The beta stage is one of the transitory stages any application or software undergoes during its production and development process. One simple example is Gmail which has been in the beta stage for a long time now.

There are two types of reactions users generally have towards beta software, websites and web applications. One set of users are simply delighted to be the first ones to test the new version of a particular site or application. Others however, tend to be simply annoyed with beta versions.

This annoyance is largely attributed to the unpolished aspect of the beta phase. Usually, in Boston web development circles, beta versions are released for the main purpose of getting active users to test it and report for bugs.

In the software release life cycle of any website or web application, the beta stage comes after the alpha stage (wherein new features are added).

Chris Campbell of Particle Tree is just one of the serious web users who wishes websites paid more attention to the proper development of the same. There is enough hype created during certain beta launches to instigate anticipation for a particular product or service, but if there is no attempt made to implement changes then all the hype is rendered useless.

Web development in Boston as practiced at Cosmos Creatives Boston pays attention to the proper steps of the software release life cycle. We create websites, develop them and launch them only after they have gone through the right channels of testing- speedily of course!

Image credit: Flickr

Widgets are fun. Period.

That was my opinion when I first discovered that widgets like ‘noughts and crosses’ games and ‘cartoon of the day’ could be peppered across a website or blog to liven things up.

From then to the present, I have added informative, useful, adaptable and a host of other really nice adjectives to one of my favorite parts of Web 2.0- widgets. There is simply nothing that cannot be done with the right widget in hand.

One of my favorite widget-loving blogs, Snipperoo has this really great post about some common misconceptions about widgets.

You don’t need to be a professional in website design to add rich applications like widgets and neither do you need to be a whiz at web development in Boston to implement them. All you need to do is customize a widget of your choice and voila, you have something on your blog or website that will not only add value to user-experience but to your business/service as well!

We decided to add this snazzy corkboard widget from Rock You! on one of our blogs. A couple of photos, sticky notes and funny graphics was all it took to give readers on this business blog a glimpse of the online shopping portal attached to the website it was promoting.

The returns and site visits it helped bring in- in terms of online marketing was immediately noticeable.

Cosmos Creatives Boston stuck to a minimalistic blog, with the focus on content (as any good blog ought to do). The various widgets added in were more than just icing on the cake- they had a purpose, viz. promoting the products and services.

Smart website promotion, what say?

You must have come across them. They are rather ubiquitous on the WWW and occur wherever there is a certain level of asynchronous communication with a server, a web browser and a neutral platform.

Rich internet applications have the sophisticated look and functions of desktop software, but the difference lies in the fact that they are honed to be operational on a web page. Their prominence has been triggered by Boston website design professionals and even novice designers applying technologies like Flash and Ajax Frameworks.

The growth of the internet as a medium of data and information exchange too has led to the emergence of RIAs in a major way. From all the applications and usability of RIAs they might very well be on their way to making the internet a Web 3.0 experience.

Rich internet applications are automatically updated, allowing users the ability to process them. The comparatively high level of immunity to viral infection makes RIAs much better executables.

RIAs are not without drawbacks however. From an SEO point of view, the text featured in a rich internet application might not be indexable by search engines. RIAs also need constant internet connectivity. Screen readers are also shown to face certain difficulty in detecting any dynamic changes in the HTML content.

Clever web development in Boston techniques and innovative website design sensibilities can outwit these shortcomings of RIAs; similar to what we are able to do at Cosmos Creatives Dubai.

Get in touch with us to know more.