Web Design Tips and Tricks

A Simply Innocent Domain Decision That Can Lead To A Guilty Verdict

Get Web Design Tips and Tricks on mps-web-design.com. A Simply Innocent Domain Decision That Can Lead To A Guilty Verdict topic will increase your understanding on Web Design Tips and Tricks. We at mps-web-design.com only provide news, articles, information in Web Design Tips and Tricks. Web Design Tips and Tricks at mps-web-design.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

In 'Yahoo.com', the top level domain name is .COM. The .COM name is the most common top-level domain name, and is used to indicate that the domain name is owned by a commercial enterprise.

Other common top-level domain names include .ORG (for non-profit organizations), .NET (for network and Internet related organizations), .EDU (for four-year colleges and universities), .CO.UK (UK websites) .GOV (for government entities) .TW (Taiwanese sites) ...and it doesn't stop there.

There is currently a new wave on the internet. It's the new .WS, racing its way towards internet popularity.

The number of Internet users is expected to hit 300 million by 2005. As internet use increases, so will domain name purchases, hosting accounts and websites. Currently, there are about 20,000 new registrations per day.

Now, like everything else in life, registering a domain name comes with its own risks and therefore caution must be exercised in doing so. Here's a simple example. You have been looking for a niche market over a period of time and finally came across a winner...

...Pet care!

Excited and full of optimism, you quickly register the domain name petcare.com.

Then, something strange happened...

...You receive a letter from some attorney representing Pet Care Corporation claiming that you have violated there trademark laws! Oh no! How could this be? You ensured that your domain name was available before registering it. You even went as far as to checking with Deleted domains and now this!

Well, guess what just happened. Pet Care Corp. has always been a brick and mortar business but just shortly after you started your petcare.com website they decided to go online and discovered that petcare.com was already taken.

Trouble, big trouble...

...The fact that you registered your domain name before the patented Pet Care Corp., their advent on the internet gives them autonomy over the use of the domain name you have chosen!

Ridiculous! How could this be?

Well, the following might surprise you:

Holders of valid trademarks are protected from infringements of that trademark by the Lanham Act.

According to Section 32 of the Lanham Act:

Any person who shall, without the consent of the registrant--

(a) use in commerce any reproduction, counterfeit, copy, or colorable imitation of a registered mark in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services on or in connection with which such use is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive ... shall be liable for trademark infringement. 15 U.S.C. Section 1114(1). Section 43 of the Lanham Act applies to

(1) Any person who, on or in connection with any goods or services, or any container for goods, uses in commerce any word, term, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof, or any false designation of origin, false or misleading description of fact, or false or misleading representation of fact, which--

(A) is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association of such person with another person, or as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of his or her goods, services, or commercial activities by another person, or

(B) In commercial advertising or promotion, misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of his or her or another person's goods, services, or commercial activities....

A good example of the foregoing, is the case of Cardservice, Int'l v. McGee, 950 F. Supp. 737 (E.D. Va. 1997)

Because of McGee's use of 'cardservice.com', Cardservice International has no access to an internet domain name containing its registered mark, and must use a different domain name.

Cardservice International's customers who wish to take advantage of its internet services but do not know its domain name are likely to assume that 'cardservice.com' belongs to Cardservice International.

These customers would instead reach McGee and see a home page for 'Card Service'. They would find that McGee's internet site offers advertisements for and provides access to the same services as Cardservice International--credit and debit card processing. Many would assume that they have reached Cardservice International or, even if they realize that is not who they have reached, take advantage of McGee's services because they do not otherwise know how to reach Cardservice International. Such confusion is not only likely, but, according to McGee, has actually occurred at least four or five times since he began using 'cardservice.com'. Transcript of Preliminary Injunction Hearing at 366.

So, before registering your domain, make sure you are satisfied that your intended domain name will not be infringing on any company's trademark or patent rights!

Today's Jamaican Patois special:

You say in english: Do you have a US visa?

We say in Jamaican patois: Yu ha' none Us visa?


15,000 Mb Hosting For $4.95/mo. - 4.95 web hosting, Free domain registration! Free setup and online website builder included.
CourtRecords.org - Background Checks. - Simply The Fastest Revenue Online!

This post was originally published on May 13th, 2004. As others are writing about the topic, I thought bringing it out of the archives would be worthwhile.

A little recap

The idea of placing multiple states of buttons and other elements that are used in background images took its roots, I believe, from Pixy's Fast Rollovers. The CSS Zen Master extended this to another purpose in CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. Didier Hilhorst came up with a nice application of this method, and I worked it backwards in Responsible CSS - Recycle your background images.

The idea behind the 'sprites' method can obviously be extended to any html element, and there are tangible benefits for doing this, just as long as the designer does his or her usual homework.

Benfits of using the 'sprites' method

What are the possible the benefits of using this method? Essentially it lies in faster download times for your web content.

Readers of Andy Kings book, Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization will notice that this method reduces http requests and makes more efficient use of the data packets used to transfer files to the users computer, and that that is a good thing.

Packet size and http requests

From Web Page Design and Download Time, by Jing Zhi of Keynote Systems (seen here - pdf), cited in Andy's book:

The basic performance principle is therefore to make fewer requests and transmit fewer packets. From this principle, we can derive two basic design rules for wellperforming Web pages. First, reduce the overall size of the page, thereby reducing the number of bytes (and packets) to be transferred over the Internet. Second, limit the number of embedded objects on the page, such as images, each of which must be requested and transferred separately from server to browser.

They also found that it was the number of packets and not necessarily the overall size of the page that was important. If a packet could hold 1460 bytes (the figure given in the article) and your object was 1600 bytes, it would require two packets. They found that this object would transfer at the same speed as another object that was greater in size but still fit in two packets.

Potential payoff

The potential payoff for using this method versus individual images, then, is a faster download time due to reduced number of packets and fewer http requests.

Reducing http requests is easy. One file instead of two or three etc. is simple. But packet requests? That depends...

An example

The number of packets sent will depend on the size of the file and the users internet connection.

As an example, lets look at the fiftyfoureleven.com logo at the top of the page. When this design was first being coded, that link consisted of two 3.34kb images, one for the link state and one for the hover state. Now, by using one image that contains both states and simply bumping it back and forth depending on the hover state, that has been reduced to one 5.35 kb image. Right there is a savings of 1.33 kb. Good news.

Now, for arguments sake lets say that a packet can hold 1460 bytes (packet size for connections greater than 128kb/s = 1500 bytes -40bytes for tcp/ip headers). The two image method used 6 packets, 3 for each image (3.34/1.46, rounded up). The single image method uses 4 packets (5.34/1.46, rounded up).

Things are looking good.

How to optimize

In his alistapart article, Dave refers to the image that holds all of the sprites as his 'master image'. The key to benefitting from this method is to ensure that the file size of your master image isn't a bloated equivalent versus the sum of its pieces.

Conclusion

Great benefits can be realized when combining a master image from slices that fall well below the size of one packet, as that unused packet space goes wasted.

After doing a little more research, it seems that packet size can vary depending on the connection rate. That being said, it may be rather difficult to come up with a firm rule here. To play it smart and safe, try and:

• build master images that are smaller then the sum of their collective slices (by combining images of similar colors, for example) or
• rather than use a different distinct image for a certain element, reuse one that you already plan on using elsewhere.

This isn't exactly groundbreaking advice, however having seen the results acheived with the logo on this page, it can be seen that using the sprite method versus individual images at minimum does reduce http requests and even further it can reduce file size which in turn can reduce the number of packets sent.

More Articles: