Hindi in the text area and produced web pages!

For Indian non-profits a web site is something that is desirable and not mandatory. Usually it so happens that the organisations debate endlessly on visual impact of the web site, but do not care for content – text, photographs, audio, video, etc. Generally, text is poorly written and full of grammatical and spelling mistakes. Photographs are poorly edited, or not at all edited and resized disproportionately. The result is DISASTER.

So dear prospective web site owners if you want that your web site leaves an impact and serves a purpose, please invest in good quality content. Only then the web site will be of use to you.

PS: We specialise in providing good quality content to our clients. :)

हिंदी के बारे में अभी तक जो कुछ भी यहां पर लिखा गया वह मूल रूप से उनके लिए था जिन्हें अंग्रेजी का किसी हद तक ज्ञान है। इसलिए इससे पहले जो कुछ भी लिखा गया वह अंग्रेजी में था।

लेकिन वे क्या करें जिनका अंग्रेजी ज्ञान वेबसाइट का नाम डालने और यूजर आईडी और पासवर्ड डालने तक सीमित है। उनके लिए यूनिकोड में हिंदी टाइपिंग सीखने के अलावा कोई रास्ता नहीं है।

यूनिकोड हिंदी कीबोर्ड की फोटो इस पोस्ट के साथ लगी है। इसे बाजार से खरीदा जा सकता है और कुछ अभ्यास के साथ सीखा भी जा सकता है। अगर न खरीदना चाहें तो सामान्य कीबोर्ड से भी काम चल जाएगा।

हिंदी के सभी उपयोगकर्ताओं से अपील है कि वे ‘हिंदी’ या दूसरी ‘भाषाओं’ के कम्प्यूटर में अमानक प्रयोग से बचें और यूनिकोड, जो इन भाषाओं का वर्तमान और भविष्य है, का प्रयोग करें। एक दिन तो ऐसा जरूर आएगा जब प्रिंटिंग प्रेस वाले भी यूनिकोड में काम करने के लिए बाध्य होंगे।

यहां पर हिंदी उपयोग की बातें खत्म होती हैं। पर अगर किसी का हिंदी उपयोग के बारे में कोई को सवाल हो तो उसे वह जरूर पूछ सकता है।

Another good tool for those who do not wish to learn Hindi typing, but want to type Hindi, is 'Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool'. It is available at the address: http://www.bhashaindia.com/ilit/HindiPreInstall.aspx. Hit the Install now button and the software will download.

Double click the downloaded software and following instructions on screen install it. Now open the application in which you want to work, select Hindi language and select the keyboard Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool. Typing is on the lines of Google Input Tools.

Pros: The user gets Poorna Virams (।). Here the application wins over Google Input Tools. Moreover, long numerals with more than three digits are directly typed in Roman script. Here too the application is clear winner.

Cons: Typing complicated Hindi words is difficult because there is no floating keyboard.