Heating & Air Conditioning – How to Choose the Right Company

A proper heating and air conditioning organization will always be there to create sure your house is warm and comfortable even in cold, rainfall, snowfall, fog, and just absolutely unpleasant. When buying a new air conditioning heat, the assistance provider you choose can impact your satisfaction rather than the brand of devices you choose.

It is really common for people to contact an HVAC fix organization only when there is an urgent situation without doing some necessary research that can discover whether or not their heating or chilling situation will be addressed in the overall way. The choice of a assistance provider when you have enough time to do continually give best results and are much better than those detailed in the yellow pages. The house heat is so significant, so you do not need to hurry to seek the services of anyone to perform on it. Taking a while up front to learn more about air conditioning and heating will preserve you time, disappointment and money when buying a organization to fix or substitute your air conditioning program. So discover a heat support professional you can believe and help your house be getting ready for winter season. The adequate heating and Air Conditioning Company is required and recommend the following features for you to seek the services of them.

Heating and Ac Company you like should have hair straightness themselves where you can simply contact them, and they should be willing to offer sources that you can contact. It is a adequate sign if a lot of sources talk absolutely about the organization.

The organization should have condition or other needed permits that are legitimate. Ensure that to verify that they bring adequate of common responsibility to property and whether their employees carry workmen's settlement insurance.

Reputed and effective heating and Ac organizations implement knowledgeable and effective specialists that are qualified to perform for them. Companies that are associated to professional organizations are sure to offer fantastic of services. Such organizations have specialists that have skills in both restoring and changing elements of your heat which can sometimes preserve a share for you.

Must be willing to offer a specific quotation as well such as a information of the perform done, the approximated cost and schedule of venture execution. Most air conditioning companies complete fixes, servicing and alternatives promptly even without an occasion delicate contract. But in case where you anticipate waiting, you need to require on an occasion delicate contract before paying. A good and respected Warming and Ac program organization should also have a effective program for attaining them after regular work hours, on Saturdays and Sundays and vacations.

You can get fantastic common company efficiency from the Better Business Institution that provides useful information on both participant and non-member organizations. They are mostly the fantastic source to know whether there are any awaiting cases against the organization.

PIPER PLUMBING

HEATING & DRAIN CLEANING INC.

12329 Mount Lawn RD NW

Edmonton, AB T5B4J3

http://www.piperplumbing.ca

service@piperplumbing.ca

Phone: (780) 934-1626 -  (780) 203-0088

Fax:     (780) 756-4493

Fish Aquariums – Tips, How to Buy Aquariums Cheaply

Many fish fans these days are thinking of a nice home for their fishes, with a large aquarium with range of spirited fish, but doing it can cost you thousands of money on your account. Maybe you are now disappointed about the concept of having your own fish aquarium, but there are inexpensive aquarium that can turn your desire into real estate. Although some other equipment for aquariums is expensive, you can buy inexpensive aquariums to decrease the problem. If you want to still engage in your greatest desire, read these following tips on how you will discover inexpensive aquarium for your desire water haven:

• You can look around for sales. A lot of pet stores these days have their annually purchase on aquariums. Most especially the set ups, they do once or twice a season to remove old stock aquarium. You can take the advantage of this purchase to have your desire aquarium. This purchase usually happens during the end of the season or in the middle of the season.

• Look for different pet stores regionally or in the internet. This concept is even better than searching down some purchase. You can discover a shop that has a lot of empty aquarium that is constricting up the area in their shop. Look for the shop administrator and ask them if they want to purchase one of these aquariums for a very affordable cost. A lot of professionals of pet stores may pick up your offer because it is the most practical way on how they can remove mess in their shop.

• Check out some homes that have a moving purchase. Individuals tend to shift locations from locations these days and the least that they would want to carry is aquarium. Especially if this folks are in a rush they might likely to offer aquarium in a very inexpensive cost. They will be grateful selling aquarium to individuals like you. You can look in your community for others who live nearby who will shift and have aquarium in their home to left behind.

• Another very useful way to discover used aquarium in the categorized ads and online stores. There are a lot of new pet groups in the categorized ads most often features used aquarium. These individuals are grateful to offer aquarium to you to get rid of them.

• Talk to people such as friends and other family members. If you make some discussion to multiple people, you might discover several those who have used aquarium in their home that are taking too much area in their home. These individuals surely want to offer aquarium to remove the mess inside their home. Some of them would to modernize their homes and would not want aquarium to be part of their remodeling.

If you are really determine to discover inexpensive aquarium you can definitely discover one. Nothing is difficult in this world these days. You can always discover what you are looking for if you will look for options.

For more information:

Aquarium Illusions Inc.

http://www.aquariumillusions.com/

Phone:  780 483-7027

Fax:    780 483-7081

Toll Free:   1-800-559-6546 (In Canada)

Web Design Versus Web Development

The terms web designer and web developer are used interchangeably in the media and advertisements. But, they are not the same thing. Design involves what the visitor sees on your website, development involves the site’s functionality. This article explores the difference between these two disciplines.
 

A website contains several distinct aspects:

• Look and feel – primarily the graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
• Content – information, products, etc available on the site.
• Functionality – functionality includes interactive features that the web site provides to the visitors and the required infrastructure needed to provide them.
• Usability – the site from a visitor’s perspective and includes things like program interactions, navigation and usefulness.

Look And Feel

Look and feel includes overall appearance of the website. A Graphic designer decides on what colors and fonts to use and how to layout each of the sites pages.

The graphic designer needs to have a good appreciation for aesthetics and feeling for what combinations of colors and imagery will project the image that the website owner wants visitors to have of the site.

Content

Content is all of the text that is found on a website and includes everything from the privacy policy to a very persuasive sales letter extolling the benefits of a product and asking the visitor to part with their hard earned money and everything in between. If it is written text then it is part of the content. You need a copywriter and editor to create good content.

Functionality

Functionality includes all of the interactive aspects of a web site and includes animation. The common denominator is that programmers using the various web programming languages that work either on a web server or in a web browser create all of these functions.

Flash can be used to animate graphics. Perl, php and java are programming languages used on the web server to create sophisticated dynamic web pages. These pages can work independently but most commonly with a database to create all of the features we have come to expect from a website.

JavaScript is used in browser to create a lot of cool effects such as swapping images when a mouse moves over an image, “ticker tapes”, links changing colors, etc. JavaScript works in the user’s web browser rather than on the web server.

There are also other “backend” applications that are transparent to the visitor such as form processing, content management and other administration programs that make it possible for non-programmers to maintain some aspects of the website’s data.

All of these programs have to be integrated into the HTML code to be used on the webpage.

Usability

Usability is the website viewed from the user’s point of view and involves mostly testing things like:

• Does the look and feel are actually portraying the proper image?
• Is the navigation is user friendly?
• Does the navigation lead the visitor to where the owner wants them to go?
• Does the site load quickly?
• Do the applications work properly?

Design versus Development

Unfortunately, there is a lot of overlap and integration needed between web design and web development. When you toss in content creation and usability testing, it becomes a real mess.

Can a single individual do all of these things? There are some people who can do all of these things but most people only do one or two of the tasks.

Web design usually involves content creation and look and feel while web development involves creating the functionality and testing its usability.

Web designers need to be proficient with graphic design tools like Photoshop. Most also know HTML so they can implement their designs. However, using animation on the site and layout for the site’s content are also part of the web designer’s responsibility.

Many site owners provide the content for the website but a web designer needs to be able to edit and even rewrite the content if necessary. Web designers also normally do the usability testing for the navigation and site loading speed.

Web development programmers create the functionality for the website, but all of that functionality must be integrated into the HTML pages on the site. Alternatively, the HTML content could also be integrated into the program. Web developers also do usability testing on the site, at least for the functionality they create. So the programmer also needs to have some HTML knowledge as well.

In case, the web designer and web development programmer need to work together to assure that the website does everything that the site owner requested.

Bottom Line – Only large companies can afford to hire separate experts in graphic design, content creation, programming and usability testing when building a new website. In most other cases, the web designer and web development programmer are two different people who must work together to create a successful website.

Aqeel Ahmed Zaman is an Internet Business Consultant and Online Web Marketing Executive for Gexton Pakistan.  Gexton Pakistan offers the complete web solution for your websites from web design layout to the Search Engine Optimization services.

Website Templates

Website templates are web page designs created by professional web designers that are sold to others for their use. Templates normally have dummy content used as a placeholder so you can see what a finished page will look like. A template is an easy way for a novice to create a good-looking professional quality websites quickly and easily.
 

Most of the commercially available templates can be found in a variety of themes and color schemes. Theme templates come complete with appropriate graphic for each theme. If you have some graphic or web design skills and a knowledge of HTML, you can create a customized professional looking website at a fraction of the time it takes to create everything yourself. Just remember you don’t own the copyright to the design.

Before selecting a template, you will need to identify the goals you have in mind for your website so you can select the most appropriate template.

Advantages of Using Website Templates

There are several advantages to using templates such as:

• Templates provide the basic webpage layout.
• Templates can provide a consistent look and feel for the site.
• Most come with professional quality graphics.
• Most allow you to customize the graphics if desired.
• It is usually easy to add your content using almost any HTML editor.

Disadvantages of Using Website Templates

• It can be difficult to make any web design changes unless you are skilled in both HTML and can use a graphics program like Photoshop.
• Although features like a login box may be part of the template design, the programs needed to make them work are not included.
• Any interactive features have to be integrated into the template.
• You do not own the copyright to the design unless you actually purchase it from the designer.

Features of a Quality Website Template

The following items are things to look for in a well-designed web template. A template should:

• Be easily editable.
• Be compatible with most HTML editors.
• Upload easily.
• Come with complete html files.
• Have header graphics provided in .psd format for easy editing.
• Have their both the .fla and .swf files if the template uses flash.
• Download quickly after the content is added.
• Retain the original design no matter how much content is added.

Customizing an HTML Web Template

If you want to customize a web template but don’t have the necessary skills to do it, most template designers and other web designers offer template customization services as reasonable prices. These services usually involve minor design changes, customizing header graphics, adding logos, removing unneeded unattractive elements, etc.

Many web developers will be happy to integrate any interactive features into your template. Please keep in mind that the developer will either need to write the necessary scripts or modify existing scripts to make the interactive features work. If an existing script is not freeware, the web developer will have to add the cost of purchasing a license for the script to his labor charges.

Customizing a Flash Web Template

If you want to do anything more than just add text or substitute a graphic file in a flash template, you will either need have expertise in creating flash programs or hire a flash programmer to modify the template.

If the .fla files came with the template, you can modify it using a flash editing program such as Macromedia Flash or Swish. If the .fla files are not available the first thing that needs to be done is to decompile the movie since the .swf files are movies. Once the movie is decompiled, the necessary changes can be made and the flash movie recompiled in any flash editor.

Summary
A quality web template can allow a novice webmaster create a professional looking website quickly and easily at the reasonable cost. Since the templates came in a variety of industry specific themes and color schemes, you should be able to find one that is right for your website.

Web template can offer the professional designer a lost cost alternative to creating the web design, header graphic, logo and all of the other graphical elements, which will allow them to charge less for their work. In either case, it is important to purchase a quality template.

Aqeel Ahmed Zaman is an Internet Business Consultant and Online Web Marketing Executive for Gexton Pakistan.  Gexton Pakistan offers the complete web solution for your websites from web design layout to the Search Engine Optimization services.

Photo - Image Optimization

Photo Optimization is necessary to allow a web page to load in the shortest amount of time possible. Fast loading time require small files. This article discusses the methods used for photo optimization.

In an ideal world, a web designer could use the highest quality photos and have the webpage download lightening fast. Fast loading requires small file sizes for pictures. Unfortunately, there is a trade off between picture quality and file size.

Web surfers are a notoriously impatient bunch. If a website takes too long to load, they will just click away and never come back.

Computer monitors can only display images at 72dpi (dots per inch). So the first step in photo optimization is to reduce the resolution to 72 dpi. Large picture can be sliced up into smaller ones and the put back together on the web page. Each piece will be a very small file and together will load in a fraction of the time a single image file would load.

Most graphic files contain information about the color palette of the image. This information is usually unnecessary for displaying on the web. Many graphic programs included the ability to “Save for the web”. This option discards all of the unnecessary information in the file without any loss of picture quality.

Another method that appears to speed up load time is to use either the GIF or PNG interlaced or the JPEG progressive property. Both of these properties allow the picture to load gradually as first a blurry image that becomes sharper and clearer. In reality the picture actually loads a fraction of a second slower than the regular formats do but it appears to load faster the site visitor.

Width and Height IMG Attributes

The HTML <IMG> tag tells the web browser to create a specific sized box to hold the graphic. That way the browser can continue loading the rest of the web page while the graphic file is downloading. If you don’t put the width and height attributes, the web browser must pause until the images is downloaded before it can load the rest of the page.

How Many Images should you use?

Some web designers use images for everything. While it may look good, it will definitely slow down the speed of the page loading. Page loading speed in the sum of the HTML file plus the size of all of the embedded files. Images constitute more than 50% of the download time.

Using fewer images will speed download time and just may keep a visitor from bailing through impatience.

Photo Quality

Photo quality is determined by the clarity, color purity and detail of a photo. Use a graphic editor to remove noise and other unwanted features. Most editors allow you to correct red-eye and sharpen edges to improve clarity.

Professional editors like Fireworks or Photoshop will let you change the background, adjust the color levels and do almost anything else you want to do to the photo.

You can also use a thumbnail on the webpage that links to a larger and higher resolution version of the image so that people who want to can view it.

Photo Optimization Guidelines

The following suggestions will allow you to optimize your photos for fast download times without sacrificing picture quality:

• Change the resolution of all images to 72dpi.
• Convert graphic text into stylized text.
• Crop the images to the actual size needed.
• Minimize color depth when it’s not necessary for quality.
• Specify the actual width and height of all images.
• Use thumbnails where appropriate.

Bottom Line – Graphics should enhance the content of a web page except in that rare occurrence where the images are the content. In either case, you need to optimize photos and other graphic files to allow for the fastest downloading time possible for the web page otherwise you risk losing the visitor forever.

Aqeel Ahmed Zaman is an Internet Business Consultant and Online Web Marketing Executive for Gexton Pakistan.  Gexton Pakistan offers the complete web solution for your websites from web design layout to the Search Engine Optimization services.

Web Design Guidelines

The goal of most web designers is to create an attractive, easily accessible and functional website that will convince the visitor to do something. Creating such a website requires good graphic design, easy and intuitive site navigation, logical site layout and good web copy. The following suggestions are general web design guidelines.

Web Content

You want the visitor to see you as a knowledgeable information source and/or a reputable business. Poor grammar and spelling will immediately reduce your credibility. Remember that people use the internet to find information. Whether you are selling your own product or recommending someone else’s products, you must first provide valuable information to the visitor or they will click away and find a website that gives them what they what they want.

Cross Browser Compatibility

There are at least a hundred different browsers in use. You must design your website to work properly in the most widely used browsers. To do that you may not be able to use all of the really great special effects that are available because they may not be supported in most browsers.

Even though most web browsers are free, people do not necessary bother to upgrade to the latest versions. The average surfer may not know how to upgrade their browser or have the attitude, “If it works, don’t fix it.” Remember your visitor may have a PC, a MAC, a Linux box, a PDA or a cell phone and they all use different browsers.

Good web design requires your web pages to work in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari at a minimum. Validating your HTML code will help but the final test is to view your website in different browsers running on different platforms.

Graphics and Photos

Web surfers are impatient and studies show that most people will click away if a webpage takes longer than 10 seconds to load. Always optimize your photos and other graphic files to have as small a size as possible without sacrificing picture quality.

Always use the height and width attributes on the picture so the rest of the page can load while the graphic files is downloading. Use the ALT HTML tag so people with graphics turned off and those using hand held devices know what the picture is supposed to be.

Background Colors

If you use anything other than white behind text, be sure to specify link colors otherwise the user’s browser defaults will determine what color the links are which can make them unreadable.

Multimedia

Multimedia is composed of flash movies, video clips, audio clips and background music. Always use streaming media because it reduces download time. Make sure the visitor can stop and start multimedia files or in the case of flash introductions, skip them if they want. That way people with slow connections or devices that don’t support multimedia can ignore them.

Also, put any important information presented in multimedia in text as well so the visitor has access to that information without using multimedia. If a plug-in is needed to use the multimedia, always provide a link to it so the user can install it. Finally, always remember the 10-second rule for site loading when deciding to use multimedia.

Site Navigation

Site navigation should be simple and intuitive. Studies have shown if a visitor cannot access the information they want within three clicks, they will leave the site. This is called the 3-click rule. Every area of your website should be reachable within three clicks from anywhere else on the site. If you use anything other than simple text links, make sure to test your navigation in all the major browsers.

Links

Periodically test all site links to be certain that they are valid. Nothing chases a visitor off faster than broken links. There are several free online services that will periodically check your links.

Frames

Avoid using frames, since they make it difficult to bookmark individual pages on your web site and you want people to bookmark pages so they can come back.

Summary

Good Web design is a combination of common sense and good planning. Your site should be attractive and easy to use and most importantly provide the user with the information or services they want.

Aqeel Ahmed Zaman is an Internet Business Consultant and Online Web Marketing Executive for Gexton Pakistan.  Gexton Pakistan offers the complete web solution for your websites from web design layout to the Search Engine Optimization services.

W3C and Validation

Who is W3C? W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium. The goal of W3C is to provide a set of web standard and guidelines that will help alleviate the problem of code incompatibility in the hundreds of different web browsers in use throughout the world today.

The standards are only a guideline, but smart web designers and web developers pay heed to what the organization has to say. In fact many of the web programming jobs found on web design freelancer job boards, specifically requests that the code used to build a website is W3C validated. Although fairly common for XHTML and HTML it is becoming increasingly important especially if the web site is a total CSS web site.

Tim Berners-Lee who pretty much invented the World Wide Web when he developed the first web browser back in 1989 and other industry pioneers created the consortium to promote the standardization of the technologies used on the World Wide Web. Without some level of standardization, the internet would not be a global medium it is today. Interoperability between different machines requires a standard interface and standardized data communication protocols to carry the information back and forth.

That is the W3C’s mission. To publish the standards necessary so that all computers can speak the same language and communicate and all web browsers render web pages so that look and act the same way. The consortium also engage in efforts to educate web designers and developers so they will work together to build their websites on the W3C standards.

Because of the work of the consortium, someone using a Macintosh in China or a windows XP machine in Canada can access a web page hosted on a Linux server in South America. If that web page was created using validated HTML and CSS code, the webpage should appear very similar and have the same basic functionality on all of the different operating systems and web browsers available.

Why is Using Standardized and Validated Code Important?

Although all web browsers understand and render HTML, they don’t all do it the same way. Each browser has proprietary extensions to HTML and CSS that it uses to create special effects because none of the standardized code can do what they web designers wants to do. The result is that code that looks and works great in Internet Explore may crash Firefox, Opera or Safari and vice versa. Unfortunately, many web designers choose to code for internet explore and ignore the other 35% of web surfers. There are hundreds of different browsers and more appearing as PDAs, cell phones and practically every other imaginable electronic device is being built to be “internet compatible”.

It is impossible to test your web pages on every browser. While testing on the major browsers will probably be sufficient for most people, web designers who want their websites to work on as many different platforms as possible can check the code they write to see if it meets the standards.

Why don’t all the web designers and web developers use W3C validated code?

They don’t use it because none of the most popular HTML editors generate 100% compatible code. The newer the standards, the less likely the code generated meet them. Of all the HTML editors available, Dreamweaver does the best job and Front Page the worst job. It’s not surprising that FrontPage, which is a Microsoft product, writes code almost exclusively for internet explorer. The rest of the popular HTML editors, rank somewhere between FrontPage and Dreamweaver.

Hand coding is no guarantee that the code will meet the standards either unless the person writing the code is well versed in the latest standards. Another problem is that a lot of the fancier and nicer features available are not universally supported by web browsers. Many web designers and web developers choose to ignore the 35% of web surfers so they can use the effects they want to use. In some cases, the site looks ok but doesn’t have all the functionality. Drop down menus are a common element commonly used that don’t work in some popular browsers. A good web designer will add a text link somewhere on the page for the parts of the menu that don’t work in all browsers. That way, the majority of visitors get the cool features while the others can still get where they want to go.

Summary

As the number of web browsers continues to increase, standardized code becomes absolutely essential. If you use non-standard, non-validated code that doesn't work in a particular browser, it is your fault. If you use standard, validated code and it doesn't work, it is a bug in the web browser. The W3C organization offers an official public validator service at http://validator.w3.org.

Aqeel Ahmed Zaman is an Internet Business Consultant and Online Web Marketing Executive for Gexton Pakistan.  Gexton Pakistan offers the complete web solution for your websites from web design layout to the Search Engine Optimization services.