| |
| |
|
Why Your Site Should be Developed with CSS and Semantic Markup
Why your site should be developed with CSS and semantic markup One thing that I have learned in over a decade developing web sites is that the Net is continually changing, and to keep up you need to change with it. One of the more recent developments in web design is the use of CSS and semantic markup. CSS and semantic web design has several benefits: clarity in code, browser and other web-enabled devices compatibility, seperation of content andpresentation, smaller burden on bandwith, and better visibility to search engines. Back in the day, we designed sites with tables and hacked those tables into doing things that they were never meant to do. The table tag was designed to display tabular data, not as a way to render the layout of a website. Unfortunately, a better alternative did not exist, so we used tables. This made for inefficient, slow loading sites with code that was very hard to read and maintain. Wikipedia defines sematic markup like this: Sematic pages: supply information for Web search engines using web crawlers. This could be machine-readable information about the human-readable content of the document (such as the creator, title, description, etc., of the document) or it could be purely metadata representing a set of facts (such as resources and services elsewhere in the site). (Note that anything that can be identified with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) can be described, so the semantic web can reason about people, places, ideas, cats etc.) These days, hip designers and developers use CSS extensively to create beautiful, fully standards compliant sites. CSS-based layout allows us to develop sites that will degrade effectively--that is that they will be viewable on all types of devices such as PDAs, cell phones, T.V.s--and will work correctly on devices that dont even exist yet as long as they are standards compliant. Most importantly, developing sites with CSS allows us to effectively separate content and presentation. Have you ever looked at the source code of HTML pages that were created with a table-based layout and wondered what the heck is going on here? You see lots of opening and closing of tables and table rows all mixed together with textual content and graphics. With a clean, CSS-based layout you can create pages that are easily understood by looking at the source, making them easier to understand, maintain, and update. Look at the source of my company site http://www.vp3media.com and then look at the source code of this site that uses a tables based layout: http://webservices.org/. Big difference, huh? If you have a site with high traffic, you can significantly reduce the amount of bandwdth used by transitioning from a table-based site to a CSS-based layout. If a visitor to your site doesnt have to load all of the code needed to render those tables and spacer gifs, you are transmiting less data. CSS also offers search engine optimization benefits over tables. If you have a tables based business site that relys on Internet traffic to turn a profit or aquire new clients you will see real advantages by switching to CSS. When a search engine spiders your tables-based site, they retrieve a large amount of content that has nothing to do with you business. When search engines spiders a clean CSS-based site, the majority of content retrieved will be textual content that describes your business. The ratio of content-to-code is higher with CSS-based layouts. Weve all seen search engine descriptions that dont make any sense; thats because search engine spiders use a top down method for retrieving information. Whatever is topmost in your document, the search engines are going to think is the most important part of the document, and therefore should be used as the description. Since we seperate content and presentation with CSS, we can put the most important information at the top of a document no matter where it is actually displayed on the page. Try that with tables! I hope this article gives you an overview of why it is important to transition from your current tables-based layout to a fully valid CSS implementation. If you dont have a web site, but are planning on launching one in the near future, make sure you tell your developers you want a CSS-based implementation. If you need help moving from your current tables-based site to a CSS-based one, please feel free to contact me at vp3media@gmail.com or call me toll free at 1-877-320-4349 and Ill be happy to discuss your site with you. James Kendall has been developing websites for over a decade and has founded and co-founded several companies concerned with web development since 1994. Currently he runs VP3Media and focuses on one on one interaction with select clients.
MORE RESOURCES:
SEO.in Named Fourth Best Android Development Company by bestwebdesignagencies ... - Press Media Wire
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How Not To Get Web Design Work I get the occasional web design lead from my website. I wanted to find a company I could pass these onto. Designing Professional Web Pages If your Web site doesn't project a professional and polished image to your visitors, your credibility and that of your products and services will suffer. Image is everything -- especially online where your competitor is only one mouse click away!Before your first HTML code is written, you will need to consider your Web site's navigational structure, color scheme and page layout. 6 Website Design Disasters and How to Avoid Them?. Let's face it; the line from A Field of Dreams isn't the whole truth. There's more to getting people to come to something than simply building it. How to use Emotional Content to Increase Visitor Response Did you know that many folks make "buying decisions" when they are moved emotionally? Other traditional medias have made the most of these principles and taken advantage of them for many years, whether it be a TV commercial or an ad in a magazine. People are emotional beings and people make decisions (either good or bad) when they are emotional. Tapping Into The Visual Stimulus Of Your Web Site Visitors "Oh, my eyes, my eyes! What an eye sore. Quick, click away! Click away!"Suddenly I wake up in a cold sweat. Web Design: Should You Hire Someone or Do It Yourself? So you need a website. You are not sure if you should hire someone or learn HTML and do it yourself. A Beginners Guide to Web Page Design Designing your own successful web page can seem difficult and nearly impossible if you do not do a little research first. The reason you need to know the basics of web page design is because the design of your website will actually influence whether or not people continue to visit your site and ultimately, whether they will buy from you or not. Website Registration Roadmap - How to Create Your Own Website in 7 Easy Steps Creating your own website is actually easy in today's world of affordable and free web hosts and website building software. Fortunately, even if you have no Internet experience at all you can simply follow directions and build your own website in seven easy steps. When You Create A Web Site, Dont Make A Splash! Don't make a splash!Are you thinking about using a splash page when you create a web site? You would be wise to think again.What is a splash page?Generally, it is a fancy entrance graphic which requires your visitor to click in order to enter the main home page of your web site. Want to Increase Your Online Sales? Make Sure That Your Web Site Has a Unique Selling Proposition If you own a web site or if you are going to build a new one, the most important thing about your site is to achieve as high as possible visitors to sales conversion rate.Although they say that "the traffic is king online", if your website converts poorly, your online business will fail, unless you receive tons of free traffic which I doubt. Top Ten Ways to Increase Web Sales - Part 2 You have only 10 seconds to impress your potential buyer. Your Web site visitors don't care about you. Web Site Accessibility Making your site accessible means making it available to be used by all. It's too easy to think that what looks ok to you will do for all. The Ultimate Web Site Marketing Strategies That You Should Know Most of us know that we need to advertise our products and our services, some of us still believe we are too small to invest in a advertising campaign. Now while a full-fledged marketing effort may be too much for your operation, it is however crucial to your success that you are involved in some kind of marketing activities. Maximising Web Site Viewability - Resolution This is my second article on maximising web site viewability. Analysing screen resolution data. How Do You Make A Website? No, that's not the real question. The real question is "How in the Heck Do You Make a Website???"You do not have to buy software. Flash Design Adds Website Versatility You have probably viewed many Flash-based components while surfing the Internet. Most smooth animations on websites and in banner ads, short films, and presentations are built in Flash. Browser Compatibility Internet Explorer, created by microsoft has been the most popular web browser for many years. But the gap is shrinking with the release of Mozilla Firefox, by an open source community. Effective Website Design For Massive Traffic STEP 1:Do your homeworkPlan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site. Adding the Right Keywords to Your Website Content You've made your website, added a great title and keywords in the meta tags. That's it, right?Not quite. Hacked Off with CSS? For those not familiar with CSS Hacks, they are ways of using styles/classes that only apply to particular browsers. They are used to overcome the display problems mentioned previously by exploiting CSS structure and code.
|
| home | site map |
| Webdesign-box © 2006 |
