web design news blog

What do Google, Yahoo & Microsoft have in common?

…They all advocate the use of sitemaps. All three companies jointly maintain the website “sitemaps.org”

So what are sitemaps?

Well theres the usual HTML sitemap, which is a section of a website, listing all the other pages. Basically, it’s an entire page or series of pages dedicated to a navigation system. The navigation system of a very large website can get overwhelming, so an HTML sitemap is primarily used to let your visitors and users know about all your pages.

The problem, search engines face is that some websites use JavaScript & DHTML menus that search engines can’t follow. That’s why most of these kinds of sites only have their home page featuring in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), leaving all the other pages by the way side. This is where XML sitemaps come into play. Google has long been advocating the use of standard robot friendly sitemap, and now with the new sitemaps.org initiative, it looks like Yahoo may be going in that direction too.

The XML sitemap has an obvious benefit of telling search engines about all the pages on your site that they may not know about. Additionally, you can specify which pages of your site are most important to you, by use of a 1 to 10 importance ratio, and you can specify how often each page is updated, thus helping search engines know how often they should crawl your site for new info.

Here’s how to use an XML sitemap

1) First make an xml sitemap, either manually or you can download a free program that does it for you (see my program recommendation under further reading)

2) sign up for a free google account, here

3) Under the google webmaster tools, you can add your URL and then follow the instructions to submit your XML sitemap

Further Reading
Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Initiative
www.sitemaps.org
GSiteCrawler – free sitemap program

G-Mail (Google Mail) is Google’s webmail service and was started as an experiment in 2004. Prior to yesterday, the only way you could get an account was by being invited by someone who already had a G-Mail account.

G-Mail’s features include a search (naturally) function so that you can search your mailbox to find a particular message and a massive amount of space so that users don’t have to keep an eye on their space allowance.

There is also a chat function, kind of like the Skype Chat, where you can set your online status to “busy” or even “angry”, and of course, this too has a search function!

You can also read your mail on your phone, and it is available in over 40 languages. Best of all, it is now free and open to the public, with or without an invite.

Further Reading
www.gmail.com

You could be sued for not having alt tags on your site and other things that inhibit the disabled from using your site successfully.

What? Can you be sued for that?

Apparently so!

More and more countries are passing laws on web accessibility. Acts like Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and British Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) are being used to bring lawsuits against websites that are not accessible to people with disabilities.

Legal action has been brought against e-commerce website www.target.com. The complainant says that alt-text is missing from images on the site which prevents screen readers from describing them to blind users. The websites image maps are inaccessible, important navigational headings are missing, and purchases cannot be completed without the use of a mouse.

Even Google has been accused of discrimination because of it’s use of anti-spammer “captchas,” which are the squiggly letters that users must decipher and type into a box before they register for a service.

Connecticut Attorney General’s Office has had a lawsuit brought against them for inaccessible online tax filing services on its Internal Revenue Service’s official Website.

Bank of America had to install 2,500 talking Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) in Florida and California and to ensure its Websites and online banking services are accessible to people using screen-readers.

America Online has had a lawsuit brought against them because of failing to alter its inaccessible software to allow compatibility with screen readers.

Make sure your website is accessible. Read up on these

Further Reading
Introduction to Web Accessibility
Web accessibilty lawsuits
Blog dedicated to web accessibility news
Google accused of discrimination
Web Accessibilty checklist