One of the most overlooked aspects of web page authoring is the title html tag. This tag is important because it does each of these things:

• displays on the application bar
• is the text shown in a bookmark of the page
• may assist in finding it in a search engine because it displays in most cases
• may be given key priority in search engine keyword searches if it matches page content

There is a good article on how to write good title tags here.

I recently did a makeover to two sites, TraverseLaw.com and WardropLaw.com. I was given the design to use for the first and used a friend to help me with the creative spark on the second one. I of course did all of the coding for both of them. I would appreciate any coding and usability comments about the sites. Are they usable? Do you experience any difficulties navigating around them or experience broken code? I don’t really need feedback on the looks of the sites as that is now set for the most part.

On that same thought process, a friend of mine over at em two design just showed me this site called YourSexyLife.com that they have completed. I really like that design. I think it is probably on my top ten list of all time favorite looks. The site is interesting because it is about living a full life, with sex or celibate, in a way that is sexy. As her tag line says, “sassy, yet classy”. It isn’t the typical type of site I would visit, and yet it somehow drew me in for a read. I was disappointed that she didn’t permit comments, but I guess with a name like that she is worried what she might get back. My friend was showing me the site to show me the quality she was able to obtain on the main gif image on the site. Impressive work!

We are often asked it is necessary or prudent to validate your pages according the the W3C standards. Some say yes, and some say no. I guess to my way of thinking good coding cannot be bad, but bad coding might, or might not, be good. Why take the chance? Your comments are welcome below.

A new site of mine Storm Trumpets is receiving some attention for the expanding / collapsing site menu. Visit the site and click on the menu items “Trumpets” and “Trombones” to see the menu in action. It creates the illusion of movement as if driven by DHTML or JavaScript, however to the contrary it works in CSS and is really quite simple. I have been asked to explain how it works, so thought I would provide a brief tutorial for it here.
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Stick around htmlfixit for any length of time, and you’ll soon find we like and endorse web standards around here. Yet, that’s such an ambiguous statement to make, as many people, including web designers, are still in the dark as to what standards are and why they matter.
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This article is a must read! This guy Mike Davidson just participated in a major redesign of the ABC News Site. The breadth and wisdom is so significant that I have included this post in six of my blog categories (general, web design, css, html, news, rss).

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When I am approached to design and write a new site, the hardest part of the process for me is to choose a colour scheme, my meagre talent lies in coding, not the artistic aspects.

A recent discovery of mine has alleviated this problem somewhat. This simple Javascript online tool allows you to choose a colour from a palette, and it will show you a heap of compatible colours in a mini page type display so you can see how they go together. This is not the first such tool I have seen, but it is definitely one of the best ones.

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