Nothing quite like being away for a while and then being faced with a deluge of messages in your inbox. Here is the pick of the bunch from the last couple of weeks.
- More website optimisation purely JavaScript focused and this time with
relation to download speeds:http://www.webreference.com/programming/optimize/speedup/chap9/
. The key lessons here are:
- reduce the number of http requests for script and css files
- only implement/download features that are relevant to the user’s interaction with the page
- remove white space
- keep your comments short - some useful information on removing your information from the Google search engine: http://www.google.com/remove.html. Contrasting this, how about some info on how to rank high on google? http://www.google.com/webmasters/
- on a similar note protect your privacy with these useful hints (US centric, but I am sure some or a lot of them can be applied anywhere): http://www.privacyjournal.net/bio.htm
- an interesting look at screen real estate usage by Jakob Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030210.html). Alarmingly only 40 odd percent of the screen is dedicated to “areas of user interest”, i.e. navigation and content, the rest would appear to be wasted. Though I don’t think you can underestimate the need for white space when it comes to laying out your content to enhance legibility.
- a look at search engines and their ability to index flash driven web sites (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/03/sd0211-ses-flash.html). So far only FAST Search, the engine behind AlltheWeb and Lycos, has stated it’s ability to index Flash driven websites. Google claims it can do it partially (by extracting links, however currently only around 50%). Have a read for more info and how to address some of the short coming of the spiders that index such a site.
- from the devshed newsletter a link to a set of articles on writing Technical references, User manuals and software developments: http://www.devshed.com/Talk/Practices/
- Netscape’s DevEdge have re-designed their website, making use of CSS and XML, read up about he process here: http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/devedge-redesign/. This is in a similar vain to the Wired CSS/xHTML re-design article to be found here: http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/wired-interview/