The term "mouse trapping" refers to the practice of keeping a visitor captive at a web site by disabling the browser back button. Another method of mouse trapping automatically opens a new browser window with a site's URL when a user tries to leave the site. Needless to say, this type of functionality is not recommended in a professional web design.
WebMaster Tools
webmaster resources
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The KISS principal stands for "keep it simple, stupid." The idea behind this principal states that the best solutions are usually the simplest ones. In most cases, over-engineered, over-staffed, and over-analyzed solutions make the problem even worse.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
MIME stands for "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions." MIME is a specification format for Internet mail to allow non-US-ASCII textual messages, non-textual messages, multipart message bodies, and non-US-ASCII information in message headers. Many e-mail clients now support MIME, which enables them to send and receive graphics, audio, and video files via the Internet mail system.
According to search engine author Alan K'necht, website owners should create and maintain a robots.txt file. This file tells search engine spiders what directories they should and should not index or spider. Learn more about the robot.txt file at robotstxt.org.
Monday, February 25, 2008
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANet) was the precursor to the Internet. ARPANet was developed in the late 1960s by the US Department of Defense as an experiment. The concept developed a wide-area-network to connect together remote computers, allowing people at one location to use computing resources from another location. ARPANet became the technical core of what would evolve into the Internet.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The Web Builder's Prayer: "God, please give me 28 hours today. If that isn't possible, at least let me get the most out of the 24 there are!"
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Emoticons are text symbols used to indicate moods or phrases in emails, instant messages, or short messages. The most well-known emoticon is the smile face :-). Since most online communication is text based, emoticons are an effective, shorthand way to show humor or other emotions to other users.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Pay per click is a marketing system on the web where advertisers pay website owners when a user clicks on its advertisement. According to web marketing author Bill Platt, there are four types of users who click on web ads: prospects who are truly interested in a product or service; accidental clickers; competitors clicking to make rivals pay more; and fraudulent clickers.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
PPC stands for "pay per click." PPC is a marketing system on the web where advertisers pay website owners when a user clicks on its advertisement. According to web marketing author Bill Platt, there are four types of users who click on web ads: prospects who are truly interested in a product or service; accidental clickers; competitors clicking to make rivals pay more; and fraudulent clickers.
According to WebsiteOptimization.com, New Jersey has the highest broadband penetration rate in the U.S. Nearly 49% of New Jersey residents enjoy broadband, well above the national average of 35%. Hawaii was second to New Jersey in broadband penetration. Mississippi trailed all states with 14% of households having broadband at the beginning of 2006.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Cool Text is a free graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you need an impressive logo without a lot of design work. Simply choose what kind of image you would like, fill out a form, and you will have your own custom image created on the fly. Learn more at cooltext.com.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The editors of Sitecritic.com review and critique websites to judge design and content. Winning websites can display the "Sitecritic.net Editor's Choice Award" on their site. Sitecritic.com is a non-profit organization formed by a group of experienced web designers and developers.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Internet 2 is an advanced network made up entirely of large-capacity fiber-optic cables, developed by two-hundred universities working along with industry and government. Internet 2 moves data about 100 to 1,000 times faster than the current Internet. Access and use of Internet 2 is limited to select institutions and government entities. Learn more at internet2.edu.
W3Schools offers an informative JavaScript reference on their website at w3schools.com/jsref. The JavaScript section contains a complete, easy-to-navigate, reference of all the built-in JavaScript objects, along with their methods and properties. It also contains samples, examples and help dialog.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Startup.com is a documentary film that chronicles the development of a rising Internet company. The film tells the story of two young and inexperienced graduates who receive millions of venture capital dollars to launch a dot com company. As the project progresses, personalities and egos clash during long work hours, technology is stolen, and the project never works as planned.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source web server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT. Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996. A November 2005 Netcraft Web Server Survey found more than 70% of websites on the Internet are using Apache, thus making it more widely used than all other web servers combined.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
In terms of the dot com and software economy, the "burn rate" is the rate at which a new company spends its venture capital before generating positive cash flow from operations. In other words, it's a measure of negative cash flow.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) provide the ability to separate the layout and styles of a web page from the data or information. CSS provides for efficiency as well as creativity. CSSvault.com is a highly recommended online CSS resource. The site provides many useful CSS resources, and reviews well-crafted web sites using CSS techniques.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The "six-second" rule of thumb for websites states that a web site has six seconds for its home page to load before visitors will click away.
The Internet SOCiety (ISOC) is a professional membership society with more than 100 organization and over 20,000 individual members in over 180 countries. It provides leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, and is the organization home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). Learn more at isoc.org.
Friday, February 08, 2008
The web term "backlink" refers to the links from other websites that point to a particular web page. Backlinks are important for search engine optimization because some search engines, particularly Google, assign higher rank to websites that have a more quality backlinks to its site. Sites with more backlinks usually rank better in search engine results.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
According to Crayola.com, blue is America's favorite crayon color choice. Blue is complimented well with other cool shades, such as green or purple. Blue works well with earth tones and neutral colors, such as brown, beige, or gray. The contrasting, or opposite color of blue is orange. When the two are placed next to each other they appear to vibrate.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email. Tomlinson sent the first email messages in late 1971 while working on the TENEX timesharing system. Tomlinson modified the existing SNDMG mail utility and CYPTNET protocol to allow mail transmission from one ARPANET host to another. Tomlinson also devised the ubiquitous @ between the user's name and the host name.
The MSN Sandbox is the place to play with new MSN technologies, look at prototypes, and peek behind the scenes at some of the new ideas at MSN. Users are welcome to try the newest products and services at MSN, and are encouraged to provide feedback to MSN. Try out the sandbox at sandbox.msn.com.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Comparison shopping websites allow users to search the web for products and see a side-by-side comparison of prices and features. Most people using comparison shopping engines are usually ready to make a purchase. Product sellers pay the comparison shopping site when a user clicks on one of their products. Some notable comparison websites are BizRate, Froogle, PriceGrabber, and NextTag.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the collection of techniques and concepts to produce high search result rankings for a website. SearchEngineWatch.com is a highly recommended SEO resource that provides useful tips and guides covering search engine topics for webmasters.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
The under construction page has been around since the beginning of the web. You visit a website that is not yet complete and are served up a web page with the words under construction with a hard hat image. Rather than using the "under construction" motif while your website is under development, display your company logo and contact information along with a brief message indicating that the site is coming soon.
Friday, February 01, 2008
The following are some recommendations for website domain names. Add e, i, or online to the beginning of the domain name when your desired domain name has already been registered. Register the .net or .biz version if the .com version of your desired domain name is taken. Register a separate domain name for your specific services or well-known products in addition to your company domain name

