By David Lason

"Great 8" Must Haves of Any Web App

There are thousands of web developers out on the market and not all are created equal. When planning to create a custom web-based application there are 10 things that stand out in my mind about what really is important and cannot be ignored in developing software. There will be some that disagree with this list, but isn't that the point in the first place?

1. Speed
First and foremost, I believe that speed is more than a feature. Speed is the most important feature. If your application is slow, people won't use it. I see this more with mainstream users than I do with power users. I think that power users sometimes have a bit of a sympathetic eye to the challenges of building really fast web apps, and maybe they are willing to live with it, but when I look at my wife and kids, they are my mainstream view of the world. If something is slow, they are just gone or telling me they need a new computer.

2. Less is More
Less is more, unless you are talking about Generation X'ers reliving the glory days at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. For web development, I really believe this, particularly early on when you launch something. Over time, you can grow the utility of your service. Facebook today probably offers 20 or 30 different features of significance in their service, but when they launched, it was really quite simplistic. I think that is true of most great services.

3. Instant Utility
What this means is the service is instantly useful to you. If you build a service and the user has to spend an hour configuring the service, setting it up, importing contacts, doing a lot of data entry, I don't think most people are going to put up with that. The service has to be useful right out of the box.

I see a lot of websites and applications make this mistake. There are a lot of tricks you can use to create instant utility and then go from there. A good example of this is if you are building an information service, you can crawl the web to populate the service initially, even though long term you expect to get the data some other way. It is critical to  give people something right off the bat that is useable.

Another example of this is when Google launched Google Video maybe 4 or 5 years ago, around the same time that YouTube launched; if you uploaded a video to Google Video, after you uploaded it you would get a note that said, "Come back in about a week and your video will be shown." Of course, that didn't work very well. YouTube provided instant encoding and you could see the video literally seconds after you uploaded it. That is what I am talking about when I use the term "instant utility".

4. Make it Personal
Personal means many things to many people, but essentially, it is a lot like instant utility. You want third-party developers to infuse your application with their energy. You also want to make your application infused with your user base's energy. The more of their data and their personality and energy that they can contribute to your application, the more ownership that they feel of it, and the more likely they are to advocate it and become, in effect, your marketing force. It is very important to make your application personal for everybody. That could mean allowing people to change graphics, backgrounds or even design their own avatar.

5. Software is Media
This is one topic that I continually discuss with potential clients. My view is that software is media today. Particularly consumer software, when people use it, they approach your software in the same way they would approach media. Women do not buy People magazine because it has boring stories, nor do men buy Men's Health to become a fitter man. Your website needs to have an attitude and a style. Separate yourself and attract your potential customers to you.

6. Make it Programmable
Talking to a group of web app developers, I think this probably goes without saying, but I think it is important to make your application programmable, and make it possible so that others can build on top of or connect to or add value to, in some way, your web application. That means API's, and in my opinion read/write API's. The founder of Delicious told me a couple of years ago that if it is not read/write then it is not an API. That has sort of become religion inside our firm. We really think if it is a read-only API, it might as well be RSS. The most important thing about programmability is that when people can add value to your application, they are in effect adding life to your application.

7. RESTful
I don't know that I'm necessarily using this term correctly. I think most of you know what the term REST means. It means something very specific from a software architecture point of view, but my reason for putting this up here is slightly different. It is a bit of a misuse of the term, but I am going to try to make sense of this anyway.

In a REST architecture, your resources have a URL and they can be called at that URL. That's kind of the software architecture that is outlined in the REST approach. What I mean is that the entire application, everything in the application has a URL, and ideally, a very clean and comprehensible URL.

If you look at something like a Twitter list, you will see a URL that says something like "twitter.com/ingenux/list..." and that will be all of the lists that I am on. There is really nothing that you can click on or look at in the Twitter application that does not have its own unique URL. You can take that URL, send it via email, or put it out into the social media world. The entire Twitter application is built so that the URLs are well understood by everybody who might use them.

8. Clean
Clean, to me, means that the application cannot be busy on the page. Your experience should be of the application, without unnecessary distractions. This can be achieved with white space or dark space; it doesn't really matter whether it's white or dark, but lots of space. It's important to really put the focus on the page's functionality. You can do this with big fonts, without too much functionality presented on any one page. Make the design very clean, simple, and inviting, and make it so the people know, right away, what they need to do.

Diversified Exposure Selects Ingenux to Create Online Business Directory Management Tool

27th May, 2010 - Ingenux has been selected by Diversified Exposure, an online classified ad and phone listing service that serves the LGBT community, to build a rich web application. This application will give Diversified Exposure a single, unified tool that addresses all of their business needs in one simple to use system.

The website's goal is to be user-friendly, with a complex back-end that will allow Diversified Exposure to automate their sales process, track all employee information, and maintain a more efficient business process. This application will also automate customer billing and all management processes. Check back in coming months for exciting news of this project and for the final date release of Diversified Exposure.

Ingenux offers a wide range of award-winning services including custom web design, web application development, custom software programming, flash applications and mobile device software. For more information about Ingenux please visit http://www.ingenux.com

Ingenux Launches A New Web-Based Workflow Management Application For The International Air Transport Association (IATA)

3rd June, 2010  - Edmond, Oklahoma - Today Ingenux announced the release of a new automated workflow web application for the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The new operational and security audit management application will better streamline and manage critical information for the company.

This unmatched software automates many functions that allow for quick, precise, and efficient workflow without the need for heavy manual intervention. The Microsoft-based web application is a feature-rich, 100% web-based collaboration application - with extensive workflow, conditional behavior logic, advanced calculation, reporting, audit/data history log, and integration capabilities.

The challenge was to design an application that allowed for flexible workflow management and on the fly redirection of in-process audits. Ingenux was up to the challenge and implemented a dynamic system architecture with user friendly Ajax forms and controls that allows IATA to efficiently run QC operations.

About IATA

IATA is an international trade body, created over 60 years ago by a group of airlines. Today, IATA represents some 230 airlines comprising 93% of scheduled international air traffic. The organization also represents leads and serves the airline industry in general. You can learn more at http://www.iata.org

About Ingenux

Ingenux is a full service custom web design and software development firm with focus on complex database driven web application and desktop software development. Companies hire Ingenux to design, develop and deliver innovative custom software applications that transform their businesses into efficient money making machines. Our slogan, "We Develop the Hard Stuff" is our commitment to take challenging problems and turning them into innovative business software solutions for any type of business that are efficient, user friendly, cost effective and designed for each customers individual business model. We take pride in solving current challenges our customers face as Ingenux custom software makes businesses run better.

You can learn more about how Ingenux can help your business at http://www.ingenux.com

We Appreciate Your Help!

Ingenux would like to thank everyone who participated in the Letter Carriers' Food Drive this past month to help feed hungry Oklahomans. The Oklahoma Regional Food Bank exceeded the goals set this year and collected a record breaking 739,000 pounds of food from donations in 52 cities and 32 counties in Central and Western Oklahoma.
For more information on the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma visit:
regionalfoodbank.org