Lorem Ipsum Dolor = What the Hell Does That Mean?

I used it in an earlier example, now I have to explain it to you…
Sometimes called “Greek Text”, the phrase is nonsense, but it does have a long history. It has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s by typographers to show the most distinctive features of their fonts. It is used because the letters involved and the letter spacing in those combinations reveal, at their best, the weight, design, and other important features of the typeface.

On the web, this text is typically used as “filler” to be used, in the ‘review process’ or web site demos, until the real content can be figured out/approved/what-have-you. It has been well established that if you write anything as a sample, people will spend more time reading the copy than looking at the layout. The gibberish is sufficiently like ordinary text to demonstrate the appearance but doesn’t distract the reader.

Usually it starts as follows, but like Pi (for you math nerds), it goes on forever…
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetaur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididun…

 

vs.

The href=”#” markup is pretty common in many HTML primers and most developers are used to seeing it, and don’t even question why it might be ‘bad’. Here’s the problem… “#” is supposed to be used for anchors within a page (for times when you want a user to be ‘scrolled’ to certain content on the (sometimes very long) page. Typically this is done to link from an index to specific paragraphs or chapters.

Example:


Title
<a name="top"></a>
<a href="#chap1">Chapter 1</a>
<a href="#chap2">Chapter 2</a>
<a href="#chap3">Chapter 3</a>

<a name="chap1"></a>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque aliquet commodo diam. Ut scelerisque, nisl id laoreet consequat, pede lacus consequat est, id consectetuer neque augue a odio.
<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>
<a name="chap2"></a>Cras vel odio. Vestibulum fermentum rhoncus sapien. Donec vehicula euismod nunc. Duis malesuada erat non nulla. Cras ullamcorper diam ut ante. Nullam quam felis, suscipit vel, ultrices non, laoreet sit amet, nulla.
<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>
<a name="chap3"></a>Cras et sem vel enim hendrerit accumsan. Fusce lobortis lobortis quam. Proin egestas justo a purus. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos.
<a href="#top">Back to Top</a>

The problem… and the cure…
If you use href="#" by itself, the browsers behavior is to take you to the very top of the page (like when it first loads). This is great on static sites, but as soon as you start adding some JavaScript events (onclick being most common), you’ll start seeing the problem.

Most developers, when coding the ‘onclick’ for an href, automatically (or by habit, or reliance on “tools”), stick the href=”#”…. by doing so, their action occurs, but as an unwanted side-effect, the browser also scrolls the content. This often takes an incredible amount of time for them to realize what’s really happened, particularly because you need enough content on the page to even see the scroll occur.

The solution, just replace the href=”#” to have a null javascript event… for compatibility with a wide variety of browsers, I recommend using href=”javascript:void(0);” in theses cases.

Good Luck!

<a href=”…” rel=”nofollow”>…</a>

In an effort to reduce what is commonly referred to as “Comment SPAM”, you should consider adding the rel=”nofollow” attribute to any ‘user provided’ link in your website (or Blog). Doing so will prevent many search engines (spiders) from giving the linked site additional ‘value’ or ‘relevance’ because of a multitude of links from around the web. It doesn’t remove ‘value’ from them, just makes your site not give them any additional weight.

To my knowledge; Google, Yahoo!, and MSN all support this markup.

Simply put… the intended effect of this is that any link containing rel=”nofollow” will allow both users and search engines to reach the site, but the existence of the link will not increase the ranking of the site in participating search engines.

Related info:

Senseo vs. Keurig

I mentioned Adam Curry in my earlier ‘Podcasting’ post… as such i’ll throw this into the mix.

Adam seems to prefer (and promote, thru his now infamous “burp”) his Senseo machine, personally I’ve got a Keurig B50 that provides my daily caffeine dosage, the big advantage of this machine is that there is a much wider variety of coffee and tea available.

It’s been a big hit with my guests, and there’s nothing better than your own cup o’ joe in about 10 seconds!

Podcasting

Just figured i’d share in the knowledge of this topic as it’s been a part of my life since about May 2005. Podcasting is essentially an MP3 (audio) blog, some have developed to the point of having adds or even being broadcast over satellite radio.

I’m subscribed to several podcasts, the most popular being Adam Curry‘s Daily Source Code…. yeah, for those of you that are my age, you’ll remember this guy as an MTV JV (as a regular top-40 jock as well as on HeadBangers Ball).

I don’t anticipate ever doing one of these on my own, but would be willing to provide some content for anyone that would like my input.

Listen in and enjoy!