Using Web Addresses to stay safe

URLs simply the web address displayed in the address bar... May seem simple to most, but could there be some way to use it to our advantage to decide which sites are legit and which aren't? Yes, simply study the address bar and decide here are some tips:

ex.  http://www.google.com/maps

Green: Scheme, simply the protocol used to connect to the site.

Blue: The name of the host. Used when any person or company registers the name for only them to use.

and of course Red: Additional Paths, this may jump you to a specific page on that web page, like a login screen or another part of the website.

Simple enough, right? Now we get into the sticky stuff. Tell me which of these four do you think are real?

www.bankofamerica.com

www.bankofamerica.xyz.com

www.xyz.com/bankofamerica

www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness

Ok here is the easiest way to tell: www.bankofamerica.com and www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness are legit. How to tell? Always look at the name of the host first. On both of these it is bankofamerica.com/ . Comprendo? Now look at the other two. In www.xyz.com/bankofamerca xyz is obviously the name of the host, this might not even really have anything to do with the Bank Of America, be careful. Easy enough yet? No, look at www.bankofamerica.xyz.com looks right, right? Now look again: www.bankofamerica.xyz.com did you see that? Looky there it is bankofamerica(DOT)xyz not bankofamerica.com/xyz YOU ARE STILL CONNECTING TO XYZ NOT BANK OF AMERICA. Be careful with these... the dot could kill you, almost literally, could destroy you, your identity or simply take your money and get you in trouble. If you are making any online transaction with any sensitive information, check the address bar first, make sure the scheme is https:// not http:// and that tere is a padlock icon on the address bar. If completely secure the full address would look like this:

https://www.bankofamerica.com/

Browsers and Privacy

Riddle Me This: What is the difference between privacy and security?
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You are so boring, the difference is simple. Security helps protect you, while privacy helps keep stuff private to some degree. Browser Security protects you from malware, phisihing, hacking, and other online dangers and privacy helps keep your information and data private.

So... what is the big deal? Listen close, no matter how hard you try not to download anything, no matter how hard you try to avoid viruses or anything that could possibly have one, and probably doesn't, it is eventually going to come bite you in the butt, and you will wonder what the whole point was. But before this happens and you blow up your computer with nitro glycerin (even though if you still want to i will help :D), this might help a little bit to do something like that, but with time it will just make the time you spent trying to protect it useless and you will probably regret it when you realize that your computer desktop and download folders look the same as the day you bought the computer, and now even that is gone. Privacy may be important especially against hackers, but your best defense is your security.

But security can also destroy you if you aren't careful. These are usually called 'Rogues' or something close to that. The best way to avoid them is simply to not click anything except the X when pop ups come up for it. But... wait! What if there really is a problem on your computer? My suggestion is simply to simply X out any pop ups then open the security program you trust and have it scan your computer. So how do you figure out what is real and what is a rogue? X it and scan it, use a security program you trust, and if you want there is a rogue vs real test on microsoft.com . you may surprise yourself.

Search Engine Optimization Videos

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is simply when you get a search engine to show your websites first, for a lot of cases. But face it, if your website sucks, don't optimize it, sorry if this seems a little harsh but if it isn't going to give the information they are looking for, don't optimize it. But if you have a good web site with the info people are looking for, of course you want to optimize it, so here are some tips to do just that:

In order to do this, you need to know the basics of what search engine is looking for what, and take advantage of that, don't spam it though, don't put a million key words or whatever, otherwise most search engines will actually ignore you. Anyway here are some tips:

• Words Matter - Is the right info given?
• Titles Matter - Does the title fit what they are searching for?
• Links Matter - Where do you links go? Are Any broken? Are you more of a resource to other webpages or your own?
• Words in Links - Does whatever you link to fit the info they are looking for?
• Reputation - Face it if people hate navigating and visiting your website, if sucks.

Bad ideas:

• Don't buy bogos links.
• Don't spam keywords.
• Don't try to trick search engines in any way, if you think you have to do this, then your webpage sucks! Try to fix it!

Page Structure

Page structure is one of the most valuable things in web design, this may decide if you are good enough to be a professional noob web designer who could rise to the top of the entire industry or if you are another one of those wannabes sitting at home playing 'League of Legends' all day. Like Jeffrey Zeldman said, "The experienced web designer, like the talented newspaper art director, accepts that many projects she works on will have footers and columns and footers. Her job is not to shine about emerging commonalities but to use them to create pages that are distinctive, natural, brand-appropriate, subtly memorable, and quietly but unmistakably engaging." -Jeffrey Zeldman- Along with the look of your website, if your navigation sucks, try not to take offense when I say this, your website sucks. As important as your design is if you forget something else, people start to hate the web site and avoid using it. Don't let it become an Orphan Annie and don't make it bad to start off. People decide whether they like your site or not, through experience not trying to find some way to trick the search engines. Site design is simply the structure of your page, the headers, footers, columns, rows, horizontal rules, fonts and sizes, basically the entire look of your website. Make it something people want to see, not something that they click on then click the back button because it bores or freaks them out. Put the common controls in the common places, but make them look good, and choose good fonts and colors unlike what I am typing now. Make navigational controls easy to find and make it look good in general or I will never visit your site for more than half a second without laughing.

What makes a good Logo

Good Logos. Of course you want them to be cool, but the problem comes when you over do anything. It loses peoples' attention, causes them to question it, and makes it so no one can remember the logo, and especially can't remember the company associated with. If this ends up the case what was the use of the logo in the first place? Just for someone to look and say, "Wow, that is a cool logo" and then forget it in another 10 minutes? Sometime in your life whether it be for your website, your company, just to show off to your friends, eventually you will probably need a good logo, I might as well give you some tips so that when you make it, it doesn't absolutely suck and be forgotten quickly.

• First, it needs to be simple, not complicated in any way, make it unique but not overdrawn. Stick to basic shapes and simple colors, and it is recommended to include your name in it, but in a simple font people can read at 80 mph on the freeway and remember. Use the K.I.S.S. principle, the Keep It Simple Stupid Principle. Keeping them simple makes them more recognizable, incredibly memorable and of course the most effective.
• Second, KEEP IT MEMORABLE, without memorability your logo is useless, trampled under feet and tossed in the trash, that isn't what you want to happen to your logo at any time. One easy tip on doing this is keep it simple, yet appropriate. If you want to see any bad examples look at these, then see how many you remember tomorrow: http://logodesignerblog.com/bad-ugly-worst-logo-designs/ . The subject matter of the log is actually mostly useless the main thing you need is that it is distinctive, memorable, and clear.
• Third is Timeless. Will it last years? 10, 20, 50? Think about the Coca Cola logo, it has always been remembered and I don't think it has ever changed at all makes it easier to remember the logo throughout all time. Can you think up all 11 logos for Pepsi since 1898 to 2008? Well can you? Probably not.
• I'm running out of time but the last two are versatility and apropriateness, the logo should be funtional, make it in a vector format, and ask these: Can you print it in one color? On something the size of a postage stamp? On something the size of a billboard? Reversed (white logo black background to white background, black logo) ? last of all make it appropriate for the intended purpose. period.

Linking and Navigation in Adobe Dreamweaver

One way of linking and navigating easily and having fun while using the site is an image map. An image map is simply an image divided into or covered in hotspots, causing the ability to link to many different places on the same images (like a map). This can be useful in many different settings and helps the user feel more welcome and enjoy their experience while using your website (maybe you will even see someone brag about how cool your site is because of this :D). It is an easy way to navigate and organize info on your site and a pretty ingenious way to do it too. Another is jump menus, both of these are my favorite to ways to navigate a web page personally. A jump menu is simply a menu that can open more options within an option by clicking or hovering over it. This is turn can give your users a few main options, then suboptions, then maybe even more options, then linking to wherever is needed. This requires a list of linked menu items, and optionally a menu selection prompt or instruction, and a go button. These are both extremely welcoming and exciting ways for people to navigate your site. Changing Navigation Settings or how you navigation bar works or is placed can boost your web page exponentially and make it fun to use, not just another web site someone anonymous created. So if you are going to make a webpage to post on the internet please please please use a fun navigation tool, and maybe I will even use your site :D.

Cookies and their function.

Cookies...:D
Ah, How can you see that word and not be happy, whether you like the taste of cookies or not. But everyone knows the function of cookies right? To eat and bring joy. Get ready. I am going to rather change the way you see cookies or add on to it. Ready? See I even changed the text to look like a link :D. But back to the topic, Cookies are simply tiny bits on info stored on your computer if enabled, helping websites remember simple but necessary stuff like accounts, settings, etc. This allows websites to be more user friendly and not restart everything you do, every time you visit it. That would suck, I think most of us would agree to that. Cookies remember everything allowing you to save what you have in your shopping carts, advertise what you don't mind seeing, and prefer certain settings and products. Cookies aren't just useful to you, they are useful to nearly everyone who uses the web.

Search Engine Optimization

One of the most important things to do with your web page especially if you are going to make profit from your web pages in any way is making it easy to find to all search engines, including the not too popular ones... But for the most part trying to trick search engines usually backfire, Don't jam as many words in as you can, especially repetitively, for one thing that is plain dirty, two it usually won't work. Though it is true that search engines pick partially because of matching the search words, it is made to be able to tell when you jam it all in to try to make the top of the list. Trust me... It will back fire on you if you use this common technique. Buying links and piece of crap user experience (too many ads, to hard to get around, etc.) will also get the search engines to intentionally ignore you. Trust me again, you would be stupid to try to win a super computer built for chess at it's own game, you would also be stupid to try to trick search engines at their own game... The people who program search engines intentionally find all these little tricks and make them backfire on you, they may be jerks in a way (when people try to trick their search engines), but they protect all the users out there trying to get a good experience, they do an amazing job at that. Instead try to have good content, performance, user experience, and are you more of your own site, or are you more of a reference to other sites?

Here is a link to an article with more information: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2259693/SEO-Basics-8-Essentials-When-Optimizing-Your-Site

Plug Ins

Back when the world wide web just barely began, about the only things you could send or use was text, links, and pictures, but no one likes limitations most of the time, so people created plug-ins. Plug-ins are simply software like Adobe Flash Player, allowing you to do stuff, like chat rooms with multiple friends, even face to face, videos, games, more interactions. In fact your web browser doesn't interface with a plug-in nearly at all, in a sense it gives it a corner and steps aside a little bit, causing the plug-in to work with most browsers and create a risk for you browser security. This can create huge problems... really big problems especially if you are running plug-ins that aren't up to date. If you use and old plug-in, anyone out there can see what extra security they added in the last update, then make loop holes into your security through the missing security features in your plug-in. But the risk is lowering, some browsers even automatically update some for you, for example Google Chrome worked with Adobe Flash Player to allow Adobe Flash Player to automatically update itself while you run Google Chrome, but even as they are starting to find ways to updated themselves, it would definitely be a good idea, just to see if you are running the most updated versions.

The Reason For Updating Your Browser

Ok... One thing to start out: Please Don't Take This Too Offensively, but if it applies to you I suggest you take this advice: UPDATE YOUR FREAKIN' BROWSER NOW!!! YOU ARE RUINING NOT JUST YOURS BUT EVERYONE'S LIFE INCLUDING ME, IF YOU AREN'T RUNNING THE MOST UPDATED VERSIONS YOU CAN GET!!!! Well Anyway, the point is you need to update your browser as often as you can... Using an old browser is one of the worst decisions you can make for your computer almost as bad as downloading a Trojan virus by accepting an obviously fake rogue anti-virus program (for more info and a quiz on rogues go to microsoft's website, it is actually pretty cool and interesting) but anyway having an old updated browser opens your security and passwords to all of those hackers and viruses out there... You often become a target of identity theft, malware, viruses, and even broken computers and hard drives, so really UPDATE IT OR DIE!!! (Just FYI the or die part is probably just to add emotion). Not updating it is an extremely easy thing to do, but usually updating it is too... If you don't update it, it not only effects your identity, computer, and security to everything on your computer or internet, but it also makes all of the web designers, programmers, and computer engineers lives ALOT harder... So go, stop reading this, make sure your browser is updated! GO!

HTML5

HTML5 is an updated version of HTML allowing users to create and use sites with easily accessible or embedded videos on the web page, as well as allowing users to use web apps without needing an  internet connection or WiFi. HTML5 also allows dragging and dropping allowing, well, dragging and dropping, like when attaching files to emails, etc. Unfortunately in order to use these features you need to have a browser that can run HTML5 code... Luckily though, today most browsers we use are updated to the features of HTML5 and can be downloaded for free. Most people I know use Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Internet Safari, which are all updated to this standard and available to download for free. Even those who use other browsers are usually updated enough to access all these features that are now available to users by HTML5 code and the programs that read and run it. Learning HTML5 is an invaluable tool and useful skill to have and continue to learn throughout life.

Web Safe Colors

    Colors are simply the way our brain interprets electromagnetic radiation within the color spectrum. Computers trick our minds by making groups of 3 by 3 dots of green, blue, and red so close together that our minds will usually trick itself into believing it is seeing a canvas of color, not dots. Any color in the spectrum can be generated this way, by having 256 shades/variations for each color, you can generate anywhere within 16,777,216 different colors that then can display in groups of dots for your brain to see. By doing this you can see what you are doing on computers, and makes them usable and easy to change the colors you see or the text you see. Even this text is made of tiny dots arranged to show my ideas, but there are such things as web safe colors which can be used on the web. These are specialized colors that can be used on websites internationally, other colors only some can see, which can make big problems for web designers and anyone wanting to make a website. This is why you should always use web safe colors on your pages.

HTML Javascript and CSS

   

Super Awesome Completely and Utterly Ultra Voltage Noobs of Doom and Destruction!!!!!!!!

       When programming and using websites there are three codes/programs that are needed to make that page possible, without any of these, all websites would be useless or even inexistent. You see every website, every image, every video, every game, every download, every comment page, everyone's youtube pages (by the way subscribe to me at youtube.com/Sonorous Turtoise for all your gaming needs) relies on these three simple concepts.
        Html is THE BASIS FOR ALL WEBSITES, period.  HTML CREATES ALL LIFE AS WE KNOW IT!!! Okay, not quite but to all those people who spend all their time on their phone or computer scrolling up and down the screen due to boredom, or watching youtube videos no one would ever dream of wanting to watch, it is their life... so in a way it is true I guess. But without Html NO website would be possible.
        Secondly is Javascript. Javascript lets you connect and do commands in a split second, without this email, surveys, etc. wouldn't work, and games would have A LOT of trouble as well as videos. This allows the ability to take a quiz, test, or survey, then see your answers and scores within seconds, not years.
        Next is XHR which most people using the internet have never heard of, yet they use it every day! This allows stuff such as games, maps, and surveys without reloading the page.
        Without these your life would be meaningless (really). 

What Is The Internet...

The internet is something all of us use, often times on a daily basis, the internet connects most computers together into one small space where we can share data, video, games, communication, etc. The internet started as a simple project/experiment made by some researchers in 1974 calling it the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP for short) which connected a couple of computers in the same room allowing them to communicate according to the rules which the Internet Protocol Suite placed to help communicate. The Internet Protocol Suite made rules to which computers would communicate (like the rules of grammar) so computers and their users could communicate in various ways and understand. As this experiment started in one room it later spread to buildings and countries and later became the world wide web as we know it. When people use the internet it is extremely user friendly helping you find anything you want to know on it, yet most people don't think of the equipment used to make the internet usable and faster, such as fiber optic cables, but whether you think of the equipment or the communication of the world wide web, the internet is as big part of life now as we are.

KWL Website Design

I have recently started taking a web design class teaching HTML coding, etc. I want to use this blog both as a learning resource and hopefully help someone else learn through it. I already know very little so far but I have a good start and a good grasp of HTML code. I have started making a website already and have a lot of work to still do on it, but it helps me learn how to write HTML code and the orders and variables. I look forward to this class and want to learn how to do this as well as i can... I have found an easy way to make sure I learn it all is to teach others so I hope this blog will not just help me but anyone trying to do the same kind of thing.