Search Engine Notes
Google, Excite and Northern Lights all ignore meta keyword tags. More search engines are starting to do the same thing. Almost everyone ignores comments, small text, text whose color is too close to the background text, ect. Some search engines read text after the <body>tags, however, some broswers show this text (oops), so that's not a good bet. Besides, that's often so far down the page that it's not ranked very high. <h4> is ranked better than <b>, even if most people can't tell the difference. <alt> tags are also ignored by search engines now. Hmmmm. For those people who missed it the first time, .gif, .jpg, and .swf files are all ignored by the search engines. This tends to upset the Flash fanatics, but that's their problem. Sometimes HTML is still the right tool for the job.
I've also noticed that, even though I only submitted my site to the major search engines using selfpromotion.com, I'm getting hits from everywhere. Even little tiny search engines are linking to me. The secret seems to be good html, and lots of textual content.
posted by Ken Boucher 2/21/2001 12:10:14 PM link to this item
What is this mess anyway?
Sometimes I have a tidbit of something that I feel should be recorded, but I don't have enough to justify building a whole web page for it. I also may feel that just adding it to my links page may not be doing it justice. When that happens, this is a good temporary dumping ground.
posted by Ken Boucher 2/21/2001 11:58:37 AM link to this item
2001. A time insanity
Man. Even longer between updates than I thought. I've been on a 404 hunt for the past week, dealing with bad links. Xenu is a great windows program to hunt them down. Give it a look see.Also, I'm now addicted to Analog for going through my log files.
posted by Ken Boucher 2/1/2001 10:42:31 PM link to this item
Is it September already?
Sorry for the long delay between updates. I've been absorbed in clients, techniques, Flash 4 & 5, multiple beta tests and other insanity.However, this section is about to get some attention again, so perhaps things will look up. I have a number of updates to make on my site including links, techniques, and philosophies. Due to the number of project I've been involved in, I've had a crash course in Web Design - The things you should have known but no one told you....
posted by Ken Boucher 9/12/2000 05:56:19 PM link to this item
Useful (?) tip of the day
Normally I use Deja to read usenet and Yahoo to read my mail when I'm on the road. However, if you haven't set them up and you want to check your mail, give Mailstart a try. As I don't know if the delete button deletes mail off of your server or not, I don't recommend pressing it until you find out.
posted by Ken Boucher 3/31/2000 01:33:45 PM link to this item
Browser Share Koan
"Look at our log files. None of our customers use Netscape."
"I've looked at your code. No one who uses Netscape will become your customer."
posted by Ken Boucher 3/30/2000 09:30:34 AM link to this item
We're Back
We're up and running at pair.com!
posted by Ken Boucher 3/23/2000 09:13:41 PM link to this item
Moving Van Go
Well, we're moving to pair.com. I've had enough of Netfirms. Between the bogus ads, the downtime (which you would think cuts into their ad profit), the server speed (slow enough to cost me a job this week), and their inability to code the HTML for the ads correctly, I just give up.
If you want free hosting, they're still the best free hosting service around, but when you need to depend on your page being up, perhaps it's time to move to pair. And at under $5 a month for a simple 30 meg account, the price is right.
posted by Ken Boucher 3/21/2000 03:36:09 PM link to this item
The Proxomitron
- Fixes everything that's wrong with the web, and it has the coolest registration method around. Just go there!
posted by Ken Boucher 3/14/2000 11:10:14 PM link to this item
Is it worth it? ...part 2
On the heels of coffee cup, I'm now pointed to 40tude HTML. I've got to admit that Dreamweaver is looking good now...
posted by Ken Boucher 3/14/2000 10:41:48 PM link to this item
CSS
I keep looking at my hits and wondering, who the heck are all these people with Microsoft version 3?
I mean, what's the point of CSS if it's just going to look bad. Eventually they'll release Netscape 5.0, but until then there's no point in trying to CSS these pages up. (Well, I could always upper left a background but still....)
I'm convinced that progress in internet design is only made by people who don't care what their pages look like. Then someone else comes along who see's the dang thing the way it was meant to be seen and tries to find a way to make it look that way for everyone.
On the other hand I might just need some sleep.
posted by Ken Boucher 3/10/2000 04:36:14 PM link to this item
Blogger tutorial coming
I've been told that my Blogger tutorial will be published soon. Looks like I'll be getting paid with a copy of Macromedia Director 8. Yes! Now I can make my own Shockwave games!
posted by Ken Boucher 3/10/2000 03:01:28 PM link to this item
Is it worth it?
Ok. There are plenty of perfectly good freeware and shareware editors out there. It's my belief that something like HTML-Kit and HTML-Tidy works fine (I still use both). If you're doing this seriously, spend the money and buy something like Macromedia Dreamweaver. For the most part, I just don't find middle of the road software a worthwhile buy.
That being said, Coffee Cup Software appears to have some very good looking tools for a decent price. If you want something better and cheap, you might want to take them for a test drive. If you do, let me know what you think.
posted by Ken Boucher 3/10/2000 02:37:01 PM link to this item
Better, shorter, URLS: redux
Missed one: Alias Names, which is another Short URL service, appears to be back.
posted by Ken Boucher 3/10/2000 12:28:50 PM link to this item
Better, Shorter, URLS
In case you don't know, you can get a decent URL without moving your account. For example, my start page is at http://www.virtualsurreality.com/, which isn't bad, but it's not good either. However, you can also find it through http://go.to/bons, which is a lot better. For those of you without a decent domain name (yeah, like anyone can spell VIRTUALSURREALITY...), it's worth looking into. There's a number of these places available so try a few variations, such as here.is.
Remember, there's a lot of good two letter country TLD out there (.to, .at, .is, etc...)
And if you want a cheap short domain name, and can't get a .com, try Christmas Island. .cx TLD's for cheap.
posted by Ken Boucher 3/10/2000 10:03:45 AM link to this item
Wanna be an apple?
Normally I hate it when a browser takes over your PC. I size my windows the way I want. I don't need theme music fighting with Winamp. In short, I normally hate all the "really cool web tricks", simply because they're invasive.
This also means I tend to try to make my pages suitable for any browser on any machine with any connection. I try to keep the pages under 40K (the magic size). My only real vice is that I love Flash, simply because I can provide a lot of content without using a lot of bandwidth. (Try it sometime, you'll be amazed.)
All that aside, I found a Flash site that breaks all the rules and I love it. This is so well done, I simply have to pimp it. Go to Yaromat and click on the third square over (wanna be an apple?). Then just sit back and let your PC go wild...
posted by Ken Boucher 3/6/2000 12:40:01 PM link to this item
<rant>
I'm not sure this will ever be a occupation for me, as opposed to a hobby. The problem is that basic (bad) web design is much too easy, and it's one of the careers any kid can do from home. I really suspect that in 5 years, this will be the alternative to working for Mickey-D's and all those webmasters charging $60,000 for a 4 week project will soon be unemployed.
The truth is, I try to charge a rate equal to what I make as a Cobol analyst. In addition I try to give my client a maintainable piece of software that's well designed rather than the pirated convoluted junk I've seen too many times. The problem is that the new clients are often lacking in internet experience and have no way of knowing they're being taken.
Oh well, honesty has it's rewards, but money isn't one of them.
posted by Ken Boucher 3/5/2000 08:49:15 AM link to this item
Flash issues
I've been using Macromedia Flash a lot lately and I have to find it a superior tool for presenting information and navigation (as well as pure entertainment). The files are extremely small, they're dynamic, and they look good at any resolution. The same cannot be said about any other common internet graphic presentation. However I do have some issues that I should take up with Macromedia. Meanwhile I'll throw them here in case someone has a solution.
- Is there any way of getting rid of that stupid "click here" hand? Normally it's useful, but it's ruining the look of a project I'm working on.
- How the heck do I update window.status with a mouseover? When I move my mouse over a link in the Nav bar, I'd like the destination to show up in the browser window just like it normally does for HTML (on the popular browsers).
- I would kill for "right click to open link in new window". Arrrghhh!
- With graphics, there are <alt> tags for people not using graphical browsers. With Flash, you have to maintain two sets of pages. I fear that just as people don't use <alt>, <summary>, <em>, or <strong> tags, the day will come when people only use Flash. Unfortunately, I see no end to it except the eventual legislation of web pages to allow accessibility, and I do not want that to happen.
posted by Ken Boucher 2/29/2000 12:09:34 PM link to this item
<em> vs. <i> and <strong> vs. <b>
I am of two minds on this issue. A lot of people tell me to use <em> and <strong> instead of <i> and <b>. The reason behind this is that <em> and <strong> work the same on visual browsers but have functions on non-visual browsers that the old fashioned <i> and <b> tages just don't have. My thought process works like this: "If the two are really interchangeable why the heck don't you just change the browsers to do the same thing regardless of which tag you use."
So I thought about it. The problem is that <i> and <b> actually control how something is going to look (style) while <em> and <strong> actually describe the content. According to current HTML theory, that would mean that <i> and <b> should actually be replaced by CSS sometime (yeah, right...) and good coders will use <em> and <strong>.
What you choose to do is up to you. I'm trying to get into the habit of using <em> and <strong> when I should. Slashdot has become my training ground for this. However I still teach <i> and <b> to novices. They have enough to deal with in my opinion, without having this issue confusing them.
posted by Ken Boucher 2/23/2000 05:41:17 PM link to this item
so let it be written, so let it be done
If you want a clue who I am, visit Virtual Surreality and take a look around. What you see there will be reflected here once I get the hang of things.
posted by Ken Boucher 2/23/2000 12:31:40 PM link to this item