For vacationers, a trip to Disney World is always enticing, but now more than ever, people are clamoring for Disney’s vacation packages. Compared to past rates, which were criticized for actually being higher than the cost of buying components of a package individually, today’s vacation deals are not only convenient - but economical too.

There are several different vacation packages to choose from for 2006. The 2006 Magic Your Way Vacation Package is the most affordable and it includes accommodations at the Disney Resort, the Magic Your Way Base Ticket (which grants entrance to one theme park per day and can be upgradeable to a “park hopper” ticket as well), and a Magic Plus option or with an extra cost, a No Expiration option.

Likewise, if you (or your travel agent) books a package online, a Disney Photopass will accompany it, and is essentially a voucher for a 5″ x 7″ photo of you and your fellow vacationers, snapped by a professional photographer. Other goodies that you can qualify for online include a meal voucher for Planet Hollywood Dining and Merchandize. The voucher can be exchanged for an entrée and non-alcoholic beverage from a select menu.

Another vacation deal is the 2006 Magic Your Way Package Plus Dining and it includes accommodations to Disney owned and operated hotels and the opportunity to experience several unique dining locations across the Walt Disney World Resort. Every day, at participating Walt Disney World restaurants, you can receive one table service meal with an appetizer, entrée, dessert, and non-alcoholic beverage, one counter service meal with entrée, dessert and non-alcoholic beverage, and one snack (ice cream, popcorn, medium soft drinks, etc).

Disney’s Magic Your Way Premium Package is a fancier, deluxe package and includes just about everything: hotel accommodations, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and unlimited access to golf, miniature golf, water sports and other recreations. Also, purchasers of this package are admitted to Cirque du Soleil’s exciting La Nouba, and various park tours and the like. As well, children from four to twelve years old can participate in selected resorts at the Disney Children Activity Center.

The grandest package of all is Disney’s Magic Your Way Platinum Package. In addition to the benefits of the premium package (like hotel stay, breakfast, lunch, dinner, recreation, and a ticket to Cirque du Soleil), you will also receive a spa treatment, extra recreational opportunities - including private golf lessons, a reserved seat to the exciting fireworks show Fantasmic!, unlimited childcare in the Child Activity Centers, a ride on the Fireworks Cruise, itinerary planning services, in-room child care, the Platinum Plan keepsake, and turndown service.

For groups of eight or more, there is a special package called Grand Gatherings. There are extraordinary benefits offered here that small groups simply can’t take part in - special events can be booked, like the International Dinner and Illuminations Desert Reception, Safari Celebration Dinner, Good Morning Gathering, and Magical Fireworks Voyage.

Nevertheless, an important thing to know is that standard full-price Disney vacation packages presented by tour operators are convenient, but there are no “bargain” prices. More often, Disney World packages are to be purchased through Walt Disney Travel Company or the WDTC.

Simon Oliver has an interest in Recreation and Hobbies related topics. To access more information on las vegas vacation packages or on hawaii vacation packages, please click on the links.

Heathrow is 15 miles from the central area where most people’s accommodation is found. Quite close by modern standards. As a result, Heathrow passengers do use taxi cabs extensively for the transfer into London.

At Heathrow the taxi ranks are outside the arrivals hall of all four terminals. It will come as a relief to many travellers that these are managed with military control. Only London’s regulated black cabs are allowed anywhere near you, you will not be pestered by touts and a controller will make sure there is an orderly queue and boarding procedure. There is always an ample supply of cabs waiting for your custom.
Fares are complex, but should be around 45-50 GBP depending on distance, time and time of day.

You can save yourself a few pounds by booking a private cab in advance on the web. The cab will park in the terminal car park and the driver will be there to meet you as you exit the customs hall.
The cheapest operators will save you around 10-15 GBP. Do scrutinise the agreements for hidden charges which soon escalate. Most common extras are a ‘Heathrow pickup fee’, a car parking charge and waiting time. Most contracts stipulate an hourly waiting charge if you do not clear customs within a set time after touch down. At Heathrow you’ll normally pass through customs with luggage in around 30-45 minutes after touch down.
Just Airports are a proven operator with some of the lowest fares, you’ll find them searching on the web.

The defacto public transport option you’ll probably end up on if you follow the flow is the Heathrow Express train. This has to be one of the most expensive train journeys in the world, mile for mile. A single fare for 2006 is 14.50 GBP, (slight reduction for return).
The Heathrow Express runs every 15 minutes for most of the day whilst flights are operating. There are two stations at Heathrow. The train terminates at Terminal 4 and then stops at Heathrow Central for Terminals 1,2 and 3. From Heathrow Central to London’s Paddington station takes just 15 minutes.

Do take care do find out where Paddington is in relation to your accommodation. Unless your hotel is in Paddington it will normally be cheaper to take a cab direct to your hotel if there is 3 or more of you.

Something the airport authorities somehow fail to communicate is that there is a cheaper alternative to the Heathrow Express, called Heathrow Connect. The Heathrow Connect train starts at Heathrow Central station and makes 5 stops on its way to Paddington, taking 10 minutes longer than the Heathrow Express. Frequency is also every 30 minutes, not 15 minutes of the Heathrow Express.
For this small inconvenience you only pay 9.50 GBP, a substantial discount to the Heathrow Express.
If you are flying into Terminal 4, the Heathrow Express is free between Terminal 4 and Heathrow Central station.

The cheapest transfer option into Central London is to use the London Underground. The Piccadilly Line runs out to Heathrow. Like the Heathrow Express there are two stations, one for Terminal 4, another central station for terminals 1,2 and 3.
Journey time is about 45 minutes into Central London and there are countless stations on the way the trains stop at. There is a train about every 3-4 minutes. There will be an Underground Station somewhere very near your destination.
The cost for 2006 just 4 GBP, easily the cheapest option. This fare is valid to any London Underground station.
The downside of using the London Underground is that invariably the carriages will become very crowded as you get into London. All Central London stations are deep underground and you will have escalators and/or steps to negotiate with your luggage.
There is a ticket office at Heathrow where you can also purchase the various travel passes for Central London that most visitors find very attractive. These give you unlimited travel on London’s bus, rail and underground network.

National Express operates coaches to London Victoria. These are very comfortable coaches with toilets onboard and a proper luggage hold. One way fare is 10 GBP, 15 GBP return.
The coaches depart from the central coach station above the railway station in the central area of Heathrow. The coach station is well signposted from Terminals 1, 2 and 3.
There are 3 or 4 coaches an hour making the journey.
Journey time varies with traffic conditions, scheduled time is 50 minutes.

Hotelink run a hotel shuttle from Heathrow. The service is a shared mini bus service. The bus takes about 10 people maximum. You may be lucky and get the whole bus to yourself, but normally you’ll share with others. The service will deliver you to any hotel in Central London. It’s a lottery how long the journey takes as the route depends on the locations of all the hotels of your fellow passengers.
Cost is 16 GBP per person. If there are more than two of you its cheaper to just get a taxi.

On flying out, all of the public transport options work on the principle that nobody wants to check-in until 05:30 or later. If that is not the case you have a problem. Your only viable option being taxi services. There is a night bus, route N9 that runs out to Heathrow every 30 minutes all night. You can pick this up at Piccadilly, Hyde Park Corner and Kensington High Street. This is a normal red London bus.

If you are wanting to travel to another London Airport, National Express coaches run frequent direct services to Gatwick, Stansted and Luton. On the most popular route, Gatwick, there are around 100 services a day.

For more details of the above and links to all the operators mentioned:

Heathrow to Central London transfers

Heathrow to Gatwick, Stansted and Luton transfers

Bob Handford is an expert about his city, London and is the owner of the website London Hotels Toolkit

In the bad old days of the web, the only way to create even slightly complex layouts was to use tables. Some sites featured silly numbers of tables, one inside the other, to create relatively simple-looking effects. With CSS, though, tables can finally be replaced.

What’s So Bad About Tables?

If you’ve ever worked with a site that uses tables, you’ll know just how difficult it can be. Your HTML becomes a mess of confusing rows and columns, with no clear markers of which parts of the page do what. If you want to redesign the site, you’re forced to try to extract your content from the HTML and start building the tables all over again. With tables, building web pages felt a lot like building a house of cards.

What’s CSS?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS lets you apply styling information to specific parts of your HTML, identified by tag name, or by IDs and classes you specify. This is done using CSS selectors.

CSS Selectors

The first thing you need to know about CSS is the basics of how selectors work. There are lots of esoteric and mostly useless selectors, but the basics aren’t too hard to grasp.

CSS relies on your tags having classes and IDs - the only real difference between an ID and a class is that an ID refers to one tag and one only, while a class can refer to more than one.

If you just have the name of a tag on its own, then your CSS rules will affect all of those tags. If you use a tag’s name followed by a dot and the name of a class, then you’ll affect all of those tags with that class. Using a tag, a hash and an ID name will affect only the tag with that ID. Using the hash and ID alone will work on any tag with that ID, while using a dot and class name along works on any tag with that class. So:

p - all paragraphs p.thing - all paragraphs in the ‘thing’ class p#thing - the paragraph with the ID ‘thing’ .thing - all tags in the ‘thing’ class #thing - the tag with the ID ‘thing’

To add rules to each one of these selectors, you just put curly brackets ({}) after it, and then put the rules in that space - that’s all you need to do to create CSS.

Useful CSS Rules

CSS rules look like this:

rule-name: setting;

Here are some of the most useful rule names and the different settings that can be applied to them.

background-color. Lets you set a page’s background colour using HTML colours (they look like this: #123456).

color. Sets colours for text.

font-family. Lets you set fonts for your text - you can add more than one font name, separated by commas, in case your first choice is not available.

font-size. You can set the font size in px or em - it’s better to use em, as these measurements are relative rather than absolute.

width and height. Lets you specify the width and height of things. You can use px or percentages.

margin. The amount of space around the edges of some content. You can add -left, -right, -top and -bottom to margin to specify these margins individually.

padding. Works the same way as margin, but is for the space between the edges of the tag’s box and its content, instead of the space between the tag’s box and other boxes.

border. Puts borders around boxes. Takes three settings (width, type and colour), so you have to put spaces between them, like this: border: 1px solid black;

text-align. Lets you align text on the left or right, or in the centre (’center’).

text-decoration. Controls some text effects - mainly used to stop links from being underlined, like this: a { text-decoration: none; }

float. Tells content to float over other content, instead of starting underneath it on a new line. This is the tag most often used to simulate the kind of effects that you get with tables - floating a div and setting the main content area’s margin to its width is one of the easiest ways to create a sidebar, for example.

Everyone has a different reason for coming to Cyprus. Whether you’re planning a visit for tranquility, a family adventure, a romantic getaway, to interact with new people, or to recoup your health and well-being, Cyprus has an accommodation to suit every purpose.

Before diving into the hundreds of hotel listings, keep your ultimate vacation goal clear in your mind by making a list of your most important requirements when it comes to lodging. Sort hotels into categories by overall atmosphere, such as “family friendly,” “health & wellness,” “leisure,” etc, then listing individual hotels and their unique attributes under each category.

To jumpstart your search for the perfect Cyprus hotel, take a look at the list below of 5 accommodations in their respective atmosphere categories, chosen by people who live in Cyprus:

Health and Wellness
If your vacation goal is to revitalize and receive the treatment of a Greek god or goddess, then Aphrodite Hills is a choice worth considering. The resort offers a uniquely Greek Thalassotheraphy treatment, inspired by Hippocrates, the Father of modern medicine. Thalassotheraphy works to rejuvenate the cells using heated sea water, producing an exchange of minerals and toxins between the blood and the water. Aphrodite Hills also offers a roman based spa, Retreat Spa, and Sauna Jacuzzi Bath Massage treatment.

Family Friendly Environment
Adults and kids can keep themselves thoroughly entertained at the Elia Latchi hotel with a wide selection of games, restaurants, and theme nights hosted by the hotel. Mom and dad can even enjoy some alone time while kids play in the kid’s club or receive care from the hotel’s babysitting service. When it’s time to return to your room and recount the day’s events, you can do so in an apartment style villa, complete with separate bedrooms and a kitchenette, perfectly suited for a family.

Leisure and Entertainment
If your style is to be in the center of the action, many travelers with similar desires often enjoy the Sandy Beach hotel. Located just 5 miles outside of the bustling city of Larnaca, this hotel is close to a variety of cultural restaurants, nightlife, and attractions.

Relaxation
If you and your traveling companions would rather relax and enjoy the serene natural beauty of Cyprus without the crowds, the ZX Holiday Villas hotel offers a quiet and natural experience. These 1-4 bedroom apartment-type hotel suites come with complete kitchenettes and are either located on the beach or just a few kilometers away. You won’t find games and clubs here, just peaceful relaxation and a stunning view of Cyprus’s almost surreal natural color palette.

Romantic Getaway
Couples consistently recommend the romantic Mediterranean garden and ocean views of the Almyra. The stylish, modernly decorated rooms feel more like a luxurious home than a hotel. Live music plays most nights and buffets and barbeques at its two restaurants keep couples satisfied with delicious cultural foods. While the hotel caters to every type of guest, the more refined activities such as tennis and diving make the Almyra an attractive choice for couples traveling without children.

When browsing through hotel listings online for any destination, always check to see if the agency is located in the country you plan to visit. Local travel agencies know which hotels are most reputable and trustworthy in the area. A local online travel agent can point you in the direction of the best deals and help you to find hotels offering free car rentals, free night stays, and special deals where children stay for free.

The author is a small business internet marketing consultant and the cofounder of nGenuity Solutions. For further information on Cyprus hotel options, check out http://www.bookcyprus.com. You can also reserve a Cyprus villa for a more secluded vacation getaway.

With over 30 million visitors a year, Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world. From the gorgeous mega-luxury hotels to the exclusive Vegas shows to the unbeatable buffets to the 24 hour casinos, Las Vegas has something for everyone.

More and more travellers are booking their Las Vegas trips online. So should you book your next Las Vegas vacation online? Here are the top 5 reasons to consider booking your Vegas vacation online:

1) Save Money

You don’t have to pay travel agent commissions which can amount to significant savings of hundred of dollars. Plus there are direct-to-customer online travel services that give you special discounts just for booking online.

2) Convenience

Book your Vegas vacation from the comfort of your own home. You don’t have to go out to pick up the tickets or haggle with travel agencies. You simply shop, click, book and print - easy as that. (and if you have questions, there’s usually a toll free number you can call for 24 hour support)

3) Larger Selection of Las Vegas Packages:

Instead of just choosing from the latest travel agent specials you can choose from EVERYTHING that’s available. You know what you want in a Las Vegas vacation better than anyone else - and you can easily browse everything that’s available to you online.

Many online travel agents upload new vacation packages weekly so you can monitor the new packages being offered and find an amazing deal.

4) Easy To Search & Book

With easy search functions and large travel package databases, you simply plug in your search parameters and get a listing of possible trips, prices and descriptions. The easy search functions make it simple and fun to find the Las Vegas vacation of your dreams

5) Research Hotels and Find Out What Other Travellers Think - BEFORE You Get There

Ever travelled some place, got there and thought - ‘I wish someone had told me what this place was really like before I spent all this money!’?

Now you can know what your Vegas hotel is like before you stay there. Many online travel agents have pictures, detailed descriptions and even downloadable brochures on each Las Vegas resort.

And some online travel agents are also introducing a Travellers’ Opinions section where people can leave feedback and rate their hotel vacation experience. They rate hotels and also leave comments on their experience. This is a great tool for you to not only find out which hotels are popular with other travellers but you can usually also pick up other Vegas travel tips that can save you money.

Considering all this, it’s no wonder that more and more people are booking their Las Vegas trip online, it’s easier, cheaper and you end up making a better choice (and thus having a more enjoyable vacation).

Cait Farrell is a frequent visitor to Las Vegas and writes for Book Vegas Online - a website helping you save hundreds of dollars on your next Las Vegas vacation.

For more tips on how to have your dream Las Vegas vacation visit our Vegas Tips section at:

www.BookVegasOnline.com/Las_Vegas_Travel_Tips.html,

A huge and growing mobile UK market following the rule of introducing the next iphone has now made it extremely tough work for people to compare mobile phone special offers. Most of the time, there are lots of aspects that individuals need to look into when making phone comparisons that some of the most chief ones get missed out.

As a result, you always end up owning a mobile phone which is either too costly or a phone which is not entirely suitable for your phone call and SMS profile. So we mention in this guide about the 2 most top things that folk should regularly look at when making mobile comparisons. This may help mobile customers land a mobile phone that at least meets the standard criteria people are looking for.

The total cell phone market is booming on the basis of astonishing features like mp3 players that keep getting added every month. Nevertheless, an extraordinarily large majority of people acquire cell phones based on their appearance, brand and awesome hype only to regret later when they note that their brilliant handset lacks a very standard feature like sending emails or picture messages. Tons of phenomenal pricey phones sell on the basis of marketing, brand image and looks at costs that are unjustified given the lack of features. For e.g. the very latest apple iphone does not let folk forward messages to all. Unfortunately, Apple Iphones target audience, eighteen to thirty five, gets to regret the absence of this cell phone feature only after spending weeks worth of salary on it. And so make sure that your phenomenal new mobile phone has all the features like interactive maps you require before buying it. Since mobile phone organisations will never tell people about the tremendous features that their phones lack, reading up online cell phone articles is the best way to do it. Save money with MobileShop and Nokia.

Sure, Thanksgiving is about eating that fabulous meal, but the good news is the traditional festive meal doesn’t have to ruin your efforts towards a healthier lifestyle. Try the following tips to ensure a healthy and delicious thanksgiving day!

1. Add some pumpkin!

Pumpkin is a great food that we usually eat at Thanksgiving. A matter of fact, canned pumpkin is higher in vitamins than fresh pumpkin. Add pumpkin to soups, breads, or even mashed potatoes.

2. More veggies less bread

Make stuffing with less bread and add more onions, celery, vegetables, or fruits such as dried cranberries or apples. This simple step will add more health benefits and decrease some of the calories.

3. Decrease the fat in your gravy

Use a fat separator or refrigerate the pan juices and skim the fat off before making the gravy. This can save up to 55 grams of fat per cup (495 calories) and help you to avoid having greasy gravy.

4. Don’t forget the veggies

Thanksgiving is such a great time to get in all of those wonderful fall veggies. Sweet potatoes, yams, squash, and green beans are a great way to add more vegetable side dishes.

5. Pies

What is thanksgiving without pie? All in moderation is what I say. If you don’t have a preference, opt for pumpkin pie instead of pecan pie and save hundreds of calories.

6. Don’t Rush!

Slow down, savor your food, and enjoy your family and friends. Give yourself a chance to feel full and satisfied. Remember, it isn’t the last time you will eat these foods and you can always have more of the leftovers tomorrow.

7. Partake in some fun activities

Take a leisurely walk, go for a bike ride, or start a family tradition of playing touch football. Getting active will help you to burn more of the extra calories you ate during the day rather than storing those extra calories as fat. Get out and enjoy some movement.

8. Most importantly…

Thanksgiving comes once a year. Have fun sharing your thanksgiving meal and celebrating your family’s traditions.

Meri Raffetto is a Registered Dietitian, free-lance writer, and is a recognized professional in the area of nutrition and wellness. She is the owner of Real Living Nutrition Services providing online weight loss programs to help people make sustainable lifestyle changes. Learn more at: http://www.reallivingnutriton.com

Accounts vary as to why the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder chose to name the dainty archipelago that lies just off the coast of Dubrovnik after deer (elafos in Greek). One version has it that the assemblage reminded him of a deer’s antlers while another holds that these animals once inhabited the islands. Whatever the reason, the name has stuck, and appropriately too since they retain the beauty and mystery the Romans associated with these graceful animals.

Just three of the islands, Koloep, Lopud, and ipan, are still inhabited, each of which can easily be reached by the inexpensive local Jadrolinija ferry that runs four times daily (twice on Sundays) throughout the year from Dubrovnik. All three islands have private accommodation, hotels, and small tourist offices that are open in summer only. Both Koloep and Lopud are, like the Old City of Dubrovnik, car-free.

A mere twenty five minutes by boat from the mainland, Koloep, the smallest of the inhabited islands at a mere 2.35 squares kilometres, was once the favored summer home of the Dubrovnik aristocracy (as if living in Dubrovnik itself wasn’t pleasant enough!) Consequently it’s littered with all sorts of ruins, some dating back to Roman times. Much of the island is covered in thick forest with the result that the settlements of Gornje elo and Donje elo, are crammed into its two largest coves. The clear seas nearby allowed their inhabitants to develop a reputation in past centuries as the Mediterranean’s most renowned coral divers.

The most “developed” of the islands, although the word hardly seems appropriate, Lopud was likewise once a playground of the Dubrovnik nobility. It’s the second largest of the islands at 4.63 square kilometres and forty minutes by boat from Dubrovnik. It features the finest ruins of the three islands - in particular the remains of the Rector’s Palace (which today are preserved as a verdant park) on the outskirts of its sole town and hill-top Franciscan Monastery, whose remains offer wonderful views over the island and its many ruined churches. Lopud’s greatest pleasure is an earthly one, however, which is to be found in Sunj Bay, on the far side of the island, whose calm waters are popular with boaters and whose pleasantly sloping white-sand beach is much beloved by the small number of discerning bathers aware of its presence.

The largest (at 16.5 square kilometres) and wildest of the islands, ipan contains a wide plain given over to wine and olive groves surrounded by hills, many of them covered in the remnants of ancient churches. There are few better ways to get a sense of how Croatia and indeed the entire Mediterranean once was than by strolling across the valley at the center of the island along road between the settlements of Suura and ipanska Luka. The two towns are 65 minutes and 100 minutes away from Dubrovnik respectively by ferry, although some ferries only stop at Suura.

Owen Lipsett, winner of IgoUgo’s Member of the Year Award, is a contributing writer to http://www.travel-2-croatia.com

India is one of the most populous nations in the world. The city of Mumbai, better known as Bombay, carries this notion to ridiculous ends.

Mumbai - Bombay

Mumbai is located on the west coast of India and is a sight to be seen. Until 1997, the city was known as Bombay, but the government for some esoteric reason changed the name. “Mumbai” was the name used by locals for years and refers to a local goddess. Most of the city buildings and agencies still incorporate Bombay into their names. I know it gets confusing which is more or less a good way to describe the city.

A little know fact about Bombay is the geographic nature of the city. When originally settled, the city was actually a collection of islands. As the need for land has grown over the years, the water has been pushed back to the point where all the islands are now connected in one land mass. How’s that for a topic at a party?

Serenity

If you’re looking for a serene vacation destination, Bombay is simply the worst place you could go. Upwards of 17 million people live in the city. Spend a week there and you’ll feel like you’ve rubbed up against every one of them. The city is so packed with people that getting from point “A” to point “B” can take forever. You will not find a secluded restaurant, tourist attraction or spot on the beach. Don’t even begin to think otherwise.

Attractions

Bombay is full of interesting things to see if you can get to them. Victoria Train Station is definitely worth taking in for the unique architecture and absolute masses of people. The gardens at Horniman Circle are good for a stroll and one place where you won’t feel completely overwhelmed with masses of humanity. For a humorous time, you can hit the beaches looking for one of the movie crews. Yep, Bombay is the home of the movie industry in India and is often referred to as “Bollywood.”

In reality, the best thing to see in Bombay is Bombay. Just get out and walk. You’ll see snake charmers, vendors hawking everything under the sun, the occasional elephant and taxi drivers that put a New York cabbie to shame.

Poverty

India has serious poverty issues in the larger cities. Bombay has a brutal poverty problem. As much as 30 percent of the population is living in severe poverty. By severe, I am referring to people living in cardboard shacks with no running water and so on. Even the most seasoned traveler will be overwhelmed. If you are going to visit Bombay, be prepared for it emotionally.

Whether you call it Bombay or Mumbai, there is no denying the uniqueness of this city. Some travelers can’t stand it while others find it intoxicating. Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t give it a visit.

Rick Chapo is with http://www.nomadjournals.com - makers of writing journals. Travel journals are great travel accessories and travel gifts for student travel, family vacations and adventure travel. Visit http://www.nomadjournaltrips.com for more travel articles, travelogues and travel stories.

Can I Do My Own Website?
Many businesses or individuals in Windsor who want a website commonly ask the question: “Can I develop my own website?” The short answer to this question is yes, absolutely. In fact, developing a simple website is easier now than it ever has been. Programs such as Macromedia’s Dreamweaver or Microsoft Front Page have made it easy to develop web pages with little to no skill. Simply pick a pre-made template, type in your text, add a couple of pictures and voila! You have yourself a website, right? Well, sort of.

The simple fact of the matter is, you can’t expect to develop a professional looking, tightly coded, website just by plugging your text into a pre-made template with a code generation tool. Yes, software has greatly improved over the years with how it generates HTML, the markup code that defines the structure of your web pages, but generated code will always be bulkier, and less efficient than hand coded HTML pages.

Most professionals in Windsor develop their HTML pages by hand. In fact, most page developers rarely ever use anything but a text editor to generate their pages. Professional page developers will use HTML for what it was developed for, to describe the structure of a page, and encapsulate the content of said page via the markup tags relevant to the content at hand. What does all that mumbo jumbo mean? Well, simply put, it means that a professional web page developer is going to structure a page correctly, using the correct tags, not just using tags that look right when a page is rendered to the browser. A professional page developer never concerns himself with how the HTML makes a page look, HTML is there to structure a page, not describe how the style is defined. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) describes how the nicely structured pages should look when rendered to the browser. Moreover, the developer structures his/her pages so they render correctly in all browsers, a task that the code generators fail miserably at most times.

What’s In Your Page Source?
Alright, I will be the first to admit that most people don’t care how bulky their web pages are or how inefficient they are coded. Granted, most visitors are on high-speed internet and those extra 500 milliseconds your page takes to load isn’t going to matter, right? Again, sort of. You always have to be aware of how long your pages are taking to load, and how responsive they are for your visitors. Studies have shown that an average user will wait about 10 seconds for a page to load before they navigate away out of frustration. I have a feeling that this study was done before the vast majority of users had high-speed internet. I suspect that tolerance to waiting is actually much lower.

Experienced web developers and web designers will always optimize their images, and HTML to load as quickly as possible. Images that are not properly compressed can easily be 5 times larger than a properly compressed image. Improperly compressed images can easily increase a web page load by 5-10 seconds!

Got Google?
One of the biggest detriments of doing your own web development is the lack of search engine optimization. One of the most common causes of websites having poor search engine rankings is because the page is full of HTML errors which throw off the search engine crawlers. Web pages that are not structured correctly, and have a lot of styling information inline with the content will never rank well compared to websites that are structured correctly with nice clean content.

So does this mean that if you do your own website, you won’t ever get listed in the search engines? Of course not, but if a professional web designer or web developer programs your HTML pages, your pages are much more likely to get indexed correctly. Moreover, most web developers will put a link from their well indexed site to your new site, which will further help the crawlers find your site quicker. If your developer is experienced in search engine optimization (SEO), that will even further liken your chances to high rankings in the search engines.

How’s It Going To Look?
Ok, so we have established that yes you can do your own website. It might be coded terribly, and not rank well in the search engines, but you are still determined to do it yourself. Quick question, how is the site actually going to look? If you are a good designer, and can make a nice picture of how you want your site to look, you can use your code generator to make it look the same right? Not quite.

Getting your website to look the same as what you had envisioned is a very tricky proposition for an inexperienced web designer. Developing for the web is very different from developing a page for traditional print. In traditional print, you have a fixed canvas (the page), whereas on the web, you have several variables to contend with. First, you have no idea what resolution your users will be viewing your web-pages at when developing your website. What looks good at 1024×768 might look terrible at 1280×1024 resolutions. To further complicate things, different browsers can show the exact same HTML much differently. Specifically, Internet Explorer based browsers use a different engine than Gecko based browsers (Mozilla, Firefox etc). It can be truly frustrating even for experienced developers to try and keep things looking the same across the board, but for a do-it-yourselfer it can be an impossible task.

Ok, let’s say you’ve tackled all the compatibility issues. How will the website actually look when it’s done? Will it look professional? Or, will it look like a do it yourself site? If your website is being used for business, what image do you waAnt to attach to your company?

Are You Scared Now?
It really isn’t my intent to suggest that you shouldn’t try to develop your own website. I still maintain that a lot of people can develop a fairly decent site themselves, especially if they have a basic understanding of HTML and a fairly good design sense. One good approach to doing it yourself is to have a web developer that you can consult with on some of the more technical issues. You can save a lot of money by doing it yourself and letting your developer check your work for any major issues with the web pages. Many web developers in Windsor will gladly check your pages over at an affordable hoAurly rate, correcting any major issues.

Having a developer to walk you through some of the more technical aspects of web developing can be a very sound approach if you want to do your own web programming. You really do have to weigh the hourly rate of checking the code against the cost of having the developer program everything.

Sharbel Lutfallah is a Web Developer and Programmer in Windsor. Visit http://www.wiredsolutions.ca to gain more valuable information when looking for your own Web Developer and Web Programmer.