All websites now use URL extensions that redirect for easy to remember URLs.
A recent example is Google’s http://google.com/pacman – a simple / and one word is much easier to remember than say /google_pacman.html (which is still keeping it simple!)
(I’m sure if you looked into it, the files aren’t actually stored in a /pacman folder either
)
There are URL shortening methods out there, such as http://bit.ly and http://tiny.cc, but I feel these don’t give you enough power for customisation. And what if you have your own domain that you want to use?!
» Read the rest of this entry «
I’ve recently read up on the importance of site performance for search engine optimisation (SEO).
Google is saying that this year (2010) it may start using the speed your site loads as a factor in determining where your site shows up in its results list.
One great way of decreasing the load times of your site is to compress the CSS and Javascript.
» Read the rest of this entry «
The order in which images load when viewing a website fis always a tricky thing to get right. Usually, if you have any sort of javascript gallery for viewing images, these images will load first (as javascript normally loads first). This is always a pain if the main layout images have not yet loaded – you’ll get the javascript gallery appearing with none of the layout images.
There are plenty of solutions out there to set the order of image loading, and most solutions use javascript. Now to me, this is like trying to fight fire with fire; solving the problem of certain javascript images loading first with yet more javascript. But what’s wrong with javascript, surely a little more won’t harm anyone.
Well, javascript means more work for the client’s computer and makes loading times (only a fraction) slower. Also, if you’re not that familiar with javascript, is can be quite daunting to keep adding this.object(); and that.var=10; to your code.
I’ve come up with a far simpler and easier method to solve the problem using only valid CSS and good old HTML.
» Read the rest of this entry «