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Customizing computer technology such as websites, blogs, layouts, browsers and profiles is part of using the technology. It is a vast topic and covers many areas just by searching the word customizing on Google. The reason for customizing a website is to be unique and individual in a world of many millions of individuals. In the first part of this article I have discussed how customizing a website for presence is essential to businesses to be professional and competitive in the online market. Part 2 of the article covers more reasons to customize.

Customizing for Presence

The reason a company decides to customize a website is mainly to establish an online presence. More reasons for companies to customize are provided by Custom Web Designs in Part I of this article found at:

http://www.webupon.com/Search-Engines/Customizing-Your-Computer-Technology-How-Important-Is-It.565053

Google recognized that search engine optimization will make a website stand out when all websites are custom designed. The popularity of a topic, the repetition of certain words in a website description and the keywords used throughout all aid the viewer in finding the content they want. This is true when doing a search offline as well. When searching for a book or magazine people will search by topic also.

Customizing Covers for Exclusiveness

At an Indigo Chapters bookstore, the magazine section of the store pointed out that customizing a magazine did not help achieve uniqueness or make them stand out. People were searching by category or by topic when they went up to the magazine.

The magazine area was a brightly lit rectangular room with hundreds of magazines together on shelves. It had every kind of magazine possible, grouped into categories. Did any one of these magazine stand out more than another?

On first glance the magazines all looked the same. Each had a bright picture, creative cover, appealing color, and catchy headline. The only ones people went to were the ones on the topics they were interested in. The photos on the magazines, placement on the cover or layout did not stand out in the crowd. The magazine title, lead the reader to the magazine, not the customized design.

Customizing Browsers to Meet Wants

Customizing is “cool” according to young people. It allows a person to feel like their wants are being met, especially if they know what they want. Mozilla Firefox is a browser that understands a person’s desire to customize and to do it easily. This is their most important feature. The add-ons are easy and numerous.

This is how they advertise their add-ons: “Why not customize your Firefox for the things you really love to do? Take your browser from simple to spectacular. Add a personal touch to your browser with Fashion Your Firefox, a simple Web application that customizes your Firefox browser based on your interests and online activities. Select multiple add-ons that fit your needs and install them with just one click.” They have understood the idea that people want to make choices and do things the way they want them done, easily.

Image via Wikipedia

In November, 2008, Mozilla Firefox announced that they had reached a milestone. The 1 billionth add-on download occurred on that day. Justin Scott, at the Mozilla Add-ons Blog said this about the milestone, “This is a very exciting week for Firefox add-ons, with the launch of Fashion Your Firefox yesterday, offering a new way for first-time add-on users to customize their browser.” At the blog, a user can ask for or provide new ideas for add-ons.

Customizing Software to Meet Learner Needs

Recently, in Australia, a character-based animation software tool, named MARVIN was developed as an educational tool to help people communicate to their audience. The audience was indigenous students, people in the health industry, and government agencies.

The designer of Marvin Software, J. Easterby Wood, found that if communication involved relevant information, fun, language-specific terms and ownership of the information, then an audience would be much more attentive and engaged in learning.

In January of 2009, a radio interviewer, Desley Blanch wanted to know the audience he intended his software to be for. She wanted to know who he had in mind when he said that almost anybody can create their own characters with training videos. They are able to tailor them to specific communities, cultures and languages. She asked if it was simple to do even without being computer literate. The developer’s goal was to ensure that no more than 4 buttons was used to create it.

Here is what he reasoned: “So I thought what if you could actually create a tool whereby the community could take the generic information that had to be delivered, whether it be for health or education or governance, but actually make it language-specific and be built by the community, so that when it is delivered to the community, it was actually represented the community members and the community language and the community information that was there.”

Another interesting feature of this animation software design was that it recognized that the students and teachers and people had different learning styles. So, by creating an animated education tool that met different learning styles all at the same time was important. People could read the content, they were able to listen to the content or they could see what the character was doing as an animation tool to enforce that content.

Customizing helps a learner to feel that their wants are being met. If they can choose what they want, they will favor the technology or program that gives them more of what they want. The ability for students in class to create content that they can share, with a classroom around the world, that can be modified to the language of the people is huge, according to the designer. The learners took ownership of their content and their learning.

People take ownership of an idea, a creation, a website, and browser when they customize the add-ons, suggest the add-ons or write the add-ons themselves. The collaboration on a creation aids everyone in meeting a variety of wants and desires. Many owners and creators make many satisfied users.

 This articles shows how software designers, websites creators, browsers developers, and search engine optimizers are attuned to the idea that customization is important. Customization in the area of computer technology is relevant to today’s developer and user for uniqueness, professionalism, presence and ownership.

Sources:

http://www.webdesignandmarketingprojects.com/importance-custom-web-site-designs/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/?application=firefox

http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2008/11/19/1-billion-add-on-downloads/

http://www.abc.net.au/ra/innovations/stories/s2444077.htm