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Showing posts from April, 2013

How readable is my website? Test how easy it is to read

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You want your readers to be able to quickly scan your web page and pick out the information they are after. But how easy is it to read your website? What we need is reliable readability tests! Online readability tests are quick tools to measure your text.  Take a look at the following two sentences: "The afore mentioned web resource provides statistics on the ease of readability of documents." Gunning Fog index: 14.17 "This website is great for measuring how easy it is to read some text." Gunning Fog index: 5.60 ..both mean the same thing - but have vastly different reading levels.  The Gunning Fog index is just one measurement. It indicates the number of years of education needed to understand text on first reading. Obviously the second sentence would be understood quicker and by more people. Check out this online readability test  www.online-utility.org  - just cut and paste the text.  It has a number of different methods of analysing your text ...

What is a crossdomain.xml file?

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A crossdomain.xml file is a file that usually sits in the root folder of your webserver.  This file is basically an opt-in to allow access to your data from outside your web domain.  This is the crossdomain bit - you have to actively give permission for someone to "trespass". Many web applications require access to data from somewhere different than where the app file originates.  The crossdomain.xml file gives these web apps permission. Things that may require crossdomain.xml access: Flash SWF Flex Adobe pdf reader Silverlight Example of a crossdomain.xml file: This following example of a crossdomain file basically allows no access, it's the strictest policy.  <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM "http://www.adobe.com/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd"> <cross-domain-policy>     <site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies="none"/> </cross-domain-policy> If you want to al...