Here is a typical scenario we run into from time to time….
The client requests changes to their website, we carry out the changes and notify the client, the client reports back that the changes have not been done. Of course the changes have been done. the client just cannot see them. So what is going on here?
Welcome to the world of caching. When you view a web page your web browser software downloads that page, and the media on it, and stores it on your computer. This storage is known as the browser cache. This helps to speed up the viewing of the website as the browser doesn’t have to keep downloading the same files again and again. If you leave the site and come back later then, depending on how your browser is configured, you may get your local cached copy loaded instead of having the page freshly downloaded from the website. This is what can lead to the impression that page updates have not been done.
It is useful to be able to forcibly refresh a web page and clear the local cache. For information on how to do this there is a useful wiki page on clearing your cache. A quick way to force the refresh of a single page is simply to go the page and press Ctrl-F5 (PCs only).
Sometimes, even this isn’t enough though to see the page changes. The problem here can be that caching is occuring at your network level or even your Internet Service Provider. If this is the case then you will have to wait until their cache is updated.
So there you have it, an awareness of caching is always useful in understanding what you are looking at and how to ensure you are viewing the most up-to-date information.
Sunday, February 7th was a perfect day for once again staging the 19th Chichester Priory 10km Road race. This is one of the major road races in the English road running calendar and is recognised nationwide as a top quality road race. The high standard and depth of the field was matched by perfect weather conditions and resulted in the largest race turnout ever as more than1500 enjoyed one of the most popular and prestigious events in the South of England.
A three strong team from White Total Design took part in this years race aiming for personal best times. Despite what the organisers described as a slight incline after 6k – it was more of a mountain! – Lisa, 52.31, Sam, 55.47, Nick 54.49 all managed to finish in their fastest times.
This year the race was once again organised splendidly by the Rotary Club of Chichester Priory and was fortunate to have the same two sponsors, Peter Cooper, the local Volkswagen Group and Brooks Sports the international suppliers of sports clothing. Organisers and sponsors were pleased with a race where many personal best times were achieved by elite athletes, club runners and recreational runners alike.
We used to use Google’s Blogger software to publish our blog but due to changes in Google’s Terms of service, and their dropping of their support for FTP, we decided to jump ship to Wordpress. And we are glad we have, WordPress is great and was a breeze to set up.
We have transferred the best of our archives over (dates not withstanding !) so we are back up and running again.
Came across this very useful tip the other day for creating a link on a web page or email to a specific page or article within a pdf file.
The format for linking to a page is very similar to the standard anchor mechanism used for web page links.
Example
http://www.mydomain.com/document.pdf#page=1
To link to a specific article on a pdf page requires a two step approach.
Firstly you need to set up a destination tag within the pdf file:-
1. Manually navigate through the PDF for the desired location, and magnification
2. Go to View > Navigation Panels > Destinations
3. Add a New Destination and give it a name
4. Save the document
The second step is create your link, the format for which is:-
http://www.mydomain.com/document.pdf#nameddest=MYARTICLE
Beware of your pdf ‘initial view’ properties though which may interfere with how the article opens. It is best to set the layout and magnification to ‘default’ (File -> Properties -> Initial View).
In the age of the digital revolution and the birth or Twitter and Facebook is print dying a death? Many a Marketing Manager the world over is asking themselves how can they better communicate with their audiences? There is no easy answer!
We’ve been debating this in house for some time and have come to the conclusion that the best campaigns are those that use a mix of both and that are able to adapt their brand to work across a range of media platforms and promotional vehicles.
It’s all about getting your message out there in a way that your audience wants to receive it and most importantly keeping it simple and easy to understand. Traditional forms of advertising might be necessary for brand awareness but do ‘opportunities to see’ stats really give you a true picture on how successful a campaign has been?
The great thing about the range of digital solutions on offer is that you can engage and interact with customers in a number of different ways, which helps to keep campaigns fresh and interactive and the great thing is that the results are instant. You can measure success of an email campaign by tracking the number of click throughs from a link or the number of new registrations/ sign-ups to email newsletters. You can talk to customers and share their views and ideas and you can improve business processes by embracing digital technology and providing traditional printed material for downloads, info via podcast or online registration for fulfilment of promotional offers. The possibilities are endless.. but digital is here to stay and those that embrace it will reap the rewards.
When embarking on a new website design you may come across the terms ‘website journey’ and ‘key paths’, but what do these mean?
Very often you have an end goal in mind when someone visits your site. This could be making a purchase, contacting you for more information, filling in a form or simply going away with a positive impression of your company. Guiding the user from their entrance to the website to your final goal is the ‘journey’ that you want them to take.
Your website may well be catering for several different audiences of course so by defining what your key paths for those audiences are, during the design phase, will help define the structure that the site should have to best achieve it’s goals.
For example, when you are looking at a product on an ecommerce website you will often see a list of other products that are similar or related in some way. In this case the site developers are anticipating that the next step of your journey may be to look for similar products and are making that next step that much easier for you to take.
Now you can ditch your tired PowerPoint slides and get creative with the use of Flash Animation to produce dynamic and engaging presentations that will WOW your audience.
Use Flash Animation to create a bespoke presentation that will capture the attention of your audience and deliver your message in a more powerful way. Creating a Flash presentation can be time consuming but the rewards are definitely worth it!
Whether you require a presentation for an internal audience, a corporate presentation to attract new business or a simple animated presentation for your reception or exhibition stand our team of creative and technical professionals are on hand to guide you through the process and help you to enhance your content and get your messages across in a visually impactful way.
Below are some top tips to remember when creating an engaging presentation that will deliver your message and enhance your brand or company…
- Think about the message that you need to convey and the time you have to deliver your message.
- Consider your audience.
- Think about the length and flow of your presentation… too short and you might not get your point across. Too long and you may lose the attention of your audience.
- Don’t over complicate or over animate… this might distract your audience from the core messages.
- Use a range of media such as images and video to deliver your message and keep your audience engaged.
Our experience team are on hand to help you visualise your ideas and bring your content to life. We’re on a mission to ban DULL presentations forever!
2009 was pretty full on and the team at White Interactive have been involved in some really great digital web based projects over the past 12 months. We’re proud of the work that we create and so we’ve pulled together a showreel which shows some of our best bits.
As a leading Hampshire digital agency we are all about using the latest technology to create user led websites, engaging user interfaces, Flash based presentations to replace PowerPoint and interactive eLearning.
View and download our digital showreel.
Just wanted to offer personal congratulations to Ben Smith, one of our new media designers, on the completion of his four and half year long film project ‘Hemisphere’.
Check it out on his Hemisphere YouTube channel.
HEMISPHERE was a self produced project by Ben Smith. The story follows the protagonist through a series of events that begins to unfold after meeting a stranger under an archway. After that event, everything which he believed and thought to be ‘true’ gets thrown into question (Much like finding out the world is round after believing it to be flat for so long) The knowledge of this leads him on a dark journey as he finds out his role in reality. In finding reality, he discovers destiny.
The filming is very dark and the visuals are very Max Payne, Sin City’esqe. The storyline has been described as a sci-fi David lynch film. There are 14 chapters all being roughly around the 5 minutes mark, making the whole project around the 70 minute mark.
If you have some time check it out, or if you have spare 5 minutes a day watch a chapter daily!
The importance of optimising your website for the right search terms is a key aspect of any online marketing campaign. Determining whether you should optimise for one particular phrase or another though can be difficult.
For example, a tree surgeon would want to know whether the search phrase ‘tree surgery’ or ‘tree cutting’ was the more popular search phrase. His website could then be better optimised towards the more popular search term, which in turn would draw more traffic.
This is where a tool such as Google Trends can be very useful. By entering the two search phrases it is possible to get a side-by-side comparison of the two and a break down of the relevance of location on the search phrases too.
Why not give it a try. You might be very surprised by the results.
