Meet Our Authors
- Bob S
- Dee Anne Kotzer
- Gabe Y
- Gerry V
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- Jeff Tincher
- Kelly Kilpatrick
- Marge R
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- Sheri T
Two Tips - CSS in Email Newsletters
By Marge R
Anyone who has tried to create an email newsletter using cascading style sheets already knows that there are issues with certain email clients. So let’s talk about which clients have problems, what causes some of the problems and a couple of suggestions on how you create an email newsletter that will look ok in all clients?
Let’s start by looking at the cause. Gmail is one of the worst. In fact, a good rule of thumb has always been that if you can get your email newsletter to look ok in Gmail, then it is a pretty safe bet that it will look ok everywhere else.
Gmail is a browser-based email client, which means that it is already an HTML page. So if your newsletter contains the standard HTML page tags (ie. <head>, <body>), Gmail strips them out, because they are basically redundant with those same tags that already exist within the Gmail web page. And if you think about it, that automatically impacts any external or page embedded CSS that you may have used.
Filed Under CSS, Dreamweaver, Expressions Web, FrontPage, Outlook, Web Technologies |
SERPs - Taking Control
By Marge R
Ok, I promised you some specific HTML tags for controlling your web page’s description in the search engine results pages. If you remember, the different search engines display different things … your meta description tag, the description from the Open Directory Project, or the Yahoo Directory description.
Under all circumstances, you want to add a meta description tag to your web pages, since this is the most utilized. This should be positioned in the HTML <head> section:
<meta name = “description” content = “Your page description here.” />
If you don’t want the search engines to grab the description from the Open Directory Project, use a robots tag to tell them to ignore that description:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp” />
To tell Yahoo to ignore their directory description:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noydir” />
The other piece of information that the search engines like to use is a text snippet from the page content that matches the keyword searched. There is nothing you can do to control this. But really … as searchers, many of us like to see that there is content that matches our search on the web page before we follow the link to the page. So the text snippets are probably not a bad thing.
Filed Under Dreamweaver, Expressions Web, FrontPage, General, SEO, Web Technologies, search |
Search Engine Results Lists
By Marge R
It’s me again, with more information about search engines and how they work. This time I’m looking at the search engine results pages (SERPs) … and how they come up with the descriptions that they use for your web pages.
Have you ever wondered how the search engines determine what to display on their results list pages describing your site? Sometimes it is an excerpt from your page content, although not always the same excerpt. Other times they grab the description meta tag information. And other times it seems to come out of nowhere.
So here is how it is done:
Google uses the description from the meta tag, if there is one. If the description meta tag is missing, they will use a sentence from the page that contains the searched keyword. And if the web page is listed in the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org), Google sometimes uses the description in the DMOZ directory.
Yahoo uses a combination of the first part of the meta description tag’s content, along with a text snippet from the page containing the searched keyword. If there is no meta description tag, Yahoo will use the description from Yahoo’s directory. If there is no description in the directory either, Yahoo will just display relevant text snippets from the page.
MSN/Live uses the first sentence on the page that contains the searched keyword. If the searched keyword doesn’t appear on the page, they use the first sentence on the page. If a description exists in the DMOZ directory, MSN/Live will use that description.
So how do you take control of your description in the results list? Check back here for specific HTML tags for controlling your page’s results list description …
Filed Under Dreamweaver, Expressions Web, FrontPage, General, SEO, Web Technologies, search |
Source: WikipediaAre you using Dreamweaver templates for your web site to make the management of pages simpler? Have you ever tried to do any SEO and could NOT change the meta tags on specific pages linked to the template? Here is a quick and simple solution that will get your site ready for SEO.
Open up your page template and look at your template in code view. Locate where your meta tags begin and insert the following line just before the first tag.
<!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="meta or whatever you want to name it here" -->
After the last meta tag insert this line
<!– TemplateEndEditable –>
Ok, you should now be able to edit each page associated to the template file and edit the specific meta tags.
This is good practice to get used to. Proper meta tags, and title are key to SEO rankings.
Filed Under Dreamweaver, SEO | 3 Comments
Web Accessibility Lawsuit Proceeds
By Marge R
On January 2, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied Target Corporation’s petition to appeal a class action suit filed against the retailer by the National Federation of the Blind. The suit was based on Target’s failure and refusal to make its web site fully accessible to blind shoppers.
As a result, the suit will proceed against Target on behalf of all blind Americans, as well as for a subclass of all blind Californians.
Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “We are pleased that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed our lawsuit against Target to move forward on its merits. Target can no longer delay being held accountable to the blind of the nation for denying us access to its Web site.”
On a related note, the National Federation of the Blind and Amazon.com announced that Amazon.com will be accessible to blind users by the end of June 2008.
Filed Under Dreamweaver, Expressions Web, FrontPage, General, Usability, Web Accessibility, Web Technologies |
Browser icons - How To
By Marge R
You’ve seen them … the little icons in the address bar to the left of the URL. They look like very small versions of a company logo. Much cooler than the standard IE logo, or that blank piece of paper picture that Firefox gives us.
They are called Favicons, and they are fairly simple to make and implement.
First, you need a 16 x 16 or 32 x 32 image saved in .ico format. Most graphics programs will allow you to save in this format. But if you don’t have a graphics program, or don’t want to take the time to simplify your logo into this small size, you can use the favicon generator at FavIcon from Pics.
Next upload your favicon.ico file to the root directory of your site.
Add the following line of code to the <head> section of the HTML in your home page:
<link rel = “shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico” />
That should do it. You may need to close your browser and re-open it a couple of times for it to be visible to you … but future visitors will see it automatically.
Filed Under Dreamweaver, Fireworks, General, Web Technologies |
A co-worker complained a couple of months ago that she had to re-enter her username and password in Dreamweaver 8 every time she opened her site. She clearly had the option to save this information checked, and yet it would only save the information for as long as her work session. If she closed Dreamweaver, the login info was lost.
Also working in Dreamweaver 8, I was not having this problem. So we chalked it up to a fluke … probably some other program she had installed on her computer that was causing a conflict.
Until I got a new computer last month, and the same problem started happening to me. Suddenly it became a bigger deal that we resolve the issue.
It turns out that this is a known issue, most commonly caused by Internet Explorer 7 being installed on the same computer as Dreamweaver 8. Apparently IE7 was released after Dreamweaver 8 and so was not tested during Dreamweaver 8 development.
The solution: Install the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater. Instructions and download file can be found at the Dreamweaver Support Center.
Filed Under Dreamweaver |
