WebProNews » graphics

Chrome Beta Gets Graphic Enhancements

Chris Crum — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:36:20 +0000

This week, Google launched a new stable release for Chrome, which pre-renders pages before you’re even finished typing them.

Today, Google launched a new beta version, with some graphical enhancements, which we can expect in a future stable release – specifically, improvements to 2D Canvas and a software rasterizer. Engineers John Bauman and Brian Salomon explain on the Chromium Blog:

For most Windows and Mac users, we’ve enabled GPU-accelerated rendering of 2D Canvas content, so that canvas-based games and animations run faster and feel smoother. You can go to chrome://gpu to see which features are being accelerated. This is a tricky area to optimize, due to the wide variety of hardware and operating system configurations found in the wild. We’ve made a series of small improvements to the way this acceleration works in the latest release, and we’re seeking feedback on it from our Beta users. If you notice performance problems with 2D Canvas graphics content, particularly if you’re a web developer using 2D Canvas on your site, please file a bug.

At the same time, we recognize that many people with older GPUs and graphics drivers have not been able to experience the rich content provided by technologies such as WebGL. Chrome is now able to display 3D content via SwiftShader, a software rasterizer we licensed from TransGaming, Inc. Although SwiftShader won’t perform as well as a real GPU, it will be an improvement for many of our users on older operating systems such as Windows XP.

SwiftShader automatically kicks in for those users who cannot run content on the GPU. If you want to take a peek at what the performance is like with SwiftShader, you can use the –blacklist-accelerated-compositing and –blacklist-webgl flags, wait a few minutes for the automatic download to complete, and then load the relevant web page.

It’s been a pretty big week for Chrome. Earlier in the week the beta version of Chrome for Android launched as well. This could very well be an early step towards the convergence of Google’s two operating systems.

New Android Logo Gets Internet Buzzing

Chris Richardson — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:50:08 +0000

What’s that buzzing you’re hearing? Are you surrounded by wasps? If not, it could be people reacting to Google’s newest logo; this time, for their Android 3.0 update, named “Honeycomb.”

Keeping with the look and feel of the original Android logo, while incorporating a theme that matches the Honeycomb name, the new logo is a mix between the current green guy and a blue-and-black bee, giving us this:

Image courtesy

As you can see, the results are pretty impressive, provided going wild for new logos and graphics is important to you. Over at the Android Developers page, they have some details about the newest update, including some information about being the first Android OS to be developed with tablet PCs in mind.

Starting with Android 3.0, developers can break the Activities of their applications into subcomponents called Fragments, then combine them in a variety of ways to create a richer, more interactive experience. For example, an application can use a set of Fragments to create a true multipane UI, with the user being able to interact with each pane independently. Fragments can be added, removed, replaced, and animated inside an Activity dynamically, and they are modular and reusable across multiple Activities. Because they are modular, Fragments also offer an efficient way for developers to write applications that can run properly on both larger screen as well as smaller screen devices.

While the new logo is a neat combination, and considering it was developed for the Honeycomb update, what happens if the update is a failure? Wouldn’t Google have to consider changing the name from “Honeycomb” to “Beeswax?”

That way, they can keep using the new logo even if the updated OS doesn’t impress Android users. However, considering the open source nature of Android, users can just fool around with the source code until they’re satisfied with what they have.

Graphics Acting As Barriers For Site Navigation

Manoj Jasra — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:21:52 +0000

Enquiro Research has just released another eye tracking white paper: Barriers on a Website, which explains how users interact with graphics and rich media in the navigation of a website. This whitepaper reveals:

How graphics can act as barriers to website user navigation.
How graphics can coax users towards essential website information.
If multimedia on a website creates a “wow” factor or a trap.

Download Now!

Barrier scanning is a term given to the type of scan behavior that deviates from the ideal user flow due to those on site design elements that can impede, redirect, or coach a certain type of user engagement. This is important, because this is this type of behavior that is working in combination with the value of your content, benefit messaging, and relevance to cause your websites to have high abandonment rates, low conversion rates, and lower ROI.

Understanding barrier scanning can greatly improve your website’s ability to resonate with your market by helping to make navigation and conversion paths more in-line with an intuitive user response, by making your page more dynamic, and by giving your content a better chance to sell to your unique visitor.

Source: http://www.enquiroresearch.com/barriers-on-a-website.aspx

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Google Ready To Bid For Wireless, Maybe

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:03:09 +0000

Lots of stories have swirled over the question of will they or won’t they bid in the FCC’s 700MHz wireless spectrum auction, but Google now looks like a lock to pony up some cash.

Google Ready To Bid For Wireless, Maybe

If Google bids for the 700MHz spectrum, they could do so with someone else putting up cash alongside the substantial pile of currency the search ad company has accumulated.

The Wall Street Journal summarized several steps Google has taken with regards to becoming a mobile business player. They left out a couple, namely Google’s acquisitions of Grand Central and portable graphics engine maker Skia earlier this year.

When Google does take that big step by grabbing some of the valuable 700MHz spectrum, they are as likely to do so with another deep-pocketed bidder alongside them as they are to go solo to the auction. That’s speculation by the Journal, citing the usual ‘people familiar with the matter’, but it makes sense for Google to arrive with a partner.

Serving the public with a GoogleNet wireless network should benefit the mobile-using public with less expensive service and broader availability. But serving the public involves customer service, and no one will ever confuse Eric Schmidt with Bruce Nordstrom in that discussion, as Google prefers to shunt its users to newsgroups rather than take questions by email, much less by phone, about its non-revenue generating products.

If Google chose to do so, it could provide world-class customer service. Financially it makes more sense for them to foist that dirty work onto someone else, which makes a partner scenario more likely once the bidding begins.

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When To Use Graphics On Your Website

Yuri Filimonov — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:25:57 +0000

Overall, using text is more preferrable, than using graphics (images, pictures, Flash and so on) on a website, because it is easier to understand and remember – and also accessible to the people and the search engines.

But there are some cases, when using graphics is the right thing to do.

When to use graphics

As mentioned in the earlier article, graphics should only be used, when it is absolutely necessary, such as:

when the image is absolutely related to the website
when the pictures makes understanding of the text easier (a graph for a table, for example)

As seen from the list, graphics should only be used, when absolutely needed, and its use has to be thoroughly considered, as graphics impose some limits on website performance.

What kind of media to use

The most obvious case of using pictures on your site is when you sell something that people need to see before buying, such as clothes, vehicles, furniture, etc. What is more is that you’d rather use large, high quality images (at about 1/4-1/2 of the screen, the other part being occupied by the description), so that people could look closer at what they are buying.

If you discuss complex schemes, structures and so forth, a graphical explanation would be nice. Not to mention that using simpler language may help, if appropriate.

How to use the graphical content

When creating graphical content, there are a couple of things to remember:

everything that is on the image should be available in text (both for the humans and the search engines)
the images should have proper alt tags
the image size and quality should depend on the product

For example, if you are selling shoes, it’d make sense to be able to rotate them, as, mostly, it is important to look not only at the sides, but also at the sole.

If you are selling clothes, it is usually more helpful to showcase them on real people, not on some background or dolls.

When selling an apartment, you may want to use a video, showing the interior, possibly with your comments. You can host the video on Google Video or YouTube – make sure to leave your coordinates, though.

Another moment to remember is that a 3D box helps selling digital products, even when there is no real box available.

What about the graphical design?

Normally, I’d argue that anything that does not serve the goal of informing the visitor of anything shouldn’t belong to a website. And that anything may be extra graphical design, extra images or unwanted sound/video.

In his post about text and graphics balance on a website, Steve points out that a website has milliseconds to impress a visitor.

Some believe that impressing the visitor means absolutely shocking the visitor by something astounding and magnificent, such as a large image of something completely unrelated to a website. As seen from the studies, such banners don’t work.

On the other hand, "impressing" means just making an impression, whether positive, negative or neutral. A site, made of text, such as this one, may very well make a quite distinct impression. Hopefully, it has the right audience not to scare it off, though.

So, in the end, it only matters who your target audience is and how you can find the right balance between the use of images and text on a website. You can learn more about the balance of function and graphics in the Sphere of Design and see more examples of good designs here.

Rounding up

While some may want to use graphics just to impress their visitors, it’d rather be used only to help the visitors to get more information and understand what the site talks about.

Finding the right balance between information and visual presentation just for your target audience will prove much more efficient than deciding on your own.

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From XP to Vista

Neville Hobson — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:56:08 +0000

Installing a new operating system on your PC isn’t a task you undertake lightly, especially when the operating system you want to install is substantially advanced and, well, different to the one you’ve been used to for some years.

This is unquestionably the case with Windows Vista which I installed on my primary desktop PC over the weekend. The edition I installed is Windows Vista Ultimate.

Don’t get me wrong. Installing Vista from scratch as I did – what the concise manual calls ‘installing’ as opposed to ‘upgrading’ – was as easy as you can imagine. No hardware or software issues affected the procedure, which took all of 35 minutes from start to finish.

That’s considerably less than half the time it took for every Windows XP clean installation I can recall doing over the past few years (and let’s not mention 2000, Me, NT, 98, 95, 3.1, etc). What’s more, once Vista was installed, I got from turning on the PC to a workable Windows desktop in less than 30 seconds. That’s with a spanking new installation, before any other applications were installed.

In sum, it’s all very easy to get up and running.

In fact, probably the trickiest aspect of installing Windows Vista is figuring out how to open the smart and stylish packaging so you can get started!

I thought it was just me with a brain cell or two unwired from understanding something that ought to be child’s play. But, no, it’s not just me – Microsoft has even published a special help page on how to open the Windows Vista box.

Once you do have it open, just insert the DVD into your PC and away you go.

Well, almost – there is some crucial work you must do before you insert that DVD.

The first thing is to check out your PC to find out if it’s capable of running Window Vista. Microsoft published a useful tool called the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor which scans your current pre-Vista system and produces a detailed report with a recommendation of which Vista edition might be right for you.

The system requirements for Vista mean you will need a PC with a bit more muscle than you might expect, especially if you want to take advantage of the coolest usability feature of all – Windows Aero, specifically Aero Glass which offers stunning glass-like translucency effects to everything you see on your desktop. It exceeds the expectations I had from just reading about it or seeing screenshots.

To use Aero, the most important hardware item is graphics. You will need a modern graphics card with lots of onboard memory, the more the better. Forget about integrated system graphics, common on a lot of business laptops – if you want the best experience, you need separate graphics processing power and memory.

A good yardstick could be that if you have a reasonable-spec computer less than 2 years old, it’s likely you’re ok for Vista with Aero Glass right out of the box. Most of all, don’t pay any attention to the minimum system requirements Microsoft say are necessary to run Windows Vista. You need to look well beyond those. Unless you want an experience akin to wading through treacle, that is.

One useful feature of Vista is the Windows Experience Index, which rates your PC on a range of factors to produce an overall base score ranging from 1.0 to 5.9. This can be quite helpful in helping you determine what software will run well, especially graphics-intensive applications.

To give you an idea, this is the index score of my Dell Dimension XPS Gen5:

I found it interesting to see that the low-ish base score is determined, in this case, by the processor. It’s quite a powerful Intel Pentium 4 chip running at 3.2Ghz. Single core, though, so I suspect the score would have been in the 5s if it had been dual core. Incidentally, this PC has 2 gigs of RAM – double what it shipped with – which I upgraded some months ago.

If you’re installing Vista in a corporate environment, you wouldn’t install the OS the way I did, ie, focusing on a single PC that’s not part of a Windows domain. As with previous versions, Windows offers a number of installation options including remotely over a network.

But for most users, popping in the DVD and letting setup do its thing is the way to go.

Now, a word about ‘installing’ versus ‘upgrading.’ As I mentioned, I did a clean install – backed up all documents, etc, to a separate drive, booted the PC from the Vista DVD and chose the custom installation option.

This means you start over from scratch. Once you have Vista installed, you’ll then need to install again every single one of the programs you use. And of course, backing up things you want to keep before you start is essential as a clean install zaps everything on your hard drive.

Microsoft recommends you do an upgrade installation from a supported Windows version (XP or 2000 only, depending on which version you have). I can see advantages from that approach, especially as you won’t need to re-install all your programs or have much to interrupt your continued use of your computer and, hence, your productivity.

But I prefer to start over from scratch with a new operating system. I tend to do that anyway – every six months or so, I’ll start over by re-installing the OS and everything else. My PC gets quite a pounding over time as I do things like try out new programs, many of which are beta, so the PC tends to accumulate a lot of clutter as well as be a bit unstable now and again. Especially with a new version of Windows, I always believe it’s best to start afresh.

None of my positive commentary means to say I didn’t experience any issues at all. I did, but none are show-stoppers from my perspective.

Some observations:

The only hardware issue I had at Vista installation time was with the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS sound system. No Vista drivers came with the installation DVD nor could Windows Update offer any, and so device manager reported an error. Indeed, I had no sound. But a quick visit to Creative’s support website produced a Vista driver released only a few days ago. Works fine and now I have sound.

The same with the synchronization software for my Nokia N73 mobile phone – no Vista-compatible version. Sure enough, there now is, released a few days ago by Nokia.

Two products I use from M-Audio – the Microtrack 24/96 portable digital audio recorder (which I gushed about last summer), and the Podcast Factory marketed by Pinnacle Systems - are not compatible with Vista. Both still work using native Vista audio drivers but with limited functionality. I’m disappointed at M-Audio’s lame announcement on what they’re doing. Vista has been on the market since last November, so I’d expect a better indicator of availability by now.

Logitech is really on the ball with compatibility with the Quickcam Fusion webcam I bought a couple of weeks ago. Not only is the latest software Vista compatible, Logitech also made sure it’s offered through Windows Update. That’s smart.

A really useful resource in your pre-installation planning is the Windows Vista RTM Software Compatibility List. I found lots of helpful information here about much of the software I use – what works, what might and what definitely won’t.

Although Linden Lab says running the Second Life desktop application on Windows Vista is not supported, I’ve had no problems at all so far running version 1.14.01. There’s also a related issue around which graphics hardware you have where ATI graphics cards were the ones some people had reported as causing problems. Mine is an Nvidia Geforce 6800 which has no issues at all with Second Life running on Vista.

I still have some applications to install when I have some more spare time so I may encounter other issues. Equally, I may have good experiences (which I think is the more likely case).

In any event, I’m now up and running with Windows Vista where the installation was painless and my usage over the past few days has been a great experience.

I can definitely see why there’s ‘Wow!‘ about Windows Vista.

Related posts:

Anything good to say about Windows Vista and Office 2007?

Wherever you look, there’s Windows Vista

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Good Design And Good Graphics

Brian Vuyk — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:36:48 +0000

One persistant annoyance to me is when people look at a site, and declare it as poorly designed’, when the only problem with said site is that it may not have the most professional-looking’ graphics, or perhaps it doesn’t quite have the right Web-2.0′ appeal. I have news for you: Good design has *nothing* to do with pretty graphics.

Hear that noise? That’s the sound of smoke pouring out of the ears of millions of graphic designers.

As webmasters, many of us feel a certain pressure to ensure that our sites match up to the latest standards. They need to be attractive *and* useful, to draw visitors *and* keep them.

Function and Form are two different entities; I have seen some well designed sites with very low circa-1996 graphics. I’ve seen *many* websites created in the Web 2.0 look, with flashy graphics and appealing layouts, which were absolutely useless.

When you visit a site, try to look past whatever visual shortcomings you may see. You may be walking away from some of the most useful tools or services you will ever encounter. In short, don’t judge a book (website or service) by it’s cover (graphics, layout etc.)

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Understanding Vector and Raster Graphics

Bharat Bista — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:20:12 +0000

Choosing the right design, the right designer and the right graphics is essential. Selecting the right business, the right platform and the right time is crucial.

If you have an artistic hand but don’t know how to write, or you have beautiful voice and you don’t know how to sing, you may have a gift, but a paralyzed one.

You have a website and don’t know what its composition is; you have graphics and don’t know how they are designed; just the lack of this information you may lose your business.

Simple, yet complex, are the pages of your website containing graphics all together in every space. And those very graphics can hamper you, if not properly designed for an impressive deliverance to the customer.

If your site loads slowly in a browser, if your logos are not eye pleasing, if the fonts are not stylish, if the color combination and outline architecture is not smooth, you might be irritating your own costumer rather appealing to them.

Graphic design

Vector graphics is a geometric modeling of images, widely being used in Computer Graphics today. Vector graphics applies geometrical standards i.e., lines, curves, and polygons to represent images, while Raster graphics or a bit-mapped image, which is based on pixels in a grid, and contains information about the colors to be displaced in "bits". Due to this raster graphics have fixed resolution, thus cannot be resized without losing image quality.

In addition, bitmap images have much large file sizes; however, vector graphics are prepared by many individual objects, and each of them are defined by geometrical data with individual properties allocated to it such as color, fill, and outline. Thus, vector graphics have free resolution and can bring high quality output at any scale.

Vector images are more flexible than bitmaps, and for that reason they can be resized and stretched. Additionally, images stored as vectors enhance appearances on monitors and printers with higher resolution, while bit-mapped images always appear the same, in spite of of a device’s resolution. Another advantage of vector graphics is it requires less memory than bit-mapped images do.

The word vector graphics is typically used in the context of two-dimensional computer graphics. Today almost all computer video displays transform vector representations of an image to a raster format.

Vector graphics editors usually allow a user to spin, shift, mirror, stretch, tilt, a combination of primitives into a more sophisticated objects. Vector graphics are better for designing outlines, typography, logos, technical illustrations, diagram and flowchart, while bitmap editors are more suitable for retouching photos, photo processing, and artistic illustrations.

It is ideally good for simple or complex drawings that need to be photo-realism. i.e., for PostScript and PDF page description languages use a vector graphics model. Vector graphic are perfect format for the Web as these are lightweight graphics to the websites due to its file size and problem free regarding physical height and width of the image.

These days, websites are filled with sophisticated icons, images, navigation bars, photographs, bottoms, logos, etc and for cutting the file size, vector graphics are efficient, smaller, compact, and scale perfect or independent resolution compare to the raster graphics.

Regarding programs which allows us to create and operate vector graphics, are called drawing programs, while programs that operate bit-mapped images are called paint programs.

Almost all graphics application these days, including CADD systems and animation software, use vector graphics; furthermore, printers like PostScript printers use vector graphics and fonts represent as vectors are called postscript fonts. While, dot-matrix printers, laser printers, and monitors, are raster devices, this means that all objects, even vector objects, must be translated into bit maps before being output which means, even vector graphic images must be interpreted to the raster graphic before the end product can be displayed on paper.

Interesting, yet most important note regarding these two graphics are, its similarity with the human organ behaviors; like bitmap images, the human eyes catches objects in a mosaic raster format by photon recipient nerves though physical world.

Another hand brain function perceives the objects as vector graphics in its visual world. As a result, the brain can easily recalls drawings like cartoon, logos, signs, images, symbols, banners, with outlines. Though the pixel image with mosaic format will be faded out, but the impression of outlines of the pictures will remain in the memory of a human being for long. Eyes cannot manipulate the objects seen in the outer world, it perceives as it is, while the mind can manipulate through its imagination in its mental zone.

If you have chosen the right graphics and the right graphic designer for your business, enrich your business with graphics that are web friendly, swift loading, attractive, impressive and much more than outlines that remain in the mind of your visitor for a very long time.

Your website design should be eye pleasing, mind snatching, impressive and overall appealing to the customers. Design simple, but yet make it striking!

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Bharat Bista
Resources and References: Graphic Design – Custom Web Site Design – Silk Flowers

Two Routes To C On Supercomputers

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 18 May 2006 21:10:59 +0000

Both routes to programming in C on supercomputers will move through Silicon Graphics, as SGI works with a couple of firms to promote its blade hardware.

Silicon Graphics has been negotiating its way through the bankruptcy court, as the long-time name in graphic development workstations tries for a resurgence. They have begun emphasizing the Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing (RASC) RC100 blade hardware, and working with a couple of firms to promote it.

Celoxica of Oxfordshire, UK, recently announced support for the RC100 blade with its DK Design Suite and libraries. With those tools, the RC100 blades can be programmed directly by the end user to accelerate custom C software algorithms.

Also, Celoxica said its environment will speeds and simplifies the programming of FPGA devices, and accelerate high-performance computing applications by orders of magnitude.

Celoxica’s library for the RASC RC100 provides C-language calls to access all the SGI core functions, registers, memories and debug resources. The DK Design Suite compiles these software functions and user algorithms directly to hardware.

The Mitrionics firm is supposed to be part of a US and European workshop tour with Silicon Graphics starting next week in Paris. Those workshops will focus on educating scientists, researchers, and software developers on the Mitrion-C programming language for FPGAs.

A statement at Electronicstalk said the workshops will be free of charge, and will show attendees how to develop and implement applications built in Mitrion-C on the RC100 blade platform.

At press time, the website for Mitrionics was unavailable. We were unable to reach a contact at SGI for confirmation about the planned tour. The Electronicstalk site posted the statement about the workshops on May 18th, but readers interested in it should watch SGI’s website for an update and more details.

UPDATE!: We heard from a Mitrionics spokesperson who confirmed the tour will indeed take place. The company is working on the website problem too.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Tips on Promoting Podcasts

Sharon Housley — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:59:03 +0000

Podcasting is a great new medium, but creating a podcast is only half of the work. Promoting a podcast is equally critical to its success.

1. Educate the Public.

It is important to remember that podcasting is a relatively new technology and not everyone understands or knows what podcasting is. It is particularly important to educate users if your audience is not technical. Not only is it important to explain what a podcast is, but it is equally important to explain how your podcast will help listeners. Instruction on how users can listen to podcasts should also be included.

Understanding Podcasting

2. Graphic

Add a graphic to your website to let website visitors know that a podcast is available for your content. Colorful graphics have become the signature to alert listeners that podcasts and RSS feeds are available. The podcast flags were initially bright orange rectangles but as the popularity has grown, webmasters have bent the rules a bit.

A free online RSS graphic tool is available that allows users to quickly customize buttons by selecting the text and the color scheme of the button enabling webmasters to coordinate their podcast flag to match their website color scheme. Graphics experience is not required. Simply select alternative colors and insert text to personalize the feed graphics.

Online Graphics Tool or choose ready made graphics from: http://www.feedforall.com/podcasting-graphics.htm .

3. Descriptive Content

Be sure the podcast RSS feed contains enough information related to the contents of the podcasts to grab the interest of listeners. The description should be keyword rich. A link to the audio file should be included in the description field. The audio file link is a great way for listeners to sample a podcast.

4. Press Release

Send a press release about the podcast. In addition to distributing the press release to editors, be sure to submit the release to free online press release directories.

Submit Press Release – (scroll to submit release)

5. Podcast Directories

Submit podcasts to the podcast directories. Podcast directories contain podcasts that cover a wide variety of topics. Inclusion in the podcast search engines and directories will tap a whole new audience.

Submit to Podcasting Directories

6. Consistent Theme / Interesting Content

The last thing you want to do is to turn off listeners who have subscribed. Provide consistently formatted and consistently themed audio files. Interesting content that is consistently presented will gradually increase your listening base.

7. Create a Community

Encourage feedback and dialogue with listeners. Listen to the feedback of listeners and test their suggestions. Remember the podcast is for them not you.

Podcast promotion should be approached with the same tactics as website promotion. Identifying and informing your audience will increase communication and dialogue.

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for FeedForDev http://www.feedfordev.com
an RSS component for developers.