Most web 2.0 websites or online applications do share some visual characteristics that make their interface more user-friendly compared to the web 1.0 websites.

So what are the secrets of a web 2.0 design?

A clean and simple layout that focuses mostly on the content design other than the whole page environment in itself,

Bigger fonts on text,

White space, allows for easier read of the content

Use of illustrations, either in logos or in icons

3D effects on buttons and badges

Neutral background colours

If there’s any other web 2.0 feature that you know of, please do share it with us.

Any great web 2.0 designs are more than welcome for listing!

A pixel unit on the other hand, is a pixel unit. It is easy to use and remain constant in value, regardless of your body text size. It does require some accurate calculations though (which does make it a bit of pain sometimes). Not to mention that not all users see it the same way. There are many articles online regarding the advantages of em and disadvantages of using pixel units.

Now, the question is how do I proceed to changing my pixel units to relative em units? There’s a great article at clagnut’s blog that will guide you through this process. Again, if you’re new to this (like I am), it can be painful and you might just feel like going back to pixels, since it is much more familiar.

Or, you can just get an online em calculator that will calculate your pixels to em units. I think the most know is Riddle’s Em Calculator.

Recently, I’ve come accross James Whittaker’s calculator that also provides the line height of your text. It gives you the full CSS rule for your element, ready to copy and paste on your stylesheet. You can check it out here. You can also install on your hard drive and have easier access on it. I love it!

If we are to develop a website for a client that needs to update a website on his own, an editor that outputs valid XHTML code is a must. Such editors are certainly not for free. One of the best I’ve come across is xstandard that recently has developed a free light version for commercial use. Mind you, I haven’t seen it integrated in any open source project just yet.
Open source is a big hit on ecommerce projects, too. There are a few noteworthy effords on this, such as the so-talked-about freecsscart, that, unfortunately, is still under development and no-one really knows if they’ll ever release it. A similar idea comes from tradingeye, although is not free, something that is totally understandable, as valid code in such projects is definitely not an easy task.

People that contribute on open source projects, cannot afford to invest much time on it as noone is really paying them to do it. It seems that we get what we paid for and that’s only fair.

UPDATE: Movable Type’s publishing platform in now an Open Source project and is available for download. This is definitely something worth looking at, since Movable Type has been a paid project for quite a while.

Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.” We are still expecting to see the results of this new product by Google. The company’s target is to make web design companies create more accessible and usable websites for all and ultimately attract a higher number of internet users.

Google once again presents innovation that other search engines will be bound to follow.

A demonstration can be found here