Development Web

Printing elements in a table downwards, not left to right

chernih — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:38:54 +0000

I was making a dynamic phone list to be printed around the office, and came across the small problem that I wanted it to print the names in 3 columns with the names listing downwards alphabetically, or as such:

NAME	NAME	NAME
Andrew	Ben	James
Anthony	Chris	Kevin

So I had extrapolated the data from our database into an array.

So to print it, I’m printing the 3 columns at a time, but for each n-th row, printing the n-th element, then the n-th + ceiling of the difference element, then n-th + 2*ceiling of the difference element, and looping through this for loop “difference” amount of times.

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Variable height to expanding message box

chernih — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:36:11 +0000

Recently, I had the problem of creating a message inbox ajax-style, but have to add an expand/retract option if the message was too long to fit in the standard message. Secondly, I did’nt want a shorter message in a giant box (ie a 1 line message, in a box that could accomodate 3 lines, leaving lots of redundant white space).

My solution was to create the div with a set height of 3 lines (which was 62 pixels in my case), with 3 lines being the predetermined maximum size for the unexpanded message box. Once it was created with overflow hidden, I compared the scrollHeight of the div, to its offsetHeight. If the scrollHeight was bigger, it would append a div with “expand” as the inner html, and an onclick event to expand it, and set the height of the messagebox to 62 pixels. If the scrollHeight WASN’T bigger, I changed the height of the messages to blank (”"), and gave it a low minHeight.

In this way, messages less than 3 lines didn’t waste a bigger box than they needed.

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4 Tips For Writing Blog Posts And Blogging Effectively

Arcel — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:48:52 +0000

Anyone can write a blog post, but not everyone can do it effectively and efficiently. With a bit of practice, four simple steps can you get producing blog posts sooner rather than later.

Step One: Find an Inspiration

Before you actually start writing your post, you need to find an inspiration. Your inspiration can come from a number of things. Much like finding a trending topic, the first step to finding inspiration is to look around you. You can find inspiration from the current news, other blogs, current events, TV shows, upcoming movies, tweets, status updates and so on. Once you’ve found your inspiration, decide what kind of post you’ll be writing. It can be a how-to guide, a documentary, commentary, or follow-up post. After deciding on a blog topic, it’s time to go to step two.

Step Two: Research

Research is important. Once you’ve picked up your inspiration, you should conduct research. Research is a good way to see if someone has covered the topic before. On top of that, while you’re researching you’ll come across similar or related articles that you can use. Researching your topic will also create a list of reference material which further enforces the credibility of your post.

Step Three: Writing your post

Writing your post can be broken down into two simple parts, defining your audience and writing for them.

Defining your Audience – You have to know your audience to write for them. Consider who will be reading your post. Do they have the understanding ability of highly educated professors or high school students? How much do they know about the topic? Do you think your post will provide a new perspective to the topic? Is there any value in your post for your target audience?

Writing for them – It’s all good and well that you’re trying to deliver a message across but if the person receiving your message can’t understand what you’re trying to say then your message is lost. Once you’ve figured out who you’re are writing for, you’ll be able to deliver your message much more effectively.

Step Four: Spell Check

Yes it’s in here. Often people forget to spell check their post before they post it, and it’s not just a matter of hitting F7 either. Things to check before publishing:

Hit F7 on MS Word (Spell Check) – Spell checking is basic, this should be done for everything you write.
Proof-read – Read your article from top to bottom, and don’t just scan over it either. Make sure everything you’ve written makes sense.
Check your links – If you have any links on your post make sure they don’t return errors or link to the wrong websites.
Proof-read – Have someone else proof read your article. You might think that you’ve covered everything but if you’ve been staring at something for too long it can either make complete sense or no sense at all.

Start practicing and over time, writing blog posts will come with ease. Can you think of any more tips for blogging?

Variable height to expanding message box Recently, I had the problem of creating a message inbox...

Does Google Read CSS Files? – New Test

Andrew — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 04:34:45 +0000

A new test has been setup on another domain to test whether or not CSS is read from the eyes of search engines.

We conducted an earlier test about whether Google entered CSS files and we received inconclusive results. This new test should accurately measure if search engines read CSS files even if it has been blocked off in the robots.txt. I cannot disclose the details of the test yet, but it does open many possibilities if Google refuses to index out the cascading style-sheets.

If Google and other search engines read CSS files when it has been blocked off in the robots.txt, does this reduce the integrity of the robots.txt file?

However, in an argument for search engines, it may be necessary to read the robots.txt file. If the search engines don’t read it, intelligent spammers can reduce the quality of search engine result pages (SERPs). I know I hate it when I don’t see relevant websites ranking for a particular term, especially if the websites on the first page are there by spam alone.

I guess it’s a hard one to consider: integrity of the robots.txt file or the quality of SERPs. Now that I think about it, the answer is becoming more clear.

Stay tuned for part 2.

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Submit your website for a usability and SEO analysis

Anne — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:35:27 +0000

Do you want your website evaluated and obtain a followed link from Development Web? We are taking website submissions to evaluate a website’s usability, SEO, look and feel and cleanliness of code.

The first website that was submitted was from one of our partner’s contacts, My Mortgage Loans. The website is a blog that provides mortgage advice for young Australians.

Look and Feel
The website is clearly built on Wordpress and running a fairly plain customisation of the Thesis theme. Unfortunately the website suffers from a lack of originality – it just looks the same as all the other Wordpress blogs out there. The website has no proper logo or unique selling point in clear view.

In order to get repeat visits and to establish themselves as a legitimate brand, they need to apply basic marketing principles to the website.

Cleanliness of code
The Thesis theme has some of the cleanest code. However, there is always room for improvement. For example, all CSS should be externalised to help load the page faster.

SEO
There are some clear attempts at SEO, but they have neglected some must-have items:

Mismatching & <h1> tags on the homepage. The current title and h1 are duplicate which looks computer generated. Search engines like to see unique content!</li> <li>Poor internal linking (using related posts plugin does not equate to a good internal linking strategy).</li> <li>Outdated nofollow PageRank sculpting methods.</li> <li>No proper or unique information on the archive pages</li> </ul> <p>There are also very few inbound links (probably due to the website’s young age).</p> <p><strong>Usability</strong><br /> One thing that the website does have going is clear site architecture and navigation. There is a clear definition between the top level navigation as well as the categories down the right hand side.</p> <p>Call to action as well as the social media plugins are put in the correct spot, but there doesn’t seem to be any tracking on them (from our quick look at the source code).<br /> A problem that may arise in the future, as the website grows in size, is the fact that the search bar will demand a more prominent position.</p> <p>Although there is an ‘about us’ page, I cannot find a way to contact the owner of the website without going through the social media avenues.</p> <p>Can you think of anything else that the website may need to address to improve usability, look and feel and SEO?</p> <div class="like"> </div> <p>No related posts.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Does Google read and crawl .css Files? Pt. 2</h1> <p>Andrew — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:17:27 +0000</p> <p>The results have been collected and an analysis has been made. Read on for more information regarding this investigation. </p> <p><span id="more-556"></span>I setup an alert so that every time a user viewed my main CSS file I would receive an email with their I.P address. Google’s bots usually had a 66. at the beginning of their I.P address, so I could identify when the Google bot hit certain pages of my website. I received a lot of spam, as expected, but the results were in and I drew to a conclusion on whether Google indexed CSS style-sheets. </p> <p>Google did <em>not</em> hit the CSS file when they re-indexed my site for the month. I did not receive an email for the CSS file with the bot address. However, this does not guarantee that Google ignores CSS files completely. Even though Google did not index/cache the CSS file with their usual bot I.P address (66.249.66.1), it does not mean that Google doesn’t use other I.Ps to read my website.</p> <p>I believe results are truly inconclusive. Further testing and analysis is definitely needed. Don’t worry Development Web readers, we have already thought of another scenario in which we can further test this subject. </p> <p>Please stay tuned….</p> <div class="like"> </div> <p>No related posts.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Building site structure for usability and SEO</h1> <p>Arcel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:16:01 +0000</p> <p>If you’re considering building a website and you are aware of the effects of SEO, you’ll need to consider some important questions about site structure. We discuss the important factors of creating a robot-friendly site structure while also designing your website for the users.<span id="more-548"></span> </p> <p>Designing for the robot and the user doesn’t have to be two completely different things. Getting rankings and creating a great user experience can be easily established if the website’s foundation is laid right. Website design and development isn’t only about creating a pretty website, it’s also about user experience. One of the essential things to consider when creating great user experience is site structure.</p> <p><strong>Know what you’ve got</strong><br /> Before you even touch Photoshop, or Dreamweaver, or begin looking for a CMS, look at what you already have. Create an inventory of your products, or if you’re creating an information based website, create an inventory of your documents and articles. After making your inventory, identify what you’re providing at a very high level and begin some keyword research.</p> <p><strong>Making categories</strong><br /> Before you decide what to call your categories, do some keyword research and see what your consumers search for when looking for your product. Categorising your products by item type when your user searches for it by brand just leaves your user lost which results in bad user experience.<br /> When naming your categories, use broader category names as top level categories and more specific category names for sub-categories. In saying that… beware of the extra detail! It is still a category page, not a product page. Creating unnecessary sub-categories can lead to bad user experience. The user should be able to get to what they want with minimal effort.</p> <p><strong>Shootin’ Hoops…or Products</strong><br /> Once you have your inventory and your amazing categories, start placing your products under the most relevant category. No matter how tempting it is to place a product in two or more categories, don’t do it! There are other ways to make your product more available to the user.</p> <p>Once you’ve completed these tasks, you now have a good foundation for your website. Imagine each product as one of the many product pages on your website and each category as another page. </p> <p>Getting your site structure right during the design process of your website is one of the differences between good rankings and not ranking at all. Can you think of any other things you should consider when designing site structure?</p> <div class="like"> </div> <p>No related posts.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Facebook Status updates now included in real time search</h1> <p>Andrew — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:51:37 +0000</p> <p>Google announced, via Twitter, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in real-time search. What this means is that the world’s largest social networking website is getting further exposure alongside Twitter, MySpace and others.<br /> <span id="more-533"></span><br /> At the moment, Facebook does not dominate search engine results. However, that is definitely going to change as Facebook starts to get more showing in search engine result pages. This is an incentive for large corporations, that don’t currently have Facebook pages, to create one.</p> <p>Now Google’s real-time search results include Facebook, MySpace, Twiter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, TwitArmy, Google News links, Google Blog Search links, news web pages, and freshly updated pages. At this point, Google generally only shows the real-time results for newsy/trending topics.</p> <p>Article Source: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/your-facebook-page-is-in-googles-real-time-results-now">http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/25/your-facebook-page-is-in-googles-real-time-results-now</a></p> <div class="like"> </div> <p>No related posts.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Components of Google’s Ranking Algorithm</h1> <p>Andrew — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:03:29 +0000</p> <p>Seventy two SEO professionals, surveyed by SEOmoz, consider which <strong>search engine ranking factors</strong> are most important.</p> <p><span id="more-528"></span></p> <p><strong>Trust/Authority of Host Domain:</strong> – 32.87% importance in ranking<br /> A major factor in SEO. Domain age, quality content and link reputation are the building blocks of a quality and trustworthy domain.</p> <p><strong>Link Popularity of the Specific Page:</strong> – 22.33% importance in ranking<br /> Quality links that are deep links to the relevant pages on a website is important to obtain high search engine rankings.</p> <p><strong>Anchor Text of External Links to the Page:</strong> – 20.26% importance in ranking<br /> Relevant and keyword rich anchor text pointing to the relevant page on a website is much more beneficial for SEO than anchor text that reads “Click Here”.</p> <p><strong>On-Page Keyword Usage:</strong> – 15.04% importance in ranking<br /> Keyword distribution on a web page in a natural manner is important for search engine rankings. The art to this is to place keywords on a page strategically without making it look like deliberate spam. Too little may be detrimental, too much may be spam.</p> <p><strong>Registration and Hosting Data:</strong> – 6.91% importance in ranking<br /> If your target market is located in Australia, a <em>.com.au</em> is a must as well as hosting your website on an Australian server.</p> <p><strong>Traffic + CTR Data:</strong> – 6.29% importance in ranking<br /> Google will obviously pay attention to the amount of clicks your website receives compared to the amount of times it’s shown (impressions). That is why an enticing page title and meta description is a must.</p> <p><strong>Social Graph Metrics:</strong> – 5.30% importance in ranking<br /> Your website should be promoted on social media websites. No more needs to be said.</p> <p></p> <div class="like"> </div> <p>No related posts.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Does Google read and crawl .css Files? Pt. 1</h1> <p>Andrew — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:53:06 +0000</p> <p>At work, the question floating around at the moment is whether Google indexes a .css file even if it has been blocked off in the robots.txt? Well I have put the question to the test on my personal SEO experimental website.<br /> <span id="more-506"></span></p> <p>When I think about it, Google must ignore robots.txt files and read the css file regardless. This is because there is no other accurate way to determine hidden content and where elements are exactly located on a page. For example, would <h1 class=”massive”> be really massive or is it a size 10 pixel heading? If Google did not follow the css file that was blocked off in the robots.txt, webmasters could exploit Google’s algorithm and Google would be loosing out on truly “relevant” results.</p> <p>To be sure however, the test will be put forward to determine beyond reasonable doubt whether or not Google reads/crawls .css files.</p> <p>Stay tuned for Pt. 2</p> <div class="like"> </div> <p>No related posts.</p> </article> </main></body></html>