This magic button is almost always forgotten, but 90% of the time when you don’t see what you think you should be seeing on a webpage, the culprit is the same: cache.

Imagine: a few hours after discussing some edits to your site with your trusted designer. Your designer says he just updated the graphics or layout of your website and you’re excited to see it. You go to your favorite browser (which I hope is not IE), and type in your url. “Hm, that’s funny, I thought they said it was updated, do they think every day is April Fools or something?!” Then after an email and a phone call they confirm that they did update the page, you go back to it once again and still don’t see anything different! By this time you are wishing you could reach through the phone and smack somebody. You look on a different computer and see the update, and are beyond confused when you go to your computer and still don’t see the update.

Eventually, the designer tells you to try refreshing or clearing your cache. That sounds like a good plan, but what the heck is he talking about? Cache is one way smart guys have determined the internet can work better and faster. Essentially when your browser (for example Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer) views a webpage it copies it from the internet to your computer. Then if you view that page again your browser remembers that it’s seen it recently, so it displays your local copy rather than connect with the server and download a new copy every single time. Especially with linked images and files such as style sheets and scripts. This helps you see the internet and websites faster. This is a good thing except when you want to see the most updated version in your browser.

There are however a couple ways you may tell the browser to forget the cached version of the page and load it all fresh from the server. The standard shortcuts are (windows) ‘ctrl + F5′ and (mac) ‘cmd + R’. You can also go to your browser options and delete browser history, but that will clear all your cache and not just the page you are on. This is almost always the case when you’re not seeing what you should be seeing on a site. So next time it happens, take a moment and hit F5 to save a headache.

People are amazed at how well Apple is doing, they are doing better now than Microsoft! I think Apple understands the power of design and this has helped get them where they are now. Apple hardware/software (since they are almost the same thing) focus very heavily on appearance and design.

Alex of Airtight Interactive points out:

Apple understands that laptops and phones are the new watches and jewelry. We are using them majority of our waking life. They define us to the people around us. They need to be both functional and beautiful. Apple products have plenty of hardware and software issues, but people are willing to forgive them since the products are so nice to look at.

He also points to the design by Andrew Kim that I love. I hope other companies get into their heads the fact that design really IS that important!

Does your website pass the big bad wolf test?

I’ve been building websites for years and always enjoy the immediacy of designing and coding a site and having it live relatively quickly. Compare web production to the construction industry where projects span out years and even decades in some cases. Even though the web does foster a faster deliverable, there are many lessons from the physical world that help us better understand and manage web projects.

What is the point of a building? It’s a roof over your head, but more importantly it’s a location. People visit and expect it to be there next week. A website is a location as well in fact url even stands for Uniform Resource Locator and a domain name is your address. There are whole sciences about how to attract people to a certain location online and keep them coming back for more. For those with a brick-and-mortar business a website is a portal or even a drive-thru window to permit easy shopping access and a gallery to showcase your products. It allows your visitors to browse and interact with your products or content from their own home. A physical store that is confusing and messy won’t sell much, but clean it up and get some Feng Shui master in there and the same space can be transformed into a pleasant, functional and usable location. So from the tangible world we can learn that we want a location that is memorable, a layout that is intuitive and agreeable and a presence that is easy and pleasing to our visitors.

Building a website also follows the same process as building a house?

First a house takes planning and preparation. It’s best to make sure you understand what it is you want in your house, what materials will be used and how much it will cost. Long ago, construction crews figured out it cost way to much time and money to change projects on the fly and now require them to be nailed down even before groundbreaking. Web designers have not all learned this lesson yet and have been lenient with demanding a spec. Some clients think they can say “I want a website for x” and then expect the designers and developers to telepathically know all the elements of the site and build it correctly the first time. I’ve worked for so-called visionary gurus and they wanted a new website and didn’t take the time upfront to plan the site and subsequently I redesigned their website daily! Trust me, that kept the site from being functional or usable.

Building a house takes a construction crew, with a website it may be considerably less people, but it does help to have a few people each with their expertise. The main goal here is to make sure you’ve got someone who can handle each piece of the project. An architect will draw up the plans for your house after the requirements are discussed. So these blueprints or wireframes as we call them in web design contain the details needed for the project to be completed. They are written with all the policies and codes in mind so that in the end the structure can be valid, functional and above all- usable.

The website, like a house, sometimes isn’t even recognizable until the very final stages of the project. We don’t complain to the foreman that the walls aren’t the right color when the windows aren’t yet hung and the drywall mud is still wet. When constructing a house first the foundation is set and everyone knows that a weak foundations will ruin the whole project from the get go. Once the foundation is solid the framing begins, and although while the house is being framed there are holes in the house all will turn out fine in the end. Looking at a website before it’s actually complete when even possible can be a very scary thing: things don’t fully connect, layouts are screwy, links may be broken and graphics are totally wrong or missing, but all will turn out in the end as long as the construction crew know what they are doing and the client let’s them focus on doing it.

Once the house is up and walls are in and there’s a roof overhead is when things actually start to look right. Now is the time to be focused on the content of the site and putting everything in the right place. Get the walls the right colors and eventually even hanging pictures and accents in each room. Final tweaks to the place or feel of the place, but now is not the best time to start thinking – ‘What if we moved the kitchen to the basement!’ or ‘Oh, We forgot the elevator/fireplace!’. While these drastic changes are likely possible, they will have more of an after-thought and will be either very difficult or very expensive to correctly put into play, or both.

Once last thing to say in this endless analogy comparing a brick and mortar construction to a website project, what about when it’s “done”. When the house is done and the dust has settled and you’ve moved in. There are always things that still need doing: tweaks, fixes, customizations, just plain maintenance, appliances break and plumbing clogs. Not to scare anyone from the american dream, but it happens, even online. Plugins need updating, security holes are found, bugs come up, things need updated. It happens. The trick is to expect things to happen. For a house you can find any number of Home Warranties that protect you from the sudden costs of repairs. Most web design shops will have a similar maintenance plan that warrants a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time to account for such surprises.

And finally the big bad wolf test. Would your website survive a big bad wolf coming to blow your site down? Make sure that whoever is building your website knows enough to not build your house out of straw or sticks. They need to be up on current technologies and you need to be confident in their ability to give you a valid site that can withstand any visitors at your very own online location.