GMC Solution has always
advocated transparency in everything we do, sharing knowledge to build a free
and supportive network. Those who follow our activities more closely will have
noticed that we have recently made a major remodeling our website, integrating a responsive design with high
doses of dynamism. Being true to our philosophy, we decided to share some of
the "secrets" that lie behind the operation of the website. Some
Basic Tips for the Web Designers:
Responsive Web Design: The term responsive is taken directly from
English, refers to pages that adapt to different resolutions and screen types.
The simplest version of this concept would be a layout that takes up 100% of
the screen. In more elaborate projects, different CSS styles are applied
depending on the screen width and type of device. The code tells the browser
which stylesheet to use is included in the label head:
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="css/screen.css" media="only handheld and (min-width:
800px) and (max-width: 1023px), only screen and (min-width: 800px) and
(max-width: 1023px)"/>
Handheld indicates a mobile device while
screen refers to desktops and laptops. Labels min-width and max-width report
the minimum and maximum dimensions from which the sheet designated styles will
be used.
Parallax Effect: The
parallax effect is a current trend in the web design, and refers to animations
that are playing as the user "scroll" vertical on the website.
There are numerous options to achieve this
effect, from prefabricated WordPress templates to complex programming in
JavaScript. In our case we have chosen to use a resource called Skrollr
interesting.
Skrollr is a JavaScript library developed
specifically to represent different effects of parallax. It is open source and
free, and it can be downloaded from their website. The use of this library
requires virtually no knowledge of JavaScript.
Animated boxes:
As in the
previous case, for the integration of animated boxes we have chosen to use a
free open-source solution. With a bit of CSS and jQuery library design can
achieve that effect with so attractive that our animations appear anywhere.
Inclusion of
RSS: The
RSS feeds are must today to unveil the contents of any blog tool. These short
excerpts of publications spread quickly through the web, exponentially
increasing the natural range of your posts.
We wanted to include our latest publications
within the website. To achieve this goal there are several options available
online. We would recommend you Feed2JS a very reliable solution open source
that does not include any advertising message or "diverted" the
information of your website. Its use is very simple, its on-line application
generates JavaScript code necessary, and only need to adapt the CSS styles to
suit the aesthetics of your website.
Tracking
without cookies: Like any other website, we have close monitoring of our visitors.
Not only how many visitors we receive, but also their country of origin, use of
links, operating system ... we is essential to analyze our business and find
areas for improvement information.
The dominant solution on the market is Google
Analytics. However, we opted to use a free and open source alternative called
code Piwik for several reasons:
- It is always free. Other solutions are free only until a certain level of hits is reached. Piwik is maintained financially by voluntary donations.
- It is open source, and not diverted your information to their servers. Data collected through GA pass through their servers, which process information before sending. Piwik is a solution that is installed on your server, and data not diverted anywhere else.