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21-04-2002, 22:36/10:36PM
Okay, this is strictly for those who may be joining us and are new to web design.
The Single Most Common Mistake in Web Design
Here's a good one for all of you new web site designers and maybe some of you ole' timers! You do know what this means, right?
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
That specifies that the background color of the web page is white. Now, do you know what this means?
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="100%" bgcolor="#000000">
<font color="#ffffff">Heading Here</font></td>
</tr>
</table>
This specifies that you have a table and it has a cell color of black (#000000) and a text color of white (#ffffff).
Okay, do you know what we've just done? We've just designed a nice table with a black cell color that has a white heading in it. Great reverse heading effect! Not!
You CANNOT have text that is the same color as your page background. This will set off the hidden text spam filters with the search engines as soon as that spider matches the two together!
I always recommend that if you are using the reverse heading effect, and you need light text against a dark background, use #efefef instead of #ffffff. It won't set off the spam filters. When users print those pages and have their background printing turned off, at least they will see somewhat visible copy. The #efefef is a very light gray color.
This is The Single Most Common Mistake made with new web site designers and some ole' timers who never realized that they were doing that. Never, ever, use white text (#ffffff).
Addendum: The above tip references pages that have the default white background or pages that have a background color value of #ffffff assigned to the <body> tag. This applies to any color values. If your page background is #000000 and you have text that is #000000 against a white table or cell background, you now have what is flagged as hidden text by the search engine spiders.
If you don't specify background or text colors for your pages, the default is black on white. Except for NN4.x which is black on gray, hence the reason for #ffffff for your page background color. This eliminates the default gray background in NN4.x.
For you more advanced designers, you will most likely be controlling your font colors through the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Just be sure that you've got a body background color specified and a default font color. Then double check all other colors to make sure that you don't have any font colors that match any of your background colors.
Oh yes, some spiders are peeking at CSS. I believe Slurp got busted traversing CSS files not long ago.
Same Font Color + Same Background Color = Spam
Believe it or not, most of the time when you see this, the designer was not aware of the issue or just forgot. Its a very simple mistake to make and one that could cause problems, so be careful!
The Single Most Common Mistake in Web Design
Here's a good one for all of you new web site designers and maybe some of you ole' timers! You do know what this means, right?
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
That specifies that the background color of the web page is white. Now, do you know what this means?
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="100%" bgcolor="#000000">
<font color="#ffffff">Heading Here</font></td>
</tr>
</table>
This specifies that you have a table and it has a cell color of black (#000000) and a text color of white (#ffffff).
Okay, do you know what we've just done? We've just designed a nice table with a black cell color that has a white heading in it. Great reverse heading effect! Not!
You CANNOT have text that is the same color as your page background. This will set off the hidden text spam filters with the search engines as soon as that spider matches the two together!
I always recommend that if you are using the reverse heading effect, and you need light text against a dark background, use #efefef instead of #ffffff. It won't set off the spam filters. When users print those pages and have their background printing turned off, at least they will see somewhat visible copy. The #efefef is a very light gray color.
This is The Single Most Common Mistake made with new web site designers and some ole' timers who never realized that they were doing that. Never, ever, use white text (#ffffff).
Addendum: The above tip references pages that have the default white background or pages that have a background color value of #ffffff assigned to the <body> tag. This applies to any color values. If your page background is #000000 and you have text that is #000000 against a white table or cell background, you now have what is flagged as hidden text by the search engine spiders.
If you don't specify background or text colors for your pages, the default is black on white. Except for NN4.x which is black on gray, hence the reason for #ffffff for your page background color. This eliminates the default gray background in NN4.x.
For you more advanced designers, you will most likely be controlling your font colors through the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Just be sure that you've got a body background color specified and a default font color. Then double check all other colors to make sure that you don't have any font colors that match any of your background colors.
Oh yes, some spiders are peeking at CSS. I believe Slurp got busted traversing CSS files not long ago.
Same Font Color + Same Background Color = Spam
Believe it or not, most of the time when you see this, the designer was not aware of the issue or just forgot. Its a very simple mistake to make and one that could cause problems, so be careful!