Dive the web

Is SEO a scam? Is it just a buzzword used to try getting money out of us? Well, the problem is not SEO, the problem is more with self-proclaimed gurus who will tell you that by following their advice (and paying the right amount) your web site will rank high on Google, you will get lots of traffic.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not claiming to be a SEO expert and I never will be. I’ve never even done any real effort to optimize my blog for SEO. I was told I have a pretty good ranking. But this blog has been online since July 29th 2003 - and from what I understood, old and stable sites may be well ranked. But lets be realistic, if you search for PHP or HTML, my blog won’t even be on Google’s first page. Right now, my full name won’t even show this blog as the first result. I don’t mind. I don’t even really mind if nobody reads this.

But companies trying to make money on the Internet mind. And they are willing to spend money to get high on Google. No pun intended. And it’s hard for them to see the difference between the charlatans and the real gurus.

I received a email this morning from Bertrand Betsch asking me if I wanted to participate in their link exchange program (note that I used a rel=”nofollow” on the previous link). They also informed me that link exchange programs helped with better positioning of a site in search engines. I usually don’t bother to answer such mails. And I won’t answer this one either.

Why not you ask? Well, first, if you wish to link to my blog or any other web site I manage, you don’t have to ask me permission. Just link to the site. I’m not responsible for your content, only for mine. And if I want to link to your site, I will. If you object, send me a mail and I’ll remove the link. Ah, yeah, I took advantage of this paragraph to add links to lots of places. You never know

Another thing I learned about SEO, is that it is a good thing to have valid (X)HTML. Basically avoid useless tags. And trying to have semantic HTML is also a good thing. The web site mentioned above has neither. The H1 tag doesn’t even have text in it.

This is the basic elements I take into account when I do a web site. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot more to SEO than valid and semantic HTML. If you want more information, point your browser to seomoz.org. It is a web site that was recommended to me by Anne-Marie Castonguay who is a true SEO and SEM expert.

And don’t take it from me. Read what the real experts have to say and check out Google’s SEO tips. So no, SEO is not a scam, but don’t believe everything you read!

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I’ve been working in the Web industry for about 12 years. During these years, I started to read about best practices in web development. I found a lot of them useful, both to ensure a better quality to my work, but also to make it easier - and sometimes quicker. I’m not claiming to have the best solutions to everything, the following tips are just a few of the things I try to do when coding. Some apply to (X)HTML or CSS, others are more appropriate to PHP or even JavaScript. Some are valid when working in a team, others when working alone.

• Follow conventions.

  This is valid both for team and solo work. When working on your personal projects, pick a style and stick to it. When working with a team, either agree with a coding style with the team or, if one is already chose, use it - even if it’s different than yours. It will make it easier for both you and your team members to understand your code.

• Validate HTML and use semantically correct markup.

  HTML tags have a meaning. A <p> indicates a paragraph. A <ul> indicates a list. Valid HTML has meaning, both to humans and machines.

  Validating HTML may help you find errors in your code. Not just markup errors, but also display errors. Something that may look great in a browser may look terrible in another. And most of the time, you have to support more than one browser.

• Comment your code

  This one will never be repeated enough. Commenting helps you and team members. In six month, you may not remember what you did today. Comment! Comment! Comment!

• Don’t commit incomplete or buggy code

  Except on rare occasions, it’s better to never commit incomplete or buggy code when using a source control tool. Stuff that goes into the common repository is supposed to work.

• Keep team members informed

  Communication is important. You refactoring code, you need to let team members know. Email is useful. Documentation is better. When you create a new library, let team members know about it. If they don’t know about it, they may create something that does pretty much the same thing. Time wasted.

• Be consistent when indenting.

  This is good for whatever language you use. Consistency in indentation helps finding your way around your code. By indenting, you can quickly see blocks of code or remove unused blocks.

• White space is your friend

  Yes, this goes with the consistency in indentation. But white space also means inserting white lines between statements or functions. But don’t overuse it. There’s no need to put 10 carriage returns between blocks of code.

• Google too

  Yep, Google is your friend. Your best friend. If you have a problem, chances are, you’re not the first one. It’s probably documented on mailing lists or Stack Overflow. Google knows, Google remembers!

• IRC channels

  It’s amazing who you may run into on an IRC. Lots of people hang around on those channels and may help you. If you ask nicely and respect the channel’s rules.

• Use available tools: good IDE, debugger, Firefox addons.

  A good IDE will help you in may ways: auto-complete built-in functions, sometimes a built in debugger or direct access to your version control tools.

  Firefox has great addons such as Firebug, the web developer tool bar or the regular expression tester that could save you lots of headaches.

• Check logs

  Logs may indicate problems. Apache logs, PHP logs… The information you may find in these logs may prove useful. But you need to learn how to read them!

• PHP Errors

  In a development environment, set your php.ini’s error reporting to E_ALL and display_errors to ON. This can help tracking errors and solving problems. But make sure you change this when going online.

What are your tips? What techniques do you use to ensure the quality of your code?

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Est-ce possible de faire des image maps côté client en XHTML 1.1? D’après la norme, il semblerait que l’attribut “usemap” serait remplacé par “IDREF”. IDREF est “une référence à un identificateur unique au document”… Mais je n’ai pas trouvé de manière satisfaisante d’utiliser une image map… Par contre, la page valide en XHTML 1.0 strict - ce qui n’est déjà pas trop mal…

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Most people know who Jakob Nielsen is. So I don’t think there’s a need to introduce him here.

If you’re interested in usability, even just a little bit, I’d suggest you read his weekly alertbox column.

This week’s subject is Misconceptions About Usability. It’s not as expensive as you think, doesn’t take that much time, and it doesn’t diminish the creative aspect of the design process. Doing usability studies as you go along in the design process can actually help reduce costs: it will help you to stay on track.

Of course, I agree with all of the above
Remember that Nielsen’s speciality is usability, so he sometimes may be over-enthusiastic. But we need people like him to make things move a little!

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Encore une fois, il faut créer un nouveau blog - une des sections de ce blog doit avoir une galerie photo. Il s’agit de la galerie typique: un thumbnail qui, lorsque cliqué, ouvre un pop-up avec la photo en grand.

Je cherche des exemples… Si j’ai des lecteurs qui en connaissent, je vous en prie, aidez-moi!

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L’Unicode c’est des charactères ASCII qui utilisent 2 bytes par charactère plutôt qu’une seule. Presque toutes les langues du monde peuvent donc y trouver leur place. De base, les ordinateurs n’utilisent que des chiffres: pour emagasiner des lettres, ils doivent assigner un chiffre à chacune d’elle. L’unicode normalise les chiffres utiliser, ce qui permet, entre-autres, de s’assurer que ces valeurs sont unique et d’ainsi éviter les conflits.

La version 4.0 de la norme Unicode a été publiée cette semaine par le Consortium Unicode. Faut dire que le Consortium est reconu par les gros de l’informatique. MS, Apple, Oracle, SAP, Sun…

Cette version propose deux fois plus de charactères que la précédente (96 000 au total). Y’a jamais eu autant de charactères chinois encodés (est-ce que quelqu’un peu me dire combien il y a de charactèrs chinois…)!

De plus, il paraîtrait que les textes asiatiques et du Moyen-Orient devraient maintenant s’afficher correctement - je dois avouer que vu mon ignorance du domaine, je n’aurais pas pu faire la différence!

Pour plus d’information / sources:
Qu’est ce qu’Unicode?. Ce texte est disponnible en plusieurs langues dont le gallois!
Unicode Standard Gets an Extreme Makeover

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Tout le monde utilise Google comme engin de recherche. Sauf 7 personnes sur la planète, mais c’est tout. En effet, Google est rapide et efficace. L’interface du site est simple a utiliser, on trouve de tout. Même un ami. Ah non, l’ami, c’est pas chez Google, s’cusez-la.

Tout le monde connaît aussi O`Reilly, éditeur de nombreux livres très utile sur les bureaux des développeurs. Le lien fut donc facile à faire: O’Reilly publie un livre sur Google. Ta-dam…

Le livre s’intitule Google Hacks et propose 100 trucs à essayer à la maison, même si vous n’êtes pas un professionnel
Comme d’habitude vous trouverz des extraits du livre sur le site de O’Reilly. En passant, il y a aussi un “Pocket Guide” - qui, malgré son nom - se glissera très bien dans une sacoche!

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Pour rendre une table accessible, le World Wide Web Consortium recommande de faire un résumé du tableau (et de son contenu, me direz-vous). L’attribut SUMMARY (placez-le dans la balise TABLE) sert à cela. Il est un peu comme le ALT tag des tables. Les lecteurs d’écrans, browsers parlants et autres technologies assistives vont le lire - mais il ne sera pas visible sur l’écran.

La balise CAPTION doit être insérée après la balise TABLE et sert à identifier la table ainsi que sa fonction. Son contenu va apparaître sur l’écran, juste en haut de la table - un peu comme un titre.

Rappelez-vous: l’accessibilité d’une table, ce n’est pas sorcier!

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Vous connaissez Jeffrey Zeldman?

Tout d’abord, c’est lui qui est derrière le site A List Apart. ll vient aussi de publier un livre (que tout les gens impliqués dans le web devraient lire) intitulé Designing With Web Standards.

Et maintenant, sa présentation pour Web Design World 2003 est en ligne…

Bonne Lecture!

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Everybody, and I mean everybody, talks about CSS Zen Garden. Face it, it’s a great site. They show us how it’s possible to use CSS to make great design.

Graphic artists (and only graphic artists can download the sample files (css and xhtml) and modify them. Once finished, they can be submitted and, if chosen, will be featured on the site.

My choice for today goes to The Garden Beneath. Big surprise, huh?

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