The new home page is incredibly simple. It has a one basic image and a bright backdrop. The image and the backdrop change when the page is reloaded. The conversion and sign up box are very simple yet prevalent. The sign in button is blue and the sign up button is yellow, giving the later more emphasis.

The new Twitter home page is very compact and small, which seems to suggest they had mobile in mind when launching this design. When I tested this design on the iPhone, it did not render the full desktop version. Instead, it showed a simple blue sign up button and a black sign in button. It also showed the same images in a slow rotating slideshow. I am sure they are doing user agent detection for most mobile phones and then letting lesser known phones view the full desktop version, which is now nice and compact to be mobile friendly.

Overall, the new design feels a little off-brand and different for Twitter. But don’t let me influence your views. Check it out what do you think? View the designs and comment below!

New Twitter Home Page 1

Twitter New Home Page 2

Twitter New Home Page 3

Do you like the new Twitter home page? Let’s get some conversation going. Think about it from a perspective of design, usability, conversions and branding. Comment below!

Google Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads). In order to convert your files from Flash SWF to HTML simply upload your SWF file to the Swiffy website and hit upload and convert, easy as that.

Google Swiffy

According to Google, Swiffy currently supports a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari. In some cases exporting your Flash animation as a SWF 5 file might give better results.

Swiffy is a fairly new product and it does seem to have a few quarks at the moment. For instance, Swiffy outputs in SVG format that is only supported by browsers such as Safari, Google Chrome and FireFox 5. Early versions of FireFox do not always support this format. Internet Explorer users may have to install the Adobe SVG Viewer to be able to view SVG in the browser. For those of you who don’t know, SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics, a standardised format for vector graphics. SVG seems to work well with HTML 5 which is in all probability the reason it was chosen as the output format.

The good news is that Abode seems to like Swiffy, as they are pleased to see Flash content extended to devices that don’t support Flash.

What is interesting about Swiffy is it seems to be a further attempt by Google to move away from Flash. At this point, they are less focused on finding ways to index Flash content, beyond means already provided such as crawling textual content in SWF files, and more focused on providing new ways to convert the information.

Swiffy is a Google tool to watch. With the current buzz around HTML5 it could be a valuable resource for web developers. Furthermore, the output of content in HTML5 may prove to be better for SEO than semi-restricted attempts at SWF optimization.

As you may know, Google made an algorithm update that takes into account many aspects of site performance, often called Page Speed. Optimizing HTTP headers is one of the checkpoints and enabling browser caching via HTTP headers is a sub-point. If Googlebot respects site performance enhancing HTTP headers then they’ll probably also acknowledge wacky ones like the PHP session_start( ) default HTTP headers that say, “do not store a copy of this page for cache; always check with the server to see if you have the most recent copy of a page immediately before and after you request a page because this content expired back in 1981 and today is April 13, 2010.”

The perceived solution for the installation was to start sessions only on pages that needed them- instead of everywhere. Now, revisiting the topic I’ve also learned that using the session_cache_limiter( ) function to control what headers are sent may also work.

What are your experiences with this?

-Sean

So, what kind of name is that? As it turns out, it’s a pretty good one. In addition to many of the SEO best practices that have been helping sites achieve good rankings for years, this newest version of the world most powerful algorithm will be looking for pots of fresh brewed content, a nice social atmosphere and most importantly… super fast hyper-active websites.

Do you know how fast your website loads across various browsers and connections? Probably not, but Google does, and if your site is among the fastest you may be rewarded with higher rankings or at the very least reducethe chances of losing rankings.

So, why this does Google have this new need for speed? As it turns out, they are “Going Green” and trying to take the internet with them. You see, if sites are able to load faster, that means they are using less processing power, bandwidth and energy. In fact these changes could result in huge energy savings across the web.

Will users be able to notice the difference? Maybe a little. But that’s not what is really important because Google will notice and you will get better rankings on the search engine result pages and that is what matters most.

Now let’s talk about what’s really important. How do you get your website to load faster? As it turns out, Search Engine Optimization Inc has just released a new Page Speed Accelerator program that has already established some incredible results against Caffeine.

Through a myriad of tech-tricks the engineers at SEO Inc have cut the loading time of some pages by more than half! And apparently that’s only part of their program.

Anyone who is even remotely interested in their website remaining viable should at least call them up for a free analysis to see what improvements could be made.

One thing is for sure, the impending release of Caffeine opens up some huge opportunities for early adopters to find themselves a new perch at the top of the rankings. Who’s going to be smart enough to take that advantage? Your guess is as good as mine!

So is this the final nail in the coffin of Internet Explorer 6?
Unfortunately, no, not really.

I despise IE6 as much as the next (sane) web developer, but the fact of the matter is: 15% of web users still use the ancient browser. Microsoft may not care about these people, but most site owners still expect their site to work well, and look good, in IE6.

I expect that in 5 years or so, about when Microsoft is releasing the IE12 beta, the number of IE6 users will be so low that we can all stop worrying about error checking in IE6.

-Stevecrest out

With SEO Inc. the war is over with our new, search engine friendly web development services that not only engage the user but ensure high visibility and traffic to the site. We take a one-of-a-kind, two-sided approach to SEO friendly website development. First, our web designers create the layout of a site with SEO guidelines in mind, then our search engine optimization technicians implement proven SEO techniques that can help put your site at the top of the search engine rankings.

Whether you’re interested in adding a blog, building a contact form, or redesigning an entire content management system (CMS), SEO Inc. can provide SEO web development that will seamlessly be integrated into new or current site architecture and technology. The web experts at SEO Inc. have years of experience working with a wide variety of programming languages, database technologies, and computer hardware, and can help you achieve your web dev goals.

If you are in the initial stages of building your website, you are in the perfect position for search engine friendly web development. Building on a structure of search engine optimization is ideal and will make any kind of updates easier in the future.

However, if you have a functioning website that’s been up for several years, it’s not too late – we can help you too! We can restructure your site design for search engine optimization to attract customers, give them a great experience and turn their interest into ROI for your business or company.

A high quality, SEO friendly CMS can significantly benefit a company by saving precious time and resources, increasing production, reducing down time, and most importantly, can bring a site valuable exposure from search engines. With SEO Inc.’s complete CMS system design, companies can gain a cutting edge over the competition.

The CMS system templates we create are all created with W3C compliant HTML and CSS (this helps with cross browser compatibility, web accessibility, and organic search engine optimization), and we also will optimize your web site so the proper information on your site is directly in the search engines’ paths. We are the ultimate one stop shop for SEO friendly web content management systems.

With projects ranging from simple blog creations to full scale eCommerce and dynamic CMS driven sites we can ensure that you get the impact you need.

Check out some of our recent web development projects, and find out more about our unique, SEO friendly web development today!