We use a few of GoDaddy’s services, and every-time I login to GoDaddy to make an update I feel as though I’m entering a carnival…. playing circus music.

Today I logged in and immediately noticed something different… more black… more people… more flashing content…. huh? Yeah, they redesigned it.

Stunner! Did their internal IT team design this one?

I never thought I would say this, but the original site was better then the redesign. The homepage layout is atrocious and makes me work far too hard. I see boxes flashing and changing, type screaming at me and a 10+ different services to choose from.

Let’s play a game. How many typefaces / treatments can you find? I count 17.

How much pricing information can be fit into 430 x 360 pixels?

The site reads like a bad combination of used car dealer, pawn shop and thrift store.

Nothing like consolidating navigation options

OK… perhaps I’m being too harsh, but I don’t think so. Let’s just say GoDaddy’s target market are those people who have never purchased a domain in the past. These users are likely less technically savvy and somewhat unfamiliar with the more technical side of the Web. Therefore wouldn’t it make sense to simplify the layout…. to offer less options… to streamline the process?

On another note, what does NASCAR Racing and GoDaddy have in common? Other then the car they sponsor I’m really unsure as to why they have selected to market themselves using race car drivers.

Danica... when was the last time you registered a domain name?

I just don’t get it. I’d love to hear GoDaddy speak about the rationale behind this redesign and how their changes have made GoDaddy more useful to the average user.

Google just recently posted an article talking about their opinion on dynamic vs. static URLs. In short, Google is saying that dynamically created URLs from a content management system, i.e. URLs that contain information talking to a database such as:

/media_review.php?user_id=25&article_id=315

should be left as is instead of rewriting them to look cleaner (static):

/media-review/bruce/dnc-ratm-concert/

Here’s a direct quote from their blog post on the topic:

Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?
That’s our recommendation, unless your rewrites are limited to removing unnecessary parameters, or you are very diligent in removing all parameters that could cause problems. If you transform your dynamic URL to make it look static you should be aware that we might not be able to interpret the information correctly in all cases… …if you’re using URL rewriting (rather than making a copy of the content) to produce static-looking URLs from a dynamic site, you could be doing harm rather than good.

The problem is that Google seems to be making a recommendation on what is best for their search engine crawling and not what is best for the user or web usability in general. There is no debate, URL rewriting makes websites easier to use. It makes people understand what they will be looking at when they visit a link, and in general provides clearer information than dynamic URLs. For instance, here on our blog you can see all of my posts by going to http://blog.imulus.com/bruce the url is clear and easy to understand. If you want to see all my posts for a certain category you can do this http://blog.imulus.com/bruce/css. This functionality makes logical sense. Websites with extremely complicated URL calls can utilize rewriting to help their viewers better understand where they are on the site. And in regard to marketing materials — the time I see a company willing to use a url with ?id=237 at the end for a marketing or advertising campaign will be my first.

The fact is this, URL rewriting is an extremely useful tool (ironically Google’s blog post about dynamic rewrites uses rewriting for the URL). And while certain rewrite schemes may hide data that Google would like to parse, that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t use rewriting. The idea that a usable standard should be changed just to make Google’s web crawling better is ludicrous. Google throughout their history of search has continuously accommodated for changing website methods. By stating that URL rewrites are improper Google is taking a strike at one of the best standards to come out of Web 2.0. They’re suggesting a machine’s readability is more important than a human’s. And guess what: they’re dead wrong.

We run across a lot of discussion whether the stage of wireframing a website is important or not. Should you avoid the process of wireframing and just dive into design? What is the purpose of wireframes and why many designers and developers implement this stage as part of their planning tool?

Wireframes are an essential tool of communication that provide a rough guide to website structure. Their purpose is to give guidence to general layout, navigational elements, and content structure to designers, developers and clients. The stage of wireframing is achieved after the process of sitemaps has been approved. At this time, you should have in your hands a site structure in a hierarchical style. Here at Imulus, we take time at a wireframe stage in order to run the design and developing stage smoothly. Only an educated client will understand this process if explained. Sure, all clients would like to see their website redesigned in 24 hours…that would require a lot of java. We take time to explain to our clients why this stage is important to us and to them as well. They will understand.

Our designers will work through the wireframe stage to completion and then will sit down with our developers to discuss the many possibilities. This opens different perspectives which are always handy to get everything on track. For example, when it comes to talking about some special functionality feature for the site, it is a good thing that developers know this ahead of time and see what’s expected. They can see what problems they can run into and how to solve them ahead of time. It is too late if this got avoided when the design is already in development. As for the designers, it is easier to have a wireframe in hand. You get the idea where things are supposed to be, and start to visualize the design. Try to have some fun with wireframes. OK, sure, they can get boring sometimes especially when it comes to some revisions but that’s all because you’re anxious to start the designing and developing. Also, you don’t have to adhere strictly to what the wireframe is showing. We have run across many times where the wireframe was showing one thing, but in the design stage we have changed it. It’s all right to change the wireframe in the design stage as long as the purpose and direction is not lost. My advice is to spend whatever time necessary to complete the wireframing stage; it will make your job easier in the design stage, and will save headaches to developers, as well as to clients.

A book recommendation to follow on a wireframing stage: Web Redesign 2.0 | Workflow That Works by Kelly Goto & Emily Cotler

Let me start out by saying that I would call myself an independent as politics go. This isn’t about who’s right about this issue or that. As a design professional I am just struck by Democratic party’s continued inability to understand the power of branding. I cannot think of a single coherent message or brand that the Democratic party has articulated in the last decade or more. The Republicans, on the other hand, appear to have this mastered. If I asked 20 people on the street what the Republican party was about I would probably hear very similar things: “They’re about family values.” “They believe in lower taxes and smaller government.” “Strong military.”

Whether you agree with these policies or not, they are consistent and haven’t really changed in decades. Repeated over and over by Republican candidates in hundreds of campaigns around the country. Just as powerful as how they have branded themselves is how they have branded the Democrats. “Tax and spend.” “Elitists, out of touch with regular folks.” “Big government.”

While these messages may or may not be true (The Republicans say they are for smaller government and lower spending, they have increased government spending at a historic rate over the last 8 years) people remember and believe them because they are so consistent.

Recent events show the Democrat’s continued inability to use this powerful tool. With the recent failures of financial institutions brought on by the sub-prime mortgage industry, is there any better time for the Democrats to rebrand the Republican party? The most basic branding of the Republican party is “conservative.” Over the last 8 years the Republicans have presided over an economy that has been anything but conservative. The word that comes to mind is reckless. If the Democrats would seize the opportunity to brand the republicans as “Reckless” they might be able to turn the Republican’s own branding against itself. A reckless party can’t have very good values. Would you trust your tax dollars to someone who is reckless? Trust them with the military?

As I said, I’m not saying either party is right or better, it’s just interesting to watch the campaign from the perspective of marketing and branding.

If you browse around online much, you might have seen people talking about HDR photos, or seen beautiful or weird looking photos that had HDR in the title. If you don’t know about HDR photos or are interested in them, keep reading. If you already know, move on because this will be a brief and simple introduction.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, which basically means more dynamic range than we have seen in the past. This is not to be confused with HD (high definition) or more pixels. Dynamic range is the title given to the ‘light levels’ of something a human is capable of seeing. A real world example would be a picture of a sunset. When the human eye looks at the sun for long enough, it hurts your eyes and burn your retinas. When a picture is viewed of the same sunset, no harm can be done since the light levels (dynamic range) are not the same, they are mimicked. Dynamic range can be defined as the ratio between the lightest and darkest element in a scene.

So the potential dynamic range of a piece of paper is nowhere near the real world, which is why pictures look like pictures and nature pictures rarely do the real thing justice. This, combined with technology limitations, is why your camera has to choose what to display when shooting a scene with a large range of lighting - think inside a dark house with a bright window

http://www.cybergrain.com/tech/hdr/

HDR photos now attempt to get closer to the real world by displaying a higher dynamic range. Here are a few examples:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynchburgvirginia/407618927/

http://www.cre-aid.nl/2006/06/13/hdr-high- dynamic-range-workshop/

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=455448365&size=Large

You can see that the photos have great color detail, and if you haven’t seen photos like this before they might almost look unreal. When I first saw pictures like this, the longer I looked at them the more they looked real.

Currently, HDR photos have to be produced with software, either from a few different exposures or using a RAW image format. Since there is no standard, the software can change a photo with varying degrees, some realistic and some ridiculous. I would classify the photo below on borderline unrealistic.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/177/477846714_d4572dad6f_o.jpg

Search online and I am sure you will find most HDR pix are a bit overboard. If you want to read more, here are a few good links that I used:

More in depth articles
http://www.cybergrain.com/tech/hdr/
http://tutorialblog.org/hdr-tutorials-roundup/

How to create a HDR photo
http://www.backingwinds.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-create-professional-hdr-images.html