discussing web services

It’s perhaps time for us to lay down what ‘web services’ are for developers, as in itself, the web provides a multitude of services. One of our very own web developers, Will has taken on this task in an article originally posted at the red ant community area of our website.

It’s a pretty great article to describe what a developer/programmer/engineer is talking about when they discuss web services, and we’d thoroughly recommend that to anyone. As a taster, these are few comments that Will has made;

web services are a means for one application to talk to another, or a sort of Internet form of communication that allows different platforms – written in whatever language – the ability to converse and share information.

In order for applications on the Internet to freely exchange information we need an open protocol that can be interpreted and implemented easily by many different systems.  HTTP, the underlying protocol of the humble web browser fits these criteria. Web services, SOAP and REST it goes without saying fall into the realm of geekery that are unlikely ever to require the average website owners attention.

If you want to see and read more, Wills full article that fully describes what web services are is found in the community/blog area of the red ant site. You cannot post comments there, however, we’ll happily enter into discussion here!

designing with icons

We know that we have a lot of opinions on accessibility and usability, and just in general producing a website that will not treat visitors to an experience that makes the house of horrors seem like a picnic, but until it stops, we’re not going to!

From design to development and through to planning and executing a digital marketing strategy, every ant thinks about how the person viewing and using our work will react to it. Our goal is to provide our clients with a website that attracts traffic and retains visitors because it provides a positive user experience. One of the key points that we address and consider is accessibility.

Fitz takes up the designing for accessibility torch in the following excerpt from a published article about the use of icons in web design;

The use of icons are not only used to make the interface look “pretty” they are used for usability. A site interface should be intuitive and by using icons to represent what the action will do this makes us think less, perfect!

If it’s not broken don’t try and fix it. There are icons which have a meaning associated with them. Examples such as an envelope implies email or sending a message and a magnifying glass is to search… A basket or bag are used to store your virtual goods, then you proceed through the checkout to pay.

All this is familiar to every one of us, however purchasing goods online is very different to physically doing so. AGFG is a woman’s clothing retailer and using a bag instead of a basket make sense. Adding more items changes the icon from one bag up to an icon with three. From personal experience of going shopping with my fiancée I know the feeling of lots of bags, I’m glad these are virtual!

There can be a negative impact of using icons and that is if the user doesn’t understand what it is or what it does.

You can read the full article over at our main website, but this was a short excerpt from Fitz’s article Web design and usability – Keeping it real. We’d like to take this moment to wish him well with carrying his fiancees shopping bags.