Globex Designs Company Blog

Building a Better Bug Tracker

2011-01-30T22:18:06-07:00

Last month we began building our own bug tracking software, and today we're happy to be launching the first beta version of the Globex Designs Bug Tracker.

In the past we used IP.Tracker which is developed by the IPB community. However, since then we've moved away from using Invision Power Board to a custom framework that we've been developing internally for quite some time now, so it was no longer a viable option. We needed something that was more flexible and easily customizable.

Before jumping into our own development, we looked at the other popular bug tracking software options, mainly Bugzilla and TRAC SVN. After careful investigation we found that other possible options, and even IP.Tracker itself were all suffering from one major fundamental problem - lack of design (something we're very concerned with here at Globex Designs).

Everything we looked at seemed to be developed by programmers which makes sense considering they're the ones that need to keep track of software bugs. However, Globex Designs is a different kind of company. We place extra focus and attention to usability and design. If a bug tracker system isn't fun, easy and quick to use - we think nobody will bother to report issues, and we rely heavily on our community of volunteers to help test our products. Bugzilla seems to suffer the most when it comes to design. It certainly has much more functionality than we need - with ability to store all sorts of data about the bug issue. However - because it's so packed with features, most of which are randomly scattered on the "New Issue" page - we found it to be simply too un-user-friendly.

It seems to use like we had no choice but to design a new bug tracker from the ground up. Our bug tracker is focused on making it as simple as possible for users to post new bugs, while at the same time making sure enough information is passed on to our developers to ensure we can correct the issue. We're extremely excited about what we've accomplished in a short period of time. Today we released a beta version in which users can start submitting bugs they find with Google Redesigned or CSS Compressor.

Currently, it's not possible to add attachments to posts or subscribe to issues - but we hope to keep adding features to the software over the coming months.

Don't Stress the Grid: Web Hosting Reviews Say Go Green

2010-12-23T00:21:09-07:00

The hosting reviews are in. Green and eco-friendly web hosting service providers are gaining sales momentum, market share, and customer approval. Hosting reviews indicate that consumers endorse green web hosting because operators in the sector provide high quality service at low cost and promote a platform of social and environmental responsibility.

The Importance of Eco-Friendly and Green Web Hosting

Accessing the web appears green, but isn't. The web is filthy, and we're not talking about the porn. We're talking about burning fossil fuels and ramping up CO2 emissions.

Although recent generations of individual computers and servers operate at much higher levels of energy efficiency than did their predecessors, the Internet continues to draw more and more electricity from non-renewable sources. To combat this, we have to take another tack to get to the solution. The problem of energy consumption by the Internet is not, per se, a problem with the machines, but with their power source.

Every web page, email, download and tweet makes a server run, and that draws electricity. Sadly, much of our power generation depends on non-renewable, non-sustainable, polluting energy sources. Scanning the web hosting reviews, one discovers that the Internet produces more CO2 than the airline industry. Our dependence on the web has made it a virtual monster, the world's most rapidly growing CO2 belcher.

The course the Internet sets towards environmental damage has to be reversed. Fortunately, that reversal has begun, thanks to the emerging green web hosting industry.

Defining Environmentally Friendly Web Hosting

If, this very minute, web servers could all plug directly into renewable sources of energy, the environmental damage caused by accessing the Internet would reverse sharply and immediately. As the hosting reviews show, numerous eco-friendly web hosting services are making a portion of that possible today, and they will take another, as it were, byte out of the problem tomorrow.

Hosting reviews show that there are two primary categories of green web hosting providers: those who purchase Renewable Energy Certificates and a far smaller group that restricts its power consumption to sustainable energy sources, such as solar panel and wind turbines. Both are eco-friendly, but only the latter are truly green. Web hosts who purchase Renewable Energy Certificates provide financial support and incentive to sustainable energy providers who feed the grid, but the buyer may still be drawing current that is not green. If one reads the hosting reviews, once can find web hosts powered directly by dedicated sources of sustainable energy.

Top Ten Reasons to Choose Green Website Hosting

An analysis of scores of web hosting reviews yields ten of the best reasons to support an environmentally friendly website hosting service.

You become a hero on a mission to rescue the planet from the clutches of waste and the threat of environmental disaster. You are helping to solve an existential problem whose consequences are so dire, yet so difficult to imagine it makes other people recoil in denial, and call the problem imaginary. You think clearly, and act for everyone's benefit.
It makes financial sense. Green web hosting is cheap.
Eco-friendly web hosting is a model of energy efficiency. Green web hosts reduce the stress on the energy grid and calibrate their servers to utilize the least energy possible.
Green web hosting companies are law-abiding global citizens. They comply with environmental regulations, such as Renewable Portfolio Standards. They recycle hazardous electronics properly, donate superseded equipment to schools and charities, and reduce toxic e-waste.
Environmentally friendly web hosts provide your company with good public relations material. Hosting reviews indicate that consumers quickly tag wasteful web hosts as socially irresponsible. When you choose green, you can tap into the publicity enjoyed by companies who cooperate to provide organic, energy efficient, and fair trade goods and services. An eco-friendly approach raises corporate stature.
Green web hosting is not a fad. It is established and trending. It may appear fashionable, but the roots of its rational purpose and urgency run deep. Green web hosts add state of the art data centers and server farms every day.
Selecting eco-friendly web hosting cultivates further development of environmentally friendly technologies. Money speaks loudly: what the public proves it will pay for someone will build.
Hosting reviews note that green hosting companies promote healthy lifestyles. Management at eco-friendly web hosts promote a philosophy that permeates corporate life and recruiting. Some hosts plant a tree for every new customer.
You become a pioneer; you blaze the trail other web hosting services must follow, or risk losing customers.
Management will win the admiration of its employees. Workers respect the efforts of employers who opt to maintain green standards. Eco-friendly companies position themselves as industry leaders, and those who work for leaders tend to have a high sense of purpose. A green workplace is inspiring.

As anyone who analyzes hosting reviews can see, eco-friendly web hosting makes sense on numerous very important levels.

The above sponsored post has been penned down by Joanna Murphy (a member of the WHS and a 2 year veteran of the industry).

The Power of a Button

2010-12-14T11:24:34-07:00

Let's take a moment to talk about user interaction and the importance of the button. With the rise of touchscreen devices, tablets and smartphones, there is a big movement afoot to change the way we interact with our technology. The same applies for the web too. Many designers often don't think enough about the user and their experience on the web. There's a lot of focus on usability and performance, but sometimes we forget that the web should also be fun, otherwise nobody's going to bother sticking around.

That being said, we've found that there's a strange sense of joy when it comes to clicking a button, rather than a text link. It's similar to playing with bubble wrap. The little bit joy you get from interacting with what looks like a physical object that you can literally push in and have it react to you can be a powerful tool to guiding your users to the information you want them to see. It's especially useful for keeping your users interested and entertained while they're browsing your page.

Compare the following two link objects:

Button

Text Link

Without even thinking about it, most of you have probably moved your mouse over the button and watched it change color instinctively. The text link however, even if underlined, gives the user no incentive to play with it. It's not fun and there isn't a clear call to action.

If you want your users to click through - make your links "clickable" and fun. This is certainly the methodology we employed in our Google Redesigned styles. We made sure to make the Gmail interface as fun and as intuitive to use as possible. For example, the "Refresh" button, which by default is a text link was converted to a button making it much more pleasant to click. This simple change, means that we're refreshing and checking our email a lot more frequently than before.

When it comes to marketing, the evidence clearly demonstrates the power the button. We recommend you revisit your web design, and take a close look at where you want your users to click. If it's important - it should probably be a button.

SEO vs Design & Usability

2010-11-22T09:18:58-07:00

In addition to the various design services we offer, we have also worked extensively with companies who seek help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of making your website more accessible and visible to online search engines. Simply put, it's a combination of strategies to help place your website at the top of a search results page.

In our practices, we've found that many web developers and business executives take their SEO strategies too far. They place keywords in their pages that have nothing to do with the content of the website in order to get more traffic to their website. They will over-populate their pages with keywords and bits of text in order to get more attention from the search engine spiders, resulting in pages that make it very hard for users to actually find the content they are looking for. In some extreme cases certain web developers will make pages that appear to search engines as one type of content and when a user clicks on that page he is redirected or shown a completely different type of content.

This is called "Black Hat SEO" and the practice is called "spamdexing". This practice is frowned upon by search engines and is actually considered to be a form of spam. It's not surprising to us that we find spamdexing all over the web, but we are constantly surprised by the number of companies who don't understand the problems that can occur because of it. A lot of managers actually encourage, and demand this type of strategy from their web developers without understanding the risks and dangers.

When practicing SEO you should always put your users first, your web developers second, and finally, the search engines third. If the page you are designing isn't friendly to your users and is very difficult to manage and update for your web developers - it will not be a good page for search engines either. Search engines are smart, and they're only getting smarter. The goal of the search engine is to direct users to pages that are most friendly and appropriate for users - not for search engines.

In some cases, search engines will actually block your website if they feel you aren't playing by the rules and using such tactics as: keyword stuffing, hidden text and links, doorway and cloaked pages, link farming and/or blog comment spam. Spamdexing may seem to work wonders for your site's traffic at first, but nobody appreciates people who cheat the system. In the long run, you are doing harm to your website and your users. In addition, technologically savvy users will recognize your malpractices and will forever put your business in a bad light because of it - reversing the effects of your entire marketing campaign.

We encourage all companies to request their web developers to practice sane, and responsible SEO tactics, and we encourage all web developers to continue to play by the rules and create a better web experience for everyone. If you'd like us to take a look at your website and determine whether or not your web developer has done used a proper SEO strategy please contact us today.

For more information about White Hat/Black Hat SEO practices take a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_or_black_hat

Moving to HTML5: Our Journey

2010-10-13T15:52:08-06:00

To kick off our company blog, I'd like to briefly discuss our recent move to HTML 5 and the challenges and advantages we encountered in the process.

As you may, or may not have noticed, the new website we have recently released is built using HTML5, our own GXD CSS framework and the Dojo Javascript Framework. We found that the combination of these tools together provided a very convenient work-flow which allowed us to get a very complicated and feature-rich website up and running in a short amount of time.

HTML5's new section and article tags made page organization much easier and really helped us cut down on the amount of classification and styling we need to do for various sections of the website. The new tags also made Javascript queries much faster, improving overall performance. The biggest advantage however, is that instead of having layer upon layers of div's we are now able to group sections of the page into more elegant and more appropriate categories: layout or content.

In addition, HTML5's audio and video tags made it very easy for us to automate previews of our design and media work. Clients can now log into their Client Center and quickly browse the latest updates to the video reels or game soundtracks we've been working on. Instead of having to deal with complicated Flash players (a lot of which are very limited in features and customization) we were able to fairly quickly develop a completely unique multimedia player which could easily handle the various types of media which we work with on a regular basis.

We are currently working on an internal HTML5/PHP/CSS framework which groups all of these ideas together into a very powerful development framework that we hope to release to the public in the near future. At this time we're still trying to find proper ways of dealing with different browser compatibilities as well as different server environments. The biggest downside of HTML5 (or any framework for that matter) is still Internet Explorer and other out-dated browsers that seem to keep lingering on and on.

To help push the web into the future, we've joined the IE6 Must Die campaign which has made our life much easier here. However, even the latest IE 8 doesn't fully support a lot of the HTML 5 features that we are dealing with. We'll have to wait until IE 9 comes out to get support for audio and video. As such, we've literally had to create two completely separate versions of the website and deal with incompatible browsers individually. We felt that this was the right approach as we wanted to ensure that those users running the latest technology were able to access all the features we had to offer, and we didn't want to reduce the level of innovation across all platforms.

Hopefully, IE will continue to lose market share and users and companies will slowly make the switch to more modern browsers - giving everyone the ability to experience all that the web has to offer.