Tonic Fusion Blog

VAT Calculator

2011-01-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

With the start of the new year comes the increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20%. This has unfortunately caught some people by surprise and confused others trying to calculate their VAT returns so we've pooled some extra resources together and created the Tonic Fusion VAT Calculator!

Features

Calculate gross figures from net
Calculate net figures from gross
Calculate net and gross figures from VAT element
Adjustable VAT percentage

Simply visit: http://www.tonicfusion.com/vat-calculator.html

iG3 Web Design and Launch

2010-11-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Our latest web design for iG3 launched last week. iG3 are the official and exclusive UK sales agent for Quofore, a sales force automation solution.

iG3 required a clear and focused web site design to introduce a complex product in an inviting and fresh manner.

www.ig3.co.uk

Politics – What’s in a Name

2010-04-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

With the UK General Election just around the corner we’ve taken a look at the names of the three leading parties.

New businesses spend days, even weeks thinking of the most appropriate name to best represent their objectives, the personalities behind the business and its products and services. A company's name is its identity to the world, a foundation block for its brand and reputation.

Effective brand identities and logos depend upon the clarity and impact of business names. They are integral to the development of trust, credibility, reliability, customer service and repeat business.

With this in mind, lets take a look at the three leading parties heading the 2010 Election Race. The image above strips away their visual identities and logo designs leaving just words... Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats. So when in comes to politics and the leading three parties, what’s really in a name?

conservative

adjective 1 averse to change and holding traditional values. 2 (in a political context) favouring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas. 3 (Conservative) relating to a Conservative Party. 4 (of an estimate) purposely low for the sake of caution.
noun 1 a conservative person. 2 (Conservative) a supporter or member of a Conservative Party.
- DERIVATIVES conservatism noun conservatively adverb.

labour

noun 1 work, especially hard physical work. 2 workers collectively. 3 (Labour) the Labour Party. 4 the process of childbirth.
verb 1 work hard. 2 work at an unskilled manual job. 3 have difficulty despite working hard. 4 move with difficulty. 5 (labour under) be misled by (a mistaken belief).
- PHRASES a labour of love a task done for pleasure, not reward. labour the point elaborate something at excessive length.
- ORIGIN Latin labor ‘toil, trouble’.

liberal

adjective 1 willing to respect and accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own. 2 (of a society, law, etc.) favourable to individual rights and freedoms. 3 (in a political context) favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate reform. 4 (Liberal) (in the UK) relating to the Liberal Democrat party. 5 (especially of an interpretation of a law) not strictly literal. 6 given, used, or giving in generous amounts. 7 (of education) concerned with broadening general knowledge and experience.
noun 1 a person of liberal views. 2 (Liberal) (in the UK) a Liberal Democrat.
- DERIVATIVES liberalism noun liberality noun liberally adverb.
- ORIGIN originally meaning suitable for a free man: from Latin liberalis, from liber ‘free man’.

democrat

noun 1 a supporter of democracy. 2 (Democrat) (in the US) a member of the Democratic Party.

If the three leading parties had the opportunity to set aside tradition and rename themselves to appeal to today’s voters, given the diversity of modern culture, which of the parties would change their name, if any, and what would they change their name to?

Google rates your web site speed

2010-04-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

Google has now introduced ‘site speed’ as part of its page ranking algorithms.

Google is using the speed at which pages load to help formulate and rank web pages that appear in its lists based on keyword queries.

Although this change is only set to affect a very small number of webpages, the speed that your web site loads is relevant to visitors and returning traffic. A fast web site is a more user friendly site.

If you’re worried about the load speed of your web site and would like Tonic Fusion to take a look at its speed to give you an opinion whether the new Google changes will affect your rankings please contact us on 01727 810254 or email info@tonicfusion.com

When designing and building new web sites we follow an optimisation process that includes web site load speed and image optimisation.

As an example of web site speed, pages from the Tonic Fusion web site www.tonicfusion.com take on average 1.2 seconds to load, which is faster than 90% of sites tracked by Google. Our website is graphic intensive due to the web site design. We have optimised our web site for speed and it performs well despite utilising large images and graphics within the page structure.

If you would like more information on how Google is using web site speed read Google’s Blog article Using site speed in web search ranking, or read the BBC technology article Site speed to fuel search results.

New Web Design Delivers Success for Clearway Gritting

2010-03-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

After a recommendation, A.A. Sherriff & Son approached Tonic Fusion to come up with a strategy to raise the profile of their road gritting and winter gritting services.

After a complete research and analysis program was completed the decision was made to give their gritting service its own brand identity and Clearway Gritting became their new business name.

Web designs and the build of a new web site needed to be completed in good time for the winter season 2009/2010. The web site launch was backed up with a targeted Google Adwords campaign.

We’re pleased to report that Clearway Gritting have achieved fantastic levels of success through the introduction of their new web site and pay-per-click campaigns in what was a very cold and snowy winter season. New business has grown in the first season of promotion to the point where expansion is already planned for next winter’s gritting season.

www.clearwaygritting.co.uk

What's the problem with Internet Explorer 6?

2010-01-28T09:36:00.000-08:00

Over the past month we've seen substantial coverage of the issues that can arise from using Microsoft Internet Explorer browser version 6. As a consequence, it has again highlighted the problems that web developers face when creating a web site that has to conform not only to web standards, but must also take into account browser anomalies (of which IE 6 has by far the most).

I'd like to take the opportunity to try to briefly explain some of these problems to those who might not be aware of the extent at which these issues run.

Lets use the hypothetical example of a simple web site that runs off a database providing information to customers about localised services. Users enter keywords to retrieve listed information and can submit their details to enquire further.

Key elements of the site construction that encounter issues with IE6 are:

Object layers behaving differently (appearing behind or in front).
Transparent images are not supported and display with flat colour backgrounds.
Certain text, form and table styling is not supported or behaves differently to other browsers.
Some page elements cannot be styled at all.

With the above in mind, its quite common for a web designer to end up adding additional files and code who's sole purpose is to attempt to fill the holes that IE leaves behind in its wake.

Why bother doing this?

The answer is simple. Until people stop using IE 6, there is always the potential for a site to be viewed by it, and the developer is at the mercy of this unfortunate reality.

Are there no web standards?

Indeed there are web standards! These are generally regarded by many developers as the best way forward for a more unified and structured experience for business and their customers. If you are ever interested in these specifications you can visit the World Wide Web Consortium's web site.

These standards have quickly become indespensable to web developers and help to speed up the job of a site build by reducing the need to test and fix browser display anomalies. I should note that the latest browser from Microsoft (version 8) does a comendable job at supporting web standards in a way that no previous version was able to.

We use 4 browsers in the majority of our testing; Firefox, Explorer, Chrome and Safari. The latest versions of these browsers bring standards closer together than ever before, so much so that any discrepancies can usually be noted down to user preferences than actual unintended display.

IE 6 really has had its day and I personally look forward to developing knowing that we are all singing from the same standards 'hymn sheet'.

The Web Development Team