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Ron of Japan
Joined: Sep 28, 2001
# Posts: 192
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Posted: 2005-Jan-30 14:51
Yes, another one of these questions. Things happens so fast that what may have been true a few months ago may not be true today. But I don't know and that's while I am asking.
I have a site with html (tables) and some css. It ranks high but doesn't look all that great. I want to give it a face lift but am concerned I might hurt my rankings. What is the best way to re-code it?
Could you use stuff like flash and js provided you used an external sheet? I mean like, if it isn't in the source code, then the robots don't see it either, right?
Also, can someone tell me what xhtml is in a nutshell? If you use it, can you use any file endings - for example .asp?
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10418
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Posted: 2005-Jan-30 20:39
>> I have a site with html (tables) and some css. It ranks high but doesn't look all that great. I want to give it a face lift but am concerned I might hurt my rankings. What is the best way to re-code it? <<
Reduce the <body> code to headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms. Get rid of all the <font> and <center> tags. Get rid of all 1-pixel spacer gifs. Make it so that the code describes the content. Validate that code. Correct all errors. Next, go back and style that markup using an external CSS file. You only need classes for any markup that is a "one-off" on the page. Advanced CSS sees usage of absolute positioning of those elements, but I really would not worry about that just yet.
>> Could you use stuff like flash and js provided you used an external sheet? I mean like, if it isn't in the source code, then the robots don't see it either, right? <<
JavaScript is always best off placed in an external file, with one line of HTML to call it. Within an HTML file, a large amount of JS is clutter. Using an external file reduces the clutter, and allows that code to be cached in the browser and re-used by other pages of your site without using your bandwidth.
I avoid flash. Much of it is not well done. There are two things that flash can be used for. One is for small logos and graphics within an HTML page. The other is a complete section, or site, done entirely in Flash. The latter bars your site to a large number of visitors. If you have full flash content, you should provide a full HTML alternative for your non-flash users.
Turn off flash in your browser, then try and visit sites like Gucci, Armani, etc. You're totally barred without Flash. Then try a site like H&M. They provide both Flash and HTML content and both are well done.
>> Also, can someone tell me what xhtml is in a nutshell? If you use it, can you use any file endings - for example .asp? <<
XHTML is a very strict version of HTML. You MUST validate your document. Several tags in current HTML are not allowed in XHTML. Unless you are going for bleeding-edge, validate your code to HTML 4.01 Transitional, or maybe to HTML 4.01 Strict. XHTML isn't necessary. There are problems with XHTML specifically regarding the MIME type that is used with it -- incompatibilities with IE no less. Unless you fully understand those issues, and the server settings required, stick to valid HTML 4.01 code.
File-endings are irrelevant. You can call a file whatever you want, just as long as it is served with the correct MIME type that announces that it is "text/html" or "text/javascript" or "text/css" etc.
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Jan-30 21:16
I completely agree with g1smd, those are very good guidelines to follow. I'd add, don't use much positioned CSS construction unless you are ready to do a lot of testing cross browser, there are many bugs present in many browsers that makes the move to css/p not a trivial thing.
Use a clean standard table for your layout and you'll have very few display issues cross browser, but avoid nesting tables. Clean table for primary layout, all sub sections laid out with divs/ul/ol will give very good results, and be very fast loading for visitors.
XHTML is something that will simply make your pages slightly harder to work with, and as g1smd says, actually gives you less options in terms of what tags you can use. There is nothing more ludicrous than making an XHTML page that does not validate with 0 errors. And there's nothing sillier than making a page XHTML 1.0 strict unless you are delivering that page with mime type application xhtml/xml, which is a pain to do. My sites are all XHTML, some strict, all zero errors, but for my clients I'm moving back to 4.01 after using xhtml commercially for a few years, it's just not worth it IMO.
Also note, when you use a doctype declaration, it will change how certain browsers display your page slightly.
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Ron of Japan
Joined: Sep 28, 2001
# Posts: 192
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Posted: 2005-Jan-31 06:06
Ian,
A ham webmaster, huh? I'm 7J3AAB. Nice to meet you. TKS FER UR nice explaination. I normally do not use much js but if an external sheet avoids problems with the SE's I might use more of it. By having an external sheet, should you still keep the code to a minimum? Does it slow loading? Perhaps it slows loading the first time it is downloaded into the browser??? I like to keep my sites running fast. What do you mean by "one-off" on the page? Should I try to use CSS wherever possible? If I aam not mistaken, you can use CSS in place of tables. But does that mean abosolute positioning which lizardz feels is a bad idea? Or, is it possible to create the tables in CSS use something like div or class?
Do you have any suggestion for an ideal width of a webpage? I have kept my pages to 660 but feel I could go wider. I have mostly shopping sites. IMO a wide site somehow looks more impressive as to having content.
73,
Ron
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Jan-31 20:26
"Should I try to use CSS wherever possible? If I aam not mistaken, you can use CSS in place of tables. But does that mean abosolute positioning which lizardz feels is a bad idea? Or, is it possible to create the tables in CSS use something like div or class?"
Yes, you should try to use css wherever possible. Yes you can use CSS/P instead of tables, and yes that technique is radically harder to implement, is far far more unstable crossbrowser, and requires much more planning and skill to implement well, and no, it adds exactly nothing to the user experience. Bots don't care either. And yes, you can fully style any html element with CSS, including table, td. All my sites are full CSS, and most use a table for their main layout.
If you want to support older browsers like Netscape 4 be aware that NS4x CSS support is almost non-existent, and many css methods will totally crash that browser.
Ideal width for a webpage is around 750px if you want a static layout, which is easier to control cross browser. 600 px will look very narrow in 1024x768 or 1280x1024. And doesn't give you much room to work with.
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Ron of Japan
Joined: Sep 28, 2001
# Posts: 192
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Posted: 2005-Feb-01 02:32
lizardz,
Thanks for your comments. Let me make sure I understand you. You say bots don't care about tables. Did you ever ask one? You hear all sorts of things. I don't know what to believe. I personally do not think tables are a problem for bots. I would think tons of flash and js would be if they appear in your source code but not if they are in external sheets.
I do not care about NS4. If I lose a csutomer or two because they use NS4 I don't mind. We have to get away form that anyway. I do care about more recent browsers. If you feel css-p has problems with compatability with the browsers more recent than NS4, I think I should probably avoid it.
Yeah, 750px width is probably a good width. But don't you think it might still be too narrow if you want to put navagation links on both sides with main content in the middle column?
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Feb-01 05:44
"If you feel css-p has problems with compatability with the browsers more recent than NS4, I think I should probably avoid it."
If bots had problems with tables there would be no websites in the search results. Bots don't care about html hardly at all, except for things in <b>, <h1-6>,<a href=> and some other formatting stuff. To see what a bot sees when they visit your webpage download lynx browser, that shows it almost exactly.
the only people I've ever come across who would try to tell you that bots care about css/p or tables are css zealots. It's true you can do some things with css p you can't do with with tables, but you can also do some things with tables you can't do with css/p. I can make you a fully stable layout with tables in about 15 minutes, that's totally stable, that will display exactly the way you want in all browsers. To make something only a fraction of that stability would take a day or two in css/p. And it wouldn't be as stable. Currently as far as I know, there are only a handful of major sites that use css/p, and almost all of them use two sets of code, one for pre IE 6 browsers and other old browsers, and one for new browsers. That's how macromedia does it. ESPN just gives you an error page to update your browser.
To me using CSS/P is an expert level thing, I do it, I'm pretty good at it, but I don't recommend it unless you are quite good already, and have extensive experience in cross browser display issues and bugs, which can be spectacular, even from the same version of firefox, using two different skins I've seen a layout fail with css /p.
What can be a problem is cluttered html. CSS use unclutters the html.
For netscape 4 you simply deliver unstyled html to them, that works very well, and actually looks better than trying to give them partial styling.
For 3 columns [virtually impossible in css by the way, in the sense of 3 full columns, I've done it but it's very hard] 750 is a bit narrow, but I think still something like 40% of users have 800x600, so you're kind of stuck. If there was IE support for min-width and max-width a lot of these issues wouldn't be issues. By the way, IE 6 is currently the worst css supporting major browser, so it's kind of hard to ignore.
If you use a liquid layout, it will look really weird on very narrow or very wide screens, which is why it's not used much. Pusher gifs can help that problem a bit, but it's all a hack long term, I just make mine 770px and don't think any more about it, it's fine.
[ Message was edited by: lizardz 01/31/2005 09:57 pm ]
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Ron of Japan
Joined: Sep 28, 2001
# Posts: 192
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Posted: 2005-Feb-01 07:34
Well you seem to be really up on this subject. Do you think 770px with html, some CSS, and three columns is OK? Or, do you think I should forget about three colums? What I have been thinking of is a navi bar on both sides with a wider middle column for content. As to css-p, I think I will shy away from that. Sounds too time consuming let alone the rest of the stuff you have mentioned.
Just curious, Lizardz, are you a website designer, SEO, webmaster, programer, or all those things in one?
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10418
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Posted: 2005-Feb-01 14:57
>> What do you mean by "one-off" on the page? <<
You can style an element, like <p>, or <img>, or you can style a class like ".important", ".notice" etc.
What I often see is code that has a classname on EVERY HTML element, and that is not necessary.
Compare:
.normaltext { style info; }
.important { style info; }
<p class="normaltext"> blah blah blah </p>
<p class="normaltext"> blah blah blah </p>
<p class="normaltext"> blah blah blah </p>
<p class="important"> blah blah blah </p>
<p class="normaltext"> blah blah blah </p>
with:
p { all paragraphs styled like this; }
.important { font-color: red; }
<p> blah blah blah </p>
<p> blah blah blah </p>
<p> blah blah blah </p>
<p class="important"> blah blah blah </p>
<p> blah blah blah </p>
Use the class name just for the one-off instance. Style the basic elements for the rest of the document, without assigning classes to them.
--... ...-- 
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10418
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Posted: 2005-Feb-01 14:59
Reduce the <body> code to headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms as the first step, without worrying about what it looks like at this stage.
Get the semantics right first. Validate the code. Check the Outline by using http://validator.w3.org/detailed.html and checking that your usage of headings is logical.
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Ron of Japan
Joined: Sep 28, 2001
# Posts: 192
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Posted: 2005-Feb-01 15:28
"Reduce the <body> code to headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms as the first step, without worrying about what it looks like at this stage. "
I am afraid you have lost me here. Are you saying to ruduce the amount of html in a webpage by using code like this:
td {
font-size: 11px; line-height: 150%;
color: #6c4d5f;
}
__... ...__ ... _._ . .
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lizardz
Joined: Nov 12, 2004
# Posts: 1394
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Posted: 2005-Feb-01 23:05
css means cascading stylesheets, the cascade is the main thing newbies mess up, including me. However, that's because there is a learning curve with css, and it's not nearly as easy to master as html.
g1 is just trying to help you avoid some of the newbie errors, like applying classes to everything. Work from the most basic structures to the smallest, the styles cascade, so for example if you set the body tag to have arial font as a default, you don't need to declare arial fonts anywhere else on the site or stylesheet. To use different fonts, all that's required is a style that has that font, all styles cascade and override the ones above them, both in the css file itself, or the on page css, the css in the header will be overridden by tag level css.
That's one reason for example you want to avoid using percents for font sizes in many cases, if the body font size is 90% then you have a td font size of 90%, some, but not all, browsers, will make that 90% of 90%, while others will leave it as 90% of a hundred.
These are the types of issues that make css hard to do. If all browsers supported css exactly the same, always, there would be many fewer problems, but that's not the case, and probably never will be.
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10418
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Posted: 2005-Feb-04 21:52
>>>> Reduce the <body> code to headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms as the first step, without worrying about what it looks like at this stage. <<<<
>> I am afraid you have lost me here. <<
All your content should look like:
<h1> ... </h1>
<p> ... </p>
<p> ... </p>
<h2> ... </h2>
<ul>
<li> ... </li>
<li> ... </li>
<li> ... </li>
</ul>
<h2> ... </h2>
<p> ... </p>
etc.
NOT
<p> <font face="blah"><font color=""><font size=blah"> ...</font></font></font> </p>
<p> <font face="blah"><font color=""><font size=blah"> ...</font></font></font> </p>
<p> <font face="blah"><font color=""><font size=blah"> ...</font></font></font> </p>
Get rid of all the font tags as a first step.
Additionally, if you find yourself spacing things out by using <br><br><br> between blocks of text, then delete the line break tags and enclose each block of text inside its own <p> ... </p> tag pair, so that it IS a paragraph. If what you have is a list, then code it as a list. If you have tabular data then code it as a table.
Use the Outline checker in the HTML validator to check the document structure.
Use the HTML validator to check the code is 100% OK too.
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