Bruce Lawson’s personal site

We were vaguely pleased with ourselves at work a couple of weeks ago when we noticed that a Google search on some of our keywords brought back our site as the first search result, and given us an extended entry that includes a matrix of links to pages within the site. These google sitelinks (as the SEO industry calls them) can help you achieve brand domination through keyword ownership.

It’s interesting to wonder how Google chooses the sitelinks. I think that it sorta-automatically gives a sitelink to pages that seem like they’re “contact us” or “about us”, which makes sense. But from my experience from my personal site and work site, some of the other sitelinks seem pretty arbitrarily chosen: they weren’t all from the main navigation elements, nor did they figure at all in the top 50 most-visited pages in the site. When it gave this site some sitelinks (gone after the last googledance, I notice) it included a link to a page which I’d recently removed, so I had to sort that out by reinstating the page, in order that the embarrassing 404 didn’t squander the extra credibility that sitelinks gave me.

It’s wise to check out your sitelinks for their usability, too. Here’s a cautionary tale. I got the go-ahead to attend An Event Apart, Boston in June, so went to book the ticket. Being unsure of the URL, and because I was already on google.com, I searched for An Event Apart.

Up popped the results, complete with a handy sitelink going straight to Boston:

I immediately clicked that sitelink, and sighed with disappointment to see that it was sold out. After food, I hit upon the idea of emailing Eric Meyer and asking him if there were any standby tickets. Being the courteous gentleman that he is, he responded that it wasn’t sold out and that was I perhaps looking at the Boston 2007 page? Being a gracious chap, he didn’t call me a Knucklehead McSpazatron.

And that was indeed the cause. The sitelink that Google provided goes to last year’s page (ditto for Chicago), so I was able to navigate to the homepage, find the pages for this year’s conferences and book my place.

But it was lucky that I’m pushy enough to bother Eric, or I would just have told my boss that it was sold out and been none the wiser.

The moral: regularly egosurf; check your sitelinks, and as soon as something like this occurs, go to Google webmaster central where you can block inappropriate sitelinks if they appear.

It would be nice if Google could provide a metatag which marked a particular page as ineligble for consideration as a sitelink, in the same way as you can tell it not to index or cache. That way, you could take preventative action and template your “archive” or “past events” pages so they never become sitelinks.

Anyway—see you in Boston?

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle lately over the Opera complaint that Microsoft is a monopolist that doesn’t uphold Web Standards. I’m glad that I’m not the only one who believes that it’s perfectly feasible for Microsoft and Opera to continue to work with each other on CSS, regardless of their current spat.

While I share Andy Clarke’s frustration about the glacial pace of change, I think the idea of having web professionals oust the browser manufacturers from main specification process, relegating them to “a Technical Advisory Panel to look over the Project’s proposals” is unworkable and potentially more cumbersome. Imagine if you’re hired to develop a website for a large oganisation and play no part in the specification process, but merely get a spec arrived at by competing, squabbling end-users who then say “implement this”. Without the active, day-to-day involvement of the browser vendors, specs would be slower, less coherent and probably unworkable. It’s important to remember that it doesn’t matter when CSS3 becomes a recommendation, it won’t magically upgrade all the browsers; the spec is only useful when (and if) it is actually implemented by the vendors.

I’m also glad that Opera have raised the stakes with a complaint to the European Union. A few frustrated outbursts aside, I’ve never been anti-Microsoft—but I am most definitely anti-monopoly. A monopoly can never benefit consumers, and it must be forced to compete. That force can’t come from the market (it’s a monopoly), so must come from government or similar organisation.

When Microsoft had a competitor in Netscape, it innovated: Internet Explorer had the best CSS support and IE6 was a marvellous browser that ushered in the era of CSS-based design. But once Microsoft killed Netscape, Internet Explorer stagnated , causinng the woe that we still partly feel today. But 18 months ago there was a convincing new competitor in Firefox, Microsoft began innovating again—and look! IE8 passes Acid2!

So I’m glad that Opera are trying to break Microsoft’s monopoly. Being British, I also admire the plucky Norwegian underdog, and I’m personally convinced that Opera are concerned at the highest level with upholding standards. I’m persuaded by Molly of the sincerity of the I.E. team, but I have no faith that those at the top of Microsoft would give a shit about standards if their profits or monopoly were threatened.

But take a breath, and step back from all of this and look at the radically new landscape that surrounds us.

What we see is another browser war, but based on who can uphold standards best. Opera go to the E.U. with a complaint that I.E. doesn’t uphold standards; a day later, I.E. announces that it passes Acid2, even though they knew that a week ago. What can have caused that announcement, other than the impetus to brag about your standards support? The good news is that the browser manufacturers see standards and interoperability as useful armaments rather than troublesome impediments.

So, while the browser manufacturers are upholding standards, what are the Web Standards Project doing? Zeldman writes,

I’m disheartened by the general lack of leadership. I wish The Web Standards Project would either disband or get meaningfully busy.

Now, I’m only a newbie WaSP task force member, not a real, clever WaSP, but my take is that everyone’s been caught off guard—when the traditional enemies are doing your work for you by promoting standards, it’s somewhat disconcerting. And without a real enemy, things fragment in a loose confederation of individuals.

My personal “enemy” is inaccessibility, and James Craig, Patrick Lauke and I fought a battle wth Microformats advocates because some of their patterns are functionally inaccessible. It was a gruelling battle, involving disagreements with other WaSP members, and in the face of overwhelming apathy, we withdrew.

The other problem is with Ajax (”Accessibility Just Ain’t eXciting”). Most Ajax remains fundamentally inaccessible—and despite the valiant efforts of Derek Featherstone, Gez Lemon, Steve Faulkner, Brothercake and Jeremy Keith—few people give a toss.

In the topsy-turvy world where browser manufacturers are promoting standards, many opinion formers and web standards advocates are so transfixed with the shiny shiny Ajax and hCard baubles that they don’t see that they’re in mortal danger of becoming part of the problem.

Who wants to rail with me against the latest marketable sexy Web 2.0 bells and whistles?

Thought not.

I’ll just carry on evangelising semantics and accessibility in the companies that employ me, at workshops, on my blog and hope this current tizzy dies down.

Opera Chief Technology Officer and co-inventor of CSS, Håkon Wium Lie has written an open letter to the Web community explaining the reasons that Opera has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Union to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer and to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop.

Their press release says

Opera requests the Commission to implement two remedies to Microsoft’s abusive actions. First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities. The complaint calls on Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support these standards, instead of stifling them with its notorious “Embrace, Extend and Extinguish” strategy. Microsoft’s unilateral control over standards in some markets creates a de facto standard that is more costly to support, harder to maintain, and technologically inferior and that can even expose users to security risks.

I wrote this up on the Web Standards Project page, so please comment there.

What I didn’t say there, which I will say here is Woo yeah! Go Opera! Go Opera! Go Opera!

Those who enjoyed my Geocities 96 CSS zen Garden “design” will probably be interested in this essay Vernacular Web 2 by Olia Lialina:

To me, what defines the history of Web is not just the launch dates of new browsers or services, not just the dot-com bubbles appearing or bursting, but also the appearance of a blinking yellow button that said “New!” or the sudden mass extinction of starry wallpapers.

A little while ago, Robert Nyman asked Why would anyone use Internet Explorer?

I don’t want to pick on poor old IE so I’d like to know, why do you use the browser that you currently use, whatever it is?

I use Firefox and Opera for developing - Opera because it’s fast, I believe it follows standards very well and is good for checking the increasingly important mobile market, Firefox because of the Web Developer and Firebug extensions, both of which are absolute must-haves.

On the Mac, I only use Safari for testing - I dislike it immensely for some weird reason (the odd way it renders forms, I think) and so use Opera/ Firefox for surfing there too.

Do you use your browser because of inertia (it’s a drag to move all your favourites), or because you love it?

Because I’m a serious intellectual, I always listen to Radio 4’s Today programme when driving to work. Today there was an interview with a guy who runs all the big airports about the new runway at Heathrow, in which he said it “will be a landmark moment in construction: it will open on time and to budget”.

Indeed, after the endlessly delayed Wembley Stadium, and ever-increasing bill for the 2012 Olympic infrastructure, he’s absolutely correct that it would be a landmark moment.

I often think building corporate websites is like civil engineering projects: something built to spec, on time and to budget would be almost incredible.

Is your site more like Terminal Five, or Wembley Stadium?

I’ve been a bit wary of microformats, as I believe they play fast and loose with the semantics of the abbr element. They do this simply to accommodate Safari’s broken support for object, and thereby force a screenreader user who listens to titles to sit though monstrous reams of numbers or other data, that’s meant for machines not people.

But, I’ll try anything once (except necrophilia and Morris dancing), so decided to make a punter’s Contact Us page into an hCard.

And discovered it’s just too damn difficult for my wee brain to deal with. Here’s the deal: I need to mark up the following contact phone numbers (and it seems to me that helpline opening hours are part of contact details, phone prices arguably so):

Helpline - 0845 123 1234, Open Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, Calls to our helpline cost no more than 5p per minute for BT customers; other networks may vary.
Tel: 01926 123456
International: +44 (0)1926 123456
Fax: 01926 89123
Minicom: 0845 123 4567

Nothing in the type subproperty values list gives me any clue. Do you know, gentle reader?

I’ve always been a bit of an apologist for Microsoft, but the experience I’ve had upgrading my Windows XP operating system has left me determined never to buy their damn products again.
Continue reading Goodbye Microsoft

Yay for the Geek in the Park meeting. I missed the picnic, as I was returning from monstrous partying for my kid brother’s birthday, but got there in time to actually have a pre-speaking run-through with my partner-in-crime, Pat Lauke, to make sure the two-handed presentation we’d jammed by phone and mail worked.

It was splendid to meet old mates like Matt Machell, the excellent Jim O’Donnell, as well as meet more people (and a shame I couldn’t meet others - who were these people, for example?)

My notes, combined with some notes Patrick gave me, are reproduced. These are dense, as we talked for two hours, as this is just our crib sheet rather than a full transcript (if you want the full thing, we are available for weddings, barmitzvahs and satanic orgies. Especially satantic orgies).

Continue reading Geek in the Park: Pragmatic accessibility

Asking users to tell you which country they live is simple. Devising a method which is both usable and accessible for the user, and which provides good data is not. There are two main problems:

• There are between 194 and 239 countries, which is way too many for a drop-down select box (how long would you listen to JAWs read out that list until it got to Zambia, if that’s where you lived?)
• Some countries have synonyms: when I’m scrolling down a list, I don’t know whether I’m looking for “E” (England), “G” (Great Britain), “B” (Britain) or “U” for “United Kingdom”.

Continue reading Forms: inputting country names