54 replies to this topic

[Ron Carnell]

Example, as a search engine how would I know that apples, oranges and bananas are related?

Google Sets

Results for: apples oranges bananas

[frobn]

Google Sets

Results for: apples oranges bananas

Three words in the same semantic space (search engine query) tells the search engine to search for association between the words. Searching on apples, oranges and bananas is the same as putting them in a list on a web page. Or by association are you saying that it doesn't matter where or how your words appear the page? If you are saying that are you also saying that a page of associated words or items randomly scattered are good enough for a search engine to find the meaning you want your users to have?

I know all the search engines are experimenting with latent semantic meaning and fuzzy logic and this will improve relevance but I also believe search engines use and will continue to concepts of semantic well-formedness.

[Raphael]

Google Sets

Results for: apples oranges bananas

That's pretty funky.

It knew what I was talking about when I entered "Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Judo" - it also knew what I wanted when I entered "Gibson, Fender, Ibanez" (all guitar manufacturers)

"Bridle, Stirrups, Saddle" confused it though. I got no results back from that. Obviously horses are not its thing.

Still, pretty slick to play with =)

[designergav]

Well thank god for that. I've just built a large php and mysql site using tables, with css for type and bgs etc, but I was dreading a rebuild.

Maybe I'm being niave but I'm not convinced by layers and divs, when i first encountered them many years ago they caused all kinds of trouble and have been using tables ever since.

I imagine things have moved on but it seems that the amount of coding required to overcome browser issues means it's more work than tables.

I know tabled site can be tricky to maintain, but if you bear that in mind when designing it can usually be overcome.

[qwerty]

Maybe I'm being niave but I'm not convinced by layers and divs...

Just to be clear for all readers, layers are divs.

[foamcow]

and a <div> is just a block level element like a <p>.
It's meant to semantically define a division, a logical block if you will.

Don't think of your page in terms of "layers" or "divs" think of it in terms of logical blocks and use the right tag to describe that block.

I think this is where many people stumble with understanding CSS layout.

[qwerty]

and a <div> is just a block level element like a <p>.
It's meant to semantically define a division, a logical block if you will.

Right. The difference is that a <div> is a block-level element that can contain other block-level elements, including other divs.

You wouldn't nest an <h1> in a <p>. I've seen <ul> nested in <p>, and you can apparently get away with it, but it's not a good idea, as your formatting is going to be affected by the parent/child relationship, and it's just not semantically correct.

[jchris]

What about this...

If one of two almost equal sites is made with accessibility in mind (and really is more accessible :-), then it would be relevant to a broader audience.
You can do this with CSS and you can do this with tables.
However, to make a good flow of the content when read by a screen reader for instance, you would probably want to use a technique that separates form from content. You would probably want to use CSS.

That said, you must also consider that an accessible site made with tables, and if it is as complicated at a normal commercial site is today, will have some browser compatibility hacks to accomplish the accessibility.

What are the odds that search engines put a lot of energy into correctly decoding such misuse of html for design purposes, when there are standards for presenting things on the web, and on mobile phone screens, screen readers, ...and so on.

I would say that in the future search engines will consider if a sites relevance is available to all visitors or just to some of them. (There's a legislation too) I would also say that they will focus their development so that they expect use of standards. (Just like headings have a standardized meaning that they don't expect from an ordinary p-tag)

You know the saying: Think of the visitors and the rest will follow...:-)

/chris

[Jill]

I would say that in the future search engines will consider if a sites relevance is available to all visitors or just to some of them.

I personally doubt it.

[Randy]

FTR, I doubt it too. The engines are all about being Inclusive, not Exclusive.

One thing that might be interesting for them to do however is to allow searchers an easy way via Preferences to only see sites returned if they validate. Specifically only sites that validate to the disability standards.

I can see this sort of user choice being quite useful for some sectors of the world population. And the Boomer generation is getting older every day.

But this doesn't mean they're going to force it on everyone.