Expression Web Blog

I’m using Twitter a lot ( see Tina Clarke ) with TweetDeck which enables me to use a number of keyword searches which are sorted into columns. One of which is Web Design.  Some of the tweets are about web design at the university level On a blog post at Alistapart.

University? Are you kidding? The first place web design is taught is where it needs to change BEFORE it gets to the University level. My local college ran a ‘web design’ course. Trust me it was painful particularly the frames section. I thought it was just my local college that was not one not two but three or four years behind. From what I’ve read online it seems the problem is more widespread.

1. The people that hire the people that teach the courses, should do their homework on what is expected in that subject that SHOULD be taught.
2. This needs to start before the university level too.

The article supports getting active with the local community if you are able to do that to help the teachers. However, in order to teach standards it really does not require that much in the way of resources. There really is no excuse when it comes to common or garden web design that such stomach crunching methods as frames are still taught.

However this is blog is focused on Expression Web, so how does Expression Web fit into all this?

Many colleges are STILL teaching FrontPage, not only FP but the older versions, not only the fp and the folder versions but, Horrors! THE BOTS, Shared borders, themes and more. WHY? The people teaching either are not web designers or are pimping themselves. You cannot pretend to be THAT far behind and have a passion for the product. ( Previously FrontPage which has evolved into Expression Web ).

Sometime last year I joined a Newsgroup where some teachers were asking for feedback on their new curriculum based on Expression Web. Needless to say once again it involved absolute positioning and advocating continuing use of some bots.

If your going to teach Web Design do it The Right Way.

Does Yahoo Search Engine use the keywords meta tag in its guidelines for webmasters?

I wanted to see what Yahoo had got in the way of guidelines for webmasters, to do well in the Yahoo Search Engine and whether the meta tag keyword was still in use in its directory.

How do I improve the ranking of my web site in the search results?

 ”Use a “keyword” meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page.”

So according to Yahoo, they recommend webmasters to use the keyword meta tag

<meta name=”keywords” content=”KEYWORDS GO HERE”>

They might say that, but do they actually use it as one of their criteria for their algorithms when producing search results? That however is another question.

How are web documents ranked?

“When you search on Yahoo!, our search engine instantly searches and sorts billions of web documents, makes a decision on each one’s comparative relevancy to your search query, and offers these web pages as ranked results. Search engines don’t have the ability to ask questions, so they rely on the search terms you enter to interpret and determine the intent of your search.

Yahoo! Search ranks results according to their relevance to a particular query by analyzing the web page text, title and description accuracy as well as its source, associated links, and other unique document characteristics.”

Not exactly a specific answer but as near as we can get. The last question to ask is:

Will using the meta keyword tag harm my website in any way if I use it?

The answer there is yes and no. There might be an algorithm to count in meta keywords on Yahoo as part of the relevance or there might not be. Including it as a guideline in Yahoo Help certainly suggests that might be so. Either way, is there an algorithm for excessive over use of the meta keyword tag? We don’t know.

Conclusion

1. Use the meta keyword tag but keep it to a respectable 150 keywords or keyword phrases. Present like so: keyword,keyword keyword, keyword etc
2. Make sure the keywords or keyword phrases you are using are actually within the page the keyword meta tag is on
3. Lastly use different relevant keywords for EACH page of the website

Read the Yahoo webmaster guidelines indepth for more suggestions on what Yahoo Search Engine wants for a site to rank well. Be advised that what you do for one search engine might affect another, however your main point of reference should always be your end user, the person that visits your site.

Let the search engines see your content first for better Search Engine Optimization and Accessibility

By using the correct doctype, some CSS and either a table or divs, we can trick the search engines into reading your content first rather than your menu. Of course the same can be achieved by using a Javascript menu with bottom text links, but that’s not always user friendly. For the header you would use a style background in your CSS file, so there is no actual content. Accessibility wise, this is better for those using screen readers so they get to the content first and don’t have to plow through a menu.

Table Trick

This code Table Trick (.txt download) ignores Netcape 4 which requires that the cell not be empty, you can use a 1×1 pixel .gif but do we really need to cater nowadays for that old an browser? If that’s what you want add in a 1×1 .gif to the empty cell. Open the .txt file in notepad and right click and Select All, right click again and press Copy, go to Expression Web and open a blank new page right click in Code View and press Select All, Right click again and press Paste, position the cursor in Design View to update the page and you will see the layout. If you want to use padding on the header and footer you will need to move them out of the wrapper div.

Div Trick

This code Div Trick (.txt download) is the Holy Grail of the Div Trick written by Alistapart in 2006. Nowadays we are just about to move into Internet Explorer 8 and we have Firefox 3, time to drop those version 5 type browsers that we don’t really want to use anyway because of security issues. Most people using IE are using either IE6 or IE7.

Conclusion: To be completely safe the Table Trick with 1×1 .gif is the way to go if you want to use this. I think I prefer a JavaScript menu with text links at the bottom and a skip link myself on balance. One has to weigh up which direction one want’s to support.

Test Table and Div Tricks by turning off CSS in the browser

To test both of these tricks save the page and View in a browser that allows you turn off CSS Styles or has an addon to do so,

1. FireFox:  View – Page Style - No Style
2. Opera:  View  – Style – User Mode
3. Internet Explorer: IE7 – It’s easier to use an addon such as AIS Web Accessibility Toolbar and use the CSS Tab – Disable CSS

To add: I was getting fed up of IE crashing, so after ten years I made FireFox (I hate the bookmarks) my default browser to save me grief when I merely click a link. So of course I was viewing the Holy Grail Div Trick in FireFox 3 where it works. It does not appear to work IE7, but does work in Opera. Perhaps a conditional of some sort?

Thoughts and comments?