Light Speed IT Solutions blog posts

Thoughts about Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Lucy Healy — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:20:59 GMT

Well, as a tester I cannot say that I didn’t find bugs on the new Windows 8, but this was to be expected as it is just a Consumer Preview, but what I wasn’t expecting was the User Interface versus the User Experience.

Installation

But let’s start from the beginning: the installation, well, that was quick and didn’t require any special knowledge, which was great. Once installed I had my first user experience on the Metro interface. It was different, somehow I was expecting something more similar with the iOS mobile interface, but it wasn’t. I’d never used a Windows phone before, maybe because of this it was so different for me.

Interface

The User Interface looks good, very appealing to the eyes and very colourful as well - not always a good thing - but it looked good.

If you are used with the usual Windows way to do things, well, forget about it, because the new Windows 8 is different on every way. As a Windows user I have loads of user habits on Windows, things such as the use of the right mouse button to select other functions, or use the search on the start menu, or shortcuts with the start key, or the use of the .exe name to run a program...

Many things that I’ve got used to over the years, things that somehow improved my daily rotines and now are gone. Wasn’t just the Start button that they got rid of, nothing has a close or minimize button. Those functions are still available but not as simple as it was. I understand the whole app feature but when you are using a PC you want to improve your PC performance as much as possible, you don’t want the PC with hundreds of apps opened consuming memory.

Being a Tester helped me to analyse applications in a way that a new user would: I have to analyse how good is the User Experience on the app; how easy and logical is for an user to execute a simple task on the application; how easy is to get to point B from A. Close an application should be a basic daily task for a normal user on any level of knowledge. And close an application was my first challenge on Windows 8 Metro interface, I didn’t count all the time spend between me and my fellow developer colleague on the attempt to close an app, but let’s say, it wasn’t quick. My theory is that should not take you more than 2 minutes (and that is a lot) to do a simple task in a software, well, took us more than that to find out how to close an app.

I really wanted to like Windows 8 because a whole new way to do things should improve the Windows user experience, but it didn’t. This new interface was supposed to be a big improvement and make things easier for the end user, should be very user friendly and make the user feel comfortable and have a great experience... but it didn’t. It was clumsy, the functions available are not very logical, I must say that I’ve used on a normal PC so I couldn’t enjoy the touch screen features, but even though should still be useful and deliver good results on a normal desktop. With the Metro interface come the new “Charm bar” that doesn’t have much charm. It is not simple to make it appear using the mouse and requires the use of the start key + C to be displayed via shortcut. How do I find that out? Well, research on the web as AGAIN nothing was very logical and obvious as it should be. The old interface still available as well, but without the Start button, it is not a nice second option. And yet the old interface is not a choice, you will HAVE to use if you wish to use things such as the Windows Calculator, Windows Explorer, Network or any other Control panel functionality. I am not sure if Microsoft will keep it like that, but it does looks wrong if you have to switch between interfaces to access different functionalities and in both interfaces each application works in completely different ways.

I do believe Microsoft lost the plot. I understand the whole investment into something that can improve the user experience on touch screen devices, and I understand the whole approach of simplicity, but that wasn’t what they delivered.

There is a new tendency that started a while ago with Google. Did you ever asked yourself why is Google so popular? It’s because it is SIMPLE and responsible, it does the job! The iPhone as well got popular for the same reasons, simplicity, and not multiple functionalities that you won’t even use, just a simple straight forward interface with a simple access to everything. Microsoft is trying to do the same with Windows 8, but in my opinion they failed. For an application to be simple has to be very user oriented, but they failed to achieve that, it looks simple but there is a lot of hidden things that should simplified the user experience but it doesn’t as there is not a logical access.

The colour scheme is a mismatch at the moment for Microsoft, the colourful Metro theme looks good, but it contradicts the new simple look that Microsoft is trying to implement, like the new Windows 8 logo with a blue and white interface or even the new Visual Studio with white, blacks, blues and greys. Contradictions...

Positives

It is not all bad, to shutdown and start the machine is as quick as it gets, of course, once you find out how to do it. There’s also a big improvement on the overall performance.

One new great thing is SkyDrive integration, free 7GB space on an easy access and the simple connection with Xbox will also make many users happy. Talking about apps, thumbs up for the Bing map, great app, very simple and functional. There are still minor improvements to be made, but it’s understandable as this is just a preview, even though I was happy with the app.

Overall Opinion

With Windows 8, there is a clear picture about what Microsoft is trying to achieve, but unfortunately the execution wasn’t good enough. They do have a shell, but there are loads of changes that will have to be made if they want succeed with this version.

The Windows 8 is functional but will take people a while to get used with the new interface. I do like the fact that Microsoft is taking a risk but I am not sure if will pay off on this version.

Online Wireframing Tools

Peter Luck — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:59:57 GMT

I have been trying out some online wireframing tools. These tools are useful for fast access to simple wireframing tools that are easy to use, and can be a useful resource for those creating their own site. Here's just a few of the online wireframing tools I tried out, with some advantages and disadvantages.

M ockingbird provides a variety of widgets for wireframing of websites and has a good setup except for the lack of some widgets. The interface for searching for the right widget is also neglected with the drop down menu provided making the process slower than it needs to be along with a search function that can add confusion as the number of widgets do not really meet the need for an individual search and using this can slow down the process even further these mixed can end up with you settling for a widget that fits but isn’t what you want as you avoid the clumsy menu. While Mockingbird has some issues it widget menu the main weakness is the lack of tools to represent databases and while it can provide an easy to use tool for wireframing of a website on the move its lack of database and other widgets limit it further than any other feature and with some more input into the widgets this tool could be useful to those working on the move however currently it is a good tool for those beginning to wireframing.

Gliffy offers a larger library of widgets and a more helpful that allows you to venture into databases and floor plans along with websites. The menu for the widgets is useful and well categorised perhaps with some visual choices between the same widgets as well. The templates also allow for a faster creation of your wireframe and seem to aim at a slightly more professional audience than Mockingbird. The widgets and tools to allow mapping out a schema for webpages could be a useful tool. While Gliffy offers an effective tool that’s easy to use and allows for good positioning design and flexibility in what you do it suffers greatly as this product seems to aim for a more professional market it does not meet the standards of programs such as Visio it could provide an alternative to work with customers on a quick wireframe along with allowing you to use the tool without installation. Gliffy just falls short with its regularly crashing and leading to loss of work, this is a shame as other than the crashes this is a great tool for use on the go and easy to learn creates wireframes.

Lumzy with what is most likely the easiest user interface to pick up and use however it is met with a large amount of problems starting with the lack of widgets to use for wireframing and its completely restricted to website widgets. The menu for Lumzy is simple and easy to use while the search function again providing minimal use due to the lack in widgets and it being quicker just to click on the menu tab the widget will be under. Lumzy is the easiest to use and allows for quick understanding of how it works with its simple layout however this appears to be accompanied by widgets that are not made to be shown in a professional environment and the tool itself appears to be catered specifically to those learning to use wireframing tools to create their own website instead of and for this purpose its great service however if you want anything more professional then this isn’t the tool for you.

While these will not be taking over the role of Visio any time soon for an online resource that allows access anywhere with internet and no installation then these programs are a great tool. Out of all these Wireframing tools I would say that my favourite was Gliffy even with its problems with crashes and freezing it provided so much more variety and flexibility that it has the potential to be a useful tool for on the move. I also like Lumzy while it may not be the best tool it provides a great starting point for those starting to develop their own sites and with its quick to learn friendly interface is a great place to create your first website wireframes.

Cross Browser Testing

Lucy Healy — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:32:55 GMT

One of the most important parts of web testing is the cross browser testing, why?

Well imagine if you are a tester and you have Windows 7 with ie9 installed on your machine and run all your test cases on ie9, well, if this happens there is a possibility that you may have to re-run your entire project because of compatibility issues or that you may deliver a very poor quality project.

Do you know that almost 9% of users worldwide still use ie6? And that just 6.8% of users use ie9? This means that the use of ie9 won’t uncover all the issues that your client may have if he is one of the 9% of users worldwide that uses ie6.
Why is that bad? Well, if your application wasn’t created anticipating the fact that should be on a different browser than ie9, this means that there is 93.2% of chances that your application won’t fully work on your client’s environment.

Each browser works in different ways, this includes different versions of Internet Explorer. What works for Firefox won’t necessary works for Safari and vice and versa.

Applications won’t always be compatible with every browser and to make sure that those issues are addressed is why cross browser testing is executed.
So before you start your test you should know few important things first.
∙ Find out about more the environment that your client will be using the software;
∙ OS used and if there is more than one;
∙ Main browser and if there is more than one browser being used by the future users of the application;
∙ Which type of devices should be supported by the application, e.g. if application should be monotouch compatible;
∙ An average number of users that will be using the application at the same time for performance test.

With all the right information the test execution should be easier and the application delivered reliable.
But even with the acknowledgment of the used browsers by your client uses always run your tests on the most popular browsers (ie, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera), this will avoid possible future issues.

A Review of Sitefinity's Module Builder - Part 2

Alex Hewitt-Clay — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

In my last blog post, I looked at how easy it was to create a slideshow module using Sitefinity’s Module Builder. Overall, the experience was a huge improvement on having to create the entire module through code. With the whole process being quicker and easier, the workflow for site development was hugely decreased.

So that’s it then? Well... no, unfortunately after some further experimenting and pushing the customisation of the Module Builder, I discovered that you could only go so far.

Moving on from the slideshow module, my next task was to create a protected downloads module which used jQuery to create a hover effect. When the front image was hovered, another area would appear containing a title, summary and “download” button which, when clicked, would present the user with a popup requesting their email address before enabling the file download to begin. This email address would then be validated and stored.

Using Sitefinity’s Module Builder, I was able to quickly configure the module and add the fields required. On this occasion I added an additional “document” field by selecting the “Media” section. This would be the downloadable document available to the user. Again, the creation of the module was quick and only required a small amount of tweaking to customise the layout and ensure that the jQuery ran as expected.

Everything was set in place. I had a fully functional download box which presented the user with a download button when the main image was hovered over. On clicking the button, this would then display the document (in this instance a PDF). Happy with the progress, I then started to look at the “protected” element of the file download, requesting the user's email address before they were able to download the document.

After staring blankly at the “AssetField” Sitefinity had created within the template, I looked at ways to create a server side “onClick” event which would trigger a popup causing the download to wait. Already faced with a situation where I would have to begin coding I tried a variety of different methods, but to no avail. It soon became apparent that what I was seeking to implement would not be possible without getting my hands dirty. However, an additional obstacle loomed.

Without having full access to the code behind files, it appeared to be impossible to create my protected downloads without having to revert back to developing within Visual Studio. In fact the only way to create what I required was to either resort back to previous methods of creating the entire module from scratch, or to create a folder named “SfCtrlPresentation” which contained the .ascx and code behind file. I would then need to paste the template code created by the Module Builder and use the module GUID to reference my new template rather than editing the “LayoutTemplatePath”, which doesn’t exist if you have used the Module Builder. This appeared to be more of a messy work around which defies the whole purpose of using the Module Builder.

Please don’t get me wrong, I still believe that the Module Builder is highly valuable for creating modules to handle items such as slideshows etc. However, I feel this could be hugely enhanced by either providing access to the code behind files, should it be required, saving creation of a new user control within Visual Studio, or by enabling a developer to enter a “LayoutTemplatePath” without having to worry about creating a “SfCtrlPresentation” folder using the horrible GUID. This additional control would certainly allow the Module Builder to become seriously powerful allowing for full custom functionality with a more fluid workflow and less programming.

All in all, on one hand I found using the Module Builder to be a pleasant and more simplistic experience, yet on the other hand it is still too restrictive in cases where you would like to take customisation further.

A Review of Sitefinity's Module Builder - Part 1

Alex Hewitt-Clay — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:01:55 GMT

So... Sitefinity’s Module Builder: “the state-of-the-art module builder which allows you to build your own content types without programming”. A big promise, but does it work?

Casting our minds back a little, back to when Sitefinity 4.4 was released, I take a look at the Sitefinity Module Builder to see how effective it is at reducing the amount of programming required for simple modules.

When Sitefinity 4.4 was announced, it boasted a range of new features and improvements to the globally used CMS platform. With a huge emphasis on making it easier and more simplistic to develop websites and applications, most excitement revolved around the news on Sitefinity’s new Module Builder.

The Sitefinity Module Builder claimed that you would be able to build complete custom modules without having to get your hands dirty with programming. Avoiding the standard method of creating custom modules, the Module Builder indicated that it could drastically improve the workflow of site development.

Generally, as a Web Designer/Front End Developer (with minimal development knowledge), I would create my custom modules directly in Visual Studio. This would usually be a problematic process trying to overcome build errors and paying regular visits to Google with the hope of discovering a new method to achieve a fully functional module. Set in my ways, despite the Module Builder being released, I plodded along with my Visual Studio-based custom modules. This was until I attended the Sitefinity and Beyond conference at the British Museum in London on 17th April. Up on stage Hristo Borisov (Sitefinity Business Analyst) was going through the processes of creating a new custom module using Sitefinity’s Module Builder. Shortly after he had started, he was able to show us a fully functional product listing with use of jQuery for effect. It looked so easy that I was eager to try it for myself.

Sure enough, back in the office I set to work on a dummy site with the intention of putting the Module Builder to good use. I revisited some of the things I had developed before on previous sites where it had appeared that HTML was the only solution (not very client friendly). I started with a full page, automatic, clickable slideshow. After naming it (appropriately named “Mega Slideshow”), I began adding my fields. With “Title” already existing, I continued to build brick by brick: “MainContent”, “SubHeader” and “SlideImage”. Now, with my fields complete, my module was ready to be populated. The fields made it a breeze to fill out and in almost no time at all I had created a range of slides to display within my slideshow.

I proceeded to my page where I was able to simply drag the control onto the page and immediately see my content appear, although the functionality still needed to be applied. By clicking the “Edit” button on the control, I was then able to navigate through and select the default module template. By copying the existing template code, I was able to create a new template within Sitefinity and then paste the code, with the correct fields, into the nicely laid out internal code editor (although IntelliSense would be nice*). To assist with customising the template, Sitefinity also provides an “Other data” drop down where code is automatically generated for pasting by simply clicking on a data name.

It’s fair to say that I had to tweak the code a little purely for design purposes and had to add an extra asp hyperlink, but aside from this, the end result was a complete, fully functional slideshow complete with image, title, content and a “Learn More” link. With a drastically reduced development time it’s clear to see just how powerful the Sitefinity Module Builder can be at improving site development workflow.

In part 2, I will be looking at how far the customisation for the Module Builder can be pushed and what areas could be improved by Sitefinity to fully complete the Module Builder.

*Telerik's Ivan Osmak got in touch to remind us that IntelliSense is supported in Thunder, the Visual Studio plugin. Thanks!

To Internet World Expo 2012

Farah Tahsin — Tue, 01 May 2012 08:40:01 GMT

On the 25th of April 2012, Ruth & I visited the 20th yearly event of Internet World Expo. The weather was terrible and I was almost certain that it was going to keep a lot of people away. Well, I was wrong. This is Europe's largest digital business event we are talking about! Despite the rain, thousands showed up at the Earls Court exhibition centre. As soon as we entered the venue, the singing butlers of Rackspace hosting wowed us! Great promotion I must say! After our little chitchat (and emptying the bowl of chocolate on the table) with Doron of Rackspace hosting, we went to hang out with the Telerik Sitefinity team.

Personally I wanted to attend as many seminars as possible on Social media but that was the busiest theatre! People were queuing at least one hour before each seminar and I only learnt this lesson after missing 2 consecutive seminars. Anyhow, there was a lot of other stuff going on too, we did attend some brilliant lectures. As a digital marketer, I really liked the seminar with Sean Duffy (Email Marketing Consultant at Emailcenter) where he talked about the usefulness of multivariate testing in email marketing campaigns. The presentation of John Engates (CTO, Rackspace hosting) on the future of cloud was also very informative. We specially loved and enjoyed the seminar by Gabe Sumner (Product Evangelist, Telerik) where he talked about using responsive design to build a new generation of mobile-friendly websites. I remember talking about responsive design to a lot of clients since this is something our ninja developers are really good at (it’s not a sales pitch, they really are!). Sitefinity 5 comes with a module to help customise your site for responsive design. This seminar reminded me why we do what we do (did I forget to mention that we’re Sitefinity partners? Don’t forget to check out the post about our visit to Sitefinity and Beyond.)

We picked up plenty of other tricks throughout the day and will be blogging about them soon. Keep an eye on our upcoming blogs!

CMS with Sitefinity....

Dan Mitchell — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:15:18 GMT

I am Light Speed's latest addition to the team, my name is Dan Mitchell and I have just started an apprenticeship with Light Speed studying web design. In the past I often asked myself “what happens when you create a web site for somebody and it needs to be updated”, I didn’t really give it much thought, I just assumed they would come back to the designer when they wanted the website updated or wanted to add new content, but when you really think about that method would not work in the real world so when I was introduced to CMS (Content Management System) the penny dropped. CMS is a piece of software that provides website editing
with little knowledge of programming or mark up languages to create, edit and maintain a website.

Light Speed’s choice of CMS is Sitefinity, I had my first play with the programme today and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to use and navigate around, you can edit pages, change text, images, and links with great ease. When you want to create a new page, you simply select the template you want in Sitefinity and then start adding content until you have completed the page, Sitefinity allows you to save and preview the page before making it live.

The most amazing thing about Sitefinity is that anyone can use it; from your marketing team to your experienced IT professional, Sitefinity has partners in 50 countries and has been used to house websites on more than 10,000 occasions.

I would recommend Sitefinity to anyone.

If you want more information regarding a website using Sitefinity then get in touch now because I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed!

Telerik Test Studio versus Microsoft Test Manager

Lucy Healy — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:00:00 GMT

I've been using Visual Studio and Microsoft Test Manager together for a while. The integration between Microsoft Test Manager and Visual Studio was a plus and ‘somehow’ made my test execution and automation quicker - not easier - but it does have great benefits.

So Telerik Test Studio came along, was very promising, as a tester I’ve decided to give it a try. I must admit, I was impressed. Not just for all the extra features, but more by the fact that was really reliable.

So, which one to use? Based on the experience that I had with both I came with the following conclusions:

Telerik Test Studio:

Telerik Test Studio is a flexible tool for non technical people who want to explore the automation world in more depth. This doesn’t mean that you cannot go wild with codes and etc; is possible to create custom-coded steps.
The UI is very logical and provides a great User Experience.
Test verifications are much easier to add. The results are detailed, very responsive and tests are easy to maintain.
The integration that Telerik Test Studio has with Visual Studio is smooth, they seemed very well connected and it feels like a natural part of Visual Studio.
The ability to add an External Data Source for the test is also a plus, and is not just about the functionality, is about how simple can be to do something that could be really complicated.
The logical steps are simple to use.
Cross browser testing seems like a useful feature, but the reality wasn’t that positive. It's a clumsy process, and didn't execute well on different browsers.
Test Studio for iOS is a big thing. To be able to test native, web and hybrid apps is a must have with the growth that Apple is experiencing at the moment. 35 million iPhones were sold in the first three months of the year and 12 million iPads. I haven’t used this feature yet, but I am looking forward to it.
Along with Functional and Mobile Testing Telerik Test Studio allows users to create Load and Performance Testing as well.

Telerik Test Studio has lot of great features, the simplicity with which I could add complexity into my tests was what really impressed me, but is that enough? What does Microsoft Test Manager and Visual Studio provide to users?

Microsoft Test Manager

Visual Studio has been out there for a while now, and is the developers' favourite. Coded UI is a great way to automate tests, but it can turn into something deeply complex and result with failure on execution.
The integration with Microsoft Test Manager is a bonus as it is possible to import recorded actions and turn into Coded UI.
Anything is possible with Visual Studio, but it will require a code knowledge that you wouldn’t expect for most of the testers out there. Also even with the right skills, automation and maintenance of automated tests on Visual Studio can take a while and it is not reliable as tend to fail for numerous reasons.
However, the Coded UI Test Builder is a great feature, the ability to add assertions is also very handy.
Performance, Load and functional testing are just part of the different test types that can be executed with Visual Studio, so many things are available but the complicated UI loses a few points.

I’ve been using Visual Studio and Test Manager for a while now, a variety of different tests and environments were created, what gave me the opportunity to try different things, Telerik Test Studio is great, but I do still need more time to test to get into any final conclusions.

Test Studio for iOS

Craig Pilgrim — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:26:43 GMT

Yesterday afternoon Telerik held a webinar for one of their products soon to hit the market. Test Studio for iOS is an automation tool that allows you to actually create automated tests for iOS applications on the device itself using manual touch input. There is a definite gap in the market for such a product given the growth in the mobile applications market (especially that of iPhone). In my experience there aren’t many companies out there that offer a similar solution to this and certainly not one that is not as easy to deploy as this.

Some of the features that really stood out to me were:

The tests are not co-ordinate based – because all the steps are based on Element Locators this means that the same tests can be used to test the application on iPhone and iPad. The use of Element Locators also means that ongoing maintenance to keep these tests working is kept to a minimum.
You can add to an existing recording – the fact that you can just add on steps to the end of a test instead of having to re-record the whole thing from scratch is going to be a great time saver.
The Ad-hoc Testing looks great – if during your exploratory testing you stumble across a bug there is a really nice feedback system that lets you take a screenshot, highlight the affected area, add feedback/bug details and then export on mass via email. Given time I would love to see this with the ability to publish straight to TFS as a bug report.
Can record swipe and pinch – These features are unique to touch screen devices and as a result aren’t usually catered for in such tools. It’s refreshing to see this included.
Disconnected – You can continue to author and edit your tests even without an active internet connection.

All in all this looks to be shaping up very nicely and should be a handy tool for anyone who finds themselves testing mobile applications for iOS. I look forward to getting my hands on the beta and giving this a go.

Head on over to the Telerik website now and have a play with the beta.

Photo credit Lukewhitt

Reflecting on Sitefinity & Beyond 2012

Gary Fenn — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:30:00 GMT

On Tuesday 17th April Telerik hosted Sitefinity & Beyond, their first conference for Sitefinity users, partners and developers. As Gold partners we eagerly signed up, and three of the team including myself went along for the ride.

Hosted in London’s stunning British Museum, we were surprised to see delegates from all over Europe: Germany, France, Italy, Finland and many more countries. It was very well attended and our hosts put on a varied show. I’m going to go through the sessions and summarize my feelings on each one.

Sitefinity 5.1 Preview

Ivan Osmak took us through a comprehensive tour of what we can expect in the upcoming Sitefinity 5.1. Don’t expect mind-blowing bells and whistles, it’s all about performance and stability in the latest upgrade. There’s also a Syncfusion-style service that converts files to PDF on the fly and by extension allows full text searching of the content. There’s also some simplification in the cross-publishing services, but more on that later. Ivan also promised “zero known bugs” for release in the eCommerce module. There was also a suggestion that the entire Sitefinity back-end will be recreated in KendoUI instead of the current jQuery-flavoured interface, which should see a number of percetible performance gains. A very interesting presentation. As I tweeted at the time: “[Ivan] is no Steve Jobs but he is an honest developer who clearly loves the product.”

Reaching New Heights with Sitefinity Thunder

Thunder is an upcoming plug-in for Visual Studio that tightly integrates the IDE with Sitefinity. As a Microsoft house this is music to our ears. We’ve been around for a while and can remember the whole heap of files that need moving around to customise, deploy and maintain a Sitefinity website. In the leaner database-orientated approach this is much more versatile. Thunder extends this versatility by communicating directly with the live (or more likely in our case UAT) site via a web service call. The demo that Ivan showed was very impressive, and we’re keeping a close eye on this one. There’s a webinar for Thunder this week we will be paying attention to.

Migrating Your Website to the Latest Sitefinity Version

This was getting a little rushed so Ivan didn’t spend a great deal of time focusing on this, instead he spoke about how the safest migration path is from Sitefinity 3.7 SP4 upwards. Telerik are also knee-deep in a migration of their own site; in conversation with Sitefinity Partner Manager Oggy later he admitted the site is unrecognisably 3.7 anyway as almost all of it had been customised through the years. It’s a very complex undertaking.

Creating Feature-Rich Custom Modules

Businss Analyst Hristo Borisov took the stage here describing his own pain points in trying to encapsulate customer needs accurately and how Sitefinity module builder can get prototypes off the ground to iterate towards the ideal solution. He showed off a flashy module that allowed for banner ad placement with no HTML knowledge by the content manager that was impressive, but a little fast for me! It got my colleagues’ juices flowing however, and they almost wanted to turn back to the office and make a start!

Going Mobile With Responsive Design

Product Evangelist Gabe Sumner took to the stage for this one, with a confident and informative demo of the responsive templates within Sitefinity. Whilst we haven’t used this on a client project yet we have explored the features on a test site. It’s certainly an impressive and very easy to use feature that has a lot of possibilities. Gabe also went beyond the technical and asked us to consider that articles will be given different prominence and this will affect how they are perceived. However the room got a little tense when the pricing of this feature came up. Both sides raised good points but it’s clear the community is having a hard time trying to sell this proposition to clients.

Multi-Channel Campaigns: Where Marketing and Technical Meet

This one will get the digital marketers salivating: improvements have been made in Sitefinity 5.1 to help connect all the publication channels so 1 piece of content can be syndicated across RSS, Twitter, Facebook etc. A good feature and can't come soon enough for those of us looking to get more eyes on content. More details on the Telerik YouTube channel.

Sitefinity as an Enterprise Level CMS

This one intrigued me as we have had a few requests from customers to implement such a scenario, and whilst we have implemented it once I wasn’t completely happy with the elegance of the solution. Sitefinity partner Avaus put forward a case study that was certainly detailed, but perhaps a little dry for the majority of the room. That said if we get another similar proposal I’ll go back to Avaus for any tips they can offer for making TFS work better with the multiple config files required.

Beyond Development – Be A Hero

Boris of United Experts put forward essentially a “hints and tips” section with a few gems in there. By this point I think the delegates were burned out from excellent demos from Gabe, Ivan and Hristo, and Boris was up against the clock to get through his presentation. The GZIP sample code and taking a little time to customise the Content Editor were good ideas that we’ll look into.

Conclusion

In all the event was a well-attended and varied conference that served a number of different audiences. In the end that was also the negative – the room was a mixture of technical and non-technical people and it was difficult to satisfy everyone. Next time it would be good to have the conference diverge into these different audiences. The presentations by the Sitefinity staffers were by far the more engaging and encouraged the most feedback. I'd really like some time with builds of the product while we were there as you want to play with the features discussed. It was also very useful to meet the Sitefinity team face-to-face and put real faces to the forum posts.

Roll on Sitefinity & Beyond 2013!

To Sitefinity... and Beyond!

Gary Fenn — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Yesterday three of the Light Speed team including me went to the Sitefinity & Beyond conference in London. It was an inspiring and thought-provoking show and the first of its kind that Sitefinity have offered. I'll be covering off the main topics and my review of the day in a later post, but here's a couple of snapshots that illustrate the day.

Hristo Borisov led a seminar in building feature-rich custom modules. He also put this true fact on the screen!

Our front-end developer Alex takes a break. Isn't it amazing how much caffeine helps knowledge intake!

Why so Blue?

Lucy Healy — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:00:00 GMT

I still remember the first time I used Instagram. The retro vibe inspired me, the whole exclusivity feeling, the ability to show that I was part of that small group of people that could achieve such a great transformation into my pictures, was a great feeling.

Suddenly it wasn’t just me posting those unique pictures on Facebook, the feeling of exclusivity was gone, but I was still excited about the whole retro vibe until Social Network pages were overloaded with those types of pictures. Suddenly the retro vibe wasn’t different and inspiring anymore, it turned into just common pictures.

Thinking about it isn’t that the same feeling that everybody once experienced when using a social network for the first time?

In the beginning it is great, everything is new, the learning curve, the new feeling. Everything is great until you start to see the same things, from the same people, in the same way.

How trends get boring?

People usually tend to follow trends until the extreme, not just simple users, companies do as well. Working in a Software Development Company is impossible not to see how many clients tend to go for a blue style UI. Coincidence? Maybe...

Do you have a Smartphone? Check it out how many apps have blue icons. Now check how many Social Network apps have blue icons?

Blue is a new trend, Facebook is a Renewed trend. Many people hated the new Timeline, but even with all the fuss about it Facebook still went ahead with the decision and implemented the timeline. Why? Because they had to change themselves before the brand started to get boring.

Think about how big this change is, before Facebook was all about sharing things with your friends, now Facebook is all about YOUR LIFE. What, where, when and how you live your life, when you graduated, when you got married, where were your last holidays, Facebook is now the diary of your life.

Facebook had to do something to avoid losing their 721 million active users. This is more than 10% of the world population.

So if you have a successful business don’t get complacent, analyse your business, take a risk and change before you lose your clients – reinvent! If you need a help contact a trusted software development company to help you with the realising your wishes.

Google Is Watching You!

Farah Tahsin — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:00:00 GMT

A little birdie told us that Google is looking for over-optimised pages and sites which means that all of the websites that have great SEO but lower quality content are going to be penalised. So, in case you have a website which happens to have way too many keywords on a page (Header, footer, image descriptions, site map, you name it!), or you are exchanging huge numbers of links with sites that you actually don’t have any relevance to, you better be careful!

What we believe in LSITS is, it’s not necessarily useful to be number one in Google if you continue to have a high bounce rate. What’s the purpose of ranking higher when your visitors leave your website without even taking a look at your content or your conversion rate is really poor?

We are just happy to know that our clients are not worried about getting caught in this crosshair of Google's update. Do you think you should be worried? It’s really worth keeping an eye on your rankings and also improving the quality of your content in case you haven’t done it yet. Better late than never! If you want to know more contact us.

When You Need A Bespoke Software Solution

Farah Tahsin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:43:00 GMT

I sometimes wonder why on earth my local pub offers ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ if it doesn’t taste anything like real ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ at all! I wish they gave me a chance to show them how I really want it. Recently I went to a proper Indian restaurant that gave specific attention to my needs and made it just the way I wanted. I believe today’s business owners face the same kind of problems, but in a different way! The key decision for them is whether to use off-the-shelf application or to have a bespoke solution build according to their specific needs.

The answer varies according to their specific requirements. It might appear as though an off-the-shelf solution might typically be less expensive than a custom-made system (the ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ at my local pub cost me just £4.50. Bargain, right?), especially if it could be downloaded almost free of charge! Nevertheless, eventually your specific costs would depend on whether or not the program's functions suit your needs. Nobody knows it better than you if you really need a bespoke application or not.

Know Your Needs-

Have a look at current solutions. Before deciding upon a brand new solution, it is best to determine whether any existing system within the company can be easily scaled or extended to meet up with your company need.
If your requirement can be only partially met or not addressed by the solution, it is quite essential to concentrate on determining business requirements-not technology or design requirements. Bear in mind: Business first, technology second.
If a significant percentage of your core business needs simply cannot be supported by an off the shelf software, you should probably consider getting a bespoke software written for you.

Have You Got the In-House Skills?

I didn’t have the time or energy to make the ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ at home even if I’m sure I can cook better than the one they served me! There are other important things to do than cooking! Sometimes you might have the resource in house but they are busy doing other projects!
Sometimes you don’t have the resource in house and in that case, it's never cost-effective to allow employees gain these expertise and experience through developing business-essential applications.

Last but not the least, if you are cost-conscious and don’t mind spending a little more time applying regular security patches to your applications, then you can use an off-the-shelf solution. But in case your software needs to do something totally unique or you've got particular design or functionality requirements, or perhaps you want to stay ahead of your competitors, then you may want to consider having bespoke solution developed. The Indian restaurant did charge me a bit more, but it was totally worth the money!

SEO Tips for Beginners

Farah Tahsin — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:16:00 GMT

So you have finally realised the importance of SEO. You’re probably flipping the pages of SEO for dummies or other resources and thinking about optimising your website to get your desired ranking. Before you hire someone who promises to do the SEO magic and bring your website on page 1 of Google overnight, there are few things you should know about SEO. I would try to give you few tips you should keep in mind while hiring a SEO consultant.

Do not fall for fancy names like ‘Google Guru’, ‘SEO Master’, ‘Google recommended SEO expert’ etc. Companies are just trying to grab your attention and Google doesn’t recommend any particular SEO.
Don’t be tricked by the membership status of SEO consultants. Having ‘SEOMOZ’ or ‘SEMPO’ membership doesn’t make them better from the others as these memberships are bought, not awarded.
Take my advice, stay away from companies who provide you guaranteed ranking and conversion based on their special relationship with Google. All the SEO consultants have relationship with Google, and it is complicated, trust me! Not even the most experienced SEO consultant can offer you guaranteed conversion as it’s beyond his/her control. Conversion rate depends on a lot of external factors like your market share, your brand’s awareness etc. Same goes for quality traffic as you only get quality traffic through conversion!
Always check if the company has its own blog. If they do not have their own blog that shows that they don’t care about their own SEO. How can you expect people to help you who don’t help themselves at the first place!
Don’t let SEO companies confuse you with jargons like image & hyperlink optimization, W3c validation, page rank etc. They are all part of page optimization and if the company is trying to charge you separately for them, you should think twice! I will discuss more about pricing tactics used by different SEO companies and how you can differentiate the real SEO expert by asking for their pricing in the next blog.

Always do your research on SEO before you hire someone to handle your SEO. Gaining some knowledge about SEO will help you to make the right choice. So, keep doing your research and look out for our next blog!