Dreamweaver Week 4 hélène kay

1. Dreamweaver Week 4 hélène kay

2. Week 4 Outline 1 - advanced tables 2 - search engines ranking, listing and optimization 3 - introduction to forms in HTML documents 4 - handout and discuss assignment #2 • due week 6 5 - presentation of assignment #1

3. 1 - Advanced tables splitting and merging cells • must first select a cell/set of cells • “Modify>Table>Split Cell” or contextual menu or use property inspector button • can only merge in a rectangular pattern copy/pasting cells • must select the entire cell, not just the contents of the cell • can copy/paste adjacent cells, provided they form a rectangular pattern • will preserve the cell’s formatting exporting table data • “File>Export>Export Table” into Excel spreadsheet or database importing table data • “File>Import>Import Tabular Data” from a delimited file format

4. 2 - Search engines ranking and listing general information • total active Web population is currently 452 million worldwide, with the United States making up 174 million of those users. Nielsen pegs today's Web audience as 52 percent female, 47 percent ages 25 to 49 years old, 58 percent earning from $25,000 to $75,000, almost half holding a high school degree with some college, and 22 percent holding a college degree • searching is second only to email as the most popular online activity; according to Jupiter Media Metrix (Feb 2003), consumers find products online by: • typing a product name into a search engine - 28% • going straight to the URL - 23% • typing a brand name into a search engine - 9% • typing a company name into a search engine - 5% • going to a search engine shopping channel - 5% • first, you register your domain name with one of the numerous reg’n sites (ex: register.com, easyhosting.ca, www.ca , godaddy.com) holding “Accredited Registrar” status with ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (http://www.icann.org/) according to the desired TLD (top level domain) – www.tv; www.tuvalu.tv

5. 2 - Search engines (cont’d) general information (cont’d) • web trivia: “Google” is a bastardization of the word “googol” which means 10 to the power of 100 alluding to the enormous amount of false info that used to be returned on keyword searches • people used to trick search engines into thinking there were more matches than there really were (ex: keywords repeated hundreds of times at the bottom of a page in the same text colour as the background to make them invisible) • Google's spider crawls the entire Web (about 2 billion pages) every 28 days, crawling news sites more often • some search engines enable you to meta-search (ex: Ixquick, MetaCrawler, Dogpile, Copernic, ProFusion, Vivisimo and Mamma.com) • some search engines can retrieve thumbnails rather than links (ex: altavista.com’s Photo Finder) • some search engines enable multilingual searches (ex: altavista.com) • algorithm search formulas typically rely on keywords, descriptions and alphanumeric position of site name

6. 2 - Search engines (cont’d) general information (cont’d) • when coding, recommend use of 5 - 7 metatags per page but use section differentiation • keywords determine the search parameters while descriptions yield the search result search engine optimization - SEO • to increase search engine ranking and to ensure acceptance in any of the search engine databases: • fast loading site • easy to navigate • no 404 errors, good link structure • no missing graphics • no typos or grammatical errors • good marketing copy, unique content • proper HTML coding of titles and descriptions • good link popularity • if your site uses frame technology, certain additional steps must be taken to avoid confusion and rejection of the site • no special characters (Yahoo! is handled as an exception

7. 2 - Search engines (cont’d) search engine optimization – SEO (cont’d) • alpha still rules - most still rank by alpha position • keyword density - ratio of keywords appearing in title, description and url • higher ranking for keyword placement at the beginning of title, url and description • try to steer clear of fancy tricks - frames, JavaScript menus, flash etc. • search engines will index frames, but will display them in their listings as individual frames - not what you want your visitors to see when they click your link! • bots won't follow links that work by using JavaScript tricks - so make sure your pages are linked with standard anchor tags • Flash movies look great, but don't use them for the main content of your pages - the bots can't read them (and therefore won't be able to add anything from them into their indexes) nor can those without the capability to use flash, including the visually handicapped

8. 2 - Search engines (cont’d) listing with search engines • which engines/directories should you submit to? great resource on cost and partnered search engines, see http://www.web-ignite.com/searchenginelisting.html • major search engines are: Google, Inktomi (Yahoo! now owns them), Norway’s AllTheWeb (FAST), AltaVista, Excite; Google feeds secondary results to Yahoo!, AOL and Netscape; Inktomi results go to LookSmart; FAST feeds Lycos and HotBot; AltaVista, MSN Searchand Excite get secondary results from LookSmart; Teoma feeds AskJeeves • use free services to list with multiple search engines (ex: http://www.bravenet.com/searchsubmit/index.php and http://register-it.netscape.com/)

9. 2 - Search engines (cont’d) inserting metatags • open the Insert panel and click on the “Head” tab or “Insert>Head Tags” • separate keywords by commas • description should be approx. 20 words or less • “Refresh” redirects user to a new url or refreshes page after specified delay • note: using the “Refresh” metatag for the current document will have it and its associated assets reload every x seconds as per your instructions • if you want to prevent a document from being saved in the browser’s local cache, thereby forcing the browser to go load the doc and associated assets straight from the server, use the following bit of code: • <meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache"> • Note: <title></title> tag determines the text displayed in the link when search results come up for more info • http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ • http://www.wordtracker.com/trial/index.php3?sid=10e8e383150603610ce3e8cbb5244b1e

10. 2 - Search engines (cont’d) for more info • http://www.searchenginewatch.com/this site provides good information about search engines in general and is run by the guru of search engines, Danny Sullivan • http://www.wordtracker.com/trial/index.php3?sid=10e8e383150603610ce3e8cbb5244b1ethis site gives you a free trial for the kinds of keywords that will work for your site • http://www.webreference.com/dhtml/DHTML reference • see “Resources” section of Centennial site for this course

11. 3 - Introduction to forms general information • to collect info, forms consist of HTML as well as a script for processing data (ex: CGI) • but can your server handle CGI scripts? form objects • first, “Insert>Form”, then “Insert>Form Objects” or use Insert panel and click on the “Forms” tab (note you would use the post method to send values in the body of a message or get method to append values to url - do not use get with long forms as url’s are truncated at 8192 characters; don’t use get with credit card/sensitive info) • types of form objects include: • text fields - accept alphanumeric entries, multiple lines, bullets or security asterisks • buttons - are associated with actions when clicked (ex: submit and reset) • checkboxes - to be used when user may want to select more than one option in a checkbox group

12. 3 - Introduction to forms (cont’d) form objects (cont’d) • radio buttons - to be used when you want to limit user to a single choice in a group of radio buttons • lists/menus - scrolling list enables multiple choices while drop-down menu does not • jump menus - drop-down menus to link to local site, different server, even a named anchor (if no “Go” button, use “Make Your Selection” as first choice and check off “Select First Item After URL Change”) • file - fields - enable users to browser locally for a file and upload onto the server (ex: online resume); form method must be “post” • images - to create a more visually appealing “submit”

13. 3 - Introduction to forms (cont’d) form objects (cont’d) • 8. images (cont’d) • <form name="form1" method="post" action=""><input type="text" name="textfield"><br /><input type="text" name="textfield2"><br /><input name="submit" type="image" id="submit"src=“img/x.gif" width=“5" height=“5" border="0"><a href="javascript:document.form1.reset()"><imgsrc=“img/y.gif" width=“5" height=“5" border="0"></a></form> • 9. hidden fields - to pass hidden info (ex: section)

14. 4 - Assignment #2 framed web site • due week 6 • worth 35 marks • elements: • main page • 3 functioning sub-sections • tables, HTML text, images, links • nav structure • frames • design

15. 5 - Assignment #1 show and tell