Thursday, September 24, 2009

Anchor tags and SEO

<a href="example.html" title="Put keywords in a natural language phrase" target="_blank">What people see </a>

Don't get confused that http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_links.asp doesn't include the title attribute; the offical spec does.
To stop the search engines from following add:
rel="nofollow"

Monday, September 7, 2009

pngfix for ie6 (Seems I try a new one each time)

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Latest favorite used on ElisabethLindberg.com is just added to the ie6.css.  Add class="png" to the element that has the background image.  Needed to slide the div 30 px to the left for some reason.  Then needed to skew the contents of the div to the right.
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If the PNG isn't large or complicated:
Forget PNG24 altogether. Use an PNG 8, "Adaptive", 256 colors, 0% Dither with Alpha transparency set in Fireworks and save using File, Export (regular save doesn't work).

The image looks ok in IE6 and fine in modern browsers.
See http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=E4024 and http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/09/18/png8-the-clear-winner/ for details.
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No, not a transparency fix, this just discusses getting consistant color fooling around with Photoshop settings:
http://www.swiss-miss.com/2009/10/consistent-png-quality-across-browsers.html
Note the commentor, Kevin, who gave the clue that "the “Convert to sRBB” option is in the little arrow dropdown on the right-hand side (above the “Interlaced” checkbox)"
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http://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/demo/
(Had unexpected trouble with this. Maybe didn't upzip properly?  Grasping...)
Best aspect: Works with html "img" tags and css background images.
Most important downside: Doesn't work with background positioning. Not great to need the two little files in the root directory.
Usage notes: Put the css code inside the ie6.css file and don't forget to set proper tag that has the background image. (Never thought about it before, but it's weird how the css is still needed if taking care of it for an html image tag. The demo code includes img { behavior: url(iepngfix.htc) } after all.
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http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/pnghowto.htm (pngfix.js)
Most important downside: Doesn't work for css background images. This is such a common need, I've really stopped using this solution.

Oh for the day I stop supporting IE6 for my sites.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Wireframeing

iPLOTZ sent junk mail this morning (something about a contest) and they got me to log back in. Sneaky devils! I had forgotten how good this looked.

Will use it on the next new project